Despite the many challenges of 2020, many consumer brands have found that their revenues have stayed steady or even grown with increased online purchasing. As more and more people stay home and do their shopping online, ecommerce has had a booming year despite retail turbulence. Some studies show that before quarantine the population made 16% of their purchases online. Now, that number looks more like 34%. Covid isn’t the only factor at play in the deprioritization of physical retail, the industry has been trending towards digital for years - a trend only exacerbated by the pandemic.

Clever advertisers are taking this opportunity to not only maintain their digital ad spend, but increasing and expanding it to connect directly with the ever-growing online consumer audience. This is especially true as we leave the summer season and get into the critically important fall holiday season. Every year brands ramp up their advertising efforts in order to stake a claim in the massive upswell of consumer activity in Q4, and this year will be no exception. Even if you haven’t started your digital advertising spend yet you won’t want to miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity the fall shopping season presents.

We love building out advertising plans for our enterprise-level clients because it gives us the opportunity to spread some of the knowledge we’ve gained over the course of the thousands of campaigns we’ve overseen here at FieldTest. We recently had the opportunity to plan a quarter of a million dollar media buy for a leading client.  We built out a model for executing a highly effective ad campaign through the end of the year that is already paying dividends for the client. The plan has proven to be so successful we wanted to share it with our larger family of clients.  New brands and those just starting out with modest budgets can learn from the thoughtful planning of a brand at scale.

Here are FieldTest’s recommendations on how to own your Q3 and Q4 advertising spends:

The “Runway Model” - Buy Now to Benefit in Q4

It’s no secret that the holiday season is the most important shopping season of the year. With so many holidays and so many reasons to give gifts it has become known industry-wide as the season to prepare for when planning retail distribution, inventory and marketing. Many clients report that they earn nearly 60% of their digital revenue in this quarter alone! This year is a bit different, however as the retail aspect has largely been removed from the equation. As we discussed up top, this doesn’t necessarily mean that shopping will be put on hold. Quite the opposite, the shoppers who would previously be holdouts of the classic mall shopping experience will now be forced by various means to do their holiday shopping online. This is an incredible opportunity for DTC marketers, but presents a unique challenge: Ad inventory prices (CPMs) always increase in Q4 and can make ad campaigns very expensive to start. This might sound like “game over” for smaller brands who don’t quite have the budget to go up against the big ad accounts of the world, but there is an easy way to overcome it: Start your campaigns early!

At FieldTest we like to break our campaigns out into three distinct phases;  Awareness, where new customers become aware of your brand. Consideration, where they are presented with info that helps them decide that your brand is right for them, and Action, where they are given the final push to convert. We’ve discussed at length how these phases all work in tandem to drive new intenders to your site and convert them to customers. By beginning your Awareness and consideration phases now, before the increase in inventory costs, you’ll be building a strong foundation of awareness traffic to your site and helping convince them of your brand’s unique qualities with consideration ads all before the inventory prices begin to spike in the following months.

Think of this as a runway, giving your holiday ad campaigns the time and space they need to gain the momentum to take flight when it really counts. By the time the holiday season is upon us you will not only have a solid stream of traffic to your site, but you’ll have a large enough data footprint to use the FieldTest Audience Predictor tool to build out high-performing lookalike audiences based on your Q3 ad traffic. These take out much of the costs associated with prospecting and allow you to focus on more revenue-driving ads down-funnel in the key moments of the holiday season. 

In order to capitalize on this opportunity you will have to act fast! Q4 is coming, and competition will be fierce leading to inevitable inventory cost increases. This means that you have to act fast in order to take advantage of the “runway” model. November holds tough competition so in order to gain the full benefit of your early advertising you’ll want to start no later than October. Any prospecting ads you start running now will help to build your site traffic and data footprint for use down the line, allowing you to lean on lookalike targeting to save money vs data group selection.

The holidays are coming, and soon. Now is the time to act to ensure that your brand is in a position to take full advantage of the increased shopping in Q4 and maximize your advertising effectiveness by avoiding costly mistakes. Every dollar spent finishing Q3 strong is 2-3 you will not have to spend for the same inventory in the coming months. Why not end your year strong and start a high-performing digital ad campaign on the FieldTest Platform today?

Want a customized model for your brand ad spend through year-end? Get in touch below so FieldTest can help you finish 2020 profitably.