Running Facebook ads in the final quarter (Q4) is never an easy task.
In the run up to the holiday season, million dollar brands will double down on their ad spend to take full advantage of holiday consumers.
This leads to an even more competitive Facebook marketplace, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run profitable ads and crush your Q4 sales.
In this article, I’m going to provide you with holiday hacks to increase yours sales in Q4 using Facebook ads.
Run one-day offer ads
Consumers, during the holiday season, are going to shop around and take their time researching products.
They know that during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the run up to Christmas there’s going to be offers galore.
With this knowledge, the power will shift away from businesses and on to the consumer. Studies have already shown that the average shopper visits at least three other stores before making their decision.
A good way to turn the tables and regain that power is to run lots of one-day offers using the offers objective.
One-day offers play on the consumers’ emotions of the fear of missing out (FOMO). If you give prospects just 24 hours to make up their mind, there’s a higher chance that they will order from you as they know the offer will expire tomorrow.
Create urgency.
Everyone who redeems your offer will be notified by Facebook, via email, when they next log in on their desktop and before the voucher is about to expire.
This extra engagement will turn more prospects into customers in a short amount of time.
Use shorter retention windows
Prospects in Q4 have a different mindset than any other time of the year.
Some will save for months, waiting for the holiday season to stock up on things they need. It’s also the only time of year when they are actively seeking gifts for others and, in some cases, cannot wait for you to send your promotional emails to their inbox.
You’ve seen the lines outside retail stores during the holidays – the FOMO is real.
For these reasons I recommend you test shorter retention windows for retargeting ads.
For example, if you currently retarget people who visited your website in the past 30 days, shorten it to 20 days and reinvest the savings in ad spend at the top of your funnel.
Why?
Consumers are going to take action this holiday season. When they see a great offer from you or a competitor, they are going to snap it up faster than usual because of FOMO.
This means that prospects in your retention window at 30 days out may have already bought the product they viewed at your store somewhere else.
Serving them dynamic product ads for items they may already have purchased is going to yield negative ROI.
It’s better to reinvest that ad spend at the top of your funnel, driving new visitors to your store.
Create gift audiences
Q4 is the gift giving season and may be the only time of year where you can target prospects who don’t match your customer profile and turn a profit.
For example, if your store sells men’s grooming products, you could target women who are in a relationship and show them products that their boyfriend or husband will love.
With the right direct response copy (e.g. “Your boyfriend will love you this Christmas if you get him X”), you can tap into new market segments that won’t be open to you at any other time of the year.
When using gift audiences you may want to target by age, income, or job type to reach people with a disposable income. Read more about gift audiences here.
Season-alize your ad copy
The more prospects that stop and consume your ads, the better CTR and relevance score they’ll gain, reducing your CPC and CPA.
Personalize your ads for each holiday season. For example, during the run up to Christmas throw a Santa hat on your product or define your sales as a Christmas sale or Xmas sale.
This small added layer of personalization will increase the engagement with your ads and lower costs.
Ask yourself where the urgency is
When running direct response ads ask yourself: where is the urgency?
If there isn’t any urgency, go back and add some. As I already stated in this article, urgency is going to be key in Q4. You can use urgency in a number of ways, including:
- making sure all offers are time-based,
- using countdown timers in emails and on product pages,
- running promotions like “50% off to the first 50 people,”
- running one-day flash sales over a seven-day period (perfect to increase average order frequency), and
- mentioning that stock is limited.
If you fail to address the urgency, the prospect will keep on researching and merely bookmark your page.
Your turn
As a Facebook marketer you shouldn’t be scared of Q4 – you should be super pumped.
There are huge audiences waiting for you to show them the right offer so they can say…
Use these five tips to hack your Facebook strategy during the holiday season.