The Four Phases of Christmas Shopping using Meta

For the best enjoyment of each holiday shopping season, our friends at Meta recommend splitting the Christmas season into four distinct sections:

1. The foundations of success must be laid.
2. Reaching customers early.
3. Maximizing customer purchases.
4. To stay top of mind even after a purchase.

Big shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) have become an integral part of the Christmas shopping period, which allows shoppers to enjoy huge discounts and merchants to benefit from increased sales and new clients. Yet, bargains are no all that is on shoppers' wish list.

Today, buyers want a personal experience that entertains, inspires, and enables them to identify the perfect present. When they do, they anticipate a frictionless route to purchasing.

In this post in this post, we give you insight-driven advice as well as actionable "holiday recipes" that will help you meet on heightened expectations during all four phases of the season.

Phase One: Establish foundations

The goal is toSet up strong data and creative foundations and best practices ahead of your sales event.

Data

One of the first steps to deliver customized holiday shopping experiences is making sure that you have a complete picture of the consumer. This will allow you to deliver the right offers to the appropriate people in the appropriate time. Marketing pixels on Facebook or TikTok are able to be integrated into your site in order to track conversions from ads and to create audiences that are targeted. By using the data from the pixels you are able to then market to users who have taken an action via your website.

In the event that retailers complement their existing data with social platform intelligence, they learn to get to know their clients better , and increase their efficiency. In fact, those who make use of Facebook Conversions API (also known as CAPI) and Meta Pixel Facebook Conversions API (sometimes called CAPI) as well as Meta Pixel saw an 8 percentage improvement in performance. ₁

There are three good ways to use information from your customers to inform the holiday ads you create:

1. Capture the customer's desire across all different channels.

Centralize customer data with adherence to the privacy rules for data and the customers' preferences for data. Build a holistic view of your customers to tailor and enhance advertising.

1. Improve your data reliability.

Increase data reliability by creating the direct link between your data on marketing as well as the platforms you utilize. Share and collect data using reliable APIs, trusted pixels and offline conversions.

1. Verify the level of data connectivity.

Make your ads available to the people most likely to take action and increase results and lower cost per result. Meta allows this by using an event match quality score. Aim for a score of 6.0 or higher through:

• Increased coverage of information about customers parameters.
• Events are shared as close to real-time as possible.
• Monitoring score in the Facebook Events Manager.

Creative messaging and visuals

Shoppers understandably get tired of seeing the same ad in the same way over and over again, which reduces ad effectiveness. To avoid this, brands can create adaptable visual assets that cater to the various motivations driving the purchase of gifts for the holidays. Getting this healthy creative mix to new customers can be advantageous in key moment of sales. Companies who had a diverse creative mix saw a 32% increase in effectiveness and an 8% more impact. ₂

For diversification of your advertising mix, you can:

• Create distinct messages to diverse audiences.
• Consider messaging that addresses the major factors that affect holiday purchases, such as cost, quality, options, and the authenticity.
• Utilize mix formats (carousels or reels) and different types of assets (video as well as static images) to connect with audiences that have diverse viewing habits.

Phase two: Get customers to buy earlier

Objective:Focus on awareness and acquisition. Take advantage of cost-efficient impressions that are early enough to be seen by shoppers and create momentum for your shopping moment.

It's crucial to reach customers who and when they prefer shopping, so it's important to reach them whenever they like to shop. When it comes to the holiday season, shoppers are filling their carts early in the weeks leading up to major events like Black Friday.

Making people aware

Companies can profit from these less-promotional periods before key sales by linking brand and performance campaigns to drive awareness via social media platforms.

Create a buzz around presale to get in touch with people who might be interested in what products or services to give this holiday season. 91% of consumers are likely to test new brands during the holidays, meaning now is the moment to engage with new customers when they're ready and willing. ₃

Drive acquisition

Make the most of these interactions through:

• Promoting direct response with a focus on awareness of the consumer and consideration.
• Optimizing mid-funnel functions like links clicked, landing page views, and add-to-carts.
• Differentiating video formats in order to present messages from brands in a playful and entertaining way.

Video is an amazing discovery tool that can keep users engaged all year long - we use 50percent of their time using Facebook watching videos. ₄

This is a much more powerful device when people are looking for gifts for loved ones and relatives.

40 percent of Christmas buyers say they've found the videos on YouTube useful for gift inspiration. ₅

This medium is an excellent method to promote brand messages, products, and services in order that when peak time is upon us, customers are familiar with the brand and are more likely to purchase.

Mix short, fun video creative in Reels, Stories, and Feed along with more detailed storytelling for in-stream advertisements to increase the reach of your ads and match it to consumer behavior.

Short-form video

Connect with people through engaging entertaining short bursts on Facebook and Instagram.

The best practices are: Create an experience that is designed for viewing vertically (9:16) Be amazed by clear transitions and editing. keep attention with motion by adding animation, graphics, or text elements.

Video with long-form

Get in touch with your customers via longer storylines about brands, such as instructional videos for products or live broadcasts.

Best practices: Crop close to main characters, boost effect with text, and design for sound on.

Third phase: Maximize purchase

On Black Friday, returns often exceed costs, which makes this a critical time to maximize purchase during the prime retail season.

The goal is toMaximize holiday sale purchases with flexible budgets and bids that allow seamless shopping and retargeting shoppers with high intent.

Budgets that are flexible and bids

Sixty-three percent (63%) of buyers who went shopping on a massive sales day made an unexpected purchase. ₇ Businesses can profit from buying habits and connect with more people who are ready to purchase by implementing an agile budget and bid strategy. Instead of making budgets as a way to manage expenses, think about using bids when you pair an limited bidding approach with budgets that are high.

Formats for seamless ads

73% of the holiday customers surveyed had a sudden discovery while shopping online, as well as a simple and quick path to purchase can convert this discovery into a sale. ₈

To encourage purchases, consider ads with intuitive and frictionless formats. In Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, this means promoting advertisements with tags for products, Advantage+ catalog ads (formerly known as dynamic ads) Digital circulars as well as collaborative ads.

Drive discovery and re-engage shoppers with different ad formats by:

• Targeting broader audiences to reach potential customers using Advantage+ catalog ads.
• Expanding the reach and reachability of shoppable content via ads with product tags.
• Finding new customers using shopping lookalike audiences.
• Highlighting local inventory and help drive in-store sales with circulars that are digital.
• Facilitating shopper-led marketing by utilizing collaborative ads to drive purchases through your site or application.
• Bring shoppers back to the experience of the buyer by using Advantage+ catalog ads as well as collaborative advertisements, and buying custom audience.

Retargeting cart abandoners

The cart you abandoned doesn't mean that it's an unintentional loss. Sometimes , cart abandoners need a little more encouragement to make them buyers. With pre-sale campaigns doing the heavy lifting, companies can leverage the power of technology and resources to concentrate on personalization, targeting customers that have expressed interest.

Fourth phase: Keep on top of the mind

Objective:Capitalize on January's lower cost-per-impression rates by running compelling advertisements that inspire loyalty, and help keep your company prominent in the minds of consumers.

It's January. The holidays are wrapping up and retailers are likely eagerly anticipating some much-needed time off after a busy holiday season. But before getting back to business as usual retailers should take advantage of this time of year to get the attention of that 41% shoppers who report that their purchases continue after the Christmas season, as well as re-engage with the new group of customers. ₉

The customer journey doesn't end when they have completed their purchase. In order to convert one-time purchasers into long-term customers, merchants must continue connecting to drive purchases and build trust with their customers.

Get the most value from your holiday campaigns with and Meta

The ability to meet the needs of customers' holiday demands can be difficult however, businesses are changing to accommodate new demands during the most important shopping times of the year. Through Meta products and tools executives are able to deliver personalized, engaging, seamless, and measurable purchasing experiences for every factor leading to the peak sales celebrations.

1. Based on 15 global studies in H2 2020 across different verticals (Ecommerce, Tech/Telco, Financial Services, Education, Restaurants, Professional Services, CPG) 2. Meta case study, Dec 2021.
2. Internal Meta test that compares the performance of two identical vs two distinct (creatively diverse) creatives from 2703 ads sets spread across verticals from 04-04-2021 until the 26th of April in 2021. 2. "Meta Christmas Study" from YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 3,130 people who are 18 or older across CA and US). Minimum N=1500 for each market. Dec 2021.
3. "Meta Seasonal Study of the Holiday Season" by YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 3130 adults 18+ living in Canada and in the U.S.). Minimum N=1500 per market, Dec 2021. 2. Meta Internal data. Auction Experts Cyber5 Analysis May 2022 4. Meta case study, Jul 2021.
4. Meta internal information
5. "Meta Seasonal Holidays Study" from YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 3,130 people aged 18and older across Canada as well as the U.S.). Minimum N=1500 per market, December 2021.
6. Driving long-term and short-term sales through Facebook and Instagram advertisement, Nepa, Oct 2020. Based on MMM outcomes of six retail clients in Sweden.
7. "Meta The Seasonal Holidays Research Study" conducted by YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 3130 adults 18+ in Canada and The U.S.). 2. Auction Expert Cyber5 analysis by Auction Experts, May 2022
8. "Meta Seasonal Holidays Study" conducted by YouGov (Meta-commissioned online study of 3,130 people aged 18and over in Canada and The U.S.).
9. Source: BMRI 2021 Holiday Research, 2) Meta case study, Aug 2020.