‘Tis The Season For Paid Search Success

We recently caught up with our new Head of Paid Search, Ian Boyden, to discover his top tips for Paid Search success this Christmas and to find out more about his role.

You were recently promoted to Head of Paid Search. What does your new role at ClickThrough involve?

I ensure our clients are receiving the best possible service from a PPC perspective, by doing the following:

• Making sure the team have the best tools and resources available to them to deliver the best possible service
• Ensuring we implement best practice strategies which are meeting or exceeding our clients KPIs
• Showing our clients the opportunities available on all channels – not just on search but across other channels such as Paid Social and Display
• Building strong relationships with the leading suppliers and technology providers

What’s your biggest achievement to date?

Being able to achieve growth for the clients I have worked on over the last 5 years at ClickThrough. I have worked with many clients from day one and have taken great pleasure in helping them grow their SEM revenue substantially year on year.

I am also proud of how I have done that; I always aimed to make sure we achieved the best results possible in an innovative way. I love testing new ideas and building new tools to help clients achieve these results – for example, over the years, I have helped to develop our own internal forecasting tools which have helped our clients recognise the opportunity available on paid search.

What are your top tips for optimising Paid Search campaigns ready for Christmas?

Firstly, my motto over Christmas is to follow the traffic, not the conversions. Make sure your Christmas budget is planned on a daily basis based on the expected search demand rather than when the sales will happen. Following this rule has helped ensure our clients are maximising their impression share on key days when consumers are researching and resulted in record sales over the total Christmas period!

My second motto is to test, review and action. Don’t forget to keep this in mind over Christmas. Last year we tested a new line of ad copy for a client, between 21^st and 25^th December (to drive customers in store before the last orders weekend). This test actually resulted in a 9% uplift in CTR!

Will Ian’s seasonal secrets make Christmas come early for you this year…?

Start planning now! It’s never too early to start getting into the festive spirit…

• Phase your budget on a daily basis over the Christmas period to maximise it when consumers are researching.
• Try and learn lessons from previous years. If you can’t remember what happened last year make sure that, following this Christmas, you create a review of what worked well and what didn’t, to help you for Christmas 2018.
• For retail clients with an in-store offering we see more and more last minute purchases. After the last delivery dates, you should still have budget available to capture these consumers, and aim to create a sense of urgency in your ad copy.
• Strong mobile visibility. Website visits are mainly driven by mobile over the Christmas period, so make sure you review your bidding approach.
• Import your email data into AdWords to encourage repeat purchases.

Want to drive more e-commerce business this Christmas? Discover how our PPC management services can help you maximise your return on investment and boost sales this festive season.