How to Give Your Holiday Search Campaigns Some Extra Sparkle This Year

Your budget is set. Your campaigns are primed and ready to go. You’re going to reap the rewards that Q4 brings to online sellers. Or are you? Your holiday search campaigns are crucial to your success, so it pays to make sure you haven’t left anything on the table. To help you go into end-of-year crunch time with confidence, we’ve created this quick checklist of search tips.

1. Analyze last year’s data—There’s a lot to learn from the ghosts of holiday search campaigns past. Dust off the data from the same period last year (and previous years, if you have it) to see if any patterns emerge. If you see spikes at certain periods, you can schedule your campaign boosts for the same time period this year. Remember, though, that you’ll still need to be nimble and ready to adapt to changes that appear this year.
2. Boost during the Cyber 5—No matter what spikes you saw last year that may be unique to your business, you can definitely count on an overall shopping surge during the Cyber 5—the five days that span Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. It’s crucial to allocate enough budget to keep your holiday search campaigns active during this all-important peak period. This is prime time for competitor conquesting, so make sure you’re not shut out of shoppers’ consideration sets.
3. Infuse the holiday spirit into your campaigns—Simply sprinkling a little holiday magic into your holiday search campaign creative can work wonders. But beware, doing it too early can also put consumers off. Consider A/B testing your best-performing ad creative and landing page against a spruced up holiday version to see if consumers respond. Be sure to note your results over time, to see if a shift in performance takes place closer to the holidays.
4. Fill your funnel with broad keywords—You know consumers are going to be out there researching gift ideas during the holidays. And many of those searches will start out pretty vague as consumers try to hone in on the perfect gift. That doesn’t mean you should bid on something as broad as “perfect holiday gift,” but consider going up a level or two into broad category terms to entice uncommitted shoppers. For example, if you sell electric train sets, you can bid on “classic children’s toys.” Be sure to then present a compelling offer, like free shipping, to compel that click-through.
5. Know your audience(s)—Break apart your audiences so that you can customize your ad copy based on where they are in the shopping process. For example, if an audience has never been to your site and you’re targeting this group with broad keywords, you’ll need to also include a compelling offer in your ad copy to get that click (similar to point 4 above). If you’re targeting an audience that has been to your site and you know which product was viewed, your ad copy should state why your version of the product is the best, or present an offer (e.g. 20% off) to capture comparison shoppers.  

Ready to apply these tips and more to your holiday search campaigns? Reach out to your Skai rep for help, or contact us for a demo of our search platform.

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