5 Tips for a Successful Holiday Google AdWords Campaign

By Keith | Posted December 15, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Advertising, Internet Marketing

I’ve passed the Google AdWords Professional exam, run several client AdWords campaigns and read everything I could get my hands on about pay-per-click (PPC) campaign management. However, when we recently suggested to a client that they should run a PPC campaign to promote their product for the holiday season, we learned holiday Google Adwords campaign management is a completely different animal.

While for the most part, typical AdWords campaigns target people searching for a specific product, service or industry; holiday campaigns need to appeal to a broad audience. This changes the typical approach to keyword selection, ad copywriting, bidding and campaign setup.

Fortunately, I had the help of my colleagues and combined with our client’s thorough understanding of their audiences and holiday-buyer personas, we were able to adapt, customize and put together a strong and successful campaign.

Here are five lessons we've learned that can help you run a successful holiday Google AdWords campaign:

1) Target the Undecided – To maximize the number of clicks you will receive, target audiences who are using search engines to research gift ideas for their loved ones. In addition, a holiday campaign should contain general keywords, such as “gift” or “present.” Undecided shoppers obviously do not know what they are shopping for so the more general the keyword or phrase, the better.

2) Nicknames for your Audiences – Before selecting your keywords, it is important to define the audience your product would appeal to the most, and then determine all the names that can apply. For instance, if you sell a product that appeals to a male audience, you may consider using the terms men, guys, dads, fathers, grandpas, sons, husbands, uncles, etc.

WARNING – Just a heads up, if your targeting terms for husbands, boyfriends, wives or girlfriends, be sure to create a Negative Keyword “naughty” or “adult” if you do not sell those types of gifts.

3) Remove the Mystery – To ensure you only get quality leads clicking on your ads, make sure the ad copy makes it obvious what you sell. Your ad should contain a keyword or phrase that clearly defines what the searcher will find on your site. This way, if your “cool gift for dad” is golf clubs, searchers will pass it over if their dad prefers spelunking.

4) Open Up the Content Network – I have never been the biggest proponent of the content network considering it is a time consuming process to identify the sites your ads are showing on and then request that your ads stop showing on those none-relevant sites. However, for holiday campaigns, I’d recommend it, mainly because your ads will appear on huge ecommerce sites, like Amazon.com. We’ve seen the content network do very well for our campaign this holiday season.

5) Be Ready to Bid – Be ready to pay a premium for your keywords. With general holiday terms, you will not be the only company bidding. Your ad needs to be in the top 3 to get the most clicks, and consequently you need to be ready to bid high enough. To give you an idea of how much you can spend, over the past three weeks, we’ve seen CPCs range from $3.00 to $12.00 for terms like, “Gift Ideas for Dad” and “Gifts for Grandpa.”

Also, do not rely heavily on Google’s Traffic Estimator to give you an accurate gage on the traffic and costs per click because for three-quarters of the year, no one is searching holiday terms, thus skewing the results.

Keith Moehring is a Consultant for PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. He is a certified Google Adwords Professional and has been working in PR & Marketing for more than three years. You can follow him on Twitter @keithmoehring