The holiday selling season is the busiest time of year for sellers, and it's also the most competitive. To stand out from the crowd and maximise your sales, you need a winning PPC advertising strategy.
Here are a few essential ad adjustments, best practices, and PPC reminders to help you capitalise on the holiday shopping surge:
If you need help to manage your holiday plan, boost your holiday sales with a personalised eCommerce PPC advertising strategy. An expert can analyse your past performance to identify opportunities for growth and create a tailored strategy for you.
What 22 PPC Experts Have To Say For The Holiday Season
Customers behave differently during the frenzied holiday shopping season, and so should your paid search ads campaigns. Here are some solid holiday season strategies from 22 PPC specialists and experts.
- No Last-Minute Stress: Plan Early
“The key to winning the Holiday Season is to start on time. Most brands start thinking about Black Friday when it’s too late. Start early and spend most of the time on your offer. More importantly, I follow Alex Hormozi’s tip: ‘Make an offer so good, people feel stupid saying no.’”
Co-Founder of PPC Mastery, Google Ads Trainer & Coach
- Optimise Your Product Feed for Top Of The Funnel
“Revise your product feed to target the top of the funnel. As the click-through rates and conversion rates increase, keep optimising your product feed to target more top of funnel and generic traffic to capture the increase in demand. Also, sanitise and clean up your Merchant Center ahead of peak to ensure all products are visible and you don't encounter any untimely disapproval or suspensions.”
Co-Founder & Director, Shoptimised
- Prepare for Black Friday Sales Early
“Prepare for Black Friday sales sooner. Upload your Black Friday ads in advance and when everything is paused. This will give you time to review your ads and make sure there are no mistakes.”
Founder, PPC Live UK
- Create Audiences Using Custom Segments
“Create audiences using Custom Segments based on past behaviours, including searches on Google, website visits, and app usage, to target high-intent users for your brand during peak trading periods in Q4.”
Head of Acquisition, Ufurnish.com
- Merchant Centre is Your Best Friend
“Use competitive metrics that 90% of advertisers don’t look at. Localise copy with data from different trends in different markets.”
Google Ads Expert & Growth Advisor
- Test High-Interest Keywords in Your Shopping Feed
“Your shopping feed is a critical aspect of your PPC campaigns, and optimising it is equally important. Make sure your feed is of high quality, ensuring minimal disapprovals. During the holiday season, consider testing the addition of high-interest keywords to your feed. This approach can improve the relevance and visibility of your products, helping you attract the right customers at the right time.”
Paid Media Consultant, Exposure Media
- Boost Sales With Pre-Holiday Feed Optimisation
“The lead up to the holiday period is a key time to supercharge your feed optimisation. This will have a big impact on performance. Leverage your historical data, look at what keywords and products were most effective and what day searches began to peak. These insights often get missed with Holiday Period preparation.”
Chief Operating Officer, 360 OM
- Use Generative AI to Beat Your Last Year’s Sales
“Be better than last year, use Generative AI for feed optimisation (Titles/Descriptions). Many PPC practitioners are more analytical than creative, so let them combine their ideas or optimisations with ChatGPT & Bard. We’ve found using a combination brings the best results and will differentiate your SKUs from your competitors!”
Head of Paid Media, 360 OM
- Automate Ad Shutdowns to Avoid Promoting Sales When You've Sold-Out
“Do not forget to set up rules to turn off the ads when the holiday period is over. Everyone’s busy celebrating the great results and may forget to do it on time if done manually, so best to always automate.”
Paid Media Director, 360 OM
- Launch Pre-Holiday Ads To Build Awareness
Plan events well ahead of time and launch some pre-holiday ads or soft discounts etc. to build up the events, increase awareness, or maybe to get people to subscribe to avail any early bird/limited offers. Leverage remarketing audiences to bring back visitors, cart abandoners with promotional offers.
Associate Director (PPC), 360 OM
- Check Conversion Tracking and Adjust Bids
“Don’t forget the fundamentals. Check conversion tracking on the website and conversion points in advertising platforms. Make sure your campaign budgets and bid strategies so they can flex with expected search volume and conversions. With some housekeeping, you’ll avoid losing sales and traffic.”
Performance Marketing Consultant
- Spend Time to Optimise Ads for Costs
“Put time into your product feed. What you put in is what you get out! Make sure you optimise your titles, add in as much relevant information as possible, and remember the cost is the biggest factor when people buy.”
Google Ads Expert
- Cultivate Hot Leads with Pre-Holiday Teasers
“Start Early. Build anticipation with teasers before peak season. Cultivate hot leads while competition is still low for cost-effective conversions:
- Use PMax / Display / Video to create strategic teasers
- Focus on informative keywords addressing users’ needs
- Amplify tease strategy with Paid Social’s UGC magic
- Funnel leads through emails for seamless conversions.”
Paid Search & Social Consultant
- Diversify Your Marketing Mix in Q4
“Audit in Q3 and focus on efficiency via measurement, messaging improvements and automation. Reinvest gains into diversifying and higher funnel activity in Q4 such as social, Sky AdSmart, DOOH and online display ensuring your strategy balances reaching enough people, enough times.”
Media Director, Rocketmill
- Use PPC and SEO to Dominate High-Volume Seasonal Keywords
“Master high-volume seasonal keywords with PPC and SEO to maximise visibility and capture seasonal trends. By planning six months ahead, you can secure a strong SEO ranking before the term becomes competitive again. Combining both PPC and SEO safeguards against budget limitations and ensures broader outreach. Utilise past year's successful paid search terms to inform your SEO strategy well in advance of the anticipated seasonal spike.”
Founder, ClickTrain
- Boost Holiday E-Commerce Sales with Countdown Timers
“Elevate holiday e-commerce prep. Amp up ads with countdown timers. Create urgency with dynamically generated countdowns, driving clicks as it ticks down to the end of the promo. Boost CTR and escalate conversions by igniting FOMO!”
Paid Search Consultant
- Provide Google with the Most Accurate Data
“Provide Google with the most accurate data possible: Implement enhanced conversions, consent mode and (if you can) server side tracking. Additionally, send any relevant customer lists to Google provided you have your customers’ consent.”
Google Ads Consultant
- Build Emotional Connections with Holiday Shoppers
“Build an emotional connection with holiday shoppers by maximising your feed. Include optional attributes like the recently introduced ‘lifestyle image link’ and take advantage of the wide reach of PMAX campaigns to show consumers how their gifts will truly light up a loved one’s day.”
Performance Manager, Incubeta
- Protect Your Budget with Real-Time Stock Updates
“Leveraging real-time stock updates for Google Shopping ads is a cost-effective holiday strategy, preventing ad spend on out-of-stock items amid rising costs per click. ShoppingIQ’s real-time inventory updates protect your budget, ensuring efficient spending during the festive season. Remarkably, 95% of brands lack this essential feature.”
Head of Performance, ShoppingIQ
- Learn from the Past: Analyse Your Previous Q4 to Boost Your Next
“When preparing for Q4, take learnings from the past, you should look back at the previous Q4, deep dive and analyse what worked and what didn’t. Look at the strategies that worked and what keywords and copy led engagement and ultimately drove conversions, by looking back you can move forward.”
PPC Account Director, Reprise
- Double-Check Your Ad Setup to Avoid Holiday Headaches
“You can have as many Merchant Center promotions, customised ads with nice countdown features and sale offers, but if your ads aren’t labelled correctly or you set the wrong date for your ads to go live or you send traffic to out of stock product pages, you could undo a lot of the time and effort you spent preparing. It's better to do things meticulously and take your time, than rush and have to do things twice. Checklists are your friend!”
Paid Media Marketing Manager, YouGov
- Write Compelling Ad Copy to Stand Out from the Competition
“Have a strong focus on your copy. Make sure you don’t just rely on RSAs to do the job. Write for your customers, focus on the quality of your ads, do not just focus on Google’s ad strength rating. If you want to highlight something, don’t be afraid to pin it making sure it shows all the time.”
Paid Media Lead
Don’t miss out on the biggest shopping season of the year. Contact an eCommerce PPC advertising specialist today to get started.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, uses data-informed optimisations to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
