Holiday shopping arrives sooner and sooner each year, which is why it’s more important than ever for small, local businesses to map out and implement an optimized holiday sales campaign. To take full advantage of sales opportunities, a digital marketing strategy, especially one that incorporates Meta advertisements, is an absolute must!
Learning how to set the stage for a successful sales season might seem like a daunting task, but it can be broken down into four simple steps: plan, experiment, push, and sustain. Continue reading for a comprehensive guide on how to increase your holiday goals this year and beyond!
Step 1: Plan
Here at Midwest Marketing, we believe it’s never too early to plan your marketing strategy, and the holiday are no exception. Now is the time to prep for your upcoming holiday sales campaigns. Through Meta, we can learn how to time your budget around seasonal moments, make more accurate campaign optimizations, and avoid potential disruptions during these peak shopping moments. To develop an effective plan, we utilize the tracking capabilities of the Meta Pixel and Conversions API and test out different strategies with your target audience. Some common mega sales days to work into your holiday campaigns are listed below.
Step 2: Experiment
As the name implies, this step is all about testing out different ideas, and A/B testing is a great method to use! To run a successful test, we’ll develop a hypothesis based on your primary business goal, create distinct ad variations, test only one variable at a time to more accurately attribute performance, and keep it running for at least two weeks.
We’ll also apply Meta Advantage options to optimize and drive sales, elevate performance with AI, and personalize the ads. Adding in a variety of Reels is also a great way to craft engaging ads, as “79% of people surveyed purchased a product or service after watching Reels.”
Step 3: Push
Once we find out what tactics work best for your audiences from the testing phase, we can activate your winning strategies using the latest tools from Meta to meet holiday demand and drive toward your goals. Of course, we’ll also keep Meta’s best practices in mind:
- We don’t advise making major edits should be made during important sales periods, so we can avoid staying in the learning phase for too long.
- We won’t set and forget about your ads. We monitor your ad campaigns daily to assess performance and make adjustments when needed. We also keep an eye on trends, by running regular reports, for future planning.
- We’ll run creative that should produce the best results, and we’ll keep focusing on your top-performing strategies that we discovered in Step 2.
- We simplify your campaigns for optimal performance and cost efficiency.
Step 4: Sustain
The holidays may be over when we reach this step, but the shopping won’t be. So, we should make the most of continued purchase intent and connect with more customers through ads that click to message or make use of Meta’s instant forms feature.
Even once the holiday season ends, there’s still much work to be done! In fact, the fifth quarter (Q5) is the biggest opportunity for the lowest ad costs. From mid-December to late January, the cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) dips significantly.
How do we recommend to take advantage of Q5’s lower CPMs? We’re glad you asked! We propose you keep sales going into the new year, create a sense of urgency (e.g., end-of-season sales, back-in-stock items, and limited-edition products), refresh your ad creative, and use insights from your holiday campaigns to inform your strategy. After all, planning makes perfect!
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