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Entering the busiest time of year for e-commerce may seem daunting, this guide will take you through how to be prepared and maximise efficiency when running Facebook Ads during this period. Let's get started!
The absolute key to smashing Q4 is making sure you’re prepared in advance. This is especially important due to the longer ad approval times on Facebook during this period.
Creative assets: Have your imagery taken, edited, and ready to start building your ad campaigns. As well as writing your full copy bank in advance, making enough that you can test between throughout the months.
Schedule: To avoid lengthy approval times, get your ad campaigns built and scheduled for your desired live date. We would recommend doing this at least 5 days before your campaign goes live. This will allow you to publish it, have it approved, then it’s ready to go live when you need it to.
Use existing data: This is another way to ensure you’re limiting the amount of testing in this period. Think about the following questions to inform your strategy for Q4: What worked last year? What is your best seller? What types of creatives historically work for your brand? What copy and tone of voice resonated best with your ideal audience in the past?
Once you have answered these questions, you can start thinking about which products to push, what creative to make, and what copy to write.
You can also use existing data such as email subscriber lists, and purchasers to create look-a-likes and custom audiences.
The Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is something all e-commerce businesses should take advantage of, as long as it still remains profitable for your business.
Firstly, decide your offers, whether that be a discount, a gift with purchase, free delivery, or even a multi-buy offer.
We would recommend building separate landing pages for your offers to make for an easier customer experience OR have a discount code clear in your ads.
Also, don’t limit yourself to just those two days. Running an ad for just a day will limit your reach and you may not get the return you ideally want. Instead, consider running your offer over the week or at least for the weekend.
People tend to start planning their Christmas shopping from October, which means, Christmas gifting ads should start feeding out from then. From November, boost up your spending as this is the busiest month for gifting! Once December arrives, you may want to start scaling your spending back towards your delivery cut-off date.
Creative: Make it festive! Don’t depend on just your copy to push the gifting message. With fierce competition, you want to make sure you’re standing out from the crowd. We recommend producing creative that showcases the gifting experience. For example, show your item gift wrapped, have images of someone opening it, even put it under a Christmas tree! You want your customer to imagine that gift in their loved ones life.
Targeting: Now is the perfect time to find new customers, but don’t miss out on retargeting those who have previously shown an interest in your brand. Open up your retargeting window and even consider targeting people who have purchased with you previously with a post-purchase campaign.
Here are the key points that you can’t forget when running Facebook ads in Q4:
Now all that's left to say is, get your strategy ready, prepare your content and get those ads live!
