It’s important to have an always-on Google Ads strategy to stay top of mind and drive sales year-round. But you may also want to ramp up your strategy or make some adjustments to capture holiday shoppers.
And that ramp-up period may start earlier and last longer than you think. For example, did you know that 34% of shoppers start their holiday shopping in July? Google also reported that eight days in December had higher spending than Cyber Monday last year.
In this article, we’re covering eight strategies that can help you drive sales through your holiday Google Ads campaigns.
Contents
- Predict and prepare for surges using Performance Planner and demand forecasts
- Activate the Ads Power Pair
- Create tailored seasonal Shopping ads with Product Studio
- Update ad copy and creative with a holiday theme using AI
- Try promotion assets to attract holiday shoppers
- Include store sales or store visits as conversions in Search and Shopping campaigns
- Refer to the Store Quality scorecard in Merchant Center for performance tracking
- Check out the Price Insights report to stay competitive over the holidays
Google Ads holiday tips and strategies for more seasonal sales
Here are the top tips to optimize for the holiday season in Google Ads.
1. Predict and prepare for surges using Performance Planner and demand forecasts
Google Ads offers insights from the Performance Planner and demand forecast features to help advertisers predict and prepare for the holiday shopping surge. Google recommends that, based on your findings in these reports, you should adjust your campaign budgets and return on ad spend (ROAS) targets 4-6 weeks before the peak season.
Are your Google Ads ready for the holiday rush? Find out with our free Google Ads Grader!
2. Activate the Ads Power Pair
Google now defines the use of broad match search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns as the Power Pair. It’s an AI-powered combination of two campaign types you can use in unison in your account to drive more conversions across all potential placements. When you’re looking to tap into new audiences to increase holiday sales, this pairing can be all you need for success.
3. Create tailored seasonal Shopping ads with Product Studio
The holiday season is the perfect time to take advantage of Product Studio if you’re a Merchant Center Next user or use the Google and YouTube app on Shopify. If you’re not in either of those categories, you can still sign up for Product Studio here.
Product Studio gives you the ability to elevate your product images and videos for the holiday season using AI. For example, you could click the generate scene tab and use the seasonal and holiday templates to create custom holiday-themed product images.
4. Update ad copy and creative with a holiday theme using AI
If you don’t have product images that need work this season but still want to update your holiday ad copy and creative using AI, there are other tools available beyond Product Studio.
Opting to use Google Ads asset generation can help you create new holiday lifestyle imagery or image variations for display ads using Google’s AI-powered image editor. For search and Performance Max campaigns, you can use automatically created assets to dynamically change your ad headlines and descriptions to be more relevant to holiday searches.
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5. Try promotion assets to attract holiday shoppers
While you should be using all different types of Google Ads assets across your campaigns, the promotion asset feature in Google Ads can be especially helpful during the holiday season.
You can customize your promotion assets according to the different holidays your ads may be targeting, and mention any holiday offers or deals. You can also schedule your assets so they only run during the holiday season.
6. Include store sales or store visits as conversions in Search and Shopping campaigns
Google Ads allows advertisers to track store sales and store visits as conversions. You could include these conversion actions in your campaign goals during the holiday season. This can impact your Smart Bidding strategy so that your campaign optimizes to increase holiday sales.
7. Refer to the Store Quality scorecard in Merchant Center for performance tracking
In the analytics portion of Merchant Center, you can check the Store Quality scorecard to see how you compare to other advertisers in your category in terms of delivery, shipping costs, returns, and seller rating. You can review this regularly to identify areas for improvement and adjust to better serve your holiday audience.
8. Check out the Price Insights report to stay competitive over the holidays
The Google Ads Price Insights report within Merchant Center is another tool to help you stay competitive this holiday season.
To be eligible for this report, you’ll have to either provide cart data and upload cost of goods sold (COGS) or report back purchase conversions and use target ROAS as your bid strategy.
However, this can be well worth it because Google will use your account’s data to estimate impressions, clicks, conversions, and gross profit uplift for your holiday products.
Make your holiday Google Ads fun, festive, and fruitful
Before you start decking the halls, be sure to deck out your paid search strategy with the right tools and tactics to lock in holiday sales.
This is an exciting time of year, so while it’s important to ensure you have your conversion tracking on point and your Merchant Center in order, a big theme of these strategies is to give your ads festive flair. That way, your ads will stand out from competitors and stay relevant to the season. So, have fun with it, and don’t be afraid to try a variety of strategies. After all, holiday campaigns only come around once a year!
For more ways to hype up your holiday ads, see how our solutions can help you make the most out of your holiday campaigns this season.
Looking for other holiday advertising and marketing resources? We’ve got you covered: