As we are approaching Black Friday or holiday season, it’s crucial that you have your Q4 strategy planned out beforehand to meet the results you are excited about. Taking the following points into consideration can help you create and implement a relevant strategy and stand out among a huge number of advertisers in Q4, 2022.
Take a look at what we think is important and will help you drive results:
1. Make sure your technical assets are set up correctly.
You may not be able to affect the Facebook algorithms, but what you can do is to have a proper ad account set up that will let the Facebook algorithm optimize your ads in the best way possible.
Test your landing pages and make sure your website is optimized for mobile.
Use CBO and automatic placements.
Create a product catalog to run collection ads and dynamic ads.
Make sure your Facebook Pixel is integrated with your CRM
2. Produce new attention grabbing creatives.
Good content rules social media, and this is the time when you need to go an extra mile with your visuals to be able to stand out from a huge number of other advertisers and will people’s hearts. This means not only do you need to make it obvious to customers what your offer is, but also prepare attractive visuals in general.
Use social proof elements. You can add stickers and graphics that demonstrate press mentions or previous customers’ reviews.
Implement user generated content created by real people or small content creators to blend into the native social media style and make it easy for people to associate themselves with the content they see.
Add “Sale” stickers to your pictures and videos, and make them stand out. Make it very clear what the discount is and use eye-catching, contrasty graphics. Don’t forget to add “Black Friday” captions as the phrase combines the 2 valuable messages of (1) a sale happening, (2) huge discounts.
Around Christmas time try using visual elements and colors related to the holiday. It can be Christmas ornaments styled graphics, Christmas related props at photoshoots, green and red color themes.
Focus on your unique benefits such as exclusivity, sustainability, high quality, fast delivery etc., and use appropriate, readable fonts and colors to communicate that to your customers.
Don’t forget about the technical requirements.
Test different formats of ads: Single Image, Singe Video, Carousels, Collections, Dynamic Ads.
Include branding in your static images.
Show branding in the first 3 seconds of videos.
Make your videos up to 15 seconds.
3. Learn from the past and make changes accordingly.
Rewind back to your social media ads strategy from the past years and aggregate the best practices ever applied. Do not forget that advertising and e-commerce trends are constantly changing, that is why you also need to make sure your old methods, that had brought you amazing results in the past, can be implemented in the current state of the market.
For example, you may have found your perfect budget allocation between your remarketing and prospecting audiences, or between the different markets you are targeting. You might want to implement those practices when it comes to scaling your advertising budget during the peak season.
However, there are things that might need some changes. The strategy of creating extremely polished visual content, only talking about the brand and the products, not engaging with the audience is overly outdated and may not drive the results you are willing to get. These days social media users prefer engaging with more authentic content and receiving some useful information; they want to see that the brand is real people who share the same values. That is why the creative strategy for your social media ads should also include more user generated content and more content that is native to the social media platforms.
4. Target the right audiences.
When it comes to social media ads, your results rely heavily on your targeting settings. During Q4 you need to make sure you are reaching both your previous customers, who are probably waiting for you to start your Black Friday sale, and the cold audiences which also include people who are looking for gifts for their loved ones, but they do not necessarily belong to your target audience.
Use your customer lists from your CRM.
Target your best performing custom audiences: most engaged website visitors, social media viewers, etc.
Make sure your custom audiences are up to date, they should not be older than 6 months.
Target broad audiences, defining them just by age, gender and location, to reach gift-givers.
5. Plan out your discounts.
It’s important to maintain this balance where you maximize your profit, and at the same time you are offering discounts that are attractive to your customers. There are multiple discount strategies you can consider, some of them are:
15% - 35% off sitewide;
40% - 60% off on selected items;
Free shipping when spend exceeds a particular amount;
Free gift wrapping when spend exceeds a particular amount;
Free gift cards when spend exceeds a particular amount;
Progressive discount.
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