Facebook Ads Strategies for the Holiday Season

When it comes to the holidays, it’s best to be prepared and start getting ready as early as possible. According to Facebook, 1 in 4 people surveyed in the U.S. start their holiday shopping sometime between the end of October and the beginning of December. 

That’s a huge opportunity to leave behind if you’re planning on a marketing blitz for the holiday season. Getting a jump start on your Christmas and Hanukkah advertising campaigns could be the difference between a boom or bust in your holiday profits.

With that in mind, here are a few strategies for focusing your Facebook Ads campaigns for the holiday season!

Save for your Q4 budget

It’s the end of the year. Q4 budgets are wrapping up. But you still have one big push for the holiday season. Make sure that you have saved up a good chunk of your annual marketing budget to cover the marketing blitz to come. Keep in mind that competitors and other marketers will likely be doing the same, so you Avg. CPC metrics may increase during peak season.

Shopping Ads for products that people may be searching for

For when user intent is clear, and you have an established amount of search traffic for your product or service, try Facebook Shopping Campaigns. Also known as Dynamic Product Ads, these ad types allow advertisers to remarket to users that previously viewed their website. Shopping Ads still use the dynamic product feed, which will display the individual product in the ad.

Newsfeed and Stories Ads for products that people may not know they want

For when your product would be a great stocking stuffer or gift idea, if only users knew about it, consider traditional social media ads. Placed in the newsfeeds or between stories clips, advertisers can give prospective customers a brief glimpse of a great gift idea. Video options tend to be especially effective for products that need a demonstration. So if you want to go this route, make sure that you have a killer video demo of your product in action ready to go.

Get testing periods completed before Black Friday

Advertisers have the option to utilize the Campaign Budget Optimization features in Facebook Ads. This allows Facebook’s machine learning algorithm to optimize your campaigns towards ads, ad copy and audiences that are most effective at driving profitable conversions for your account. The only issue is that the algorithms require some time to learn. 

With about a week, most campaigns should have generated enough conversions for the campaigns to understand what’s working and adjust the targeting and settings for optimization. But if you’re having trouble getting enough conversions to complete the learning process, consider adding conversions further up the sales funnel. For example, maybe your small business only completes transactions once a day. Try adding ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Visit Pricing Page’ as a conversion and see if that helps improve the learning process.

Aim for a broader audience

With your ad variations ready and your testing completed, make sure that your campaigns are shooting for a slightly broader audience. This is especially true for products and services that make good gift ideas, if only customers were exposed to them a little more.

This is the best time of year to test out lookalike audiences, audience expansions, and connections targeting. Although we recommend that you keep your new audience targeting separated into different campaign sets so that you can quickly pause or expand on them depending on their effectiveness.

Feeling Inspired?

Do you want to know more about our Facebook Ads services at 565 Media? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business. 

If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.

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