Black Friday approacheth. We’re here to help.

Digital Marketing / November 01, 2016

Three ways to make your Black Friday & holiday AdWords campaigns even better

It’s coming up faster than you can imagine. We’re in that special time, that calm before the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping storm. To avoid full-on panic, now is exactly the time when you need to be planning your holiday rush AdWords campaign.

While you are plotting and scheming promotions and other blinky attractions for your future customers, there are some fundamental things you can do in your AdWords campaigns to make everything run better, smarter… and more profitably.

Below, our pre-Black-Friday-holiday-rush AdWords checklist:

1. Optimize your Google Shopping feeds

If you’re running AdWords for your ecommerce site and you’re not running Product Ads through Google Shopping, you’re missing out on the party. It simply involves uploading your product data into the Merchant Center and using AdWords to create Shopping Ads that promote your products (with images!) in the Google search results.

We’re hoping you skipped that paragraph because you’re all over Shopping Ads already. If this is the case, there are some clever things you can do to make your ads stand out and drive more qualified clicks.

Pay close attention to the keywords that drive to your Shopping Ads. You may not want to be as targeted as you are with your AdWords campaigns; if you do broaden your Shopping Ads keywords, use your search data to identify and add negative keywords to your campaign. This may seem obvious, but with all the fuss about getting your datafeed right, it’s something you can easily overlook.

The titles in your Shopping Ads are valuable real estate. Make sure your Shopping Ad titles clearly and accurately describe each of your products. Take the time to insert the most relevant, top performing keywords into each of your product titles — the very keywords you will be using in AdWords to promote these products.

2. Study and apply what you learned from last year’s campaigns

What happened last year? If you didn’t put together a post mortem after last year’s holiday mayhem, we suggest that you book time for this now. Dig into last year’s Analytics to get a solid understanding of what really happened during Black Friday and the holiday shopping season. This knowledge is gold. Take what you learned from last year and apply it to your Black Friday and holiday campaign strategy this year.

Was there messaging or creative that resonated with your customers? Did certain promotions or products sell better than others? Were there any challenges or usability issues on your website that got in the way of a stellar holiday shopping season? Address them now.

Even more important: were there any surprises? One thing we love about Analytics is its ability to teach us new things about our customers (and ourselves). Take a look at metrics such as peak shopping times (to set up day parting), Google Trends (what’s popular this year), and regional differences (products, messaging and promotions that work better in specific regions or cities).

3. Update your ad extensions

We shouldn’t have to say it… but ad extensions sometimes get, uh, neglected. Black Friday and the holidays being the most competitive season for SEM, it’s doubly important that you make the most of all the real estate you get in the search results. Give those ad extensions some love and they will love you back.

Review the types of ad extensions to see which ones apply to your business. And check your extension metrics so you can do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. Make sure your sitelinks are well written, and that they drive to the best possible landing pages. As always, integrate top performing products and keywords into your sitelink copy; sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference.

Do it now and you will feel ready

Don’t let Black Friday creep up on you. Start optimizing, building and planning your ad campaigns now to make sure everything is in place. A little research and planning goes a long way toward bringing in those extra customers and additional revenue.