4_Tactics_To_Prepare_Your_Paid_Search_For_Back_To_School_Season_-_FINAL_Hanapin_Marketing (1)

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4 Tactics To Prepare Your Paid Search For Back To School Season With summer almost upon us, now is the time to begin planning your back to school strategy. According to a Think with Google study, search interest for the “back to school” topic increased 12% from 2014 to 2015. This growth comes after search interest grew 48% from 2013 to 2014. Needless to say, more people are searching for back to school related items online, meaning you need to have a strong presence in order to capture and convert this traffic. In this whitepaper, we’ll cover 4 tactics to make the back to school season a success for your paid search efforts. In fact, many of these tactics can be utilized for other high impact seasons as well, such as holidays. The most important takeaway is to be prepared for the influx of search traffic that will be generated. Review Last Year’s Performance The best place to begin your back to school preparation is by looking at last year’s data. The timeframe of your data should include pre and post back to school season so you can get a complete picture. A good timeframe to review would be 6/1 – 10/15 (though you can adjust how you see fit). You’ll notice that clicks and conversions begin to pick up at the beginning of July and start to tail off once September arrives. This graph gives us a good benchmark of when we should plan to allocate additional budget for our back to school efforts. You should also review the top spending campaigns and ad groups from the previous year. Chances are, budget was higher for some of these campaigns and/or keywords bids were increased during this time period. There might also have been keywords that have since been paused. Similar to the holiday season, return thresholds may be lower in order to account for a greater volume of traffic. For example, perhaps your “backpacks” ad group needs to have a 300% ROAS to remain profitable. However, during back to school season, that number may be at 200% in order to capture more volume, and ultimately conversions. hanapinmarketing.com
4 Tactics To Prepare Your Paid Search For Back To School Season Review Your Promotional Calendar Many companies offer back to school promotions, such as free shipping or percentage off products. Generally, these promotions are created well in advance, allowing advertisers ample time to create ad copy. By utilizing labels and automated rules, ads can be created and then turned on/off at the appropriate times. A good tactic to take when writing promotional copy is to utilize the extended headline format with the countdown ad customizer. Ads where description line 1 is a distinct sentence (a period or exclamation point at the end) are eligible to show as an extended headline. This format emphasizes your headline while creating urgency, by dynamically counting down to the end of an event. Here’s an example of an ad with an extended headline that dynamically counts down until the sale is over. Here’s how the description line looks with the countdown customizer syntax. Only {=COUNTDOWN("2016/08/31 00:00:00","en-US",5)} Left To Save 20%. Our syntax tells Google to end the countdown at midnight on 8/31. The “5” at the end of the string tells Google to begin counting down 5 days in advance. Another tactic to encourage urgency is to put the date and/or time sensitive material into the copy. For example, instead of counting down to the end of the sale you can say something like “Back to school sale ends 8/31.” Or, you might mention the fact that school is beginning soon. Here’s an example. hanapinmarketing.com
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4_Tactics_To_Prepare_Your_Paid_Search_For_Back_To_School_Season_-_FINAL_Hanapin_Marketing (1)

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