All I Want For Christmas Is For My Ads To Show!

In the magical land of PPC, getting your ads to show can sometimes be a Grinch; however, if you follow a few simple rules you can fulfill your holiday revenue stocking.  In this third installment of our series, Jingle Your Bells All The Way To The Bank, we’ll discuss writing snazzy holiday copy for Sarah’s keywords and Kayla’s account structure.  And perhaps we will talk about fruitcake as well…

Ad copy could be the single most important part of creating a successful PPC holiday campaign.  How else are you going to entice people to buy your seemingly delicious looking fruitcakes?  Internet retailers are seeing increases each year in their sales around the holiday season.  Shopping at the brick and mortars for the holidays and especially on Black Friday is slowly becoming a Ghost of Christmas Past.  In a survey about online shopping, 74% of people said that the biggest incentive to shopping online is free shipping, followed closely by better discount offers.  So what does this tell us as PPC marketers?  Give the people what they want!  Here are 4 tips to help you give the gift of great ad copy this season.

Create a relevant headline

Holiday ads need to have some sort of gift giving theme.  You want people to be able to differentiate your ads from the competition as well from your own non-seasonal ads. Using headlines like, Fruity Holiday Goodness, ‘Tis The Season For Fruit or Give Gifts of Fruitcake can help alert your customers that you are ready to make all their holiday wishes come true.  They will tell their friends, “Miriam, did you know that Fruitcakes Unlimited I found on the Internet last week sells special goodies for the grandkids? I think that little Bobby will love a fruitcake for Christmas!”  Making sure that you call attention to the people on their holiday list is also important.  You want to trigger their minds that they need a fruitcake for Great Granny Mildred or the Johnsons next door.

Have an attention grabber

Sixty percent of people say that they like to shop online because of better discounts.  Shout your holiday discounts from the rooftops in your ads!  The Scrooges of the world will be more likely to click through your ads and convert knowing they are getting a deal.  For example, lure your holiday shoppers with things like:

Try putting your discounts in the headline as well as the description lines to see what works best.  (Tip 4 will be essential if you go this path.)  If your company can offer it, free shipping is holiday gold.  People are already watching their pennies during the holidays so offering free shipping or even a shipping discount is really crucial.  Call this out in your copy!

Create a sense of urgency

The holiday season is short lived.  You have to hit while the proverbial iron is hot!  If you get a jump on it, you too can be an annoying company that advertises in June for Christmas.  But seriously, adding a sense of urgency to your ads will help boost your CTR and lead to more conversions.  Use call to action verbiage like, Limited Time Only!, Until (Enter Date Here)!, or Beat The Holiday Rush Today!. For those shoppers who want to get their gifts purchased early you have hit the mark!  To grab folks a bit later in the buying cycle (AKA holiday procrastinators) try copy such as, Don’t Forget Your Mom This Season. Having a good mix of these types of ads will capture the right kind of traffic for your business.

Test your ads

This is a golden rule of ad writing in general but it’s especially important during the holiday season.  You only have a short window of time to make your holiday campaigns work and sometimes, this is a company’s last chance to make up for lost revenue for the year.  Test different elements in your ads – the headlines, copy, call to action, discounts, promotional offers.  The list is endless of things that you can test.  Just make sure that you are giving your campaigns enough budget to ensure you are getting good relevant data in the account quickly in order to test properly.

So we have wrapped up our holiday ad tips and placed them under the tree for you. Please don’t wait until Christmas morning to open these – use them now!  (Your mother would never tell you that, kids!)

Be sure to also gnaw your new front teeth on the rest of this series from Kayla, Sarah and Dave to make sure that you are spreading holiday PPC cheer!  Thanks as always for reading PPC Hero!