As PPC experts, we’re fully aware of the peaks and troughs that can be experienced throughout the year – dependent on what’s going on, such as holidays, and what type of product/service is being advertised. In the case of Christmas, it’s important to look at festive ppc and how it might differ from ‘regular’ ppc!
Often, Christmas sees a huge uplift and improvement in account performance, due to higher shopper intent and willingness/preparedness to spend. However, this doesn’t mean that PPC experts should be sitting back and just observing how their accounts might change, but rather, implementing best practices that can help to enhance performance during these periods.
In the spirit of Christmas and festive PPC, we’ve put together our ’12 days of Pay-Per-Clickmas’ to help you to make informed decisions around your campaigns and how they run:
Beware of budget caps
We’re not sure there’s anything that could kill the festive spirit of PPC campaigns more than restrictive budget caps!
Prior to the Christmas period, ensure you’re aware of any budget restrictions and plan with these in mind. If a budget does look set to run out, create an ad rule that notifies you so you can sort as quickly as possible.
Specify your keywords
Keywords are important for PPC year-round, however, at Christmas, shopper intent changes and therefore some keywords become more, or temporarily popular. Christmas-themed keywords with high search intent around the Christmas period can be used within your campaigns to better position them and increase the chance of click-throughs during the festive season.
Back up your payment card
Ensuring that you have backup payment method on your ads account will ensure that you’re not surprised with scheduled ads not going ahead due to budgets running low or payment cards defaulting.
This will give you the peace of mind that your campaigns can run seamlessly over the Christmas period.
Make use of historical data
Previous data patterns can be a huge indicator of what your account performance could look like during similar time periods during the year. Assessing historical data and recognising the patterns and trends that appeared throughout the year and during seasonal events, can help you to better understand how your accounts work, and how to successfully improve them.
Know your audience
Understanding your audience, and how they shop, will help you to best optimise your ads and ensure that they are set up for success – no matter how your target audience decide to shop. For example, popularity in mobile shopping has skyrocketed, so ensuring that your website is optimised to suit a range of devices is essential to reach your intended audience and drive sales during the festive period.
Ensure your client has considered stock levels
It’s extremely important, when it comes to online shopping, to ensure that your client remains on top of stock levels, and informs you when something does go out of stock so that you can update your ads.
Despite it being an indication that your ads are working, having too many orders, and too little stock, could be a recipe for a Christmas disaster!
Create seasonal landing pages
PPC landing pages can work well when tweaked to align with particular events – such as Black Friday, or in this case, Christmas. Just like ads, ad copy and keywords are changed or updated to fit in with the season, it’s important that your landing pages reflect this, to remain consistent and meet the expectations of customers clicking onto your ads.
Automate your ad rules
Automation is becoming more and more of a must-have for PPC experts, especially during busy seasons that might mean that you are dealing with more than one account looking to do something a little different with their ads during the festive season.
One of biggest benefits is how much time it can save, with the potential for time spent setting up and managing campaigns to be reduced, whilst continuing to improve results and meet objectives.
Be wary of delivery times
Businesses, over the festive period, need to be aware of how delivery times could affect their customers, and PPC experts, need to know how to focus and when to focus budget to ensure that it’s best used to enhance your Christmas campaigns.
Usually, businesses have a ‘cut-off point’ for delivery, advising customers to order by a certain date in order to receive their orders before Christmas. Being aware of this way in advance can help you to plan for budget allocation prior to Christmas, and give you a head start on making sure that your Christmas campaigns are successful.
Create Christmas ad copy
Promoting your products in a way that stands out from competition can be difficult at the best of times, never mind during a period of higher shopper intent. Including chosen festive keywords within ad copy can help to position shopping and search ads in the intended way, and drive more click-throughs during the festive season.
Use a countdown
There’s already a pretty high sense of urgency when it comes to shopping throughout the festive period – we’ve all experienced the mad Friday rush and last-minute Christmas Eve gift shopping. However, using a little booster in your ad copy is a great way to remind people of said urgency, and even promote Christmas sales to drive more leads.
Target high intent phrases
This is a rule that doesn’t just work for Christmas, but year-round, but nailing down your strategy and making sure you have high intent phrases covered in your campaigns could make a lot of difference when it comes to your Christmas campaigns.
As an example, high intent keywords can be related to shopping, location, or both. Think words such as ‘buy,’ ‘get,’ ‘nearby,’ or ‘local.’ For example, during the Christmas period, a high intent phrase during the festive season might be, ‘visit santa near me.’
There you have it! Our 12 days, or festive tips, of ‘Pay-Per-Clickmas.’ Feeling festive yet?
Most of all, we want to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year – see you in 2022!
Is Black Friday essential for PPC campaigns?
For many retail and eCommerce businesses, Black Friday is one of the biggest days of the year, and has become a culturally significant event in the Western world that encourages people to spend in the weeks leading up to Christmas – and in America, following Thanksgiving.
Our PPC expert, Slava, discusses how it can affect PPC account performance.
For any business that uses PPC as a way to generate leads and improve sales, Black Friday is definitely worth utilising as a tool to improve PPC account performance and product sales.
During the Black Friday weekend, if you have a solid PPC strategy, there are plenty of positive outcomes that can benefit your account performance and sales. Due to the popularity of Black Friday weekend, people generally have a high buying intent – even non-discounted items due to already having an urge to spend. Using PPC during this time is also great for brand awareness and could lead to a surge in account performance and sales.
There are also some things to keep an eye out for and take into consideration, as despite the benefits that Black Friday might bring, it isn’t completely free of potential issues.
Some of these issues include an increase in traffic causing both your website to crash and false indications of sales due to a build-up of traffic prior to Black Friday, a higher spend, and improved account performance being temporary. However, this shouldn’t deter you from taking advantage of the huge changes and enhancements that Black Friday can add to your account performance.
In addition to being aware of the potential issues that could affect account performance, it’s also a good idea to make sure you’re aware of the expectations you should have when it comes to PPC and Black Friday. There are three big things to expect, which are:
- Spending more money than usual due to higher volume and traffic.
- Being busier and more alert in order to continuously monitor your account.
- Preparing for technical issues such as scheduled ads not going live.
Being aware of these things will put you in a better position to successfully and carefully consider the most suitable actions to best improve PPC account performance.
So, in conclusion, Black Friday can make a huge, positive difference to PPC accounts, providing businesses with a boost in sales that can help towards year-end goals and KPIs. However, the downside of a (potentially temporary) surge in account performance, is the return to a much more ‘normal’ paced account performance in the days and weeks following.
P.S. Be kind to your PPC analyst – they are under tons of pressure over this period! Even if you don’t cash as much revenue as you had expected it doesn’t mean they didn’t do a good job or didn’t work hard enough. It could be down to your competitors having better sales or higher budgets allocated for Black Friday.
P.P.S. To PPC’ers out there: Don’t forget to pause your ads after the sale is over.
In addition to Black Friday, it’s important to take into consideration Prime Day – which we looked at recently and you can find out more about here.
Client wins for Circus this November!
We’re excited to welcome onboard a number of new clients including Cheesegeek, 4×4 Tyres, and Everly Wellness. The client wins come as we begin plans to continue growth and double our workforce in 2022.
Circus Founder and MD, Rick Tobin, said:
“We’re extremely happy to be welcoming new and exciting clients to our existing and constantly growing list of businesses that are realising the potential of well-managed PPC accounts.
“Our continuous growth and success, along with our latest client wins, means that our plans to double the workforce by next year are well and truly underway, and our new city centre location will provide us with more and more opportunities to connect with new and existing clients, and continue to expand in a thriving digital city.”
Rich Simpson, Chief Operating Officer at Cheesegeek, online cheesemongers selling craft and artisan cheeses, said of the new partnership:
“Circus PPC put together a thorough proposal that really impressed. Key for us was their small team of focused PPC specialists and the number of clients each of the team worked on. It was also refreshing to see commitment behind the projections they gave us – this has given us the confidence that we can achieve big things together over the next 3 months.”
Fancy joining the Circus?
Right now, we’re looking for PPC experts to join our consistently growing and talented team, to help continue to deliver exceptional results to our clients, meeting their business objectives and driving growth along the way.
So, what might a day in the life of a Circus PPC expert look like? PPC Account Manager, Meg, talks us through a day in her working life:
9.00AM
Usually I’m already sat at my desk, with a cup of tea to hand, catching up with emails and checking over my client accounts.
10.00AM
There’s not many days that go by without a meeting either internally or with clients over Zoom – so it’s time to top up my tea and head into one of our meeting rooms.
11.00AM
One of my clients is launching a new product, so I’m setting up a new campaign. To do this, I first turn to the Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords to bid on and their associated search volumes, which I then arranged into tightly themed ad groups. After this, it’s time to begin the first draft of the ad copy!
12.30PM
Our Brand Communications Manager, Steph, pre-warned me that she’d need to me to pose for some photos for social media today, which I wouldn’t mind, but it was raining when I ran from the car to the office this morning, and my hair didn’t quite survive the journey 😣
1.00PM
Lunchtime and no more photos! If I’ve not brought my lunch in with me, I’ll most likely be heading over to The Springs – a nearby shopping centre – to grab some lunch. My go-to is either a Boots meal deal or if I fancy a treat, a pitta from Humpit!
2.00PM
I make a post-lunch cuppa and get ready to concentrate! Growth is really important to our clients, and one of the ways we assist with this is by forecasting the level of investment required to help hit business goals. For the next couple of hours, I’m preparing a 6-month projection for one of my clients so that they can plan how much of their marketing budget to allocate to PPC.
4.00PM
The final hour of the day, for me, is usually spent wrapping up anything I’ve not had time to do yet, but at the moment, I’m assisting with recruitment, so myself and Will, the PPC Operations Director, will sit down and have a catch-up around interviews for people who’ve showed an in, admin and all things Circus! Of course, none of this happens without a cup of tea to hand ☕
5.00PM
Time to head off, but not before saying bye to Teddy, the office dog AKA Rick, our MD’s dog 🐶
Are you a PPC expert looking for a new challenge?
Or enthusiastic, willing to learn, and ready to pursue a career in PPC?
The business is currently going through a period of exciting growth and we’re looking for new team members to join us on the journey. If you’re up for the challenge and fancy joining the Circus 🎪, email careers@circusppc.com and let us know why you’d be the perfect addition to our growing team.
Circus prepares to move into Leeds City Centre
Following huge successes and client wins over the past few months, Circus PPC is excited to announce its expansion into the city centre as part of an ongoing recruitment drive that hopes to double the size of the workforce over the next year.
The new offices, located on Thirsk Row in the newly refurbished Tailors Corner, will act as the company’s new headquarters, whilst they keep their existing space at Thorpe Business Park to accommodate meetings.
(From L-R): Commercial Director, Ahmed Chopdat; Founder and Managing Director, Rick Tobin; and PPC Operations Director, Will Cheng.
Founder and MD, Rick Tobin, talked about the importance of the move and how it was necessary to move the business forward:
“We believe that putting ourselves at the heart of the action, along with a focus on our online brand awareness is the perfect way to attract quality candidates who can help to take our business to the next level.
“There’s no shortage of agencies in Leeds and the surrounding areas, and moving into the city centre was the next logical step for us in order to position ourselves as serious competitors that people are keen to work for.”
On top of an exciting move, the business is also celebrating multiple client wins, with a number of clients having come on board following a successful year.
If you’re a PPC expert, or you’re enthusiastic and interested in pursuing PPC as a career – let us know! We’re on the lookout for passionate and driven people to join our team in Leeds and help continue to grow the agency. For more information, email careers@circusppc.com or find out more about what we do over on our services page.