Helping Guide for All E-commerce to Maximize their Campaign Return
Christmas is the busiest period for all businesses, but for e-commerce companies, it's on a whole new level. After all, it's the biggest holiday of the year. Not to mention the new year event is also tied together. Consumers are rushing to buy gifts while companies are competing to get their attention towards their products. In the US alone, the holiday period sales were approximately $789 billion. Now project this to a global scale and you end up with an unreal amount. As a result, everyone wants a slice of the pie. But it can get very competitive very quickly. This guide will help you understand the scale of the competition and what you can do to stand out despite the competition.
No Holiday Spirit for Advertisers
This article will focus on the guide for small to mid-scale e-commerce companies. The larger corporation has all these covered
anyways.
Days before the internet, you used to see ads in newspapers, television, and billboard. But generally, those were the ads from
larger brands, corporations, and so on. Smaller companies simply did not have the budget to compete with larger corporations.
However, with the rise of online ads, things have changed in a more positive direction while certain difficulties still remain.
I am sorry to bring a negative vibe and topic during the holiday spirit, but that's the reality we live in, at least from the
advertisers’ point of view.
Facebook Ads & Google Ads have provided the means to reach your target audience even if you have a significantly
smaller budget. Practically this is very promising throughout the year when no special holiday/event is present. But during certain
events like black Friday and Christmas, the picture can change.
If you have been on the advertised side of online ads, then you are familiar with the bid cap and bid strategy.
To paint a picture, generally, these online ad platforms charge you based on the impressions (showing the ads to the audiences)
and to reach them.
Every company is trying to reach the same online profile for their online ad campaigns, but there is a finite number of online
profiles.
During this period, larger corporations spend extensively to reach these online profiles raising the bid cost. As a result,
smaller to mid-sized companies can struggle to reach their audience using online ads. And if you can not reach your target
audience as e-commerce, then you will lose traffic and sales.
You can read more about the issue regarding this bidding war, you can read our
article about Black Friday.
What Can you Do?
So what can you do to compete during the Christmas period?
The only way to tackle this is to make your target audience even more effective and precise. You can not spend more than those
larger corporations, but you can make your target audience selection even more relevant and reach the most relevant audience for
your product. Consequently, you can reach the right person even with a smaller budget and keep your conversions in check.
However, here are some other tips and tricks for Facebook Ads that will have a positive effect on the campaign results:
- Do not try to reach a broad audience during Christmas, it's very hard to get a good result from this. You will not have the budget to reach the best broad audience as their bid cap can be very high during Christmas-like holiday periods. So Lookalike audience is not recommended at all.
- Remarketing is the best option. These people came to your website, may it be organically, using google search, or through paid traffic campaigns. In other words, they came knocking on your shop door. During the holiday period, the cost will increase to a certain degree, yes, but the cost of such a campaign is significantly lower compared to new user acquisition campaigns. This still should be suitable for the budget of smaller to mid-sized companies.
- Since the campaign cost can have unpredictable behaviors, it would be best to increase the budget as much as possible from your end. If you are running more than one asset under the same campaign then it is highly recommended that you activate the Advantage Campaign Budget option. This lets Facebook decide and allocate the budget to the ad set that is performing better and has optimized more over time. As a result, if one ad set is not performing well, you don't have to waste a ton of money before realizing this was a mistake.
- If you have a slightly larger budget then we would strongly suggest turning on Advantage Custom Audience. It lets Facebook create small-scale lookalikes based on the audiences used for the ad set and the allocated budget. This is different from than conventional lookalike. Where a lookalike creates a lookalike with hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, this one creates a lookalike with only a few thousand (1000-5000) people. It lets you reach the website visitors that have interacted with your brand and reach new potential customers as well. On normal occasions, this is not recommended for remarketing campaigns, but for an occasion like Christmas, you would want to reach new people and show your products. Since new user campaigns can cost really high during Christmas-like occasions and if you don't have the budget for this then this is the perfect alternative that can work wonders for your brand without breaking the bank for you.
- Advantage Plus Placement is another good option to turn on for exactly the same reasons mentioned above. Some placement options can come down to the highest bids and can break your bank if you strictly select those. Instead, let facebook decide which placement will work for your campaign during this busy period based on your campaign budget.
Target Audience Selection
Target audience selection is the single most important factor that determines the success of any online ads. Online ad platforms charge you based on the impressions (showing the ads to the audiences) and to reach them. The target audience you choose is very critical here. No matter what target audience you choose, the online ads platform will show them your ads, regardless of the relevancy of the target audience with your brand and product. You either get a lot of sales from the campaign if your target audience choice is a good one, or you lose the campaign cost on the wrong target audience choice. Therefore, choose the target audience wisely. We can not emphasize enough how much this can affect your campaigns.
Good Luck To You All
Another important factor outside of online ads is email marketing. Simply put; Don’t Skip this. Especially during this Christmas
period. Make your emails more creative and stand out in the inbox. It goes a long way if you can reach them using emails and as
well as using online ads.
Do These and you should have a better chance of succeeding in remarketing campaigns during this holiday period. We bid you good
luck with the online ad campaigns.
