We Heart Holiday PPC: Valentine’s Day Promotions for Paid Search

Thought you would get a break from holiday promotions? Not likely! It’s time to get back into high gear after Christmas holiday campaigns because Valentine’s Day is fast approaching.

A recent presentation posted by Bing Ads discusses trends advertisers should consider for Valentine’s Day 2015.

Consumer spending for Valentine’s Day was estimated at $17.3 billion for 2014, and 2015 is likely to be similar.

Maybe your product or service is not traditionally known to be a Valentine’s favorite, but this is really all about the positioning. According to the presentation, a good percentage of people will plan to purchase an evening out, clothing, jewelry, or gift certificates for the holiday. If you fall into any of those categories, a Valentine’s promotion could be a good fit.

Prepping PPC for this special time of year will take an engaged approach. Here are some tips we love for Valentine’s PPC promotions:

1. Since half of the transactions are within one week of the holiday, having budget adjusted higher to capture available search volume is important.

2. A large percentage of people plan to give to someone other than a romantic interest, for example, family members or friends. Plan to create keywords around relationships and segment into separate campaigns. For example, “valentine gift co-workers” or “valentines for kids.” Ensure the ads reflect appropriate messaging for each group. This may be an example where you do not want to use dynamic keyword insertion.

3. Yahoo Bing Network trends indicate that not only do searches for Valentine’s Day get hot in February, but they do so for both desktop and mobile devices. This means it will be key to have mobile campaigns tightened up and ready for the holiday, specifically in the themes of:

• Product and pricing research
• Retailer location information
• Coupons
• Ability to purchase from mobile

4. For additional mobile exposure, be sure to have ad extensions that are complementary to mobile, like location extensions and call extensions. Ads with extensions tend to deliver higher click-through-rates on both Bing Ads and AdWords.

5. A Bing Ads study show that ad copy with “official site” in the title, and references to shipping or delivery in the ad description, tends to have higher ad quality for retailers. Plan to use this tip as applicable and/or test it with your own product offerings.

Do you have a great Valentine’s Day marketing tip you can share? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @ClickZ or @LisaRocksSEM to discuss.