How to Prepare Your Paid Ads for the 2020 Holiday Season
Even though the 2020 holiday season may look different this year.
Once Q4 hits, holidays become the primary focus of most shoppers’ minds. This is especially true for 2020, even with COVID-19 in mind. Here’s how to prepare your paid ads for the 2020 holiday season.
What to expect for the 2020 holiday season
According to the National Retail Federation, 74% of retailers believe the 2020 holiday season (including Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Hanukkah, and more) will be longer than before — spread out over the course of several months.
Most people surveyed expected to begin advertising sales by October (it’s October already?) with most of their stock available at the same time. This is also when most retailers expected consumers to start shopping.
Buckle up for 2020’s most active shopping days
A lot has gotten discombobulated in 2020. Amazon’s Prime Day was originally supposed to take place in July, but got pushed back to October. But with lockdowns (hopefully) behind us, retailers are going gung-ho for the holiday season.
To prepare your paid ads in a time like this means to make the most of a critical time. Because despite companies like Walmart and Target boosting revenue like nobody’s business, many businesses hit the wall. Fortunately, proper marketing can bring you back fully.
Prep for online and BOPIS
A BazaarVoice survey tells us that 61% of people plan to spend about the same on holiday gifts as they did last year. Other sources, like Credit Karma, say people are already spending more (with 35% of people reporting increased stress spending).
Whatever the reality, online shopping and buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) will definitely remain trending — half of all consumers now do more than 75% of all their shopping online — so be sure to prepare your platform for an influx of couch-bound shoppers.
Image Source: Digital Commerce 360
Build ad costs into your budget (yes, even in a recession)
The reality of an economic recession makes budgeting tough, both for your business and personal life. This may make you want to cut back on the “niceties” like marketing. However, if you choose to do this, you’re going to see your revenue, leads, and overall consumer communication slow to a crawl.
Marketing is what keeps you in business, especially in tough times. Giving ad costs their well-deserved place in your budget is the best thing you can do, regardless of which industry you’re in. As we lean into the 2020 holiday season and you begin to prepare your paid ads, keep this tidbit in mind.
Move toward mobile — without abandoning desktop
App Annie is a mobile data and analytics firm. They say that mobile shopping apps are going to see their largest, most fruitful holiday shopping season yet. In fact, their research suggests that Android users alone will spend more than a billion hours on their phones during Q4.
Image Source: App Annie
This kind of mobile device obsession has been slowly building for quite some time, but e-commerce experts didn’t expect this level of frenzy for another 4–6 years.
With this in mind, prioritizing mobile paid ads is a solid route to success. All the while, you don’t want to leave desktop paid ads in the dust — or else you risk ostracizing a chunk of your valuable audience. With an estimated 42 percent of the American workforce now working from home full-time, you can imagine that desktop dawdling isn’t going anywhere.
Choose your platforms wisely, and optimize differently for each one
There are lots of options for platforms to use when it comes to paid media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter YouTube, Google, Bing, Snapchat and — yes — even TikTok are all a part of the mix.
Deciding which platforms you want to focus on is crucial. If you can’t (or don’t want to) use all those available to you, that’s okay! What’s important is giving your best effort to those you do choose to use. Take a good, hard look at your audience and determine where they’re most likely to spend their time. Then optimize in a way that is uniquely tailored to each platform.
This holiday season screams opportunity for paid ads
Preparing your paid ads for the holiday season should be a top priority, whatever direction your business has veered during the pandemic. Marketing plays a critical role in lead acquisition, customer retention and brand presence.
In May 2020, marketing spend as a portion of companies’ total budgets was at 12.6% in the US, up from 11.3% in January. Meanwhile, they increased social media’s chunk of the overall marketing budget, from 13.3% in January up to 23.2% in May. All of this is to say that marketing professionals across the board recognize the value of paid ads, especially online.
Start early and stay ahead!
Believe it or not, top marketers start planning their holiday marketing campaigns as early as August. We have to agree that early is best! Don’t wait until the end of November to start planning.
Use our tips above to create a smart strategy and make the holidays a profitable time for your business. To take it a step further, consider using artificial intelligence to optimize your Facebook ads at a faster pace. Our platform, Lightning AI, helps marketers find the perfect Facebook interest groups and Google keywords. See how it works, or book a demo on our site!
