5 Top Tips for Successful PPC Campaigns in December
December is a busy month for everyone, including our event organiser clients. One of the questions we get asked a lot during the festive period is…
“Should we be spending more or less during December, or should we be pausing our campaign all together?”
There is often confusion surrounding best practice for paid media campaigns, so the Tag Digital team have provided you with 5 quick tips to make the most of your campaigns in December:
1. Reduce ad spend:
We would recommend reducing spend on your paid media campaigns as users tend not to be as active during the festive period and we want to priortise spend for when the campaigns are performing best. Pausing your campaigns has a greater impact on re-entering the learning phase, which we want to avoid.
The learning phase is a short period of time at the beginning of the campaign where the platforms effectively ‘learn’ about all elements of the campaign in terms of who are the best users to push the ads towards.
The learning phase typically lasts around 2 weeks, and this is where campaigns spend less budget. If we pause over Chirstmas, we don’t want to waste any time in the New Year and want to be able to run the campaigns at their full potential. If we run at a minimum spend we will be able to ramp up spend in the new year with ease and avoid the campaigns re-entering the learning phase.
2. Keep your audience warm:
It’s important that your users do not go ‘cold’ over the festive period, so we suggest running a smaller brand awareness or engagement campaign for your audience. The budget you would use depends on your own circumstances, but this could be anything between £250-£500 as it will only be for 1-2 weeks.
3. Don’t wait until January to brief in
If you are working with Tag Digital and are looking to start your paid media campaigns in January, don’t wait until then to brief in.
It is crucial that the technical team have enough time to get all assets prepared before Christmas – build the campaign, ensure tracking is set up correctly, and have a smooth launch in January.
If you brief in this month, you will receive our 2022 Benchmarking Report for free – A unique one-of-a-kind benchmarking data set built from over 100,000 paid campaigns to determine “what’s good” across key sectors, countries, and objectives.
4. Pay attention to your data
Monitor engagement levels. If your engagement rate drops, take a look at click-through-rate (CTR). If CTR has decreased, the campaigns might need a refresh – this could be in terms of copy, creative (images and/or videos), or audience updates. Utilise the data you have and then determine your next step. It’s best practice to review the performance of your campaigns regularly in December and monitor trends within the industry.
5. Include festive offerings
If the event tickets are paid, then you can offer early bird rates or discounts before Christmas. Share your offers as early as possible to give the audience longer to include these in their campaigns.