3 Insights To Seduce Valentine’s Day Shoppers With PPC Ads

Know­ing these Valen­tine’s Day trends will help brands cre­ate PPC cam­paigns that shop­pers will love.

Danny Goodwin By Danny Goodwin from Momentology. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Ah, Valen­tine’s Day. Choco­lates. Flow­ers. Smart­phones. Wait, smart­phones? Wel­come to 2016 – where tra­di­tion­al Valen­tine’s Day gifts now mix with the mod­ern as con­sumer shop­ping behav­ior evolves. So what can brands and mar­keters hop­ing to get some love from their PPC cam­paigns expect as the fourth-biggest spend­ing hol­i­day approach­es?


Here are three insights on Valen­tine’s Day trends to watch in 2016.

1. Rethink Valentine’s Day Gifts

Valen­tine’s is a day for giv­ing gifts. Noth­ing new there. Some 40 per­cent of Valentine’s Day search­es in 2015 used “gift” as a key­word, accord­ing to Microsoft data.

Whether it’s on can­dy, greet­ing cards, flow­ers, a roman­tic evening out, jew­el­ry, cloth­ing, or some­thing else, peo­ple are expect­ed to spend $142 on aver­age in 2016, accord­ing to the Nation­al Retail Fed­er­a­tion.

But you know what else peo­ple would love to receive this year on Valen­tine’s Day? A new smart­phone. Maybe a lap­top or tablet. Heck, why not a fit­ness track­er?

What exact­ly is a Valen­tine’s Day gift in 2016? Chal­lenge your think­ing.

While flow­ers and choco­lates might be the obvi­ous choic­es for Valen­tine’s gifts, you could change up your ad copy for some prod­ucts in your inven­to­ry that would make the per­fect gift but which might not be the first thing that comes to mind,” said Frances Done­gan-Ryan, Bing Ads Cus­tomer Obses­sion Man­ag­er. “The beau­ty of PPC is the abil­i­ty to change ad copy on the fly and per­haps plant some allur­ing sug­ges­tions in searchers minds as a gen­tle nudge that might make them look a lit­tle more orig­i­nal in the eyes of their loved one.”

Also keep in mind that Valen­tine’s Day isn’t just for cou­ples. Peo­ple are also buy­ing gifts for fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends – even pets.

Also, remem­ber to think about the 45 per­cent of adults who don’t cel­e­brate Valen­tine’s Day in the “tra­di­tion­al” way, but will be part of the esti­mat­ed $18.9 bil­lion in 2016 con­sumer spend­ing. This year sin­gle peo­ple will shop, go out for the evening with oth­er sin­gle friends or fam­i­ly mem­bers, or treat them­selves to some­thing spe­cial, such as a spa day.

2. Choose Your Words Wisely

If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, than here are 3,000 words worth of images for you to exam­ine for insights on win­ning PPC ad copy.

First, here’s a heat map show­ing the words that work in PPC ads on Valen­tine’s Day, accord­ing to Microsoft data:

Valentine's Day PPC words that work

Which ad copy com­bi­na­tions work best across all devices? Here’s a look at some win­ning PPC words used in ads for gifts, flow­ers, can­dy, and cards:

Top ad copy combinations

Final­ly, here’s a fur­ther break­down of which copy worked best, com­par­ing PC and tablet to smart­phones:

Top ad copy combinations by device

Our data shows ad qual­i­ty and CTR increased when superla­tives and calls-to-action are used in copy,” Done­gan-Ryan said. “So ‘best’, ‘top’ or ‘great’ cou­pled with ‘send’, ‘make some­one’ or ‘give’ saw the opti­mal response. Inter­est­ing­ly the ad copy com­bo with the most inter­ac­tion includes the brand name in the title of the ad fol­lowed by ‘col­lec­tion’ in the descrip­tion.”

Bing Ads not­ed that the top 10 search­es relat­ed to Valentine’s Day account­ed for 32 per­cent of all search vol­ume and 74 per­cent of those were relat­ed to spe­cif­ic brands.

3. Reach Consumers At The Right Moments

Valen­tine’s Day is one of the biggest moments of the mar­ket­ing year. But there are sev­er­al moments lead­ing up to Valen­tine’s Day you need to think about and cre­ate strate­gies for to ensure con­sumers will find your busi­ness or brand.

The sweet spot for tar­get­ing Valentine’s Day shop­pers is the two weeks lead­ing up to the big day. So that means, essen­tial­ly, it’s game on start­ing this Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 31, which will be exact­ly two weeks before Valen­tine’s Day.

Mobile is going to be a big dri­ver of research and pur­chase in 2016, accord­ing to Bing Ads. Twen­ty-six per­cent of smart­phone users will research prod­ucts and com­pare prices, while 14 per­cent plan to make pur­chase on their device.

Smartphones Valentine's Day

Also, many men may be plan­ning a mar­riage pro­pos­al for the most roman­tic of hol­i­days. This is a huge life moment and mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for the right brand or busi­ness.

Anoth­er key insight for mar­keters: think about how you can take advan­tage of the many last-minute search­es that will take place the day before Valen­tine’s Day. Last year, the biggest click-through rates on ads hap­pened on Feb­ru­ary 13 between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. across all devices. Is your ad copy opti­mized with a rel­e­vant mes­sage and word­ing for these des­per­ate, eleventh-hour shop­pers?

One final tip from Bing Ads:

Under­stand­ing local intent is going to be huge,” Done­gan-Ryan said. “So get those loca­tion and call exten­sions set up to help your brand cap­ture those con­sumer hearts and make it mem­o­rable!”


What oth­er Valen­tine’s Day trends are you watch­ing? Have any great Valen­tine’s Day mar­ket­ing tips? Share your insights in the com­ments.

Danny Goodwin

Written by Danny Goodwin

Managing Editor, Momentology

Danny Goodwin is the former Managing Editor of Momentology. Previously, he was the editor of Search Engine Watch, where he was in charge of editing, content strategy, and writing about search industry news.

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