How to Prepare PPC Campaigns for Christmas

After the most significant sales days and the madness of Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, we haven’t even had time to take a breather, and the Holiday season is already upon us. Numerous brands release colorful new ads during Christmas, offering users products and special deals. If you’re worried that you won’t know how to stand out from the crowd, don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. The following article contains valuable tips we have prepared to help you stay on top of your game during this hectic period.

Plan Your Strategy in Advance

The best approach to planning holiday campaigns is based on historical data. Before deciding which direction to go with your strategy, check how your campaigns have performed over the past few years during the holiday season. Pay special attention to ad spend at that time of the year, and you’ll get valuable insight that will help you budget for your future holiday campaigns.

In addition to the budget, see which categories were most interesting to customers and which products they bought most often. I know, I know… Consumer behavior changes quickly, especially during the Christmas season. What was interesting to them last year may not be interesting to them this year. And we agree with that, but historical data is a good starting point.

Monitoring the results in real-time is equally important so you can take advantage of good opportunities. If you see that interest in a specific category or product is increasing in real-time, redirect the budget to them to maximize their sales potential.

Review and Adjust Your Campaign Budgets

Competition tends to get tougher around the holidays, so you should prepare for CPC growth and budget increases to ensure consistent visibility of your ads.

To determine if your competition has outbid you, look at the results of campaigns that ran during the holiday season last year. If your campaigns had an above-average ROAS and a low Impression Share, you most likely missed an opportunity to increase sales.

To avoid this, be prepared to optimize your campaigns more often during this period and raise your bids and budgets in time to prevent a scenario where competition steals potential customers from you. We suggest that you use automatic bid strategies (if possible) because monitoring and manually adjusting bids in such an intense period is very difficult. Also, if manually managing your budgets is too time-consuming, you can always use automatic rules to increase or limit your campaign budget.

Run Separate Campaigns for Best-Sellers

It wouldn’t be good if your best sellers ran out of budget during the day. That scenario is possible since this is a period of intense competitive activity. We suggest separating your best sellers into separate campaigns to avoid potential losses. In this way, you ensure continuity, have more control over their budget, and can easily adjust it.

Include Holiday-Specific Keywords

When preparing your Christmas campaigns, conduct keyword research focusing on finding words specific to this festive period. Don’t limit your targeted keywords to generic words like “gift ideas”; base it on precise criteria like search volume, cost per click, and past campaign search term reports.

Let’s say that your company sells skincare items. Even though “skincare gift set” could be a good starting keyword, phrases that are more related to the Christmas season, like: “Christmas skincare sets,” “Holiday skincare deals,” and “Winter skincare gifts,” will be more effective. These keywords are often overlooked, meaning they are less competitive. 

Create Christmas Ad Copy

We have already mentioned this countless times and will repeat it because it is really important. For your ads to be relevant to user inquiries, aligning the ad copy with your holiday-specific keywords and offers is essential. By tailoring ad copy for this occasion, you are directly addressing the festive mindset of users. This approach will more successfully capture their attention and align with their seasonal needs and desires.

Adapting ads for Christmas isn’t just about getting attention; it shows that your brand understands what people want during the holidays. When ads match what users seek, it makes a stronger connection. That connection means more people converting, which is super important during this time for making more sales and getting better results.

Custom Landing Pages

In addition to adapting your ad copy to the Christmas spirit, it is also important to redesign your landing pages into a Christmas version. Just as you would decorate your brick-and-mortar stores or offices, it is also important to decorate the landing pages of your webshop.

By creating customized holiday pages, you will easily keep the attention of users who land on them, spreading the Christmas spirit and cheerful mood. This will encourage them to explore your assortment of holiday products and offers further. Customized landing pages increase the conversion rate and contribute to the success of the holiday marketing strategy.

Be Mobile Friendly 

Make sure your pages are mobile-friendly. Mobile purchases and transactions are growing year by year, and this trend will not bypass this season. Therefore, provide mobile users with the same quality experience as you have for your desktop users. If it makes sense, create separate campaigns for these two types of users.

Ad Extensions and Customizers

The use of ad extensions such as site links, callouts, and structured snippets gives users more information about promotions and special offers, increasing the visibility of your ads and bringing more traffic to the website. Showcasing special pages for seasonal sales, callouts for Christmas discounts, and snippets for various products will attract users’ attention and boost the conversion rate.

Remember to set up promotions within the Google Merchant Center to highlight your planned discounts. If you need help setting up the promotion extension, read more about the topic in our article “How to set up Google Shopping promotion.”

Optimize Your Feed

Improving your shopping feed will boost your holiday sales results dramatically. Since PPC platforms use this feed data to match user searches, consider changing item data to reflect the current season. Optimizing and streamlining your feed guarantees a solid foundation for success during this joyous time.

Also, check if your shipping costs are correct and updated if you have special shipping prices for the holiday period. If the shipping cost differs between the feed and what the user sees on the landing page, Google could penalize you.

Don’t Forget to Remarket

Remarketing campaigns are essential and refine any PPC strategy, pushing it towards better results. Advertising to users who have already been on the site is always a good idea. They are already familiar with your brand and have shown interest in your products, so the possibility of conversion is high.

This is the right moment to remind cart abandoners that they have left a product in the cart, and you can even offer them a certain discount on their purchase as a little Christmas present. They will appreciate it.

Keep an Eye on the Optimal Stock Level

Start planning stock levels for the holiday period in time. Consider whether you have sufficient quantities of your key products. Running out of them too quickly would not be a good thing. Although these are possible scenarios, you can prepare for them.

Determine what the substitute products are for each of your key products. If, at some point, the key product is out of stock, you can offer users a similar product through the “you might be interested” or “view similar products” feature.

Adjust Your Delivery Times

Maintain clear communication with your audience and team about delivery schedules and any delays. Consider changing your PPC expenditure to match your delivery capabilities, especially during peak seasons like Christmas.

Managing large sales volumes without the capacity to match delivery expectations over the Christmas season may result in bad reviews. Nobody wants their Christmas gifts to arrive after the holiday season.

Schedule budget modifications following delivery deadlines for various product categories. Assess, organize, and share these strategies with your team to ensure easy handling of any possible problems. Preparing ahead of time is essential to prevent becoming overwhelmed by bad customer feedback afterward.

In conclusion, we would like to remind you of two more things. Don’t shut down your campaigns as soon as the first ornament is removed from the Christmas tree. Let them run for a little longer. Many users will receive money as a gift during the holidays; they may want to spend it on a product with a good offer.

Finally, remember to evaluate your campaigns, look at the results, and determine what was done well and where opportunities were potentially lost. That way, you will be ready for the next season in advance.

In the end, there’s nothing left for us to say other than to wish you all good luck with your campaigns, a very Merry Christmas, and a successful New Year.