Unless you’re in the health and fitness niche, the first few months of the New Year can be slow for most e-commerce businesses.
Consumers have overspent during the holiday season and many will ration their salary over the next few months.
Some will have New Year’s resolutions to save more money, so getting them to take action becomes tough.
In this article I’ll reveal four tips you can use on Facebook to boost post-holiday sales.
Focus on recent buyers
One of my favorite tips to increase post-holiday sales is to retarget customers who recently bought from your store.
Create a website custom audience of customers who have bought from you during November and December (ideally, segment them by what product category they bought from).
For example, if your business sells clothes, you could segment by gender or go deeper into product categories like t-shirts, shoes, accessories etc.
In your creatives, call out the customer and thank them for ordering in 2017, welcome them into 2018, and tell them you have a special promotion just for them.
This extra level of personalization and product targeting works really well to boost Q1 sales.
The only downside is that your customer audience will be fairly small and you won’t be able to scale.
This tip is for increasing your customer LTV, not CPA.
To lower your CPA, follow the next tip.
Focus on the top 25%/75%/95%
Facebook lets you target the top 25% of website visitors and lets you target video views watched at 75% and 95%.
Aside from your customers and prospects who have given you their email addresses, these audiences are going to be your most profitable to lower your CPA.
If you’re running blog content or video views at the top of your funnel, scale these ads to increase the amount of people in your website and video custom audiences.
Selling high-ticket items or receiving a higher average order value from this segment will be easier than selling to someone who visited your page or website for only a few seconds.
This will typically take up 20% of your entire custom audience.
Segment these prospects and serve them high-ticket items just like you did during the holiday season – they are more likely to convert.
What about the other 80%?
You should not neglect the other 80% of your audience.
These are the people who maybe only watched 25% or 50% of your video, spent a dozen seconds on your website, or visited your Facebook Page.
First, show them the same offers as the top 20% of visitors and monitor your CPA and return on ad spend (ROAS). If the numbers are profitable, then don’t change a thing.
If they aren’t, then pivot with your offer.
Consider showing them middle or low-ticket items that require less decision-making, or lower the profit margins on specific products to drive more sales from this group. And again, check your CPA and ROAS to see if this option is profitable.
If showing low-ticket items doesn’t work, pivot your strategy again by serving content to educate them more about your brand and products.
Play on the New Year, New Me
For some, the New Year is a time to save money. For others (like me), it’s the time to stick to my health goals.
Serve me a Facebook advert about a healthy food delivery option and I’ll be like….
Like me, many people are going to start 2018 with a new mindset. Whether that’s eating healthy, getting in shape, or clearing out old stuff, use creatives that will play on their goals.
Focus your creatives and text copy on how your products can help them reach their 2018 goals. For example, if you’re selling computer gear, you could target business owners who are looking to scale their business in 2018 – to do that, they are going to need tech.
Here’s an example of UK gadget retailer playing on New Year habits to increase sales:
Your turn
I’ve said it many times before in other blog posts: marketing is a dynamic environment.
Consumers needs change based on seasons, and it’s your job as the marketer to serve them the right message at the right time.
The better you can understand your audience and their needs, the better you’ll be able to use the tips above and increase post-holiday sales using Facebook ads.