RODA marketing

Tis the Season to be Extra Creative in Your Marketing

Present wrapped with a red ribbon and bow

Wreaths, Christmas trees, and holiday tunes have long replaced pumpkins and fall decorations, and the holiday shopping madness is about to start.

Savvy business owners know that in order to take full advantage of the shopping craze you need to start a well thought-out marketing campaign now, and see how to leverage holiday fever to maximize the impact of your campaign.

Starting your planning early will allow you to focus on your daily operations as your marketing strategies roll out.

We gathered some tips to help launch your marketing campaigns with a bang this holiday season:

  1. Ad Extensions

When launching and managing several concurrent holiday campaigns, make sure your ads are making optimum use of ad extensions. 

Some of the features that can make your ads stand out and convert visitors include sitelinks, call extensions, and review extensions.  If you’re already using extensions in some of your ad campaigns, it’s a good idea to revisit them now and ensure you’re maximizing different ad formats available.  This is especially crucial before the holiday rush.

  1. Shopping Campaigns

If you sell physical products, Shopping Campaigns should be an essential part of your holiday marketing strategy.

Shopping Ads are a great since they provide pretty much all the info that potential buyers need to make a quick decision about your products without having to delve deeper.  They make the price and product photos, two of the most important elements of an ad, easily and clearly available, making them a powerful tool of your ad strategy.

Even though your products will appear together with alongside those of other retailers, making it imperative that your pricing is competitive. It’s also important to use unique images of your products, even if other retailers stock them, as using generic images can lessen the impact of your ads. Overall, though, Shopping Ads are highly effective and well worth considering this holiday season.

  1. Leverage the Power of Ad Automation

Managing your marketing campaigns hands-on will ensure longer-term results, so we recommend spending half an hour per week optimizing and refining your paid search strategy.

With that said, ad automation should also be part of your holiday marketing plans.  It can be extremely powerful for time-sensitive marketing campaigns like holiday promotions.  Using tools that can help you automate your holiday campaigns will allow you to start, pause, and resume campaigns depending on your timing and scheduling preferences.

If you utilize ad automation, make sure you remember to resume a crucial campaign or stop a campaign that will no longer be relevant after the holidays.

  1. Ad Copy

So many businesses seek to entice shoppers with a time-sensitive holiday sale or other incentive and do nothing else in their marketing campaigns – a mistake that could cost them greatly.  

Smart way to do it would be to revisit your ad copy before launching your campaigns for the holidays, and often times that means rewriting ad copy.  Writing unique ad copy to launch your specials and sales will put you ahead of many advertisers who don’t take the time and don’t make an effort to do so.

Holidays are an exceptional time to push potential customers to buy, especially when combined with other incentives, such as purchasing before the dreaded shopping rush, so financial rewards such as sales and discounts should be an important part of your holiday ad copy.  And, be sure to polish your ad copy and create ads that are fresh, compelling, and topical.

  1. Timing

Truly, who loves driving from one store to another trying to find the right gift for a loved one, at the right price; or, worrying about whether your online order will be delivered in time for the holidays.  During the busy and often frantic holiday season, timing is key, and smart marketing campaigns will incorporate it well in advance.  Take steps to make the holiday shopping as stress-free as possible for you existing and potential customers by having special time-sensitive offers.

Your ads, landing pages, and social campaigns should be all about the ease with which prospects can get their shopping done, at the great price, if they act right now.

Make the holiday rush work for you – get creative in your marketing campaigns and use your ad copy to show the images portraying the chaos of the last minute holiday shopping.

For some businesses, posters, brochures and flyers can nicely strengthen their marketing campaigns, especially in targeted high-traffic and shopping areas.

Use email, social media and your website to let customers know about your upcoming deals, and see that your posts are frequent enough, engaging, informative, and – fun; ‘cause ‘tis the season to be merry, too!  And, don’t forget to feature your upcoming holiday specials on your blogs, too! 

Show how doing business with you can help lessen or remove the stress of holiday rush – offer free shipping on orders placed before a certain date, include freebies when purchasing early, etc.  Utilize social media by making the most of hashtags and offer giveaways to promote your products.  To create an even more powerful sense of urgency, use ad customizers to add a countdown to your sales.

  1. Landing Pages

Creating a sense of urgency on your landing pages is a highly effective way to persuade tentative buyers to make a purchase.  

You can do so by including countdown timers on your seasonal landing pages that tell visitors exactly how much time they have left to take advantage of a time-sensitive offer.  Or, include banners promoting specific offers, such as free shipping and discounts, which is especially powerful when used together with ad copy and ads fully utilizing extensions.  Basically, your landing pages can serve as an opportunity to provide potential customers with yet another reason they should buy from you right now.

  1. Keyword Research

Instead of targeting the same keywords every holiday season, capitalize on seasonal keyword searches and other timely trends.

In addition to your core terms, make sure you also include seasonal terms by using Google Trends and other similar online marketing tools to find new keywords that will greatly enhance your holiday campaigns.

  1. Tightly Organized Campaigns

During the holidays it’s even more vital to maintain strong campaign and account organization.  This will make it easier to coordinate, adjust, and run time-sensitive marketing campaigns.

So, if you’re selling seasonal products, make sure they’re contained within their own unique ad groups, and that your keywords are relevant and tightly themed.

Having tightly organized campaigns will also help increase your Quality Scores and other critical metrics.

Since repetition sells, take steps to ensure you send multiple emails, direct mailers, or holiday cards announcing your holiday sales.

We hope you maximize your profits this holiday season with these marketing tips and ideas.

And, all of your holiday marketing should be measurable so you can track your ROI and plan for an even more profitable campaign next year.

Plan your holiday marketing early and you’ll be able to maximize your profits, AND get more free time to enjoy the holidays with friends and family!

Competition for most businesses is pretty big, so in addition to offering competitive prices – always emphasize quality, experience and service.  

And if creating content and applying creative marketing strategies is not your forte, turn to RODA marketing, your Internet marketing Lancaster PA and nationwide solution:

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