4 Ways You Can Prepare Your Ad Campaigns for the Holiday Shopping Season
October is passing us by and shopping season is nearly upon us. Q4 is easily the number one shopping season of the year, and with good reason: It’s where the top shopping holidays of the year take place and where the vast majority of online sales occur. While this is a huge opportunity every year, this year presents a particularly hot iron to strike for digital brands who have already seen their sales increase throughout the events of the last couple years. This week we’ve decided to run down our top 4 ways brands wondering how to best take advantage of this opportunity can prepare themselves for the tremendous opportunity ahead and make this their best Q4 yet!
Start early
If you’ve been reading our blog posts you already know our number one tip for delivering huge successes in Q4 and that is to start your awareness level buying early! October is your last chance to buy awareness marketing at pre-holiday season costs, not an opportunity to be missed! Proper investment now will create a strong flow of traffic to your site, building up momentum that will carry you through the rest of Q4 and allow you to focus on mid-to-lower funnel marketing in the coming weeks when inventory costs increase with demand. Investing early in your Q4 marketing will pay dividends down the line.
2. Build new campaigns
If you’re already running effective marketing campaigns it’s easy to think you’ve got Q4 in the bag. Simply continue your current successes and you're good to go, right? This might work out, but by only continuing to run your evergreen ad campaigns you’re leaving money on the table! We’ve discussed how to use holiday sales and events to your advantage with custom ads and specialized targeting groups intended to resonate with holiday shopping intenders and there is no better time to do this than Q4. By starting a new holiday-themed campaign you reach out to new customers who might be more interested in your product as a gift while leaving your evergreen campaigns successes untouched. It’s never a bad time to experiment with new custom creatives and the holiday season is no exception!
3. Try new formats
If you’ve set up your evergreen Q4 FieldTest campaigns and even built out some custom holiday-themed campaigns you’re in a great position for marketing success through the holiday season, but there still a number of ways you can reach new audiences and build strong, lasting connections with them. FieldTest’s access to CTV inventory allows you to take all the data learning you’ve gained through social and digital ad campaigns and apply it to your video ad placements, giving you access to some of the most engaged audiences out there all with the pinpoint accuracy you expect from FieldTest digital marketing campaigns.
FieldTest has also unlocked a bevy of daily newsletter placements from publishers like NYT, Martha Stewart, Curbed and others. Once again these placements offer a front row spot in front of audiences that have proven intent and engagement, all with the precision targeting capabilities only digital advertising can provide.
4. Run a Sale
With the holiday season so close, now is a good time to begin to plan out your seasonal offers and sales. While holidays like Black Friday are the marquee days for deep discounts, here at FieldTest we think every brand should offer some kind of discount during the holidays. Studies have shown that any discount, even as little at 10% off or free domestic shipping, can increase online sales from 2-3x, especially when offered in the retargeting phase after your audience has already proven interest and intent. When planning your seasonal campaigns we consider it a part of FieldTest best practices and there’s no better time than now to make sure that you’re prepared to incorporate special discounts in holiday plans.
The holiday season is one of top places DTC brands make back their annual ROAS and one of the best places to solidify your relationship with new customers online. By running early prospecting, building out custom holiday campaigns that funel customers down to special discounts and trying new awarness level marketing creatives that take your awareness marketing to the next level, we’re confident you will have an incredibly successful, and profitable, Q4.