Now that the Back to School insanity has died down a bit, it's time to start thinking about candy corn, bobbing for apples and all things Halloween!
While the seasonal Halloween PPC opportunity--and competition--is huge for costume and masquerade-related advertisers (see downloadable keywords link below), Halloween can also be a strong season for retailers offering party supplies, craft supplies and cards and gifts, not to mention specialty stores that cater to the occult.
Given that Halloween 2010 falls on a Sunday, there's sure to be more than a few Halloween enthusiasts who're inspired to throw a party that Saturday, which can translate into profits for any business owner with products/services related to the above categories. If you're anticipating a seasonal lift in traffic during the weeks leading up to Halloween, review the tips below for applicability to your campaigns and make any relevant updates accordingly:
1.) Campaign Structure – Set your adCenter campaigns up in a way that will make sense when you pull a report. If you lump everything together in one ad group, it will be more difficult and time-consuming to pull insightful data from your campaign's metrics. For example, consider how different types of costumes are grouped either on your web site or in your store and perhaps mimic that in your ad groups (infants, kids, women, men, couples, etc). Doing so will allow you to review your reports to spot trends that may be helpful in adding negative keywords, adjusting budgets, setting targeting or all three.
2.) Targeting – Do you offer online sales exclusively, a combination of online and in-store or in-store only? When planning your SEM campaigns, it's important to not only know who your audience is, but where they are and how you'll reach them. If you ship anywhere in the world, targeting may not be all that important to you (though market distribution may be), but if you're a local specialty store catering only to walk-in customers, you'll want to get a feel for how far your typical road-tripping customer is willing to travel to get to your store and then set your geo-targeting parameters accordingly.
3.) Ad Copy – Make sure your ads are as specific as possible, highly relevant and include a specific “call to action”… that’s marketing-speak for telling your potential customers what you want them to do: “compare and save”, “buy now”, “shop all sizes”, “outfit the whole family”, etc.
4.) Keywords – As I mentioned before, competition is fierce for costume suppliers during this time of year. If your keyword list is not as robust as it possibly could be, you may miss out on opportunities to get your ads in front of potential customers. In an effort to help you beef up your existing list, I’m attaching a list of 47,470 suggestions provided by our partners in Media Analytics Services that may be helpful. Most fields are populated with suggestions (ad group names, keywords, bids), but you can and should tweak them to fit your own needs.
NOTE: Because there are so many suggested keywords on the attached list, not all of them will apply to your business. Before loading anything into your campaigns, be sure to review this list for relevancy and remove anything that does not align to your costume offerings! Failure to do so could result in editorial disapprovals or potential customers clicking on your ads, only to realize you don’t carry what they’re looking for, thereby creating a poor experience for both you and your disappointed visitor.
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