How did your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales perform? Wondering if it’s really worth it to advertise on social media to help boost sales?
Sales are expected to increase again this Holiday season, and the holiday shopping rush is something you don’t want to miss out on.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) just posted their 2021 holiday forecast that says momentum is building for higher sales volumes this holiday season. They are projecting an 8.5% – 10.5% increase in holiday sales due to rising income and more balanced household budgets this year.
NRF says both online and non-store sales are projected to increase at an even faster rate, up to 11% – 15%. So – how are you taking advantage of this increase in online shopping from your consumers?
Facebook Ads are a smart way to increase visibility and target specific audiences. With an increased number of consumers looking online this holiday season, the right Facebook Ads can offer a big boost to your sales. Here is the low down on how direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies can boost their return on investment (ROI) with Facebook ads.
Diversify Your Facebook Ads
Don’t just try one approach—test out different ad styles, messages, subjects, and channels to see what is most appealing to your target customers. Here are a few Facebook ad types you should try.
Instant Experience Ads
Use instant experience ads for content that pops up 15x faster than a linked web page. When someone clicks on your ad, they will instantly see a full-screen ad that can include:
Tech Crunch reports that 53% of users look at half of the instant experience page, and the average view time is a shocking 30 seconds.
Messenger Ads
Facebook reports 1.3 billion people are using Messenger every month. Messenger ads allow you to start up conversations with page visitors or respond to pre-set queries for instant responses. You can even retarget your customers with sponsored prompts to those who have already talked to your business via Messenger.
Video Ads
There are two powerful ways to grab attention for your ads—images and videos. Some research has suggested that nearly 60% of marketers say videos get more clicks than images alone.
Not all Facebook users will watch their videos with sound, so include subtitles. Some turn the autoplay feature off, so choose an intriguing frozen start screen. Keep videos relatively short, while being entertaining, informative, or engaging. How-to videos and product reviews are examples of valuable video content.
Carousel Ads
You can publish up to 10 videos or images in one post with a carousel ad. This allows you to show more benefits of a product, highlight multiple products, or include multiple ad angles in the same post. Each image or video in the carousel can also have a different link to take your lead right to the landing page or product page that best applies.
Image Ads
The old saying, “a picture speaks a thousand words,” is true in marketing. The brain reads images far faster than words on a page, so images are highly engaging in ads. You can use the right image to stop someone’s scroll, and you can even include attention-grabbing text in your image to kickstart your ad message. The right imagery can make your audience feel some of the most powerful emotions in advertising:
The Power of Optimization
When you learn what works for your audience, you can convert faster and improve your ROI. Testing different types of copy, CTAs, visuals, and audiences increases the likelihood of reaching (and converting) your ideal consumer. Consider working with a team of experts that can help create and optimize your holiday campaigns for guaranteed results.
The boutique marketing collective SLTC was able to increase Facebook ROI by 41% for their client Shop Priceless, a trendy and affordable online fashion brand for women and teens, by using targeted social ad campaigns.
Objectives for Shop Priceless included increasing brand awareness, promoting seasonal sales, and increasing conversions to boost revenue. SLTC’s experienced team of experts will optimize your ads by measuring outcomes and modifying strategies to improve success rates.
Understanding the iOS Privacy Update
The impact of the iOS 14 updates has limited how businesses can target and retarget users with personalized ads, resulting in increased costs per lead and murky attribution. To mitigate this, lean into Facebook’s ad tools to control the outcome. Facebook allows you to cap maximum spending and use “Campaign Budget Optimization” to help improve your ROI.
Facebook has even rolled out statistical modeling to help provide data where iOS opted-out devices aren’t participating. While Facebook has made improvements – and will continue to do so – this will take time. Try not to be disappointed or hesitant if your YOY benchmarks aren’t aligning.
If you are a brand or a company looking to hire a team of category growth experts to support you as you scale, we would love to speak with you. Please contact us here to book a discovery call.