Six fresh marketing ideas for Q4 and beyond
By Anastasia Stefanova, AVB Marketing
The holiday selling season is quickly approaching and if you’re looking for some fresh ideas for your fourth-quarter marketing, below are some unique approaches to running digital campaigns.
Many digital platforms offer numerous ad types and sophisticated targeting parameters to allow you to execute custom strategies. You can request these or any other digital campaign ideas from our team at AVB. We’re here to work with you on full custom strategies, one-off campaigns and anything in between.
Check out some of the ideas below; can you come up with any as well?
Highlight an Audience
There always needs to be an evergreen component to your marketing strategy, but you can supplement your efforts with niche campaigns that target specific audiences. Digital marketing can help you get super-granular with your messaging and targeting parameters, to home in on specific demographics.
Facebook Idea No. 1: Luxury Interests
Interest targeting on Facebook allows you to use topics consumers are interested in or follow on Facebook to target an audience. You can serve your ads to affluent consumers by targeting FB users who are interested in luxury goods such as yachts, real estate and other high-end items.
Facebook Idea No. 2: New Home Buyers
Create a campaign specifically targeted to new home buyers with a striking creative piece or video, and targeting set to capture this audience alone.
Win in a Segment
While everyone else is getting lost in generic messaging for holiday sales, you can capitalize on a single segment by putting your budget behind winning the majority of the searches happening in your local area for a specific category. Imagine getting most of your area’s sales for sectionals over Black Friday weekend!
Search Idea No. 1: Narrow the Field
Break out a campaign specifically for “Refrigerators,” “Sectionals” or another category and give it a solid budget. The copy and keywords targeted with this campaign would be only for this category, allowing your budget to win the impression share for this category alone.
This tactic allows you to concentrate your budget rather than diluting it across multiple product categories. Choose a high-margin area and make sure your inventory is stocked up to support your efforts. This is also a great tactic to get rid of any extra inventory.
Showcase Multiple Promos
Will you be running different sales/discounts throughout the store in November? There are ad units available that allow you to have multiple placements within one ad.
Facebook Idea No. 3: Facebook Carousels
Facebook Carousels have multiple tiles that users can swipe through. Each tile can feature a different piece of creative, its own unique call out and its own unique destination link. Use each tile to highlight a different promotion you’re running within the store, and add in a tile about financing to create a super-promotional, high-conversion carousel.
This is an impressive way to show the consumer how many great deals you have going on in-store with one ad unit. Generate more store visits by showing the consumer how promotional you are!
Display’s the Thing
Google Display often drives a lot of “fat thumb” clicks (users clicking it by accident while scrolling through content), which leads to a notoriously low conversion rate. However, display is highly effective for driving brand awareness at a super low cost-per-click (CPC). You’ll want to evaluate display based on impressions (how many people saw it) rather than how well it converts. If brand awareness is the goal, display is a highly effective tactic.
Search Idea No 2: Display Ads
Use Google Display to tell folks about a current sale, to visit your store or to explore a category. These ads will populate for users when they are visiting different sites and will follow them where they navigate. The CPCs are incredibly low, allowing you to get the word out for cheap!
Changing Channels
If you haven’t yet tried it, Performance Max from Google is a highly effective campaign that is geared toward driving in-store performance (calls, driving directions, in-store visits). It uses a single campaign budget to disburse various ads across six of Google’s channels, like YouTube, Display, Google Maps and more.
Search Idea No. 3: Max Out
Try a Performance Max campaign to supplement your current search campaigns. Complete with brand awareness-driving components and high-converting assets, this campaign type is especially effective for furniture and mattress categories. It typically has lower CPCs associated as well.
Since Performance Max covers a spread of channels, it needs a bit more “gas” to run. You’ll want a higher budget here with a longer run time to allow for greater optimization and performance.
Cut the Cord
It’s no secret that cable has been on the downswing. You can easily transfer your broadcast strategy to streaming services instead. Serving ads on streaming services like Hulu is called “over-the-top” advertising (OTT). Almost 80% of Americans aged 50 and over use streaming media, and many have opted to “cut the cord” and have a streaming-only household (no cable at all).
Digital Strategy No. 1: Over the Top
Switch your traditional media to OTT for two or three months and evaluate the results. Not only does OTT give you greater control over how and where you serve your ads, you also get better attribution and performance metrics than traditional media.
If you’ve been on traditional media for years, you’ve built up enough market penetration to the point where a couple of months off the air will not impact your performance negatively. This is a no-brainer way to test a digital strategy with little repercussion.
The Takeaway
Nothing changes if nothing changes! Try something new this season.
With Google being the first place active shoppers will flock when they are in-market, a digital strategy is imperative to success. What’s the use in blasting out messaging to consumers via TV and radio ads if they’re not going to be there to capture them when they actually begin their shopping journey online?
If you’re looking for some new ideas or strategies for “Black November” and beyond, reach out to us for a consultation.
Anastasia Stefanova is director of marketing/home furnishings, at AVB Marketing, the advertising, e-commerce and digital marketing arm of YSN publisher AVB BrandSource. Contact Ana at Anastasia.Stefanova@avb.net.