People may not be in holiday mode yet, but retail marketers should be.
Why? Because successful holiday marketing starts with preparation in August and September.
[source: Facebook for Business] As you begin thinking about holiday advertising, keep in mind that this year people are expected to do more holiday shopping on mobile than ever. In fact, sixty-eight percent of UK shoppers use their mobile phone in store.1 People are also spending more time on Facebook and Instagram than any other digital media, and more than half of people in the US say Facebook is somewhat or very influential on their holiday shopping.2
So, as you get started planning mobile holiday campaigns, here’s how to maximize your advertising efforts on Facebook this holiday season.
Refresh your audience profile
Before you can build ads that resonate, you have to know who your current and potential customers are. Use Audience Insights to review your audience’s demographics, location, psychographics (such as interests, attitudes and lifestyle) and purchase behavior. Then put together a profile of your target audience (or audiences). For example, your audience profile could be women who like high-end retail brands and live in the suburbs of certain geographic locations.
Identify your key audience segments
Once you know the characteristics of your target audience, think about segments within that group that you want to connect with leading up to the holidays. Will you focus on connecting with loyal customers, new customers or both? Divide your target audience into segments, so you can plan distinct campaigns that will resonate with each group and accomplish your business goals.
Add the Facebook pixel and SDK to your website and app
The Facebook pixel and SDK are snippets of code that, when added to websites and mobile apps, respectively, empower advertisers to reach their website and app visitors with targeted ads on Facebook. So if someone browsed for watches in your mobile app but didn’t purchase, you can automatically retarget them with an ad for that watch next time they visit Facebook. Have your website engineering team make sure that your pixel and SDK are setup correctly ahead of the season.
Find your customer conversion path
The pixel and SDK code also help advertisers understand their customers’ paths to conversion, so advertisers can tailor ad campaigns to their customers. Once you have them set up, review the conversion device data in Ads Manager or Power Editor to find out which devices your customers use when they see your ads versus when they buy. You may find that your customers tend to see your ads on iPhone and then purchase later on desktop. Use this report to plan which devices to run ads on this holiday season and in what sequence.
Optimize your mobile experience
Last year nearly half of online shopping traffic came from mobile and 56% of in-store sales were influenced by mobile activity. But people tend to purchase on desktop and tablet, not on phones. Marketers can shorten the path to purchase by making it easy for people to shop on mobile. Make sure your ad creative translates well on smaller screens. Then click through your ads into your mobile website or app to see where you can improve the shopping experience. The better mobile experience you can offer, the more likely you are to increase purchases there.
Divide your budget strategically
During holiday shopping season, you’ll want some ad campaigns that run continuously and some that promote key events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and any limited-time promotions you run, like free shipping or discount codes. Allocate your budget accordingly.
Test creative and ad types
Use the time before the holidays to test different creative and ad formats with your audience segments. Are your customers most responsive to images or video? Test different images, copy and call to actions, so you know what resonates best with your audience before holiday shopping starts.
Prepare your product catalog
Retailers with large product sets who want to use dynamic product ads during the holidays need to prepare and upload their product catalog to Facebook. Product catalogs contain a list of products you want to advertise, their availability, product URL, image URL and other product attributes.