Top 10 Ways to Maximise Your Adwords ROI this Christmas

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We at I-COM have recently been told by Google that despite the tough economic times, this Christmas promises to be a bumper year for online retailers! It has recently been reported that gross revenue generated by online retail this year could reach £8.9bn, accounting for 20% of all UK sales.

In light of this, the team at Google have put together a list of tips designed to help e-commerce websites make the most of their Adwords campaigns this Christmas, maximising their ROI in the process. It coincided with the some of the work we have been doing for our clients and, rather that reinvent the wheel I thought this would be useful information to pass on in order for you to maximise on the opportunities available at this time of year:

1. Set up a separate Christmas campaign on Adwords: Come up with Christmas-themed keywords by inserting words like ‘Christmas’ and ‘Xmas’ into the names of popular products e.g. ‘Christmas Coffee Gifts’
2. Run a series of Christmas ads alongside your normal campaign: The Christmas rush can start as early as September for some retailers, thus it is useful to start generating festive ad text as early as possible which can then be filtered into your campaign.
3. Create Christmas landing pages: Make sure the page to which your festive ad text links is 100% relevant to the product mentioned in the ad, as well as being Christmas themed in terms of both copy and design.
4. Mention USPs in your ad text: Make sure you highlight any Christmas promotions or offers in your ad, and then offer further explanation (if necessary) on your landing page. Also ensure that you have relevant calls to action; calls to action which include final order dates are particularly relevant at this time of year.
5. Uncap budgets on popular categories: Uncapping the budgets on well structured and popular campaigns should push in plenty of relevant traffic, generating excellent ROI.
6. Increase bids on keywords, especially if they relate to a popular product: Make sure you’re in a good position in the Google results in time for the pre-Christmas rush by increasing your bids on keywords.
7. Take a fresh look at your keywords: Do they cover your entire product range? Savvy festive shoppers may be aware of individual product names, so it might be worth investing some time in coming up with some long-tail keywords.
8. Check and double check your keywords: Spend some time going through your keywords; check there aren’t any left over from defunct campaigns or advertising out of stock products. The last thing you want to do is frustrate your online customers.
9. Expand your negative keywords: Make sure the negative keywords on your campaigns have been carefully selected and well built. If you’re setting up a Christmas campaign add in some season-relevant negatives.
10. Spend time building your content campaigns: They need to be well structured with tightly themed ad groups.

Investing time in generating seasonal Adwords campaigns could have a really positive affect on your ROI this Christmas – as with everything, you get out what you put in!

If you need any advice on making the most of your e-commerce site, I-COM offers a range of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) services that can help you maximise your online potential this festive season.