With the holidays fast approaching, you may already have an ad strategy deployed via search engines and social media to bring in traffic and make sure that shoppers remember you when they make their holiday lists. With so much potential revenue on the table, you want to make sure that you are making the right decisions when calibrating your campaigns, targeting and considering where you spend your ad dollars. Unfortunately, many people make mistakes that will lead to their ad campaigns falling short during the holidays. If you want to avoid becoming a statistic, then consider the following mistakes so that you can avoid making them.

Improper Budget Allocation

You may have plenty of experience pinging networks on Google, Bing and other platforms with advertisements throughout the year. You likely have an idea of how much money you need to spend on a given audience per day in order to meet your targets. During the holidays, however, all of this can change quite dramatically. Because there are more product searches and overall clicks during this time of the year, your normally-adequate budgets may be completely consumed within just a few hours of each day, leaving you without marketing reach for the majority of the day. Nobody has money to burn, but be prepared to spend more during the holidays if you want 24/7 reach.

Not Having a Plan

With the hustle and bustle of shopping, you’ll likely have some hustling and bustling of your own when it comes to marketing and customer service. Your website may suddenly crash, your marketing may suddenly become viral over a controversial typo, or you may run out of stock at a moment’s notice. Are you prepared to pivot when and if unexpected events occur? Before we get knee-deep in the holiday season, it is a good idea to sit down and have a contingency plan drafted so that you know what to do if the worst-case scenario occurs in a given area. Not doing so could cause you to lose a chunk of business that otherwise would be yours. Know not only how to respond, but in the case of brands with multiple employees, who is tasked with responding.

Failing to Go Mobile

As mobile technology continues to become more and more affordable, more people are becoming reliant upon it to do their holiday shopping. A majority of brick and mortar shoppers will actually browse via mobile devices for better prices on the items they are considering purchasing. With around one-third of internet traffic now coming through mobile devices, it is an absolute failure to avoid including mobile ads and optimization in your marketing campaigns. People who use mobile devices to find the latest and best deals are more likely to make a purchase via mobile than traditional search engine users, so keep this in mind when calibrating your advertising campaigns.

Conclusion

Pinging networks with advertisements this holiday season is vital if you want to expand your potential clientèle and earn substantial revenue, but you’ll need to consider all of the potential pitfalls that can appear. Some otherwise effective strategies will need to be altered for the holiday season in particular, while other strategies that are wrong year-round will need to be avoided as always. By keeping a level head and being aware of these mistakes, you’ll help steer your bottom line toward favourable seas this holiday season.