Over the last few weeks, I have created some articles that look into how advertisers can benefit from the Christmas holiday shopping rush – remember that many businesses make the majority of their profit around this time of the year. This is all good when it comes to starting a holiday PPC campaign. But, when should an advertiser end one? This seems to be something that is not completely covered online so I thought it would be a good idea to give some pointers on when advertisers can potentially stop running a holiday PPC campaign.
 
 

#1 When it is no longer possible for it to be delivered as a gift for someone

The first overruling point to ending a holiday PPC campaign is to end it once it is no longer possible for a consumer to purchase it and have that product/service delivered to them in time for it to be opened on Christmas day.

• For products that need delivering, this will tend to be around the 22nd December. However, this does not mean your campaign has to finish then. If you are making a huge profit from the holiday rush, change your delivery to next day so it can run for a day longer until 23rd December (final delivery for products has to be for Christmas Eve).
• For services and anything that does not involve posting and dispatching, you can run your campaigns right up to midnight on Christmas eve. This is because, in theory, people can still purchase your service and use it as a gift – a good example of this is something such as a driving experience, which only needs a document to be printed out and put into an envelope for it to be a gift for someone on Christmas day.

A good point to take away from this is that it can be just as bad to finish a Christmas campaign early as it is to finish one late.  Finish it too early and you are not taking advantage of the shopping spree of consumers: especially with the fact that there are millions that still do their whole Christmas shopping on the 23rd and 24th December. Finish your campaign too late and you will risk paying for traffic that has no intention at all to convert for you, making all the good work before Christmas day wasted.
 
 

#2 Analyse Your Campaign for Spikes/Drops

Another factor that can determine when to finish your Christmas PPC campaign is the statistics of your campaign.

• If something is working, don’t change it! For example, if you find that you are consistently getting high conversions from your PPC traffic even on the 24th December and potentially the 25th, you have no reason to stop it. In this situation, you will need to monitor the performance of your campaign much much more closely with 1-2 hour intervals so that when the conversions do start to drop off, you can pull the plug on the campaign – you will general find that it will drop off very quickly.
• If it is only the 20th December and it seems like the holiday rush it is over, you can pull back on the amount you are investing into your campaign just so that it reflects what the consumers are doing. If after a day things do not improve, you have the necessary evidence to pull the plug on your campaign early and save some of your budget for the January sales.