4_Tactics_To_Prepare_Your_Paid_Search_For_Back_To_School_Season_-_FINAL_Hanapin_Marketing (1)
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4 <strong>Tactics</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Prepare</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Paid</strong><br />
<strong>Search</strong> <strong>For</strong> <strong>Back</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>School</strong> <strong>Season</strong><br />
Written by Matt Umbro<br />
Senior Account Manager<br />
hanapinmarketing.com
4 <strong>Tactics</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Prepare</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Paid</strong> <strong>Search</strong> <strong>For</strong> <strong>Back</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>School</strong> <strong>Season</strong><br />
With summer almost upon us, now is the time to begin planning your back to school strategy.<br />
According to a Think with Google study, search interest for the “back to school” topic increased 12%<br />
from 2014 to 2015. This growth comes after search interest grew 48% from 2013 to 2014. Needless<br />
to say, more people are searching for back to school related items online, meaning you need to have a<br />
strong presence in order to capture and convert this traffic.<br />
In this whitepaper, we’ll cover 4 tactics to make the back to school season a success for your paid<br />
search efforts. In fact, many of these tactics can be utilized for other high impact seasons as well,<br />
such as holidays. The most important takeaway is to be prepared for the influx of search traffic that<br />
will be generated.<br />
Review Last Year’s Performance<br />
The best place to begin your back to school preparation is by looking at last year’s data. The<br />
timeframe of your data should include pre and post back to school season so you can get a<br />
complete picture. A good timeframe to review would be 6/1 – 10/15 (though you can adjust<br />
how you see fit).<br />
You’ll notice that clicks and conversions begin to pick up at the beginning of July and start to tail<br />
off once September arrives. This graph gives us a good benchmark of when we should plan to<br />
allocate additional budget for our back to school efforts.<br />
You should also review the top spending campaigns and ad groups from the previous year. Chances<br />
are, budget was higher for some of these campaigns and/or keywords bids were increased during<br />
this time period. There might also have been keywords that have since been paused. Similar to the<br />
holiday season, return thresholds may be lower in order to account for a greater volume of traffic.<br />
<strong>For</strong> example, perhaps your “backpacks” ad group needs to have a 300% ROAS to remain profitable.<br />
However, during back to school season, that number may be at 200% in order to capture more<br />
volume, and ultimately conversions.<br />
hanapinmarketing.com
4 <strong>Tactics</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Prepare</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Paid</strong> <strong>Search</strong> <strong>For</strong> <strong>Back</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>School</strong> <strong>Season</strong><br />
Review <strong>Your</strong> Promotional Calendar<br />
Many companies offer back to school promotions, such as free shipping or percentage off products.<br />
Generally, these promotions are created well in advance, allowing advertisers ample time to create<br />
ad copy. By utilizing labels and automated rules, ads can be created and then turned on/off at the<br />
appropriate times.<br />
A good tactic to take when writing promotional copy is to utilize the extended headline format<br />
with the countdown ad customizer. Ads where description line 1 is a distinct sentence (a period or<br />
exclamation point at the end) are eligible to show as an extended headline. This format emphasizes<br />
your headline while creating urgency, by dynamically counting down to the end of an event. Here’s<br />
an example of an ad with an extended headline that dynamically counts down until the sale is over.<br />
Here’s how the description line looks with the countdown customizer syntax.<br />
Only {=COUNTDOWN("2016/08/31 00:00:00","en-US",5)} Left <strong>To</strong> Save 20%.<br />
Our syntax tells Google to end the countdown at midnight on 8/31. The “5” at the end of the string<br />
tells Google to begin counting down 5 days in advance.<br />
Another tactic to encourage urgency is to put the date and/or time sensitive material into the<br />
copy. <strong>For</strong> example, instead of counting down to the end of the sale you can say something like<br />
“<strong>Back</strong> to school sale ends 8/31.” Or, you might mention the fact that school is beginning soon.<br />
Here’s an example.<br />
hanapinmarketing.com
4 <strong>Tactics</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Prepare</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Paid</strong> <strong>Search</strong> <strong>For</strong> <strong>Back</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>School</strong> <strong>Season</strong><br />
Ad Extensions<br />
No matter the time of year, you should be using ad extensions. However, during back to school<br />
season you can make your extensions highly specific. Take a look at our backpack ad with extensions.<br />
We’re utilizing 4 ad extensions, including:<br />
• Callouts<br />
• Review<br />
• Sitelinks<br />
• Structured Snippets<br />
Our callouts speak to a price match guarantee and shipping the same day. These are important<br />
benefits, especially for those users whom are comparison shopping. The fact that we can match<br />
competitor pricing and ship quickly are huge value ads. In addition, we’re giving away a free planner<br />
with each purchase. By itself, this value ad isn’t substantial, but it allows searchers that extra<br />
incentive to purchase.<br />
Our sitelinks are back to school centric. 2 of the sitelinks speak to back to school products while the<br />
other 2 reference loyalty and subscription services. Even if users don’t click our sitelinks, they see<br />
that we’re focused on back to school and have more content/products to offer, besides backpacks.<br />
Even though the structured snippets don’t reference back to school, they do showcase the brands<br />
of backpacks available. If users are looking for specific brands, they can easily see what we offer.<br />
Rounding out our extensions is the review extension. The quote is highly relevant to searchers as a<br />
third party has acknowledged we are the store for back to school shopping.<br />
hanapinmarketing.com
4 <strong>Tactics</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>Prepare</strong> <strong>Your</strong> <strong>Paid</strong> <strong>Search</strong> <strong>For</strong> <strong>Back</strong> <strong>To</strong> <strong>School</strong> <strong>Season</strong><br />
Shopping<br />
The last back to school tactic for this whitepaper is Shopping. At the core of any good back to<br />
school initiative is the ability to showcase products in both Google and Bing Ads Shopping. Due<br />
to the images, searchers’ eyes are generally drawn first to the Shopping ads. It’s important to not<br />
only be present, but to showcase the right products. Take a look at the Shopping ads that show for<br />
“green backpacks.”<br />
You’ll notice that the prices range from $54.99 to $143.96. Especially for generic queries, it’s key<br />
to show the right products for each search. You can take this action in a variety of ways, including:<br />
• Creating separate Shopping campaigns for specific products and categories, bidding<br />
accordingly. <strong>For</strong> example, higher margin products may get higher bids.<br />
• Implementing negative keywords. If you don’t want to show for a query of “green<br />
backpacks” add this term as a negative exact match keyword.<br />
• Excluding products. You have the option to exclude products from showing altogether.<br />
As a bonus tip, you should also layer remarketing audiences on to your Shopping campaigns. Just like<br />
in <strong>Search</strong>, you can set a different bid for users that have already been to your site.<br />
Start Planning Now<br />
It seems that back to school shopping continues to start earlier each year, facilitating the need for<br />
advertisers to prepare their campaigns further in advance. If you haven’t begun to prepare, getting<br />
your account ready for back to school season should be a top priority right now.<br />
hanapinmarketing.com
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<strong>Hanapin</strong> <strong>Marketing</strong> is a paid search agency based in Bloomington, Indiana. Founded in 2004, the company<br />
manges & optimizes clients’ paid search programs—increasing sales while simultaneously hanapinmarketing.com<br />
decreasing budgets.<br />
From ad copy composition to keyword research to landing page optimization, <strong>Hanapin</strong>’s core objective is to<br />
maximize our clients’ return on investment.
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