It’s that time of year when advertisers are starting to prepare their PPC campaigns for the on-slaughter of traffic due to Christmas approaching ever nearer. It seems to me that the Christmas ‘buzz’ is getting sooner every year. I remember when the Christmas buzz first happened at the start of December time and now we are already in the swing of things and it’s not even mid-November yet! Either way, this time of year is the perfect time to adapt your campaign to have a ‘Christmassy’ spirit. Therefore, along with the changes you will be making, it is useful to include a few optimization tips into your campaign too to make it that bit more successful. Here is a quick fire round of pay per click advertising tips to help you succeed in the last quarter of the year.
 

Include Christmas Keywords

This might seem obvious at first to do. However, you will be surprised at the number of advertisers that forget to include Christmas keywords such as ‘Christmas present ideas’ and so on. This is crucial to the success you have in Q4 because Christmas keywords will bring Christmas traffic which have a much much higher conversion rate than normal traffic (because they are wanting to buy gifts). Therefore, don’t let your campaign not target this traffic by not including Christmas keywords.
 
 

Change Images

As I have already said, Christmas traffic generally tends to adopt a high conversion rate because they are on the internet specifically to buy gifts. Therefore, another method in PPC for Q4 is to try and change your normal traffic to Christmas traffic. You can do this through trying to get your traffic into the Christmas Spirit.
What get’s you into the Christmas spirit at home? When you decorate your house and put a Christmas tree up. The same can apply to your PPC landing page. To get your normal traffic into the Christmas spirit so that they are more likely to buy your product/service on your landing page, decorate your landing page and images by adding touches of Christmas such as a Christmas tree, decorations and snow.
 
 

Make Your Shipping a USP

A huge factor that changes the minds of web users when they are shopping online at Christmas is the shipping cost and estimated delivery time. Although it might cost you a little more than before (for example, making delivery free), I would highly recommend that you include some reference to how you ship your product in your PPC advert and landing page. If your shipping is free and guaranteed next day delivery, there is no reason whatsoever the web user has to not shop at your website. Mentioning your shipping in your PPC campaign will become more effective the closer to Christmas when web users start panicking more about getting things they bought online delivered to them before Christmas.
 
 

Include a Countdown

Including a countdown into your PPC text advert will work great at getting people to click on your advert because it produces a sense of urgency that there is not long till Christmas. Combine this with the fact you do next day delivery will work wonders! However, it is a thought to not start the countdown too early (such as now being mid-November). Just like a Christmas calendar, try and start it at the very start of December.
 
 
As well as this, there is a final tip to always bid higher than your competitors! Christmas is a time when you can really profit and I mean really profit. Don’t loose out to someone else because they bid $0.20 higher than you. Remember that many businesses make most of their money at Christmas and so should you.