Does it matter when you launch your pay per click campaign? Does your launch date matter relative to other important dates? I think it does.
You should time your PPC launch to coincide with any other important advertising initiatives you have going on as well as any specials you might be promoting.
For instance, let’s say you are gearing up for Christmas. You know that Cabbage Patch Dolls will be marked down 25% between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but you are just now in the throes of your Thanksgiving holiday specials, featuring the Gay Batman Figurine at a 19.3% discount. Obviously, you don’t want to start your pay-per-click campaign marketing the cabbage patch dolls in October. That would be a better time to promote the Batman Figurine. Now the question is, when DO you start your pay per click campaign for Christmas?
Off line, you can run your TV and radio ads early. You might start advertising your Christmas specials two weeks before Thanksgiving because you know people aren’t going to run right out the door the minute they see your ad on TV and start swiping up dolls. Online, though, it’s a different story. People are more likely to buy right now than they are to put off a purchase. If they put it off then they will likely buy it off line instead. That means you should have a different strategy.
The best time to launch your pay per click campaign is when you’re ready to start taking orders. If you know the special begins the day after Thanksgiving, but you don’t have your online order taking process in line yet then you don’t want to launch you pay per click campaign. Unless the idea is to send people to your website and have them call you for orders. But if you are taking orders online then you shouldn’t launch the PPC campaign until you are ready to take the orders. It is absolutely essential to have everything else in line before you launch your PPC campaign because the moment that first ad goes live, you could potentially get an order. It CAN happen that quick so you’ve got to be prepared for that.
