With Christmas and New Year fast approaching, take the opportunity to spruce up your digital marketing campaigns and make the most of the festive season with our 10 digital tips for December.
This time of year is often quite hectic for all of us, even outside of business hours! Presents need to be picked and shopped for, arrangements for visits made, sorting out when and how to travel, to name a few. This can be especially true within business hours too, with many companies having a particularly busy period over Christmas. We’ve rounded up the following digital tips to give you some ideas on what improvements you can make to ensure your paid CPC ads are working as efficiently as they can.
1. Increase your paid ads impression share
Using paid ads on any digital marketing platform? Competition is especially high during the festive period, so it may be worth testing bidding strategies that aim for impression share instead. By focusing on getting your paid ads visible to potential customers, you can make sure that your products and services continue to be seen (or even better, are seen more!) during one of the busiest times of the year.
2. Inform customers about special offers
Looking to do something special for Christmas and the New Year? If you’re planning to run special holiday promotions on products and services be sure to shout about them. This could be running some paid ads to promote them, writing a blog post on your website or posting on social media to increase awareness of your special offers. If using tools like Google Ads, be sure to have a look at ad extensions and assets to add those promotions into your existing digital marketing.
For example, we’re currently running a Christmas promotion on our new Introduction to GA4 webinar event, up until the 16th of December 2022. It’s something we’ve included in our monthly newsletter and our social media channels to help make our audiences aware of the discount.
3. Get your brand out there with display advertising
Display advertising is often a cost effective way to run a brand awareness campaign. By creating some eye-catching display ads you can both show off your brand and products in the run up to Christmas and also introduce your brand to many people who may have never even heard of you before!
Digital marketing platforms have different networks, so be sure to test out different ads depending on the audience you want to reach. Always using Google Ads? Why not test Microsoft Advertising?
4. Use remarketing to target previous visitors
Remarketing to people who have already visited your website is one of the most effective ways to secure a sale or lead. Quite often potential customers will shop around or will perhaps be on the fence deciding whether or not to make a purchase. A well placed remarketing ad from your business can help remind or convince them to make that final step at the checkout.
5. Update your ads and assets
Still using the same ads in the run up to the busy period? Update the content of your ads to include mentions of Christmas and why your product would make a fantastic present. Don’t limit updates just to your ads either. Assets and extensions, such as sitelinks, calls to action, etc. can all be updated with relevant information for the festive season.
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6. Make use of image extensions
Do you want your paid ads to really stand out from the crowd? Add image extensions/assets to your existing ads. You can select the type of imagery you want to appear alongside your ads.
This is especially effective for CPC search ads as they are often fully text-based. With image assets added they can become much more eye-catching and look significantly more appealing to customers. We’ve talked about why you should use these before, so check out the full list of benefits there!
7. Update your landing pages
Any digital marketing campaigns you run will point to a landing page on your website. This could be from ads and sitelinks, email links or other promotions you might be running. Your landing page could be updated to a dedicated Christmas page, updated with mentions of Christmas or even just a banner to give it some festive appeal and keep customers engaged.
8. Review keywords
If you look through your search queries as to what keyword terms are triggering your ads, you may see mentions of Christmas. Does your keyword targeting reflect this or are you still using the same keywords?
Updating your keywords to include variations that target Christmas can help your ads appear more often for relevant searches.
By targeting Christmas as a keyword (along with your usual keywords!) you will likely see a lower cost-per-click, better quality score and you’ll be able to show Christmas-specific ad content to those potential customers.
9. Run campaigns after Christmas too!
Don’t stop running campaigns as soon as Christmas and New Year arrive. The period after both holidays is often a great time to run campaigns, as many people receive money as gifts and will be looking for cheaper products and services after Christmas. The Boxing Day sales (which tend to last until the New Year) and January sales following are both prime opportunities to run seasonal digital marketing campaigns.
Even if you don’t sell products directly, your campaigns can focus on January activities, such as New Year resolutions. Giving up bad habits and getting healthy are two of the most stereotypical examples, but both are quite broad and your ads can be tailored to match the goals of your target audience.
10. Check seasonal keyword trends
People change their searching habits all the time, though the time of year always plays a part for certain keywords, especially those related to Christmas. Why not have a look through Google Trends to see what kind of keywords you should look at including in your CPC ads and on your website for organic traffic. You might be surprised at what is popular (and what isn’t!) when comparing keyword options.
Google Trends can also help you find new keywords to improve the content of your digital marketing campaigns, check out our full guide on how to make the most of this completely free tool.
We hope these tips will help you make informed decisions about your digital marketing and help you see some performance improvements, or at the very least help you plan out your festive season plan for next year.
From all three of us at Aillum, we hope you have a wonderful festive season with lots of clicks and conversions!
