The world’s best snow shovel salesman could never have anticipated the boost in sales they would receive this March, and the recent bad weather got me thinking. Is your PPC account prepared to capitalise on these adverse weather conditions?
If it snows, do you have campaigns on standby targeting key areas affected by the ‘Beast from The East’? If you’re in an industry that thrives in the summer, will your swimming pools be in the number one spot when the next UK heatwave is predicted (we wish!)?
This type of extreme weather preparation may not be relevant to some businesses, however, there are a few very simple, yet powerful, optimisations that can drive successful results for all PPC accounts.
Ad Scheduling
Do you know what time of day you receive the most conversions? With PPC you can set bid adjustments to bid more aggressively at certain points throughout the day to ensure you are appearing competitively. Equally, if you are tracking phone calls in the office between 9 am - 5 pm you shouldn’t have ads showing outside of these hours.
What days do you drive the most sales? If you’re looking for leads it could be that by reviewing your search terms you find that on Saturday and Sunday queries are mainly research-based – with decisions being made Monday to Friday instead. As such, is it relevant to keep paying for your ads to appear at the weekend?
I recently found myself locked out of my house at 8 pm and had to call an emergency locksmith. Here, it would make sense for the locksmith company to increase their bids between 5 pm – 2 am to capture all of those returning home locked out. Alongside this, the locksmith could bid less between 9 am – 3 pm whilst potential customers are at work to save budget for peak times.
Device Targeting
When was the last time you checked how your website performed across mobiles, desktops, and tablets? Do you know where your audience is viewing your ads?
You can bid more or less for users that view your ads on a specific device, for instance on their phone. I am always amazed by the huge savings this can create, leaving you with more budget to spend on users that convert more often.
The easiest way to check how different users are interacting with your site is by looking in Google Analytics and checking the bounce rate i.e. the % of visitors who leave after viewing just one page. If, for example, you notice that desktop users have a bounce rate of 30%, but mobile users have a bounce rate of 60%, something is not quite right. For reference, a bounce rate below 40% would be considered excellent.
Location Targeting
Most businesses sell to customers not only in their local area but also nationally and perhaps even internationally. Whilst PPC can target all these areas, how are you identifying which locations are converting best and in-turn maximising your efforts within these places?
Thankfully, using PPC you are able to adjust bids for users searching within specific countries, towns, and postcodes. The latter could be particularly useful if you are targeting highly competitive cities such as London, Manchester or Birmingham and find that bids in these locations are too costly for your budget.
Don’t forget to add your location negatives too for places that you don’t want to target! I looked in more detail at negative keyword lists in my last post.
Bonus: Weather Targeting
For those in weather-dependent industries, there is a final piece of support a PPC agency can provide, weather-based campaign management. This is a specialist type of campaign management that requires the use of AdWords scripts - programmable code that you can use to optimise campaigns.
Weather-based campaign management retrieves data from the Open Weather Map Project and uses current weather information in specific locations as well as weather forecasts. You can go into as much or as little detail as you like, from snow volume to wind speed, which could prove incredibly useful depending on your product.
If you are a swimming pool retailer, for example, you could pause a campaign if rainfall is predicted for the week ahead. Likewise, it would also be possible to increase bids automatically if sunshine is predicted.
I should reiterate that weather-based campaign management is a highly-specialised area of PPC and if you’re looking to give this a go, it’s best to contact a specialist - the Aquamarine team can help you with this.
Get Your Free PPC Audit
Running a successful PPC account means being pro-active. Spotting trends in your PPC performance and adjusting appropriately should be the least you are doing on your account. Schedule your ads for your most effective times of day, on the most effective devices and in your most effective locations. And don’t forget to capitalise on the weather conditions if you can!
If you want to make sure your PPC account is performing as well as possible, we’d be happy to perform a free audit and give honest recommendations for improvement. Get in touch today to book yours!
