2 Tactics to Maximize ROI During Peak Seasons in 30-Seconds or Less

Marketers are familiar with the yearly crush around the November and December shopping period. Although the holidays get the most attention, peak seasons come and go multiple times a year and the timing can vary by industry vertical and company. We've provided two tactics that will take less than 30 seconds to implement to help you maximize your ROI during ANY peak season just by optimizing your retargeting campaigns.

Tip #1: Bid Up To Increase Your CPM During Peak Seasons

This particular tactic will take less than 30-seconds! During peak seasons, competition increases and overall CPMs rise. Accordingly, you’ll want to increase your CPM across all of your retargeting campaigns to ensure you’re bidding enough to stay in front of your potential customers. As a rule of thumb, we would generally recommend advertisers increase their CPMs by 50-100% of their current average to maintain competitiveness during these times.

Adjusting CPMs in Perfect Audience is simple. Click to edit any of your campaigns and dive into your settings. In Step 3, Campaign Details, you’ll see an option to set the Bid Type as Optimized Bidding or Manual Bidding. Select the Manual Bidding radial button and set your new CPM. Try testing different CPMs to find the right balance between reach and ROI.

Tip #2: Drive In-Store Traffic with Geo-Targeting

It wasn’t too long ago when many considered showrooming, where customers in brick-and-mortar stores use their mobile phones to compare prices online, as the beginning of the end for real-world retailers. However, one of the more interesting trends that has since emerged is reverse showrooming, where customers research online but complete the purchase in-store. In fact, this practice has become even more prevalent than the original showrooming phenomenon.

Not only is this good news for physical retail stores, it also provides advertisers additional opportunities via geo-targeting. Perfect Audience provides marketers a simple way to geo-target potential visitors by country, DMA region, and even down to the zip code. Advertisers can leverage this, for example, by creating ads targeted to specific DMAs that guide potential customers to the nearest store locations.

Of course, one caveat with geo-targeting is that it greatly decreases reach. For this reason, you’ll want to limit geo-targeting to larger DMAs that ensure your retargeting lists have at least 5,000 unique users.

You can find the geo-targeting settings in Step One in any of your campaign settings:

Boosting your ROI during peak seasons can be challenging, especially as competition increases across your different marketing channels, but by making a few strategic tweaks and complementing your existing marketing efforts with the tactics above, you can maximize your reach and return for great overall performance.

To read more about these retargeting tactics and others that will help you maximize your ROI during peak seasons, check out our white paper.