Peak PPC season is coming: 5 tests to run now

We all love to take a little time away from the grind during the slow season (which for many of us is right now), but smart PPC marketers are also using the time to get in the prime position when the tide is higher. 

• In retail, that will fire up in October (probably earlier than ever this year). 
• In B2B, that means prepping for the end-of-year push that comes from needing to hit quotas and engaging brands about to be flush with new yearly budgets.

No matter your vertical or the particular timing, there are five tests I like to run during the slower season to help clients get learnings to leverage when the tide is high. Those are:

• Channel diversification.
• Landing page optimization.
• Seasonal creative and offer testing.
• Incrementality testing.
• Default settings testing (TL;DR: find them and turn them off).

1. Channel diversification tests

When choosing a new channel to test, the first things to consider are:

• How effectively it can help you reach valuable users.
• Where the right people spend their time.

Depending on your company’s size and goals, you can weigh the pros and cons of niche platforms with great targeting and intent (for SaaS, maybe that’s relevant subreddits or a platform like Capterra) vs. bigger platforms with more reach and less precise targeting (YouTube or connected TV). 

Once you choose your channel(s) to test, you must find some budget. Ideally, your brand or client has a test budget to play with, but if not, consider shifting the budget from the same stage of the purchase journey. 

For instance, if you’re looking to build awareness and you’d like to test Reddit, assess how spend on platforms like GDN is performing to see if you can pull from there without impacting your revenue too dramatically.

Timing-wise, I believe there are no bad times to run tests. Still, remember that your goal should be to learn. 

If demand is relatively low, you’re not running aggressive promotions and direct response is relatively soft, it’s a particularly good time to test up in the funnel. 

When you’re weighing timing, use the tests to get information you can leverage in your peak season.

Dig deeper: Un-silo your PPC campaigns: 4 tactics for more cohesive marketing

2. Landing page and CRO tests

The soft season is also a good time to tweak your existing landing pages or launch new ones to see how they perform.

The ultimate goals are to improve user experience and conversion rates – some of our clients have seen a 15%+ boost from these efforts.

Build your list of landing pages to address based on a combination of impact (engagement volume) and opportunity (low CVR).

You can assess this by looking at your data (spend, traffic and CVR) within your ad platforms or do some cross-channel assessments in GA4. 

First, test the higher-impact variables: 

• Copy above the fold.
• A layout that delivers impact at a glance.
• Adding different types of social proof.
• Form fields and copy.
• Different CTAs.

To get the clearest insights when tweaking or revamping a page, duplicate it and run A/B tests between the new and old versions. This approach also prevents performance from dropping if you’re testing riskier changes.

Dig deeper: A/B testing mistakes PPC marketers make and how to fix them

3. Seasonal creative and offer tests

There’s only so much advanced testing of seasonal creative you can do (Christmas themes might not work in July, for example), but you can test how different specials, promotions and CTAs resonate with your users.

It’s also a good idea to look for different opportunities to run seasonal PPC promotions:

• For retail, the usual examples would be Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and other relevant secondary holidays.
• For B2B, the end of the quarter and the need to hit quota can leave room for limited-time promotions to test with your users. 

Many industries can have their own seasonal spikes, too.

Consider the academic calendar if you’re in the education space or the enrollment period if you’re in health and schedule some tests outside of high tide to get learnings to leverage.

Dig deeper: 3 tips for using promotions and discounts in paid search

4. Incrementality testing

One of my favorite testing initiatives for slower times is incrementality testing. 

Basically, test segments of your campaigns to see if they’re actually driving the return you think they are or if users in those segments would be engaging or purchasing without seeing your ads.

These can take the form of holdout tests or geo tests. 

• For holdout tests, create groups that do not receive your ads and measure their performance against similarly composed groups that are seeing your ads to gauge the difference.
• For geo tests (a form of holdout tests), identify specific geographic areas to suppress and measure the performance of those geos to those still getting served ads.

Successful learnings from these tests depend on a few key factors: 

• The right variable (and only one variable, whether that’s geo or age or another factor).
• Identifying segments to compare that are close enough in composition to produce clean results.
• Enough data density to make a call on the level of incrementality your spend is driving.

If you find that your campaigns aren’t all that incremental, the next step is to determine where to reallocate the spend for greater impact. 

Often, moving funds away from direct response and up the funnel to build brand awareness and reputation is a long-term play.

If you’re thinking about when to start incrementality testing, the most common reason is that you’re spending more but not seeing a higher return. 

Another reason, though less common, is when your closed-won rate drops in the later deal stages. This suggests there’s a chance to strengthen customer loyalty earlier in the process.

Dig deeper: Incrementality testing in advertising: Who are the winners and losers?

5. Default settings testing

Yes, this is kind of an excuse to remind you to check your default settings (e.g., Google Search Partners, audience expansions in any channel, etc.). 

My rule of thumb is to turn off any settings that will give the advertising platform power to expand your campaigns.

For smaller brands or brands without a sophisticated analytics set-up, it’s best to just turn off these settings and monitor impact (I’m guessing the impact will be improved efficiency). 

Even for brands with more robust measurement systems that tell them that GSP and audience expansions are bringing in revenue, the slow season is a good time to do some on/off testing to measure the effects in their campaigns.

Dig deeper: Improve your Google Ads performance: 3 simple setting changes

Prepare your PPC campaigns for high-demand periods

Human nature makes it hard to knuckle down when the sun is shining, and you’re months away from seeing the traffic that will make or break your year. But your competitors are feeling the same pull to power down their laptops.

Brands that run these tests now and have a system for analyzing and storing the results to deploy when the tide starts rising will have a big edge in crunch time. 

Just remember that when you’re patting yourself on the back in late December, you have your summertime self to thank.