Facebook Holiday Best Practices Guide 1 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 1 8/5/2015 11:14:41 PM
Contents Introduction 3 Your holiday prep checklist 4 Drive momentum before the holidays 8 Maximize sales during the holidays 11 Keep customers engaged after the holidays 15 Closing 18 2 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 2 8/5/2015 11:14:42 PM
Introduction Last year s holiday season signaled a major shift in the way people shop. More people started their shopping online, even when intending to buy in store. Mobile traffic also rose significantly. In 2014, 90% of holiday sales took place in store, but 56% of in-store sales were influenced by mobile. 1 Mobile s impact on both online and offline sales will continue to grow in 2015 and it s important for marketers to be present at the point of influence and, increasingly, purchases. On Facebook, there are more posts, shares, and comments during the holidays than any other time of the year, and more people using mobile devices to find deals and gift ideas before shopping. 2 It s the best time to reach your audience, drive discovery of your products, and grow your business. A successful holiday season depends on thoughtful preparation and research during the summer and early fall. These guidelines will help you maximize your success during this critical time of the year. 1. The State of Retailing Online 2015, Shop.org & Forrester 2. Facebook US internal data based on stated and inferred data from January 2013 to January 2014 (accessed April 2014) 3 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 3 8/5/2015 11:14:43 PM
Your holiday preparation checklist It s never too early to start planning for the holidays. Make sure you have the right tools in place, test your creative for different audiences, and understand your customers behavior before the holiday rush. Leverage Facebook s strategic insights about your customers Use Audience Insights 3 to better understand your current and potential customers. These insights including demographics, location, interests, psychographics, and purchase behavior can help inform your creative strategy when targeting those people. You may discover, for example, that high lifetime value (LTV) customers are 70% female, like high-end retail brands, and live in the suburbs of specific geographic locations. Armed with this information, you ll be able to tailor your message more effectively when targeting these potential customers. Identify key audience segments 3. Link: https://www.facebook. com/ads/audience_insights Determine which audience segments you will want to reach during the holiday season as well as how best to connect with them. For example, you might want to build different ad campaigns for your potential new customers, high LTV customers, category purchasers, loyalty members, and email subscribers. By segmenting your audience into distinct categories, you can build different ad campaigns and target each segment with tailored creative that will most likely resonate with them. 4 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 4 8/5/2015 11:14:45 PM
Plan your budget for the season Allocate budget for always-on campaigns to drive sales during the holiday season. At the same time, plan for key high-volume days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as key holiday pushes and free shipping deadlines. Go mobile 44.6% of online traffic during the 2014 holiday season came from mobile 5 This year, people are expected to shop on mobile more than ever during the holiday season. 4 Advertisers should adapt their marketing, measurement, and purchase experiences for mobile. While consumers opt for larger smartphones, advertisers have greater opportunity and more creative real estate to drive discovery and purchases of their products. Research from the National Retail Federation determined that larger screen size on smartphones correlate with lower cart abandonment and higher conversion rates. 6 Use the time before the holidays to test your ad campaigns and creative on mobile and optimize your mobile web and app purchase experiences. Ensure your creative aligns with an audience on the go. In addition, test separate mobile and desktop campaigns and set specific bids for each. Add the Facebook Pixel to your website and the Facebook SDK in your mobile app To leverage all of the capabilities Facebook has built for retail and e-commerce advertisers, such as dynamic product retargeting, conversion optimization, and cross-device measurement, make sure your website is set up with the Facebook Pixel. If you have a mobile app, make sure it is set up with the Facebook s SDK with App Events. 7 With these items in place, you can target people who visit your website or use your mobile app on Facebook across all devices. For example, if a shopper browsed for watches on your mobile app but didn t purchase, you can automatically retarget them with an ad for that watch when they visit Facebook on their laptop. 4. Poll of 500 respondents, ages 18+, selected as representative sample of US online population, July 2015. Research published by Facebook IQ, Jul 2015. 5. IBM, Online Retail Holiday Shopping Recap Report 2014, January 2015 6. Retail s Big Show 2014, emarketer, January 2015 7. Link: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events 5 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 5 8/5/2015 11:14:45 PM
Explore Facebook Marketing Partners If your business needs extra support during the holiday season, Facebook Marketing Partners are a great resource to help supercharge your marketing efforts. Facebook Marketing Partners specialize in exactly what you need to do, from adding scale to reaching new audiences to buying media more efficiently. Learn more about Facebook Marketing Partners here: https://facebookmarketingpartners.com Know your customers conversion path After implementing the Facebook Pixel, SDK, and standard events, you can review cross-device conversion paths 8 in ads reporting. 9 Using this data, you can identify typical conversion paths and tailor your marketing to accommodate your customers behavior. For example, if your customers tend to browse on their mobile device and purchase on desktop, you can draw their attention with video on mobile and use an ad with a strong call to action on desktop. Get started with the Facebook Pixel here: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/online-sales/conversion-tracking Get started with the Facebook SDK here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events Test different creative for your audiences Use this time before the holidays to test the different creative formats for your audiences. For example, your high LTV customers may be more responsive to link ads with video, while new customers may convert better with link ads with a product image or a featured offer. Consider testing strong call to action copy so you identify the best-performing creative prior to the holiday season. Include holiday hot list items in your test creative. 8. Link: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/cross-device-measurement 9. Link: https://www.facebook.com/help/510910008975690 6 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 6 8/5/2015 11:14:46 PM
Prepare your product catalog If you have a large product set and want to leverage dynamic product retargeting across devices, you will need to prepare your product catalog for Facebook. The product catalog contains a list of products you want to advertise, their availability, product URL, image URL, and other product attributes. If you re already advertising your product catalog on other platforms, you can leverage the same catalog or product feed and upload directly to Facebook or through a third-party feed provider. Learn more about the product catalog here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/dynamic-product-ads/ product-catalog 7 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 7 8/5/2015 11:14:46 PM
Drive momentum before the holidays August - September The time before the holidays is less promotional in nature and can be a great opportunity for you to boost your brand, grow your customer base, and capture more intent data from your website or mobile app. Get your brand front and center before the holidays If your brand needs a boost before the holidays, use this time to build affinity for your business on Facebook and Instagram. To boost your brand: Audience segmentation: Use Audience Insights to learn more about the people you want to reach. Create audience segments based on demographics and psychographics. Use insights to understand how people perceive your brand. Tailor creative to either reinforce or change this perception. Targeting: If brand awareness is your main objective, start broadly (age, gender, interests) before narrowing down. Ad units and creative: Video is a great way to bring your brand to life on Facebook and Instagram. If you don t have a video creative, consider using the carousel format to showcase your brand and product. Make sure that your creative is noticeable and the message is emotionally relevant to the audience. 8 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 8 8/5/2015 11:14:48 PM
Optimization: Optimize for reach rather than clicks to raise awareness of your brand. Use Reach & Frequency to efficiently reach your target audience in a predictable way. If your objective is to drive views of your video creative, optimize for video views using Auction Optimized for Action. Example A fashion retailer wants to debut its winter line on Facebook to generate demand before the holidays. They used Reach & Frequency to reach a large scale of people with an emotional video creative showcasing the new collection. Ramping up your acquisition efforts early can give your business a boost during the holiday season. By starting early, you can bring your brand top of mind with your consumer, grow your customer base, and capture more intent data from your website or mobile app. By driving association between your brand and the holidays, your brand can be the natural destination when the holidays arrive. The more customers you reach and acquire during this time period, the more targetable audiences you can reach during the holiday season. 9 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 9 8/5/2015 11:14:50 PM
Banana Republic used Lookalike Audiences modeled after its most loyal customers to increase its customer base during the competitive holiday season. Result A nearly 4X higher return on ad spend 10 Start acquiring new customers early Acquiring new customers early in the season ensures you have a healthy buyer file, thereby setting your business up for a successful holiday season. To acquire new customers: Audience segmentation: Identify specific segments of customers that you would like more of, such as high LTV customers, category purchasers, and recent purchasers. Targeting: Use Lookalike Audiences to find more prospects like your best customers. Remember to exclude your original customer list to only reach net new customers. Ad units and creative: Entice new buyers by using highly engaging ad units, such as video link ads or carousel link ads, to showcase multiple products or offers, different categories of products, or benefits of a single product. Optimization: Use conversion optimization to bid and optimize delivery for the action you care about, like a purchase. Example An e-commerce business wants to grow its customer base before the holidays so it can re-engage during the holidays. The e-commerce business used Lookalike Audiences to find people who looked like their high LTV customers and reached them with a carousel link ad showcasing their topselling products. 10. Facebook case study, June 2014 10 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 10 8/5/2015 11:14:51 PM
Maximize sales during the holidays October - December All of your pre-holiday planning prepares you for your prime-time holiday campaigns. With the right tools in place, your brand top of mind, your audience segments identified, and a larger customer base, you are in great shape for a fruitful holiday season. The holidays are a highly promotional period on Facebook, with several retailers announcing sales as early as August. To capture your customers attention in News Feed and drive sales, use the following marketing techniques. Maximize sales during the holidays Engage people who are already familiar with your brand on Facebook. After identifying your customer segments, reach them on Facebook with targeted creative to drive them to purchase online, in store, or in your mobile app. To engage with existing customers: Audience segmentation: Identify specific customer segments you want to market to during the holiday season. For example, you can build segments for single or cross-category purchasers, members of your loyalty program, recent purchasers, past holiday purchasers, and customers with similar conversion paths. 11 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 11 8/5/2015 11:14:52 PM
When comparing carousel link ads to single link ads, advertisers saw: 30-50% decrease in cost per acquisition 20-30% Targeting: Use Custom Audiences from a data file or your website or mobile app to reach your audience segments. Layer on additional targeting like demographics, location, interests and behaviors to reach the right audiences. Creative: Leverage carousel link ads to drive customers to your website or mobile app. Consider different promotions, such as limited-time offers, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and shipping deadlines, to compel potential customers to act now. Optimization: Use optimize for CPM to maximize delivery with your audience. Enable accelerated delivery for limited-time sales. If focused solely on conversions, choose the optimize for conversions bid type. decrease in cost per click 11 Example A book retailer with an in-store and web presence wants to attract members of their loyalty program with multiple holiday promotions. The retailer uses carousel link ads to showcase each promotion in News Feed across devices and drive people to purchase online or in store. Retarget website visitors with dynamic product ads For always-on holiday campaigns, use dynamic product ads to automatically promote your entire product catalog on Facebook. Dynamic product ads enable you to import your entire product catalog to Facebook so you can automatically promote any product from your inventory to people who visited your website or mobile app, without having to create thousands of individual ads. Dynamic product ads provide you with the power and control over the products that are advertised, ensuring you are only showing ads for products that are in stock and correctly priced. To retarget website and mobile app visitors with dynamic product ads: Audience segmentation: Segment audiences based on their browsing behavior. You can create audiences of people who ve browsed key collections, added products to cart, or have recently purchased from your site. 11. Facebook internal study across 9K ad sets testing carousel link ads and standard link ads, January 15, 2015 February 15, 2015 12 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 12 8/5/2015 11:14:52 PM
Targeting: After implementing the Facebook Pixel and SDK, you can automatically build Custom Audiences of website and mobile app visitors based on their browsing behavior. You can also include or exclude audiences from your campaigns based on these behaviors. Be sure to exclude past purchasers from the above to minimize audience overlap. For example, include people who have viewed and/or added products from a specific category but did not convert in the last 10 days. Creative: Upload your product catalog to Facebook to dynamically generate product ads showcasing one or multiple relevant products to people who have demonstrated intent on your website or mobile app. Test different variations of dynamic creative including variables such as price, description, and brands. Consider organizing product ad creative by creating different product sets. For example, if you sell different product categories, you could create one ad set for each. In addition, consider ad sets for best sellers, high-margin products, and gift products. Optimization: For each audience you are targeting, you should bid your maximum value for a one-day post-click conversion. In addition, consider optimizing ad sets by setting different bids for different targeting windows. For example, you may want to bid higher for an add to cart list than a viewed only list. As always, you should test different bid types to determine which bid type delivers most effective results. Example A potential customer visited an e-commerce website and added a sweater, hat, and scarf to his shopping cart on his mobile phone but did not purchase. With dynamic product ads, the e-commerce business can automatically retarget this potential customer with an ad showcasing that sweater, hat, and scarf in a single ad unit when he visits Facebook on his laptop. In addition, the business could show similar products the potential customer might be interested in but may not have seen when he or she visited the site. 13 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 13 8/5/2015 11:14:54 PM
Dynamic product ads Facebook s dynamic product ads enable you to automatically promote relevant products from your entire catalog with unique creative, showcasing one or more products, across any device. Power of dynamic product ads Scale: Promote all of your products with unique creative without having to configure each individual ad. Always-on: Set up your campaigns once and continually reach people with the right product at the right time based on actions taken on your website or mobile app. Cross-device: Reach people with ads on any device they use, regardless of their original touchpoint for your business. Highly relevant: Show people ads for products that they have shown interest in from your product catalog. Minimizes challenges with low inventory: Dynamic ads only feature those products that are currently in your inventory, thereby minimizing wasted impressions. 14 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 14 8/5/2015 11:14:54 PM
Keep customers engaged after the holidays The post-holiday time frame presents an opportunity to both generate sales and continue the relationship with your customers into the new year. Many people maintain a shopping mentality into the new year but look to fulfill unmet needs and have new demands going into the new year. Your existing holiday customers and gift recipients may be interested in products that enhance items purchased or received over the holiday season. Others may want to buy similar items related to something they now own. In addition, many people have gift cards and demands that were not fulfilled during the holiday season. It is important to recognize this behavior and reach your customers with your business s offerings. Cross-sell and up-sell to customers after the holidays To cross-sell and up-sell holiday buyers: Audience segmentation: Identify recent purchasers, high-value customers, as well as potential customers that did not convert during the holidays. The new year is a great time to showcase new collections and take advantage of full-price purchases across these segments. Targeting: Layer additional targeting to find the audiences that are most likely to convert after the holidays. Leverage Lookalike Audiences to continue to grow your overall customer base. Ensure your seed audiences are composed of your best customers. 15 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 15 8/5/2015 11:14:55 PM
Creative: Focus on creative that defines your brand beyond the holidays. For example, showcase the latest products or spring-themed items for the new year. Optimization: Monitor which creative cross-sell communication and ad units most effectively drive users down the funnel. Invest in the Custom Audiences that have the highest rate of re-engagement with your business. Example A customer visited a toy store website and purchased a toy for his or her child. That toy store can now retarget the parent with other product offerings, such as similar toys and/or games within the same brand or genre, related to the original toy purchase. After the holidays, consumers naturally start thinking about and planning for the new year. This presents an opportunity to reach your holiday customers as well as new customers with products that extend beyond the holidays. Present your brand and new product offerings to build your customer base as well as increase the lifetime value of existing customers. Create demand for new products Keep your holiday buyers engaged by showcasing new product arrivals after the holidays. To drive demand for new products: Audience segmentation: Build Custom Audiences based on customer behavior during the holiday season. For example, identify customers that tended to purchase at full price versus those customers incentivized by a discount. Create Lookalike Audiences for these high-value segments in order to grow your customer base in the new year. Targeting: Connect with core audiences and Custom Audiences with new offerings beyond the holiday season. Leverage Lookalike Audiences to continue to grow your overall customer base. 16 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 16 8/5/2015 11:14:56 PM
Creative: Use strong visuals to narrate a brand story that reflects your brand beyond the holidays. For example, showcase the latest products or spring-themed items for the new year. When targeting new Lookalike Audiences, be sure to exhibit creative with strong branding so potential customers understand what your business has to offer. Optimization: Leverage lessons learned during the holiday season about which budgets, bids, and creative messages resonated most with your customers. At the same time, start reallocating resources to testing new creative and bidding strategies to continually improve performance of your campaigns. Example A customer visited a toy store website and purchased a toy for his or her child. That toy store can now retarget the parent with other category offerings, such as games or books, based on that purchase. In addition, if the store has a brick and mortar location, the ad creative could provide an offer that drives the holiday customer in-store after the holidays are over. 17 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 17 8/5/2015 11:14:56 PM
Closing The holiday season is wonderful time for people to connect and celebrate with those they care about. This time of year provides the opportunity for businesses to be a part of these moments by inspiring and connecting with their target audiences in a way that resonates with them most. In order to do so, businesses must prepare well before the holiday season. In addition, they must reflect upon last year s trends and ensure they are prepared for the way consumers shop today. Facebook has created the tools to help businesses connect to their audiences at the right time with the creative that will resonate the most with them. During this holiday season, leverage Facebook s platform to help your business connect people to people. 18 facebook_holiday-guide.indd 18 8/5/2015 11:14:57 PM