It’s that time again when everyone is searching for the best deals on the internet and in stores. Is your business changing its PPC or paid search strategy to bring customers to your site at the right time in their buying cycle?
Many businesses ramp up their paid search on Google and other engines in order to take advantage of the influx of web surfers trying to find that great bargain during the holiday season. Most do not take into account the change in behavior of consumers during the holiday season when it comes to buying online and shopping in stores.
If you ramped up your paid search the previous year and just ran through your budget without really seeing a significant increase in leads or sales then you did not take advantage of marketing data from your site and around the web for your industry.
Many marketing departments don’t take into account that purchasing behavior shifts during the holiday season. Many people are off during the holidays, staying up late and traveling. With internet access being almost everywhere these days, many shop during the middle of the week day, late at night and even very early in the morning.
If you have good analytics tracking on your site, then you probably have day parting stats that show when the customers come in and when they make their buying decision. This stat is extremely important. You can get lots of cheap traffic to your site if you ramp up and have good ads to click through to your site but if you are marketing when people aren’t buying your product, then you are throwing your money away.
If you had conversion tracking setup last year and you brought a lot of traffic to your site, you should be able to see what time of day and week you received the highest and lowest conversion rates. You should start from there when setting up your day and time ad serving settings for each campaign group. Set bids slightly lower on days and times conversions where down and slightly higher on days and times they were better. Watch conversions daily and make adjustments where you can actually see a trend one way or another. You should see good improved in overall conversions by making sure your ads are in front of consumers when they are ready to by and not as visible when they are just surfing the web looking at deals.
If you need help setting up or optimizing your paid search (PPC) campaigns during the holiday season contact Shawn Hickman shawn@seopros.us