The Calm Before The Storm - what to do in the quiet spell ahead of Black Friday
We’re in that slightly uncomfortable late October/early November spot where you can feel the storm (a good, healthy, exciting storm!) is coming, but everything feels unnervingly quiet.
Quiet because we’ve been building audiences and testing creative since the summer, so are in good shape for our Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, but also quiet on the shopping activity front. Depending on your brand, it’s not uncommon for e-comm campaigns to slow up before they take off when everyone’s Black Friday offers are released.
So, what should e-comm brands be doing directly ahead of the Q4 peak?
What should you be doing to prep your campaigns?
Now is the time to turn the dial up on all of the activity you’ve been working on since the summer in preparation for Q4:
Before ads costs start to head north, really ramp up your audience building. The more traffic you can drive to your site, or video views you can capture, the easier and cheaper your conversions will be in a few weeks. This year we’re running audience ‘teaser’ funnels using cheap reach and traffic objectives to bring audiences closer to the brand before the big offers are released.
Bring your organic socials in on this too, highly engaging content in the weeks leading up to an offer will warm your audiences and lower your costs.
This really is your last chance to check that your website is fully optimised for check out. Priorities need to be fast loading and mobile friendly. In Q4, shoppers are quicker at grabbing an offer and checking out, so if you have anything on your site which is slowing it down, and not essential for this season, consider making some changes for the next couple of weeks.
That said…. customer reviews are still essential! If yours are looking a bit thin, can you run an email campaign this week to sweep up extra reviews?
Are you running a leads campaign to build your email lists? Your email lists are golden at this time of year, both for audience building and for diversifying your funnel in the noisy weeks ahead. Time to scale up the leads!
Recent survey results released by Meta report that a huge 46% of people start planning what they need to buy for home and family ahead of the festive season in November…. so even if they’re not buying yet, shoppers are researching and watching.
What should you be doing about sales slowing?
Unless you have specific month on month targets to hit, and some extra slack in your ROAS (return on ad spend), we wouldn’t suggest loading up your budget to maintain your results if they’re slowing up. If shoppers aren’t ready to shop, it will just cost more to convince them.
Last week Meta advised us that, on average, e-comm brands will need to spend an extra 10% (up to 15% in certain verticals) this year to maintain their results through the peak season. And, as we know, with shopping at full frenzy, if brands have the budget to scale their spend, the gains can be huge. If you feel that you’re selling into a void in the weeks leading up to the peak season, there’s nothing wrong with banking a bit of budget and spending it in a few weeks time when your audience are ready and your ads will be seen by more people in more places.
In short:
If conversions are slowing up consider using cheaper objectives to build audiences, and/or bank some budget for the coming weeks. Don’t, however, flatten your conversion campaigns by whipping all of the budget out.
Website views, video views, social engagement, and email leads are all worth focusing on pre peak season.
Get some spit and polish on your website/landing pages.
Good luck!
If all of the above leaves you feeling a bit sick, or totally overwhelmed (rather than excited!) and you’d like to talk about handing it all over for 2024, book in a call any time to chat about your campaigns. We don’t shut down new client enquiries in Q4, or run waiting lists, we’re always happy to start the conversation to support brands on their journey to the next big goal.