A Guide to Smart Bidding & Budgeting During the Christmas Season

Budgeting and Smart Bidding during the Christmas season is now more relevant than ever, with Google experiencing a sharp increase in online shopping and purchase behaviour during Black Friday and the subsequent holiday season.

How much should my PPC budget be? With this in mind, we wanted to help you plan ahead when it comes to budgeting and Smart Bidding during the Holiday Shopping season, helping you save time, remain flexible and grow your profitability.

Budgeting and Smart Bidding for the Christmas Season: Choosing the Right Strategy

When it comes to budgeting and Smart Bidding during the Christmas season, Google is fixed to handle frequent or sharp changes in queries and demand. Reacting quickly to seasonal events, it is increasingly important to choose the right strategy for you and your business.

This holiday season, whether you want to increase volume and make up for lower demand in the past, be it in the form of a flash sale or an improved marketing campaign, or simply improve your ROI and increase your profits, whatever your objectives may be, be sure to identify your KPIs and strategy accordingly.

If you want to get on top of your budgeting and smart bidding for the Xmas season, we suggest you use these tips to construct the best strategy imaginable:/p>

1. New Customer Acquisition – Opting into a campaign-level goal, this means that Smart Shopping now optimises towards new customers in addition to online sales.
2. Value-Based Bid Strategies – If conversions or customers are not valued the same for your business, then your strategy should reflect that.
3. Pay for Conversions Billing – Choose to pay for conversions rather than clicks or a basic standard display campaign.

In situations where you expect an alteration in conversion rate, and when it concerns budgeting and Smart Bidding this Christmas season, it is hugely important to put in place a robust strategy.

Budgeting and Smart Bidding During the Festive Season: Planning and Setting the Right Seasonal Budget

Once you have decided on the right tact to take in terms of budgeting and Smart Bidding this Christmas season, it’s important to then plan and set the right budget. Whatever your objectives may be, it is essential to support your strategy with the right seasonal budget.

Indeed, with the Performance Planner in Google Ads, plans can be built for everything from short seasonal periods such as Christmas and Black Friday, to longer trends, be it monthly, quarterly or yearly.

Furthermore, we also suggest optimising your budget before and during the Christmas season:

• Keep your budget unconstrained with recommendations.
• Implement Shared Budgets spanning numerous campaigns to distribute budgets automatically.
• Use Budget Management to automate your plan and pace your budgets, even more so if you are using SA360.
• Utilise Target and Bid Simulators to simulate investment scenarios based on budget changes and target alterations.

So, by aligning your seasonal budget with your goals for the Christmas period, you can capitalise on important demand and bid more effectively.

Budgeting, Smart Bidding and the Christmas Season: Planning and Setting the Right Targets

Smart Bidding can handle target changes, however it’s important to plan and set the right targets, even more so during the festive period.

If your business objectives change during the Christmas season, think about adjusting CPA/ ROAS targets to capture a bigger share of the market. Moreover, budgeting and Smart Bidding for the Christmas season can be ever changing and so, as demand changes over the holidays, be prepared to adjust your plans and targets when needed, be it by increasing bids and spending to capture more customers or raising CPA or reducing ROAS targets or optimising ROAS.

From using Smart Shopping correctly to running Display & Discovery campaigns, be sure to plan ahead and set the right targets that align with your businesses capabilities this Christmas season.

PPC Geeks Can Help You with Budgeting and Smart Bidding During the Christmas Season

We hope this insight into the inner workings of budgeting and Google Ads Smart Bidding this festive season has helped you understand and prepare accordingly for the next few months.

At PPC Geeks, we are always working hard to get the most out of your PPC campaigns, whether it is during the Christmas season, Black Friday or any other time of year. In doing so, we are constantly striving to ensure we deliver an exceptional service and give you a positive ROI.

That said, in preparation for Christmas, get a FREE Google Ads Audit today and make sure your ads are in the best condition possible for the busiest period in the PPC calendar.