If you're not in digital marketing, you might think there's a typo in the headline. Why would you be focused on Q4 when Christmas is a full five months away and summer sale campaigns are still running? On the other hand, if you are in digital marketing, you’ll understand exactly why Q4 is the focus from August onwards and what can happen if you leave it too late.
With the ecommerce advertising space becoming more competitive every year and marketers seeking out increasingly granular ways to get the edge on their competition, there’s no substitute for time and forward planning when it comes to building out the best possible strategy for maximising ecommerce performance in Q4.
This week, we’ll look at strategies retailers can use over the next few months to ensure that their accounts are in the best possible position to maximise performance throughout Q4.
1) Introducing High Quality Data
If you’ve been on the internet in the past year, you’ve heard about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. You’d be hard pressed to find an industry that hasn’t adopted AI in some form and digital marketing is no exception with ad platforms investing heavily to drive better results for advertisers and consumers.
At the heart of success with AI is the quality of the input that the system receives. We’ve already spoken about the importance of input in relation to using tools like ChatGPT to write effective ad copy, however there are other sources of information that can be added to an account to improve performance.
Introducing responsibly sourced 1st Party Data and highly relevant interest & intent audiences to your account well ahead of Q4 will give the ad platforms time to analyse this data and determine how to use it most effectively. By the time Black Friday and Christmas comes around and budgets increase, the ad platforms will know exactly who to show ads to leading to stronger ROI and overall performance.
2) Reviewing Past Performance
The complexity of modern digital marketing means it’s no longer possible to simply repeat what worked last year. Increased competition, new ad formats and changes to platform policies mean that the tactics from last year aren’t guaranteed to drive the same results. While it’s no longer a case of simply re-enabling the same campaigns, the data can still provide valuable insights and a foundation to build this year’s peak period activity from.
Quality data analysis takes time and making space for this in Q3 will ensure that high quality, usable insights can be discovered in time for peak period. Information from the previous year can be layered with insights from 2023 to develop a customised, real time strategy that accounts for historical trends along with recent account performance to ensure the best chance of success.
3) Seeking Approval
The worst case scenario for a digital marketer is looking at their account at the peak of a sale only to find that campaigns and ads have been disapproved. Cue frantic adjustments to assets, ad copy and campaign settings followed by a nervous wait as activity is re-reviewed while revenue is lost with each passing minute.
One of the most effective and most underrated uses of Q3 is uploading and troubleshooting the campaigns, ad copy and assets to be used during the Q4 sales. Uploading these well ahead of time ensures that they’ll go through the review process with any disapprovals able to be flagged and fixed well ahead of the campaign start date. As an added bonus, the upload process itself ensures the team managing the campaigns will be very familiar with the structure and setup making optimisation simple.
In a perfect world, you’d have your campaigns ready to go a month before the sale. Realistically? Two weeks before is fine as long you’re on top of the account and clear on what needs fixing.
Q4 is stressful enough for marketers without running into unexpected issues. For guidance on how to plan for successful ecommerce performance and strategic advice, get in touch.