Facebook advertising: tips for holiday campaign planning
Published: October 19, 2015
Author: Kendra Pennington
After prepping for a Facebook holiday advertising webinar (which you can catch here!), I didn’t want to leave those of you who missed it in the lurch. Here are my tips (in handy checklist form, with notes) for holiday campaign planning. Hat tip to my colleague Dippy for a few of these!
Planning for Holiday Campaign Launch
The holidays can be a scramble, but make sure you’re getting the basics right before you get new campaigns out the door. Things to consider:
–Budgets
–Tracking
–Creative (ads and landing pages)
–Competitor research
–Account structure
–Promotions
Plan according to business type
The holidays aren’t high season for everyone.
E-commerce retailers should note:
–Increased seasonal competition means higher CPCs and CPMs, but…
–Increased seasonal CVR = better ROAS
Lead gen, service-based, and B2B companies should note:
–Increased competition = higher costs and…
–Increased CPAs
The takeaway for lead gen, service-based, and B2B companies? It might be better to scale back budget for Q4 and prepare to ramp up in Q1, when costs will be lower. Keep in mind that because social ads are people-based, not intent-based, you’ll be paying more to reach the same people that retailers are trying to reach and fighting for the same real estate. Be smart with your budget and spend it when you can stretch it farther.
General best practices
More than ever, the holidays require you to carefully plan out a calendar and plan of action. What’s your Black Friday plan? Cyber Monday? When do your competitors start adding promotions, and do you need to beat them out the gate? When do your products absolutely need to ship to arrive by Christmas, and how do you reflect that in ad copy? Make sure you’re ready to reach the customer with appropriate messaging and promotions for every single milestone of the season.
Another tip we’ve learned from years past: have more creative available than what you expect to need. Set expectations with your creative team, and always plan to have 2-3 more extra creatives…they may not turn out to be “extra” after all.
Last, learn from the past! Analyze data of previous year’s holiday campaigns to determine:
–Target audiences
–Top creative
–Top offer
(Pro Tip: Create lookalike audiences and custom audiences based on last year’s holiday customers.)
Tracking tips
Things to consider for tracking on your holiday landing pages:
–Update/verify conversion pixels
– Purchase
-Add to Cart
-Registrations
–Ensure placement of website custom audience pixel site-wide for retargeting during your holiday campaigns
Pro Tip: Begin creating secondary target audiences from your holiday conversion pixel to use later in the holiday season – and beyond!
–Set up retargeting
–Create lookalikes based on converters
Have some insights that should be included? Let us know in the comments!
