It’s never too late to start preparing for the holidays. If you’re a retailer looking to snap up some of the action then you need start getting your stuff together…
like…
right NOW!
For most retailers, the winter holiday season is their most profitable period on the calendar. If that applies for you too, then digital marketing must be high on your agenda and if you’re anything like our clients, then you’ve been sizing up Facebook for a long time to try figuring out how to use it to make a big payday by December 25.
So without further ado, check out these Facebook advertising tips to get you started on your digital marketing campaign for the holidays.
Are your customers “family” to your brand?
If that’s what you claim then you’ve got no excuse not to get to know your customers a bit better, especially when holiday season is approaching!
Facebook lets you get a quick snapshot of who your current and prospective customers are by logging on the Audience Insights dashboard. On this screen you’ll get a detailed look at your fan’s demographics, location, interests, and past interactions with your page.
Create your own customer segments
Once you’re more familiar with the make-up of your Facebook following, you can start building what are known as personas, or profiles of your typical customer, and thus helping you create marketing messages that specifically speak to them.
A profile of your target audience can be as simple or as complex as you make it, however a good place to start is the four-quadrant method that’s popular with the entertainment industry, in which you segment your audiences into four categories:
| Under-25 | Over-25 | |
| Male | ||
| Female |
Here’s an example of a more advanced segmentation method which we’ve used in the past in B2C and B2B contexts:
| Student | Early-career professional | Mid-career professional | Late-career professional | Retired | |
| Male | |||||
| Female |
A third method to segment your customers is based on their purchase behaviour:
- Unqualified prospects (people who are still window-shopping)
- Qualified prospects (people who initiated a conversation with you)
- New buyers (people who bought from you once)
- Return buyers (people who bought from you repeatedly)
- Referrals (people introduced to you by past customers)
By dividing your audience or customers into neat segments you will be able to organise distinct marketing campaigns that will resonate with each group and transition people smoothly from sceptical tyre-kickers to loyal customers who won’t stop singing your praises.
Your resolution for the New Year: Start doing data-driven marketing
Data marketing is where it’s at and he or she who holds the data, holds the keys to their customers’ purses. To make sure your cup runneth over with data, make sure to stick in the Facebook pixel and SDK in your websites and mobile apps.
These snippets of code let you re-target people who visited your site or used your app with an ad on their Facebook walls, making sure that your brand stays for longer at the top of their minds.
Track your customers’ footprints in the snow
Just like walking on snowy ground, a persons’ footprints on the internet get quickly muddled up and covered beyond recognition after some time, so it’s insanely useful to have a method to track your customers’ journey from first contact to conversion.
Once you’ve set up the pixel and SDK code we mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to use Facebook’s Ads Manager or Power Editor to trace exactly how and in what order your customers interact with you online assets. This insight makes it much easier to plan ahead how and where to run your ads this holiday season.
Is that a mobile phone in your stocking?
Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will feature highly on Santa’s wish-list and the holiday credit card bills of parents, friends and lovers everywhere.
Nearly half of all e-commerce traffic originates from mobile devices and 56% of purchase decisions made by customers inside your shop are influenced by their mobile activity. So make sure your site and ads look good on smaller screens and that you offer people a mobile-friendly experience.
Budget strategically and make room for testing
You’ll want to capitalise on the increased time people will spend searching and shopping for Christmas gifts online by making sure your ad campaigns feature continuously on their screens throughout the holiday season. Allocate your advertising budget so that you promote most heavily during key events while maintaining at least a minimum presence on other dates. It’s always good practice to set a portion of your budget aside purely for testing different ad formats, images and copy with the customer profiles we mentioned earlier.
Update your product catalogue in time for the shopping rush
Facebook has seriously upped their game when it comes to dynamic ads, like their carousel ads that let you showcase up to 5 products on the same ad and include pricing details and a call-to-action. Take advantage of this feature by creating a carousel for each customer profile.
Hey, need any help with getting your digital marketing sorted out and working like clockwork in time for Christmas? Contact me or Mark on info@systemato.com and we’ll swoop in to your rescue faster than a reindeer sleigh that’s been hooked up to a rocket engine.
