3 timelines and steps to successful Holidays Digital Advertising - to drive sales & demand/lead generation

Planning for the holiday season (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentines, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday) or Marketing calendar is key to successful digital marketing.  Goals are to sales, demand generation and awareness.

PLAN:

1. (August–September) Before the Holidays:
• take advantage of the less-promotional summer months to build momentum, 
• get your brand presence on point, 
• grow your customer base, 
• and capture intent data from your website or mobile app using 
• (Facebook) Website Custom Audiences or 
• (Twitter) Tailored Audiences.
• ACTIONS: 
• Leverage insights tools (such as Facebook’s Audience Insights) to understand your audience better: interests, demographics, etc. A good first step is to run an analysis on specific, high-intent audiences, such as fans of your page, Website Custom Audience of all visitors of your website, CRM list of recent purchasers, etc
• Targeting: Segment your audiences based on demographic, geographic, and behavioral targeting such as digital buyers, mobile early adopters, etc.
• Ad formats: Video is the most engaging form of brand communication, making it an obvious choice for this objective (especially on mobile). Publishers offer a wide variety of options, including Facebook Carousel Video Ads. Other highly visual formats such as Facebook Canvas Ads offer an immersive experience around your brand.
• Creative: Needless to say, using visually compelling creatives is in order. Regarding video, think about typical usage – many users will view your content on-the-go on their mobile with the sound off. As a result, make sure any video has great storytelling, grabs the attention within the first 10 seconds, and makes use of captions (either uploaded via Facebook or as text overlays).
• Optimization: Use specific campaign types to focus on the objective that matters. Facebook offers reach and frequency buying to secure ad inventory at a predetermined CPM cost for Facebook and Instagram ad formats, including video
2. (October–December) During the Holidays: 
• Your pre-holiday campaigns will pave the way for the holidays to come. With a large customer base having expressed a clear intent, break through the noise and focus on customers that matter.
• ACTIONS TO drive sales 
•  Audience: Build your campaigns around high-intent customer segments such as recent purchasers, loyalty members, and past holiday purchasers—and try to plan for a specific conversion path for each of them. This is where you’ll typically want to reuse your Video Engagement Audiences and audiences resulting from past Lead Ad campaigns. 
• Targeting: Use Custom and Website Custom Audiences of people who’ve visited your website recently or purchased from you before. 
• Ad formats: Focus on ad formats that’ll allow you to showcase your products and services, such as Video Link Ads, Carousel Ads, and Canvas Ads. 
• Creative: Showcase your best-selling products to your audience segments and highlight USPs. Create urgency with limited time offers, shipping deadlines, or discounts, and timely promotions such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday %-off.
• Optimization: Optimize for conversions to maximize the delivery of your ads to people likely to purchase. Once again, make sure your conversion volume is enough for Facebook’s algorithm to be effective (especially if selling high value products with costs above $200).

• ACTIONS to re-engage audience who express interest but didn't buy/promote across devices. 
• Audience: Segment audiences based on past browsing behavior. For example, you can create audiences of people who viewed or added products to their cart but didn’t purchase, then retarget them with the same products to increase their purchase intent.  
• Targeting: Upload your product catalog to Facebook and make sure it’s regularly updated. Build product sets by category, best sellers, or high-margin products. 
• Ad formats: It’s best practice to use Carousel Ads rather than static image link ads. 
• Creative: Test different variations with macros such as price, brand, and description in your ad text and Carousel titles

1. (January) Post-Holidays: 
• Post-holidays is a perfect time to nurture the relationship with customers acquired during the holidays, to convert them into repeat buyers using demand generation and cross-sell programs
• ACTIONS: 65% of shoppers plan to keep shopping after Christmas. 
• Audience: Identify recent purchasers to showcase new collections to them. You can achieve this by using Website Custom Audiences (or Tailored Audiences on Twitter) with an appropriate retention window
• Ad formats: Use Dynamic Ads to automatically cross-sell complementary products or upsell higher value products from your catalog. 
• Creative: Focus on creative that defines your brand beyond the holidays to avoid ad fatigue and expand into the New Year. Your brand message should seamlessly transition from the holidays to the post-holiday period to maintain interest and create new opportunities, such as additional gear and add-ons for holiday presents (video games, DSLR bag, etc.), post-holiday flash promotions, etc.
• Optimization: Optimize for product sales or conversions to maximize the delivery of your ad campaigns to people likely to convert, once again making sure that your pixel is capturing enough conversions per week.

OVERALL ACTIONS:

1. Implement the publisher pixels on your website: 
• Add the Facebook Pixel and the Twitter Tag to all your website pages. 
• Configure both pixels to track conversions (add to cart, purchase, etc.). 
• Make sure both pixels are capturing the right events (Facebook Pixel Helper). 
• Create audiences matching each conversion event.
2. Use a publisher SDK or Mobile Measurement Partner for your Mobile App: 
• Add the Facebook SDK to your app. 
• Make sure all conversion events can be tracked within your Mobile App: pageviews, purchases, etc. 
• Make sure your app is enabled with deep links for an effective mobile re-engagement strategy.
3.  Prepare for an effective cross-device retargeting strategy: 
• Facebook Dynamic Ads enable advertisers to run powerful retargeting, cross-sell, upsell, and prospecting campaigns. 
• Ensurre your Product Catalog is ready to go and your Facebook Pixel is firing the right events to report which products are being viewed, added to cart, or purchased. 
4. Plan for an effective auction and delivery strategy: 
• Design a budget plan that includes always-on campaigns, to make sure you maintain a presence throughout the holidays. Plan for strategic highvolume days (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday) by booking ad inventory in advance and boosting your manual bids when relevant. Don’t be shy. 
• Be mindful of audience overlaps. Always exclude audiences from one another across campaigns or consider consolidating them.

*info taken from Marin software + Omniture and re-structure for my presentation and team structure