Seasonality In PPC Management
Seasons bring change in most countries in the world, and the same is true with PPC Management, seasonality is a fairly fixed process but of course we get some variance, snow in July, hot days in February etc. but in general there’s a flow to things that’s consistent and this allows for us to plan to maximise seasonal variances in PPC Management.
We’ve done some very season specific things over the years such as Snow and Ice Grips (not a great seller in June!) to Bikinis (slow in December!) but this post is more about ensuring your PPC management is using seasonality to enhance your AdWords account performance.
Get Informed – First you need data
Real time data rocks, but sometimes doing PPC management is a little like day trading, some account managers focus on the almost live ticker-tape of data for the last 24-72 hours then week, and then month but seasonality demands that we look further back than just one month. You should ideally be examining 2-5 years to see any general trends that appear, you can then relax a little if you know that March’s high is followed by an April low, but being armed with that data means there’s an opportunity in April for a sale to keep things moving with some spruced up adcopy that you put into place to try to boost the seasonal lull.
The main 3 reports are :
1) View By Month In AdWords Dimensions Tab.
Here you will see general budget and volume trends, you can spot any general trends quite easily.
2) Same Day vs Last Year Excel Report.
Ideal for honing in on specific days, i.e Valentines Day, Mothers Day or just a like for like comparison of Tuesday mornings in April etc.
3) Custom Google Analytics Report For AdWords Cost Vs Total Revenue.
Great report for showing AdWords cost vs total ecommerce revenues on the same graph in Google Analytics
(you can create this report by going to “Custom report” tab in Google Analtyics, then select Revenue and Transactions from the Conversions drop down, as well as Cost from the advertising drop down, you can select other metrics if you wish too. Then select a Dimension drilldown, Date and other time selections in the other drop downs are worth a look too. Now click ‘Save’ and you’ll have a custom report.)
Optimise – Do the work!
Once you have discovered some seasonality you have to plan around this and more importantly do something about it. If you know there’s a lull in traffic then maybe bid higher to move up and grab a little more of the available traffic, but when normal volumes return, drop down (unless things are running better/within KPI’s) to your previous bids/positions etc. Where regular patches of low conversion/ROI occur step back and analyse how to optimise these periods, it could be that you actually are better just pausing your account, but often tweaking adcopy, making an offer, highlighting some other aspect of your service/product benefits might raise you through this seasonal slow patch.
Plan – Forewarned is Forearmed!
In B2C retail there are several high points over the year such as Mother’s day, Father’s day, Valentines Day, Easter, Summer, Christmas, January sales etc. so developing strategy to cope with these is essential, a yearly seasonality calendar is useful to ensure that you are prepared in advance, it will give you time to analyse previous yearly data, see what worked better, what didn’t and develop new tests, turn adcopy off/on, enable seasonal campaigns etc.
Be Relevant – Keep A Consistent Message
If you are pushing a seasonal offer such as a summer offer, then be relevant, get it in the adcopy, send it to a targeted summer landing page, ensure there’s a summer vibe on the page, be relevant, be consistent, get it into the company ethos that you do seasonality orientated campaigns so that other departments such as graphics/email/organic etc. are on board with it too.
Copy or Differentiate – See What Competitors Do!
Your competitors may be switched on, or could be total buffoons, so it’s wise to keep an eye on what they do but don’t fall into the trap of thinking they are better than you, if you like something that they do with their PPC seasonality then test it yourself, but do so tentatively, it could be that it just sucks and doesn’t work for them, but they may bot be measuring the results accurately. Copying or “taking inspiration” from what they do is one way to go, you could also try to stand out from the crowd and differentiate your offering or adcopy emphasis – click here for over 20 ways to do this with adcopy alone.
Analyse – Find Out What Rocked – And What Sucked
Finding out what worked and more importantly; what didn’t! is very important to build up PPC seasonality data to be able to make better informed choices for the next seasonal spike/dip so don’t just do the work then move on, analyse, summarise, learn and then put into notes for next time, also ensure that you note the landing pages you used as they play a big part in conversions so these need figuring into the data too.
Bonus Thought : Look To Other Markets
Some products and services have severe seasonal highs and lulls, so for things that are summer or winter orientated such as holidays, snow and ice grips, heating/cooling products, climate appropriate clothing etc. it’s worth looking at other places in the world that might be having a high when you experience a low in your country. It’s summer in the Southern hemisphere when it’s winter in the North so it’s worthy of investigation to see if you could fulfil a demand that lays outside your normal area of operation.
