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November 4, 2020 - By Hawke Media

How To Set Up A Last Minute SEM Holiday Campaign

Have you been swamped with work and didn’t have time to research and prepare for your holiday campaign in advance? Here are tips to put up the right kind of search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns and ads so you don’t miss out on those potential sales.First, determine if you have the budget to create a separate search engine marketing campaign for remarketing. If you do, create that campaign, add your remarketing lists, and set them to “Target and Bid.” If you don’t, layer on those lists to your general holiday campaign and set them to “Bid Only.” Also, consider targeting “Similar to” and In-Market audiences to efficiently expand your reach.Regarding copy, include all relevant details about your promo (e.g. % or $ amount in the headline and promo code in the description, if applicable) in all of your ads. Also include a countdown timer so that when your sale is close to ending, the real-time countdown update will add a sense of urgency and further encourage users to click through, which could lead to increased revenue. Moreover, create an ad group specifically for keyword insertion ads that incorporate your top-converting exact match keywords from the last 30 days. You could go one step further and add exact match keywords that include the words “best,” “coolest,” and “most unique” respectively because searches including those terms increased by more than 80 percent during last year’s holiday season. Most importantly, make sure all keywords make sense with the copy in your keyword insertion ads.Lastly, set rules for your campaign’s start and end dates so that they can run and pause automatically, which will take one reminder off of your list. After you create your campaign, select it under the “Campaigns” tab, click “Automate,” and create one rule for “Enable campaigns when…” and another rule for “Pause campaigns when…” Now you’re good to go!Don’t let the holidays wear you and your search engine marketing campaign down!