The holiday season is coming, and with that, so is peak PPC season. We all know that spending trends upwards towards Christmas. Therefore, you could be getting the most bang for your buck when using paid ads around this time too. Of course, seasonal spending can mean something different for each industry. For example, an air conditioning company may not have so much success as a Christmas tree supplier. However, this is a great time of the year to assess your marketing efforts and determine whether you should be competing during peak PPC season.
We first read about peak PPC season on Search Engine News. This is an excellent article, with loads of useful information – but a lot of it is aimed at the US market. So in this article, we’re going to explore what peak PPC season might look like in the UK.
The Difference Between The US & UK Market
Peak PPC season in the US will be composed of a few seasonal holidays, some of which the UK shares with them. However, the UK doesn’t widely celebrate Thanksgiving or Hanukkah, both of which are key spending influencers in America. While Black Friday is becoming acknowledged in the UK, it has nowhere near as much spending power as it does in America. In the UK, our spending habits will increase in the lead-up to Christmas.
The Christmas season for UK marketers is typically between November and December. However, some shoppers may start their Christmas shopping as early as September. The UK sees the most Christmas spending of anywhere in Europe around this time, both online and in store. Your industry may dictate how much of a surge you see.
Increasing Your Ad Spend
If you’re considering taking advantage of peak PPC season, you’ll need to prepare to increase your spend. However, this should be done with care. If you’ve been running ads for some time, you should review the data from past years. See if there’s any patterns, such as spikes in traffic and conversions around the same time. This valuable data can inform you more reliably about when it’s worth increasing your investment in advertising.
You should also be tailoring your advertising to the season, and to your target audience. Your message needs to resonate with them, and appeal to their behaviours during the holiday season.
Service Industry Seasonal Advertising
The service industry tends to work a little differently to businesses which have items to sell around the holidays. Although a lot of UK spending will go towards gifts and Christmas supplies during this season, essential services will still be needed.
If you’re a service industry, maybe you need to remind them not to forget about you during the holidays. Things like boiler servicing, roof maintenance and car care can fall by the wayside. A few adverts should help clients to remember these essential services and make a booking. Scheduling your ads to appear earlier in the year is wise, as clients are less likely to have spent their Christmas budget yet. We recommend that service industries boost their advertising from late September – unless their historical traffic trends suggest otherwise.
Design Tips
Holiday season advertising is your chance to make things a little more festive. You might want to incorporate Christmas colours like reds and greens. You could also use icons like snowflakes, presents and Santa hats. Audiences are generally quite accepting of holiday-themed adverts, but just make sure that your branding is still recognisable.
Choose Search4Local For PPC & Paid Ads
Our paid ads team are experts at producing and managing successful advertising campaigns. If you’re looking to increase your marketing efforts this holiday season, get in touch today.
Written by Alice Farley
