Google just released their retail industry newsletter for September 2007. This newsletter in particular is talking about Halloween and offers suggestions for businesses running seasonal campaigns. Some of the main points are:

Being Creative

If you sell a variety of items you might want to think outside the box in terms of what you offer. Besides your typical items like costumes think about other money making products that are in your inventory. I would suggest you setup your campaigns based on product and price range within those products.

Landing Pages

Just be smart about your landing pages. If you are promoting a particular item in an ad, when a person clicks that ad the page they are directed to should have that item on it. There should be no doubt in the users mind that they are on the correct page and they’ve found what they’ve been searching for.

Shipping Information

Highlight special shipping offers. If something is time sensitive they recommend including phrases like “Order by Oct. 25 for Halloween delivery” to let them know when to buy. Then there’s always the time proven “Free Shipping” that draws users in. It might be worth offering free shipping especially if your items are pretty inexpensive to ship in the first place.

Negative Keywords

Be sure to use negative keywords. This can save you a lot of unqualified clicks which is especially important when running a seasonal PPC campaign.

I also recommend pausing your campaigns at the end of the season so that you can save yourself time the following year and have solid data on which ad copy was more effective etc.

For Google’s full newsletter click here.