Six tips for the digital Christmas advertising battle
1. identify YOUR customers
What motivates your customers to buy? Are they more likely to be savers waiting for the best opportunity? Or are your customers looking for that special something for their loved ones? Convert the results of the analysis into interest-based target group clusters. For example, bargain hunters, gift buyers, those interested in culture, event fans, etc.
2. determine the key dates
Which dates influence your customers' purchasing behavior and trigger the shopping reflex? Black Friday (27.11.) and Cyber Monday (30.11.) are now also available in Germany and are a festival for bargain hunters. On the first Advent and St. Nicholas Day, those who want to make small treats away from the big hustle and bustle become active. Business people may buy at the last minute, the price doesn't matter. Discount fans become active again immediately after Christmas. In order to maximize the click-through rate, it is advisable to design the advertising material in such a way that it addresses the interests of the respective target group as precisely as possible.
3. schedule your measures
Define a rule in your campaign management tool that prevents event-specific ads from being delivered after the relevant date. An ad that is still advertising the St. Nicholas special on 20.12. leaves a bad impression and costs unnecessary budget. Many tools offer the option of defining individual time windows for playout at campaign, ad group or ad media level. This allows you to set up the "redeem your voucher" campaign and time the activation even before the festive season. The ads are automatically played out at the right time, even if you are still on vacation.
4. use ad extensions
In order to reach your target group, you need to achieve top positions on Google and Co. for at least your most important SEA keywords. Since your competitors will also throw unique ad texts and special offers into the ring, it will be difficult to convince the user. To increase the visibility of your ad, use ad extensions. Sitelinks take the user directly to the holiday promotion page. Location extensions show the opening hours during the holidays. Call-out extensions offer the option of adding non-clickable festive or promotional messages such as "Free delivery" to the ad.
5. exclude appointments from bid management
If you exclude certain dates or time slots from bid management, you can save costs. In addition, certain conversion data is not taken into account in bidding. This is particularly useful in phases in which exceptionally high or low performance values are achieved. This can confuse the calculation of optimal bids. If the available data does not reflect the normal performance of the campaigns, the calculation is based on incorrect assumptions.
6. use retargeting
Your additional advertising measures during the Christmas period will also attract new visitors to your store. These users have already looked around on other websites before they landed on yours and will certainly continue to browse. Between all the digital Christmas advertising, it's easy for users to forget where they actually saw the perfect gift. With retargeting ads, you can help them remember and bring them back. It costs nothing to create retargeting lists and match them with your campaigns. Every shopping occasion in the year-end rally leads to different search intentions. If you create retargeting lists analogous to your target group clusters, you can advertise your offers very efficiently via search and display ads.
