Have you prepared your AdWords campaign for the festive period?
Christmas is a busy time of year for everyone, especially online businesses. If you fail to adapt your campaigns to cope with an increased number of seasonal searches over the festive period, you’re missing a trick!
Google and search partners generally see an uplift in dating search queries at the end of December every year, with this continuing into January and February of the following year. So, what can you do to ensure that you’re capitalising on the opportunity to achieve more clicks and conversions on your dating sites over the festive season?
Budgets
– Ensure that budgets on your top campaigns are not ‘limited by budget’; this will result in your ads not being visible for part of the day. When search volumes are high, this would be an unfortunate missed opportunity.
– Increase budgets on your campaigns, allowing for the increase in searches that we can expect at the end of December; a 20-40% increase is recommended.
Bids
– Look at your campaigns and identify AdGroups and keywords that are performing well, but aren’t showing in top positions (1-3). Consider increasing your bids to try and move them up to the prime positions of 1 to 3, where they will receive a higher volume of clicks.
– This is also a good time to review poor performing keywords – use filters to find keywords with high costs and no conversion. Pausing activity on these poor performing keywords will improve your ROI.
Ads
– Consider adding another ad to your existing AdGroups containing a seasonal call to action. Users like to see personalised, clever ads and this can help your ads stand out from the competition.
Conversion Tracking
– Conversion tracking is essential to see how your campaigns are really performing. If you aren’t using this tool already, set it up as soon as possible in order to gain greater insight into the performance of your campaigns, enabling you to improve your bottom line.
Remarketing
– If your campaigns are successful, you’ll be bringing even more users to your sites over the Christmas period and beyond. Around 80-90% of these users won’t convert the first time around.
– Use remarketing to remind them about your site and bring them back. This kind of activity is a great way of improving conversion volumes.
Site links
– Ensure that you’re using site links in your ads; they’re free and help improve your Click-to-Registration rates (CTR) and quality scores . This will also help to drive down your Cost-per-Click (CPC). If you’ve created a seasonal landing page, you could even consider adding a Christmas site link directing users to this page on your site.
Special Offers
– Everyone loves a saving. Think about using a special offer in your AdWords ad; a discount offer could see a great improvement in CTR. Include the offer saving in your headline, as well as the description line. Get in touch with your Partner Manager today, if you’d like to discuss adding offers codes to your site.
Give your landing page a festive look
– Everyone is in a festive mood this month, whether they’re shopping for themselves or for others. Don’t miss out! Increase engagement with a festive landing page.
– Draw attention to any Christmas offers that you’re running on your landing page, adding a bit of sparkle to your call to action.
The key to any successful campaign lies in maximising the relevancy of what your site visitors are looking for and what you can offer them. In December, everyone is in the festive spirit so make sure your site, and your campaigns, reflect this.
Have a great Christmas!
Sarah Iles, Partner Manager at WhiteLabelDating.com