Category: Interiews and Presentation

Tags: Alex Cohen, ClickEquations, PPC, pay per click, AdWords, ad groups, competition, Christmas, holiday, brand, CTR, click-through rates, CPCs, landing pages, mi

In this video interview, PPC expert Alex Cohen explains some important tactics for PPC campaigns you're setting up for the holidays -- which aren't very far away! What makes holiday shopping different? asks Cohen. How you buy: people are buying gifts for others rather than things for themselves. How you sell. You have a lot of offers and promotions, coupons, free shipping, etc. How you compete. You find new competitors during the holidays, and high costs per click. Strategy 1. Target your brand terms in a very specific way. Track branded keywords, such as "Sony," separately from your other PPC campaigns, since they tend to convert better. In their own separate ad groups you can watch them carefully. This allows you to get better metrics, more relevant text ads, higher click-through rates, lower CPCs, and more specific landing pages that will convert better. Strategy 2. Focus on search query mining. This helps you understand how people are searching so you can give as specific an ad as possible. During the holidays you see ads that you don't see at other times of the year, since during the holidays ads focus on gift-giving, free shipping, etc. As you mine data to find the specific search queries, sort by the keyword you're spending the most money on when running Broad Match. (Don't run on broad match usually, only to get this data.) This helps you find the biggest "leaks" in terms of non-converting keywords. Also look for opportunities you can build out for holiday campaigns. Alex Cohen is the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies. He can be contacted at AlexLCohen.com. This interview was recorded at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, October 2010.

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