PPC over Christmas
Christmas shopping – we all hear about shops opening longer / different hours over the Christmas Period.
But what about online shops?
Key here to successful trading is being responsive over the Christmas period – which is why Cornish WebServices ensure client PPC advertising campaigns are monitored and optimised over these key dates. The search market behaves in quickly changing and unique way over the festive season, and the most successful marketing campaigns will plan for this.
So how do search patterns change over the Christmas period? Boxing day can be a very important day for both ecommerce and B2B or other types of website leads with good traffic. Across several markets sectors (comparing PPC data for Christmas Eve and Boxing Day) we are looking at a 50% increase in search volumes in key areas and a doubling in useful traffic.
By comparison the traffic on Christmas day tends to be less useful – with a lower conversion rate across a range of industries and market sectors.
Of course this could also be a function of how campaigns are optimised, as during December most PPC campaigns will be optimised for pre Christmas sales, and from Christmas Day onwards the focus is on sales. Christmas Day (or late Christmas Eve) tends to be the changeover period and accounts can take half a day to optimise (or longer for smaller accounts) for ecommerce sales.
The key to successful PPC advertising over the festive period is to have the account managed so changes can be made quickly in response to new opportunities where competitors have stopped bidding, or cutting spend on poor performers. With many accounts run on ‘auto-pilot’ over this period it is easy to see big hikes in bid price or budget wasted on weak performing keywords.
And with Christmas over the New Year presents the same challenges….
Published on 27/12/2012
