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Three Key Tips for Romancing Valentine’s Day Shoppers

Valentine’s Day is a sweet time for retail sales.  It’s one of the largest retail holidays following Winter Holidays and Back to School, with $18.6 billion estimated sales in 2013. The average consumer spent $130 on Valentine’s Day last year, which is likely to increase again this year.  And, those sales are widespread, ranging from candy and flowers, to evenings out, to travel and more. [1]

Make the most of your search advertising efforts during the season of love with three key tips on timing, mobile and ad copy.

1.) Timing matters

90% of gifts are purchased within 3 weeks of Valentine’s Day. Even further, half of all gifts are purchased within the week before Valentine’s Day.[2]  Plan to capture customers shopping at the last minute and provide guaranteed delivery by Valentine’s Day.

TIP: Complete Valentine’s Day plans 1 month in advance of February 14

  • Customize your keywords and ad copy with Valentine’s Day seasonally relevant terms
  • Continue to check in on your budgets as you near February 14th

 2.) Go mobile – your customers already have

Customers use smartphones differently than their PCs or tablets.  Smartphone customers are often close to a point of purchase in search of deals, and doing price comparisons.  In fact, 24% of intimate apparel site traffic and 22% of jewelry site traffic came from mobile devices during the week before Valentine’s Day last year.[3] 

TIP:  Treat your customers using smartphones differently than customers using PCs or tablets to be more effective in capturing sales both online and offline.

  • Consider running search campaigns set up separately for smartphones, tablets, and PCs
  • Use promotional ad copy in your mobile ads – smartphone customers are looking for deals and comparing prices
  • Select discount and deal-oriented keywords for smartphone customers who search for deals
  • Use our Call Extensions feature to surface your business phone number inside your text ad
  • To drive foot traffic into your store, definitely leverage Location Extensions, where your clickable phone number and directions will be displayed to help customers find your store – not just your website

 3.) Write your Valentines (ad copy)

Yes, even search marketers need to write Valentines – think of your PPC ad copy as a customer love letter where you need to romance them into visiting your site.

TIP:  Anticipate what your customer will be searching on around Valentine’s Day and create dazzling ad copy to draw attention.

  • Sweeten up your ad copy to target Valentine’s Day shoppers.  For example, “Add some sparkle to Valentine’s Day with jewelry” or "Sweet talk your Valentine with a box of chocolates"
  • Promote shipping options, especially "Guaranteed Delivery" if available.  Be clear on shipping timeframe options and guaranteed delivery – you don’t want to disappoint customers if they don’t receive their order in time for Valentine’s Day
  • Include Valentine’s Day keywords to your keyword lists; consider using broad match to send more searchers your way who may be searching for related Valentine’s Day gift ideas

For additional insights, check out our deck below on SlideShare:

 

Now go woo your customers with your sweetest Valentine’s Day ad campaign yet.  Happy selling!

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 [1] National Retail Federation's Valentine’s Day spending survey, 2013

[2] Experian Marketing, Getting Ready for Valentine’s Day email promotions Nov 12, 2012     

[3] IBM as cited in company blog, Feb 17, 2013