As we move into the winter months, your business may be feeling the brunt of reduced sales during the seemingly endless COVID-19 lockdowns. Many businesses are turning to digital marketing to shore up their efforts and boost sales in winter. Whilst the world of paid digital advertising may seem daunting, paid search is a fantastic way to attract new customers and improve conversion rates of people searching for your products. Whether now is peak season for your company or you are looking to recoup lost sales after a slump, here’s how you can use paid search to boost your sales this winter.
What is Paid Search?
So, you are ready to start paid advertising online and have set aside a budget to start with. But what exactly is paid search? Simply put, paid search is the method of placing a digital advert in a search engine results page. Two of the most popular methods of paid search are through Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Paid search results are ads placed at the top of the results page, above organic search results in order to attract the attention, and clicks, of people searching for specific search terms or related topics. Paid search aims at driving traffic and conversions on a bidder’s website in order to increase revenue or goals for a business.
What Does a Paid Search Ad Look Like?
When looking at a SERP (search engine results page), you will typically see an advert at the top of the page related to the keywords you have been searching for. Depending on what you are searching for, you may see a number of them. For example, when searching Google for Google Ads, Google’s own advert will be placed at the top of the page, followed by a number of other services that have bid on ads related to that search term. These ads will then be followed by any organic (non-paid) search results. Paid search results are easily identifiable through the word ‘Ad’ in bold next to the online ad.
How Effective is Paid Search?
If this is your first step into online advertising then you may be asking, is paid search worth it? For many businesses, paid search is one of their top-performing digital marketing tools. Utilising paid search to boost your online sales this winter could be a brilliant move for your business. Paid search can put your business right in front of people searching for your product or service right when they are searching for it. When building winter marketing campaigns, for example by creating ads for Black Friday sales, paid search can be incredibly effective in capturing additional traffic flooding to search engines during the festive period.
Why is Paid Search Important for My Seasonal Marketing Strategy?
When optimising your online marketing in order to boost sales as part of your seasonal marketing strategy, paid search offers one of the quickest ROI (return on investment) of any online tool. Paid search is important because it can give you access to a large number of new customers and site visitors who may not have previously heard of you or your business. These people are specifically targeted based on what they are searching for so you know that they are interested in topics related to your product or service. This benefit of paid search compared to other, less targeted marketing methods creates a higher conversion rate and more chance of your seasonal marketing adverts connecting with those you want to see them.
How Can Paid Search Help my Winter Sales?
If the pandemic has taught digital marketers anything, it is that online shopping is definitely here to stay. More people than ever before are searching for and buying their products and services online. From meals to loft conversions and everything in-between, customers are searching for what they want and need online. With the approach of the winter sales, this trend is only set to increase and those who don’t have a strong online presence run the risk of being left behind.
When it comes to online marketing, one of the key differences is that you do not have a shop front to attract passers-by who may not have heard of your product before. In this case, your website acts as your shop front and search engine results pages act as your updated local directory. A more prominent, attractive position in this new, modernised directory can mean a larger share of the traffic looking for products and services like yours and this is where paid search comes in. By utilising pay per click marketing and placing a paid ad towards the top of the page your customers are searching on, you can attract the lion’s share of clicks and visits and boost sales during the winter months, some of which could convert into paying customers.
For those who see the winter months as their peak sales season or who hope to utilise seasonal offers to attract new customers, paid search is something really not to be missed out on. With winter ad campaigns designed around seasonal sales such as Black Friday sales or Christmas shopping, you can boost your sales’ reach, bringing in customers ready to view or buy your product.
How Do You Optimise Paid Search for Sales?
If you are looking at paid search to boost sales this winter, be sure to review your AdWords account and ensure it is perfectly primed to deliver on results. Optimising your paid search campaigns can mean the difference between paying out a high amount in ad costs for very little return and seeing converting customers driven to your website from a well-managed cost-effective winter campaign.
To optimise your seasonal paid search campaigns, you should first take a look at which ones are actually already working for you and why and compare this with seasonal data. If any paid search campaigns are under performing, you should look into why this may be happening. Next, take a look at where you are repeatedly defending your brand’s keywords and where you are converting, take a look at where you are allocating your budget and see if it is working for your campaigns. When do your customers most often convert? If you often see poor performance during certain times of the day or week, why not exclude those from your campaigns to shore up your paid search performance ready for your winter marketing campaigns? This can also apply to locations where your campaigns see the best performance. Maybe your campaigns are being targeted at too wide a location and you need to shrink the radius around areas that perform better than others. A Google Ads audit can help identify areas where your paid search advertising could be performing better as well as help you to identify areas to develop moving forward.
What is a Paid Search Specialist and How Can They Help?
A Paid Search Specialist is an expert in paid search or PPC (pay per click) advertising. Usually, they have a number of years of experience in creating and maintaining successful paid search campaigns. Often they are Google accredited with demonstrable examples of using paid search to increase traffic and conversions for businesses and individuals they have worked with. A paid search specialist can audit your AdWords account or set one up if you do not already have one to ensure that it is running as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. They will use data insights to avoid overspending on ads that are not converting for your business and search for new opportunities for advertising your business in search engine results pages. If you are looking for ways to boost sales this winter through seasonal offers and campaigns, a Paid Search Specialist could be the answer.
Our Team of Paid Search Specialists
Having been experts in paid search for over 15 years, the team here at SEM Consultants specialist in highly-optimised paid search campaigns as well as a range of other digital marketing tools to help your business thrive in the online world. Our team of PPC specialists are fully-certified with Google and experienced in building and managing challenging paid search campaigns for a range of industries.
To find out more about paid search and what the team here at SEM Consultants can do for you and your business get in touch online or by calling 0121 552 6500. Alternatively, take a look at our PPC page to find out more about our paid search management.