The other day I stopped by my local office supply store and was taken aback by how many parents and kids were crowding the aisles filled with school supplies. Back to School shopping in July? Wow. Apparently things have changed a bit since I was a kid!
Knowing that the Back to School shopping season has already begun and that traffic peaks in early August (see chart below), now is absolutely the time to make sure your Back to School PPC campaigns are ready to capture as much of this seasonal traffic spike as possible. Here are some optimization tips to get you started:
- Attract clicks by updating your ads with enticing offers (the info that follows was taken from the PowerPoint presentation mentioned below).
- Focus on the deals and bargains for shoppers by using phrasing like “Coupon,” “Deal,” and “Sale.”
- Include “Coupon” in the ad copy and title (provides the largest CTR lift).
- Include “Deal” in the ad copy.
- Include “Official” in the ad copy and title.
- Include “Sale” in the ad copy and title.
- Include “School” or “Student” in the ad copy or title, respectively.
- Highlight relevance to the season and shoppers by incorporating “Back”, “School,” and “Student,” to your ad copy.
- As a whole, bargain copy was producing average CTRs over 9% while school-related copy was averaging over 4%.
- You can also leverage action words like “Shop”, “Buy”, “Save” and “Compare” to appeal to the buyer’s mindset.
- Monitor your average positions to ensure your bidding strategy remains competitive.
- Implement geographic or demographic targeting to help maintain high average position.
- Review, and if necessary, expand keyword list to ensure usage of high performing keywords.
- Make sure to bid on both generic and branded keywords to ensure complete coverage for all relevant terms.
While researching other pertinent info I could include in this post, I ventured over to see if our partners in Media Analytics Services had any Back to School related insights available on their Sharepoint site and boy, did they! Not only did I find a PowerPoint presentation that’s chock full of helpful research, insights and recommendations, they also had keyword lists covering general Back to School terms, as well as specific to laptops and mobile phones.
Not wanting to leave out anything that could be helpful to you, Dear Advertiser, I asked for their blessing to share their Back to School PowerPoint slides and the keyword lists here on the adCenter Blog, which they graciously agreed to (just click on the links above to download them). WIN!
Here’s a high-level sample of the type of insights you’ll find in the PowerPoint presentation:
• July 4th weekend appears to be the beginning of the Back to School shopping season according to Hitwise1.
• Keywords gain the most search share over the next 5 weeks, and then begin to slowly taper off during a 5-6 week period ending in mid-September.
•Though online searching and research occurs during this entire timeframe, the peak purchasing season is the month leading up to the start of school.
• 94% of all Back to School shopping will have begun at least 1 week prior to the start of school, which, in many areas is the week after Labor Day, September 6, 20102.
• Based on that, most Back to School shopping will occur during the month of August.
• Almost two thirds of Back to School shopping will begin in the first half of August.
Beyond that, this PowerPoint presentation provides detailed info in terms of clicks and costs-per-click across a range of products… from Clothing and Footwear to Sports and Recreation to Beauty and Personal Care, all based on historical adCenter data. Not only that, you’ll also find keyword and demographic targeting recommendations for College and Dorm related campaigns.
Questions? Suggestions? Let us know what you think… feel free to leave a comment below!
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