Every year, no matter how great my summer is, I’m excited for fall. Just about all year long I am ready for the weather to turn a bit chilly, to tuck away my summer shorts and for the leaves to start to change. It’s been just about boiling where I am this summer (120+ heat indexes, no thanks), so I’ve been ready for fall for several weeks now. With fall and back-to-school on the horizon, it’s time to get your PPC accounts in tip-top shape for the remainder of the year. (I’ll refrain from the countdown of days until Christmas for you e-commerce PPC pros).
Back to School Prep
It’s officially August – which means many kids across the country start back to school this month. Make sure your Google Shopping campaign game is strong by checking out these tips, but before you do, check out these tips to make the process go smoothly. Especially for retailers looking to target college students, you’ll want to review geotargeting settings to make sure you’re hitting the right audience.
New Channels
There have been some recent updates in Facebook Ads Manager, Pinterest, and LinkedIn (just to name a few). Thanks to many of these updates (I’m especially looking at you, LinkedIn), this has meant that some of my clients are finally ready to dive into these new channels. Are your clients ready to take that jump, too? Consider talking with your clients about some of the channels that you haven’t tried yet.
New Features
Even if your clients aren’t ready to take a leap into a new channel, you can still take advantage of all the recent features that have been released in Google AdWords and Bing Ads recently. Consider launching a few of these new features:
- Google’s expanded text ads – you’ll want to keep this headline suggestion in mind when you write them.
- Google’s imported call conversions – make sure you know which parts of your campaigns are driving calls by taking advantage of this new feature.
- Bing’s Native Ads – reach Bing Ads users in a new way.
Account Cleanup
There’s 151 days between now and December 31. Have you continued your PPC New Year’s resolutions? It might be time to bust out the old-fashioned notebook and figure out what needs to be done on your accounts between now and the end of year. During that time, consider adding some of these into your week:
- Conduct a self-audit to identify areas of your account that could use a boost.
- Look to your campaigns’ “glory days” to identify past trends that could still be utilized.
- Cleanup your Google Analytics goals and funnels.
Continued Learning
It’s easy to get wrapped up in client work and deadlines and forget how important it is to continue improving your everyday processes and skills. As the end of the year approaches, if you aren’t able to implement any of these other suggestions for your accounts, consider using these tips to improve your time management and abilities:
- Schedule a brainstorming session with your team to help each other out.
- Check out some new PPC industry blogs.
- Prioritize your tasks differently to switch up your days and boost efficiency.
- Find a way to save time on one task a week and a way to automate one task a month – check out this post for more.
- Discover shortcuts in Excel to help with frequent tasks.
Pumpkin everything, boots and bonfires are coming! (Well, I suppose depending on where you live…) What are you doing to prep your accounts for fall and the rest of the year? We’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments!
