Today I was excited to attend the Google Engage for Agencies Hangout on Air in Google +, “ A Seasonal Approach to AdWords” with Anastasia Holdren. Anastasia is the author of the book “Google AdWords, Setting Your Account Up for Success”. She offered various tips and strategies to help with Google AdWords seasonal campaigns (AdWords has enormous potential for small businesses or any business, not only those affected by seasonal sales trends).
Seasonal Google AdWords campaigns are AdWords campaigns that may only run in a specified time period tied to a specific season. A great example that was used is a back-to-school campaign. Many retailers run back-to-school campaigns before kids start school in the fall. There are many examples that you could use for seasonal campaigns, but back-to-school is one of the best known. So how would you start looking for seasonal information for your AdWords campaign?
Before you started and created your seasonal AdWords campaign, you would need data about when to start the campaign, as well as which product terms may be better to run. Anastasia talked about one of the best online tools for helping to find seasonal information, Google Insights for Search. According to Google, Insights for Search helps you to:
….. compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
The example they used in today’s Hangout was comparing types of backpack terms, but you can search for anything. I am comparing ski resorts to golf clubs in the United States to show seasonality. Both of these terms have seasonality, and you can see from the searches how seasonal they are. Golf clubs rise in spring and peak in summer, while ski resorts rise in fall and peak in winter. This is information that I could use if I wanted to run a seasonal campaign for either of these two search terms (I do realize this may be very obvious to most people). Below is the chart:
Anastasia’s 3 Tip for Running a Seasonal AdWords Campaign
- Start well in advance. Do your research and plan ahead.
- Don’t just throw more money into it (Seasonal Campaign). Be accountable. Plan, track and measure it.
- Don’t forget the off season. There are marketing opportunities there as well! Seasonal campaigns are a good segue for new opportunities.
I am really excited to share what I have learned today with my clients and further help them in their search engine marketing efforts. Please let me know what you thoughts are, I’d love to hear them! – Bob
Bob Strassel Jr.