Peak Mastery: Perfecting your PPC and Paid Media Strategy

The peak season provides a golden opportunity for retail and e-commerce brands, shoppers are eager to find the best deals and complete their holiday purchases. For brands, it’s the most critical time of the year to capture consumer intent.

Having a robust PPC and paid media strategy is essential. With the right approach, businesses can turn the peak season into a period of significant growth.

What are the biggest barriers to successfully implementing paid media and PPC strategies during peak trading season?

• Delayed Planning:

Failing to plan early enough is the major downfall for most businesses during their peak period. 58% of shoppers are already looking at what to buy in October, with 38% starting earlier than last year.

Brands need to be visible during the key October consideration period in order to maximise success. If your ads only ramp in late November, it is likely you will miss out on consumer shortlists when they are ready to purchase.

• Rigid Budgeting:

A surge in demand can happen at any time. If your budgets are inflexible, you might exhaust your daily limits as traffic spikes, resulting in lost revenue opportunities. Being prepared with fluid budgets that can scale with demand is key.

• Limited Creative Diversity:

With 64% of shoppers planning to engage across multiple channels, having a diverse range of creative assets is vital. Advertisers need to keep up with where users are spending their time and attention.

Consumers are spending more time on platforms which prioritise video. Without video assets and a varied ad format, you risk limiting your reach and engagement.

 What are the important considerations for maximising the impact of paid media and PPC marketing during the busiest time of the year?

• Plan Early:

Kick off your strategy in advance of the peak demand to capture early-bird shoppers and build momentum.

• Keep Budgets Flexible:

Uncap budgets to capitalise on demand (make sure cap is at least 30% above daily spend).

• Segment campaigns:

Use segmentation to quickly scale best-performing campaigns, ensuring you are reaching the right audiences at the right time.

• Adapt Creative Messaging:

Tailor creative to reflect changing consumer needs with frequent messaging changes. Focus on implementing deal-driven messaging during Black Friday, then switching to gift focused post BF.

Next steps and recommendations:

To fully capitalise on the peak season, strategies must be refined with specific and actionable steps.

• Segment High-performing Aset Groups:

Identify asset groups that have generated more than 30 conversions in the past 7 days and split them out. This allows you to scale with demand.

• Offer Dedicated campaigns:

Streamline your ,messaging by launching separate campaigns focused solely on promotions and discounts. This will help the push of sale products, driving higher conversion rates with targeted, deal-driven ads.

• Incorporate Black Friday Search Themes and Audiences:

Add keywords related to Black Friday and include relevant BF audience segments in your Performance Max campaigns. This will help guide bid strategies and align ads with heightened search intent during the peak season.

• Launch Demand Generation Campaigns:

Active demand campaigns now (if you haven’t already). This will increase brand recognition and expand the retargeting pool, creating a stronger base to convert once Black Friday arrives.

• Focus on Proven Creatives:

The time for testing new creatives has passed. To maximise performance, focus on using the ad creatives and messaging that have already demonstrated solid results. 

To find out more about our paid media services visit: https://26pmx.com/services/paid-media/