The dust has settled after the festive peak so now’s a great time to look at what worked and what didn’t. I’ve jotted down the 8 top things to bear in mind when you’re planning your run-in to peak retail – and most of these can be applied to Sale periods and other seasonal peaks too.
- Safeguard your customers
Offers make people disloyal. You need to make sure you’re front of mind when it matters and you’ll have a fight on your hands to it. We know that cost per impression can jump by up to 2X at peak times so it’s important that you upload fresh customer audiences (at the right time – more on this later) and assign them the right bids. If you’re worried about overlap with other channel spends or ‘getting orders you would have got anyway’, hold back a control group and measure the incremental revenue.
- Test creatives – customers behave differently to prospects
During Sale periods, in our retargeting campaigns, several of our clients found that customers responded better to static, branded creatives rather than dynamic ads whilst prospects responded better to dynamic formats based on their browsing behaviour. In this case, it’s enough just to tell customers there’s an offer on – I don’t necessarily need super-personalised product ads to bring me back. It’s always worth testing to see how your customers respond.
- Make the offer good enough
People don’t believe you’re offering them a sale unless the discounts are 30% or more. And keep it simple – if people have to think or figure out how to get the saving, they usually don’t.
For example, up to 50% off two thirds of your products will perform much worse than 25% off everything. The gain you make by protecting product margins on some products is swallowed up by a poorer overall performance. And customers usually spend their saving anyway.
- Don’t keep changing creative within the campaign
Many brands escalate discounts as the sale progresses. It’s like they think customers get bored of 40% off but will return for 50% off. Sure, a handful of shoppers will do that but the damage you do your campaigns by resetting creatives and learnings will offset those marginal gains.
However often you want to change the discount on the site or instore, try to maintain consistent creatives on Facebook. A creative that’s been live for longer has the history and social proof to help it outperform a new ad, even if the old one has a weaker offer.
