We’ve reached the height of summer, signaling the time for retail small businesses to put away the summer SKUs and gear up for the holiday rush. After all, the stakes are high: while online sales are expected to increase by upwards of 9% by the end of 2024, there are only 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, making the peak shopping season shorter than years prior. The upcoming U.S. election could also influence shopper behavior in new and unpredictable ways. Early preparation is essential to navigate—and win—the season ahead.
Here are four steps to optimize your pre-holiday advertising campaigns to drive higher sales and return on ad spend (ROAS):
1—Set Your Goals, Stick to Your Budget
Begin your pre-season planning with clear, measurable goals tailored to your business objectives—increasing sales, enhancing brand awareness, or expanding market share. Establish a solid campaign foundation by leveraging data to understand and prioritize which marketing channels and strategies perform best. And remember, sometimes simpler can be better when it comes to your campaign setup.
Additionally, consider integrating tools that enable real-time analytics and align with your strategic goals to ensure that you make necessary adjustments quickly to maximize your campaign’s impact well before the peak season begins. For example, automated reporting systems can monitor performance metrics continuously, allowing you to optimize your campaigns over time and create high performance. On Meta’s platform, this may mean setting up the Conversions API to create a direct connection between your marketing data and Meta technologies so your ads can find more relevant holiday shoppers and make more accurate campaign optimizations based on real-time data.
This is also the time to determine your ideal budget. Let trends like seasonal moments and high-volume shopping days guide your budget allocation. For example, conversion rates during Cyber Monday tend to increase dramatically. At the same time, cost per action (CPA) often decreases, making it an efficient moment to distribute a larger portion of your budget. Planning for these high-impact periods ensures your ads reach more people with high purchase intent, further maximizing your ROI.
2—Amplify Efforts to Generate More Customers
Many consumers start holiday shopping early to capitalize on bargains and make smarter purchasing decisions. To capture this early interest, enhance your pre-holiday marketing efforts to generate more customer leads. According to recent research, 54% of holiday shoppers discovered brands or products on social platforms last year. Focus on creating tailored promotions and compelling offers that resonate with your target audience and spark online engagement.
Getting an early start on building a solid customer funnel can make a significant difference and allow you to nurture potential customers. To do so, leverage diverse seasonal creatives across various concepts and formats to improve lead quality and close more sales. Instead of just selling, consider engaging customers with the holiday spirit in advance to build anticipation. Try creating a three-month runway, actively reaching out to customers during this time to inform them of upcoming offers, new products, and holiday teasers. Cultivating an ongoing connection opens more opportunities for discovery.
3—Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment
A/B testing is a great way to identify what levers to pull to amplify your performance from your ad creative to targeting. It starts with developing a hypothesis such as: “Does product-focused creative drive more sales than lifestyle creative?” Because the hypothesis should be directly related to your business goals, running A/B tests without a clear one can lead to inconclusive results.
It’s also important to create distinct ad variations with noticeably different parameters. For example, testing an ad with an audience aged 18-20 versus 20-22 may be too similar to yield meaningful insights. Instead, ensure that each test variation has a clear distinction, such as testing different types of creative content or varying the call-to-action. It helps to focus on one variable at a time to attribute performance changes accurately. After at least two weeks of running tests, you should have enough data to help you determine which variations perform best. July is the perfect time to conduct thorough A/B tests, as those insights will be invaluable during the critical holiday period.
4—Tap Into AI-Driven Automation and Personalization
Let AI be your holiday helper this year. By leveraging AI-driven tools, you can save more time during the busy lead-up to the holiday season and ensure your campaign is set up for maximum efficiency. For instance, our Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns leverage AI and machine learning to optimize every aspect of the campaign journey, including creative selection, dynamic audience targeting, budget allocation, ad placement, and product recommendations. Tools like these are designed to be used when sales are your primary objective and when you want to sell to new and existing customers in as few steps as possible.
When implementing AI-driven tools into your campaign, consider how they can leverage the data from your lead generation and testing phases to better segment your audience and personalize your holiday messaging. This will not only improve the customer journey but also drive higher ROAS by delivering the right message to the right audience at the best time.
The holiday season is all about excitement and opportunities, and starting your campaign preparations early will help you confidently embrace the season and maximize sales. With the right approach, you’ll watch your efforts pay dividends throughout the season.
Becky Bui is the Senior Director of North America Small Business Sales at Meta. To learn more about making the most of your holiday spend, check out Meta’s new Small Business Holiday playbook here.
December 2024 stock image by Jenn Miranda/Shutterstock
