Seasonal

6 Tips For The Second Half Of The Holiday Season

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, we can comfortably say we have entered the full flow of the holiday season, however, there’s still so much more to come! Whether you’re still setting up your campaigns or simply dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, you might want to check out these tips before going live! Here’s a short summary of the six tips you should keep in mind during the rest of the shopping season.

1) Use Collection Ads

A highly useful and effective way of helping people discover the products and services that you offer is by advertising them through the Collection Ad format. Such ads, ideal for the busy and active shopping season, present online users with the perfect opportunity to browse through the list of products that a brand is offering.

Of course, a Collection Ad isn’t optimally complete without the immersive, full-screen experience that helps drive engagement whilst generating interest and intent: Instant Experience. Formerly known as Canvas Ads, this interactive format has become very popular amongst mobile social media advertisers, allowing users to access this content by simply tapping on the Collection Ad on their Facebook or Instagram Newsfeed.

2) Facebook & Instagram Stories

Last month, Facebook revealed that it had reached an impressive 300m daily active users for Facebook and Messenger Stories combined, so you can imagine the potential reach that advertising on this placement can have. Building on the successes registered by Instagram’s Stories ads, Facebook recently revealed it had also started monetising its Stories format. Allowing advertisers to reach their audiences in a vertical, full-screen and immersive environment has given them the opportunity to tell a story in a creative and engaging way.

Considering the way many Facebook & Instagram users often use Stories to share their status updates or to discover things they love, it won’t come as a surprise that using this ad format for your business during the shopping season can yield excellent results. With Stories creations and consumption up by more than 800% since 2016, it has been claimed that Stories is on the way to surpassing the Newsfeed in terms of content sharing by its users. Bearing these facts in mind, Facebook & Instagram Stories are the future for both users and advertisers!

3) Place Facebook Pixel

Placing a Facebook pixel on your website and app allows you to retarget customers that have previously visited or completed an action on your online store. Once you have attached the Pixel, it will trigger and report any activity that has taken place on your website, giving you invaluable information about your customers’ online behaviour.

According to reports, some periods of last year’s shopping season saw cart abandonment rates reaching 75%, so make sure to leverage the Pixel in order to retarget these on Facebook and Instagram with dynamic ads! For example, if a shopper browsed for winter coats on your website but didn’t make a purchase, you can automatically retarget them with an advert for the exact coat that they were looking at later on Facebook. Use this to your advantage and avoid missing out on big opportunities!

4) Optimise Mobile Experience

For many customers around the world, smartphones have become the preferred device when it comes to purchasing products and services online as many companies report mobile sales beating desktop sales. According to reports, the number of Brits using their smartphones to complete purchases online in the run-up to Christmas has increased by 44% this year in comparison to 2017.

This is only the beginning as the figure has been on a steady increase over the last few years. Research has shown that mobile consumption increases during the holidays, making it the perfect time to reach smartphone users across the globe. When mobile and social media consumption rises, so do the number of mobile sales. This makes it absolutely imperative for businesses to encourage and launch mobile-friendly content, especially during the lucrative shopping & holiday period.

5) Test Ad Creatives and Ad Types

Testing out the performance of your content before entering the busiest part of the year is an absolutely crucial practice for all social media advertisers. It’s important to use the time before the full swing of the holiday to trial different creative and ad formats with your different audiences. Do your customers respond better to images or to videos? Do certain images, CTAs or text trigger more activity from the other side? Are Carousel Ads proving to be popular amongst your target audience? Or perhaps Slideshow Ads work best for your visitors and customers? Test them out, learn from the results and improve your performances! Never underestimate the power of A/B testing!

6) Benefit from a Facebook Marketing Partner

Want to take your social media campaigns to the next level and beyond? Need that one, final push to really kick-start what will likely be the busiest month of the year? Well, look no further than a Facebook Marketing Partner!

Maybe you need Facebook and Instagram experts to help you manage your holiday campaigns or increase your conversion rate, or maybe you just need the social ad technology to help you create and put out your social media campaigns.

Well, we’re extremely proud to say that we at The Next Ad are Facebook Marketing Partner (& Google Premier Partner) , and we’re here to help and share our expertise!

Send us a message if you want to know what our team could do for your business!