Just three more shopping months

As we launch into fall, many retailers are already gearing up for the most important sales season of the year -- the winter holidays. It may seem like we have a long way to go before December, but according to the 2007 Holiday eSpending Report, shoppers are hitting their favorite online stores well ahead of time -- some even report that they've already finished their holiday shopping!

With this in mind, it's never too early to start thinking of ways to attract more customers. We suggest creating a separate, fine-tuned winter holiday campaign with specific, narrowly focused ad groups and relevant keywords to attract potential customers. The Keyword Tool is a great resource to turn to for ideas and tips on creating a number of keyword variations.

You may also want to write ad text that appeals directly to the audience you're targeting. After creating multiple ads per ad group, you can look at the % Served column in your 'Ad Variations' table to see what kind of ad text attracts more clicks. And, remember that AdWords will automatically show the ad with the higher clickthrough rate (CTR) more often, so you can experiment with different ad texts to see what works best.

As always, you can visit the AdWords Help Center year-round to find ways to improve your ad performance. Retailers can also check out our optimization tips.

Posted by Christina, Inside AdWords crew