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Back-to-School PPC Campaign Strategies

It’s back-to-school season and advertisers are aggressively competing for the attention of both parents and students alike.

The paid search landscape is especially intriguing this time of year.  The competition is fierce for back-to-school keywords as retailers across a number of industries compete in the space.  Retail companies, national  banks, and telecom companies are but some of the players that can be found in the back-to-school search space.  This creates a very competitive, and potentially quite costly paid search environment.  These are advertisers with deep budgets.

So how to compete?

Here are some ideas that can help provide some efficiencies in your back-to-school search campaign.

Long-tail Keywords        

If you’ve decided to pursue back-to-school keywords ensure that you have exploited long-tail keywords opportunities.  Although they may represent a small portion of search queries, they have the potential to return excellent cost efficiencies.

Explore Additional Keywords

Searches do not necessarily have to be ‘back-to-school’ specific.  There are other relevant searchers for back-to-school that can be explored.

These keywords could potentially be an excellent source of cost efficient traffic from your paid search campaign.

Sitelinks

Try to include sitelinks that are back-to-school specific or that would be of interest to students.

New AdWords enhanced campaigns provide search marketers with deeper insights into specific sitelinks performance.  Rotate out the underperforming sitelinks and test new sitelinks.

Back-To-School Specific Landing Page

Many advertisers have created a specific back-to-school page.  This can have a great impact on a campaigns performance and ROI.  This should also have a positive effect on the quality score of back-to-school specific keywords.

Don’t Forget Mom!

There is an excellent opportunity to explore searches specific to moms.  Mom’s are key influencers for back-to-school shopping.

Consider queries that may be of interest to moms.  If there is sufficient search traffic behind these terms, and they are still relevant to the campaign and landing page, consider giving them a try.

Conclusion

It’s a competitive search world for back-to-school keywords so it’s important to develop an effective action plan ahead of time.  Get an idea of the competition in this space and understand what it’s going to cost to run an effective campaign.  Explore long-tail keywords and additional keywords that may return less competition and provide potential cost efficiencies and utilize all of the tools at your disposal.

cheers,

v

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