Valentine’s Day – Show Some Love to Paid Search

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With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, marketers seem busier than lovebirds preparing to find the perfect gift for their significant other. Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest gifting occasions, where spending typically averages to over $142.00 USD per person, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).

Gifts like candy, jewelry, and flowers are the biggest category in which spending occurs. This is also greatly beneficial to other retail segments as well, since consumers are willing to spend more to spoil their significant other.

Another interesting statistic that the NRF points out is men tend to spend nearly double of what women typically spend on gifts. As a result, paid search marketers really need to roll up their sleeves to address this specific variance. This is the month when millennials and post-millennials are really excited about searching for the perfect item and getting the very best deal online. It’s imperative for paid search marketers to be right there in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and capture them.

In this context, NetElixir has come out with three practical tips for paid search marketers to follow for a successful Valentine’s Day campaign.

1. Tip 1: Ensure that your bids are competitive for keywords like “gifts for boyfriends” and “gifts for girlfriends”. The search volume for these keywords were 70% higher during February 2015 than in any other months except for December. (source: Google Trends)
2. Tip 2: Consider removing the negative mobile bid adjustments, at least for your top performing categories. Yes, we know you love last click attribution and might have shut down mobile entirely, since mobile campaigns don’t always give you the last click revenue you’re looking for. Also, keep in mind that the day before Valentine’s Day, gift givers search more on mobile than on desktop (source: Think with Google) and if they don’t find you there, you’re losing lots of potential customers.
3. Tip 3: Create a sense of urgency with the dynamic countdown parameters. Don’t forget that millennials and post-millennials are the ones that tend to spend, even though they don’t have deep pockets. As a result, they wait for the best deals and delay their purchase until they find the best deal available. In that content, you want to make sure you create a sense of urgency to your potential customers. The ads you place should be tweaked accordingly with dynamic countdown parameters.

Fellow marketers, don’t just pour all your love strictly into paid search alone. Spend some time with the people you love and care about this Valentine’s Day. It’ll surely be something special. We have even more Valentine’s Day trends and findings to share with you at our next webinar on February 19th. It’ll be a great opportunity to see all the data from Valentine’s Day and find out how we can learn from it apply it to future campaigns.