• by Grant Reid , Op-Ed Contributor, October 2, 2017

With total online holiday sales predicted by Fortune at more than $91.7 billion in 2016, brands are ramping up early to get in on the ever-growing digital commerce holiday pie. But while sales are projected to grow 10% year-over-year, according to NetElixir, the competition is heating up as well, as brands get savvier with their paid search strategies and tactics. Brands must take an audience-driven approach to their paid search strategy this holiday season by meeting customers where they are with content that will drive conversions. Here are some tips for making this a record-setting holiday season for your company.

Understand your consumer. Spend time well ahead of the holiday season generating keywords that segment your audience to a very granular level. For example, a consumer electronics company shouldn’t target only for “TV.” It should segment its audience into people seeking “flat-screen TV,” “LCD TV,” “plasma TV,” and so on. 

Meet your customer on their preferred channel. Many companies rely solely on Google paid search for their holiday ad investment. It’s always good to be on Google, but there are lots of other places to reach your customer when they’re in the mood to click the buy button. Bing can still provide incremental revenue lift, especially if the demographic you’re targeting is an older audience. Pinterest is a good social platform to target people who are in the buying state of mind. It’s currently underutilized by retailers doing paid search, so there’s lots of opportunity there. While YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are all important channels for brand awareness, securing conversions there can be more difficult because the audience isn’t necessarily reaching for their wallets.

Get cultural expertise for international campaigns. Hire local agencies with boots on the ground in your target markets to develop effective paid search campaigns. For example, retailers going into the Chinese market aren’t going to do well there with Google ads, since Baidu is the primary search engine for China. It’s also critical to get expertise on language, colors and themes that have a certain meaning in different cultures, and a local agency can help with that.

Get ads approved early. Don’t wait until a few days before Black Friday to finalize your creative and send it into the morass of your platform’s approval system. Come up with several ad options early—like, now—and get them all approved weeks before your campaign starts. Then you can do some A/B testing during the holiday season when your testing pool is at its largest.

Think mobile. With Amazon leading the charge with one-click shopping, mobile commerce—or m-commerce—is gaining traction every year. By 2020, 45% of all ecommerce will come from mobile devices, according to Business Insider. Brands can’t continue to operate on the assumption that people use their mobile devices only to browse and hit up their desktops when it comes time to buy. Brands must have robust, user-friendly m-commerce capabilities to compete.

Tease them. While some brands start the Black Friday holiday season only a week or two before the actual date, consumers have been searching out deals and planning their shopping for months. Keep them engaged with your brand by providing a cascade of content leading up to Black Friday that promotes the discounts you’re planning to offer.

Create landing pages that drive conversions. The language you use on your holiday landing pages will make or break the success of your campaign. Use proven behavioral economics principles to drive your audience to take action. For example, Black Friday offers a great opportunity to use the scarcity tactic to create urgency to buy. Just as in the store, your landing page can offer a limited amount of each product and even have a ticker counting down how many items remain in your inventory.

Stagger your discounts throughout the holiday season. Some retailers front-load their discounts, offering the best deals at the very beginning of the holiday season. It’s better to spread your discounts out throughout the season, offering the steepest discounts at strategic moments.

Keep your search promises. When someone searches for a 32-inch LCD TV, make sure the link you serve takes them to that specific product. They shouldn’t land on a page for a similar, but larger 40-inch plasma TV. Even if you have one-click purchasing capabilities, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot if you return search results that are not what people are actually requesting.

Stay nimble to respond to the competition. All your user journey, keyword and planning work can be for naught if your competition blows you out of the water with some incredible deal you’re not prepared for. It’s important to have a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency plan in your back pocket—and you’ve given the sign-off to use it when necessary. Whether it’s an extremely steep discount or an edgy promotional message, have something ready to go if the unforeseen comes to pass.

With early planning and a laser focus on what your audience needs and wants, brands can compete in the race for paid search sales this holiday season.