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The holiday season is the most significant time of the year for most retailers. To ensure you don’t miss out on potential holiday sales and post-holiday sales, ensure you use smart Google Ads strategies.
You don’t have to start from scratch and develop these strategies yourself or search high and low to find the best ones for the holidays. We’ve gathered the best methods to maximize your results from Google Ads during and around the holiday season.
You will notice that many of these strategies overlap with the ones you will likely be using year-round. As such, you can even adopt some of these suggestions to work during other times of the year.
As with any other strategy or campaign, you want to make sure you start planning for holiday sales as early as possible. The earlier you can begin planning, the less stressed you will be when it is time to start displaying the ads.
You can even start planning for the next holiday season as soon as the previous one ends. As a bonus, starting to plan that early will mean that any obstacles or challenges you had are fresh in your mind, making it easier to plan and overcome them for the following season.
Include a Crisis Response Plan
Part of your early planning should include creating a plan in case of a crisis. What happens if something goes wrong with your advertising during the holidays? Ensure that you have a plan of action and know that the appropriate team members will be on call on the relevant days.
Another reason to start planning for holiday sales early is that it gives you time to take care of time-consuming actions, like making sure your full inventory is in Google Shopping. After all, the more products you have, the more likely you will appear for a range of searches and showcase what shoppers want.
As part of your preparation for the holidays, go through your products and confirm that none of them are disapproved.
One of the first things you will want to do to drive more sales during the holiday season is boost your Google Ads budget. Remember, this is the time of the year when you will bring in the largest chunk of your sales. This means that increasing your budget will be an efficient use of your funds.
You don’t want to wait until people are already starting to shop for the holidays to implement your plan, no matter which Google Ads strategies you choose. The ads that you show before this point will help you with branding, priming the minds of viewers to encourage them to buy your products or services in the future.
Your goal with this particular strategy is to ensure that your company remains in front of shoppers’ minds.
Keep in mind that there will be some variation in the search terms used as the holidays’ approach. This gives you opportunities to incorporate seasonally relevant keywords. For example, if you normally have a campaign for “gift basket,” you should consider creating one for “holiday gift basket” or “Christmas gift basket.”
With so many people shopping on their smartphones, you need to make sure that your website is accessible on mobile devices. Your website should provide the full user experience on mobile as it does on a desktop. Otherwise, you will find yourself with a high bounce rate as mobile users leave your website immediately.
Remember that making sure your website is mobile-friendly will also help your SEO efforts, which should be even more helpful for holiday sales.
When it comes to using Google Ads to drive sales, you want to make sure to use Search ads as well as Shopping ads.
Google Search Campaigns
Google Search campaigns show your ads at the top of the search results when someone searches for the keyword you bid on. These are more targeted towards driving traffic to your website or generating leads, although you can also use them to create sales. You can divide search campaigns into ad groups for increased customization.
Google Shopping Ads
Google Shopping ads are advertisements that include a picture of your product along with other information like its brand, price, and name. They can also include product rating and shipping costs. The ultimate goal of a Google Shopping ad is to get people to make a purchase.
Use Google Ad Extensions
To make the most of your holiday ads, make sure to include relevant ad extensions. These extensions let you add information to your advertisement. There is no cost to use extensions; you pay like you normally would for a click.
If your goal is to encourage sales at your physical location, opt for location, affiliate location, and callout extensions. If your goal is to have customers contact you, opt for call extensions. If you want conversions on your website, consider sitelink, callout, structured snippet, and price extensions. There are also app and lead form extensions.
You should always try to create a sense of urgency with your ad copy, but this is especially important around the holidays. Even better, it is even more effective during the holiday season as people tend to be running around trying to find gifts and get ready for celebrations.
Use Familiar “Urgency” Words
You will still want to use the same “urgent” words as you would any other time of the year, such as “now” and “limited time.”
Add a Countdown
You can also take this a step further with a countdown script in your ad. Show that your sale is only valid for a limited time or that shoppers only have a few days left to order and get the item in time for the holidays. This will further the sense of urgency.
Your ad copy should also make it clear that your product is convenient to buy. This ties into the sense of urgency associated with holiday sales. Shoppers want to be able to conveniently and quickly complete their purchases so they can continue with their holiday checklist.
Include convenient delivery options in your ad to show shoppers that you offer this convenience. Free delivery, quick delivery, or in-store pickup are all great options.
One of the most critical Google Ads strategies, whether or not it is during the holidays, is to ensure your ads have accurate information on availability and pricing. While it might be tempting to get people to your website any way you can in hopes that they will buy something else, most people will leave your website if the product they want is not available at the price they expect.
Google offers several tools to let you automate this process and ensure the pricing and availability in your ads are accurate. These include the Content API, automated feed delivery, and Automated Item Updates.
When it comes to holiday ads, don’t forget any of the major shopping days. In the past, you just needed to worry about the weeks leading up to Christmas and Black Friday. Now, however, you also need to include Cyber Monday. Additionally, many brands are getting in on the deals in the week leading up to Thanksgiving.
Make sure to include all of these major shopping days in your promotions. Cyber Monday is significant, as you get to take advantage of shoppers who couldn’t find what they needed on Black Friday.
Consider following the recent trend and turning Cyber Monday into Cyber Week. The most common approach to this is to start Cyber Week on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or on Thanksgiving, but you can choose any dates that work for you.
When creating these ads, incorporate all the other Google Ads strategies on this list, including conveying urgency. You should also consider using the name of the shopping day, such as “Cyber Monday” or “Pre-Black Friday,” in the announcement. This helps viewers connect with the ad and brings to mind past holiday shopping. That will hopefully bring the sense of urgency you want from holiday shoppers.
Another piece of information you should usually include in your ad is your seller rating. Google tracks this for you, and when you create Google Shopping Ads and certain other ads, you have the option of including it.
Assuming your rating is at least reasonable, including it will help your ad stand out from the competition. After all, people are more likely to buy products that have good reviews and are from reputable sources, as they expect fewer potential problems.
Having the word “Free” anywhere in your ad copy tends to draw in the eye and encourage people to click on it. Offering free gift wrapping not only brings in this attention, but it also provides a valuable service.
Many people aren’t confident in their gift-wrapping skills and would rather someone else does it for them. Others are incredibly busy and don’t want to spend an hour or two gift-wrapping all the presents they bought. Yet others don’t want to have to buy gift wrap, bows, and other wrapping supplies.
If your competitors are also offering free gift wrapping, consider adding a free card for the buyer to personalize and include with the gift. This addition could cost you just pennies per card but bring in plenty of sales.
You may be tempted to skip location targeting if you only run an online store, but even then, it can play a role. If your product or service is geographically limited, like a restaurant, then you definitely want to include location targeting.
Even if your product is online, location targeting can make your ads feel more personalized, increasing your chances of sales. Of course, the downside is that you then have to create separate ads for each region you serve. However, that can come with potential benefits as well. After all, your advertising copy for a city that mostly has retirees would be very different from the copy that would appeal to a city filled with young professionals.
If you have a physical store as well as an online store and want to drive traffic to both, then you hopefully already recognize the importance of location targeting. You may not realize that there are even more options, including local inventory ads.
To use local inventory ads, you need to have connected your Merchant Center and Google My Business accounts. When a customer searches for your product, Google will show them your information, as well as how far away your store is. This lets you boost in-store sales with Google Ads in addition to online sales.
If you have an online store and can handle the logistics of international delivery, then you should be taking advantage of Google’s global reach to expand your holiday sale opportunities. Google offers Shopping ads in 37 countries, many of which can use English. This makes it incredibly easy to target new markets, as you don’t even need to change the ad copy or language. Google will even automatically convert the price into the local currency for you.
In addition to using Google Shopping ads as part of your holiday strategies, consider using Showcase Shopping ads. These are a sub-type of Google Shopping ads that let you show viewers a group of related products. This is great, as it increases the chances that a viewer will see a product they want in the ad. It also shows shoppers that you have a variety of products, making them more inclined to explore the rest of your inventory on your website.
Not only are Showcase Shopping ads a great way to attract potential customers, but they typically bring in new visitors. In fact, Google reports that 85% of the traffic from these ads are new visitors.
One of the Google Ads strategies that will boost your efficiency is to use Smart Shopping campaigns. These campaigns take advantage of automated ad placement and bidding. The campaigns will automatically adjust your audiences, products, and bids in real-time. All adjustments are based on how likely a search query is to convert.
According to Google, Smart Shopping campaigns typically increase the conversion value by over 30%.
Your Google Ads strategies should always include remarketing, including for holiday sales. As a refresher, remarketing ads let you target your advertising towards those who have already visited your website but not necessarily bought something. The idea is that to visit your website; these people must have a strong interest in your products, which will increase their chances of responding to your ads.
Remarketing ads can be particularly helpful during the holiday season because of the urgency and feelings of being rushed that people have. Shoppers want to check everything off their list as quickly as possible, which increases their chances of choosing a product, brand, or website they have already considered buying in the past. Retargeting ads let you take advantage of this.
During the holiday season, you will likely gain plenty of website traffic that doesn’t lead to a purchase. After all, not all advertising converts visitors to buyers. To make the most of your next holiday season and the time in between, start remarketing ads. This remarketing strategy is beneficial when it comes to overcoming the post-holiday slump that is so common in retail.
To effectively remarket following the holidays, take a closer look at the data for your Google Ads performance and Google Analytics. Use that data to segment your remarketing ads based on the action that causes shoppers to earn a spot on your remarketing list. For example, you could have one segment for those on your email list who haven’t bought and another for those who browse your website and left. You can also have another for those who got to the checkout but never bought anything and another for those who have bought something but not in a long time.
You can then use these segments to create ads that target those specific segments. For example, consider the segment of customers who have returned to a product page several times without a purchase. You could target them with ads for that product that incorporate a sense of urgency.
In addition to remarketing, you can target in-market shoppers that have not bought from you or even visited your website before. This is a unique feature offered by Google that takes advantage of similar audiences. If you opt to target in-market shoppers, Google will show your ads to people who previously searched for services and products that are similar to yours despite not interacting directly with your brand.
As you set up your landing page, there are a lot of decisions to make. One strategy that you do not want to skip is to ensure that your landing page’s headline matches that of the ad copy. At the very least, they must convey the same idea. Ideally, they will be identical.
This matching serves multiple purposes. To start, it increases the chances that your landing page will provide the information or product that the ad viewer expected. This reduces your bounce rate and improves your chances of making a sale.
It also increases the relevance of your landing page to your ad copy. Google determines relevance based on numerous factors, including bounce rate. Your relevance will affect your ability to win bids, potentially increasing your chances of winning them or even reducing the bid you have to make to win.
Essentially, ensuring that the landing page and ad copy match will boost your relevance. This way, you not only get more conversions, but Google also displays your ad more often, expanding your reach.
Your landing pages are essential to the success of your Google Ads campaign. One of the most effective ways of optimizing your landing page is via A/B testing. With this method, you create two nearly identical landing pages that have a single difference. Maybe you include a unique video or image on one, change the layout slightly, or adjust the color scheme or phrasing.
You compare the performances of each page for a set amount of time. Then, you opt for the version that delivered the most conversions or clicks.
It is rare for shoppers to buy from a company the first time they interact with them. Doing your best to introduce your brand to shoppers before they even see your Google Ads can increase the chances that they will click on your ad. After all, they will already be familiar with you.
To do that, start by finding other ways to connect with potential shoppers. One of the best ideas is to make video content, such as product reviews, holiday gift recommendations, and store tours.
It is never too early to start planning for the next holiday season. The above Google Ads strategies will help you drive more holiday sales. They will also help you overcome the typical post-holiday drop in sales. While the above strategies are customized for the holiday season, you can easily adapt most of them for any other time of the year.
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