How to Create Successful Holiday Facebook Ads
Holidays are in the air, and are statistically the busiest selling season of the year. Studies have shown that videos, photos, and updates to Facebook increase by 26% during the holiday season, and 68% of people report that Facebook is highly influential in their holiday shopping decisions.
The entire 6-week period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s enjoys the rush of traditional holiday shopping, but there are several key shopping days that anchor the entire season. These days provide an ideal opportunity to engage and do business with your followers.
Black Friday – November 25
People are 1.3 times more likely to make online Facebook purchases on their mobile devices on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday.
Small Business Saturday – November 26th
With 54% of sales taking place in small businesses, this single shopping event garnered $14.3 Billion in sales in 2014. 68% of every dollar spent at local businesses will remain local, appealing to both the well-established Mom & Pop supporters, and the socially conscious Millennials.
Cyber Monday – November 28th
In 2015, a total of $3.19 Billion was spent via digital sales. This is an increase of an astounding 139% in sales from an average online shopping day.
Giving Tuesday – November 29th
An exclusively social-media driven phenomenon, Giving Tuesday harnesses the power of the hashtag to raise money for precious causes. Giving Tuesday was responsible for raising $116.7 Million in 2015. 700,000 online donoes joined forces to affect changes for causes that mattered to them—without leaving home.
Key Holiday Planning
Strategy: Start by putting together a holiday STRATEGY to let your followers know about your upcoming promotions and why they should do business with you. Know your target audience and what they crave this season. In what way will you provide this that your competitor will miss? What are your client’s pain-points, and how can you relieve them?
Change Your Cover Photo: Change your cover photo to an eye-catching image that reflects your offers during the holidays. Make it easy for your followers to understand what you provide and how they can get their hands on it.
Types of Campaigns: The key to a good ad is that it’s compelling enough to get people to act. The end of the year means holiday after holiday, and an opportunity for your brand to give your fans a little surprise while creating more reach and visibility. It is easy to become over-saturated, so each interaction must draw your followers back to you.
Will the ads be continuous or focus specifically on key days or events? Will they take people from your ads to your site in one click with link ads? Below are examples of ads that might work for you.
- Run a Customer Appreciation Campaign: Reward the people who are sharing your content the most by setting up a big giveaway or a set of smaller gifts over a period of time. Create a specific post(s) for people to share and pick a winner from those who share and tag correctly.
- Create Social Media-Only Holiday Specials: Make your social media audience feel extra taken care of this time of year by offering social media ONLY exclusive offers. They could be discounts, free shipping, bonus downloads, etc.
- Create a Holiday Download: Create a brand-related holiday product that your followers can download. This is a great way to add value to your followers’ lives and solidify your position as a resource – while you collect emails, of course.
- Advent Calendar: A fun and simple campaign you can run over a period of days. Reveal an exclusive piece of content to your fans (12 Sales of Christmas). This can be anything from discounts, to flash sales, to never-before-seen content.
- Holiday Round-Ups: Gather your most popular posts from the year, or compile a list of the best gifts to fit your target customer. You could even create infographics of holiday facts that relate to your business.
- Holiday Photo Contest: If you offer a signature product, run a photo contest where customers can get creative. This is a pretty simple promo to set up, and you’ll get more brand visibility from it, inspiring your audience to share content about your brand. To drive the excitement home, create a custom #hashtag to accompany the photo entries.
- Discounts That Make Sense: There is nothing inherently wrong with discounts. They’re effective. Always have been. Always will be. But discounts are like white noise now. It’s not enough to shout about your 15% Off offer. Stand out by offering DEEP discounts on specially created holiday offers. Be careful not to insinuate a loss of value with your discount, but instead allow your special to work as a gift exchange for your customer’s loyalty.
Make it Mobile: Make your holiday message accessible to mobile devices, as over half of sales are generated via mobile means. Be sure to check each aspect of your page for mobile compatibility. There’s nothing worse than an amazing page cut in half by an incompatible design.
Products and Services: Decide which key or holiday related products or services you want to promote.
Optimize your budget: See your ad data to allocate budget to high-performing ads and pause under-performing ones. Even $5 per day can greatly elevate your reach. Decide when each will launch, and set a limit for how long they will run.
Target Market: Use Insights to gather information. Target your ads by age, gender, location, interests, behaviors and more. When you try to appeal to everyone, you often appeal to no one. Choose your demographic and focus your ad. Consider creating a look-a-like audience or putting a pixel on your website.
Copy: Create irresistible headlines and benefit-laden body copy. Benefits greatly outperform features. How will your client’s day improve through their partnership with you? A/B split test different copy versions to see which connect the best.
Images/Videos: Use bright, cheerful holiday-themed images of your business to reach more people. Test different images or videos that best connect with our target. In general, video will out-perform images. Ensure that text comprises no more than 20% of your ad image for better impressions.
Add a call to action: Include a single, clear call to action with a specific instruction, such as “shop now” or “sign up today”. Insinuate urgency. If they navigate away from your page before taking action, it is unlikely you will have a second chance to make a strong impression.
Test your strategy: Test multiple versions of your ads by changing factors like targeting or creative elements. This will help you determine which ones are working best.
The holidays and the tips above present a great opportunity for you to engage with your own promotions at a time when your customers are primed and ready to buy. Let’s make it your best holiday season yet, for both you and your followers!
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