‘Tis the season… a time where we all wind down, slam down the shutters, and start looking ahead to the New Year. But what does that mean for your PPC activity and what tactics should you deploy to make the most of your budget?
For many it’s a case of assuming the same thing; “Get it done, shut it down, and pick up where we left off in the New Year”. Unfortunately, this isn’t the most effective approach.
“But why?” you ask….
Why you shouldn’t wrap up your presents PPC activity
So, what happens to the LinkedIn audience over the Christmas break?
Firstly, advertising competition and cost per result actually drops. Yes, you read that right. This allows your brand to take centre stage for the festive period, often resulting in more impressions, clicks and leads with the same amount of budget.
For example, last holiday season, the average cost per click (CPC) for campaigns running on LinkedIn dropped by 5.2% while cost per lead (CPL) reduced by a staggering 12%!
Overall, social engagement on the platform does dip, but ad engagement remains high, and it’s likely your ads will still be shown to a highly interactive audience.
This is supported with the knowledge that although social engagement dropped between November-January 2021, the paid campaign click-through rates increase by 20% over the same period.
Bring joy to your customers with Google Ads at Christmas
Most of you have probably heard already, but Google Ads work best with an always-on approach. And yes, that includes keeping your campaigns live throughout Christmas and into the New Year for optimum results!
For example, when running ads through this period you stand to reap some of the same benefits you would on LinkedIn including:
- Reduced keyword cost due to a lack of competition
- Increased exposure and website traffic due to your audience having more free time to spend online and in places your ads can appear
Not only that, but you’ll find that many of your audience will be planning for the New Year and looking for ways to ‘do things better’. So why would you not make sure you’re front of mind when they step back into their offices?
Finally, if you do choose to pause your ads for the holidays, you’ll be missing out on the benefits above and setting yourself up for a battle in the New Year. This is largely due to higher bids after campaign reactivation and the potential for your rankings to take a hit due to inactivity.
The proof is in the (Christmas) pudding
We’ve provided you with the facts so far but we can’t help but feel you’d benefit from taking a look at just what we’ve achieved for our clients over the festive period in previous years. Seeing as we can’t give you access to our PPC accounts, we thought we’d share a snapshot of what we achieved in December of 2021. See below:
LinkedIn Overview, December 1st – December 31st 2021
Impressions: 487,939
Clicks: 5,463
Average CTR: 1.12%
Leads (from 6 campaigns): 16
Google Overview, December 1st – December 31st 2021
Impressions: 9.75m
Clicks: 138k
Average CTR: 1.42%
So, if you’re already running PPC activity with us this holiday season (or would like to), we suggest you bear this in mind to make the most of your marketing budget and enabling you to arrive back to work in the New Year with one final present from ResourceiT!
Keep the mulled wine conversations flowing
Coming offline and onto the phones; the conversations with customers don’t stop and continue into the Christmas period.
We find the mood of the decision-maker is often slightly more jovial and chattier during the festive period – so it’s a good time of year to keep campaigns running. Calling prospects in the days leading up to Christmas also presents a great opportunity to not only warm up your audience but to tee up conversations for early January or drive registrations for an event you might have in January.
It may come as a surprise but we actually find that ROI for telemarketing calling in December remains steady, if not increases. During the lead-up to Christmas, contacts tend to be more readily available (in some industries) and are often happy to spend longer on the phone talking to key contacts about opportunities – so make sure you’re making the most of these opportunities!
Get in touch if you’d like some help refining your digital strategy over the coming weeks and into the new year, alternatively you can learn more more about our LinkedIn, Google and telemarketing services here.
