A Strategic Checklist for Holiday-Ready Ads that Maximize Sales
Santa Claus is not the only one who needs to make a list around this time of year. If you haven’t already realized it. The train has well and truly left the station, and we’re all rattling down the track toward the holidays –the busiest time of year for over-stretched e-commerce marketers. So as you double-check inventory for the all-important uptick in sales and ready your other operations, it’s even more critical to make sure that every ad you’re running this season is holiday-ready.
Goal Setting for Best Results
Before you even tinker with copy, color palette or any of those important factors, set some goals. The most important thing about holiday ads and promotions on Amazon is that you should be able to learn from them, to capture, analyze the data and apply it back to the goals you set for your brand, products and portfolio. This will make future campaigns more targeted with better ROI. Plan to use Amazon Performance Metrics and campaign manager to monitor and assess factors like ACoS, ROAS (return on ad spend as a percentage of total ad spend), click- through rate and cost-per-click.
Holiday Ready Means Retail Ready
It’s critical at this time of year especially to ensure Amazon views your ads as retail-ready. Features within every ad must meet Amazon guidelines. Review all of your ads and work down the retail-ready checklist. Product tiles must be 50-100 characters in length and it’s a good idea to ensure they include your most effective keywords. Ensure your product descriptions include all must-know data but they must be no more than 500 characters. Review your bullet points for descriptions and ensure they focus on customer benefits for a fast, easy read. Images should be presented in a clear manner and on white backgrounds.
Holiday Seasoning – Top Ad Tweaks for Success
Once you’ve double-checked your ads meet guidelines, focus on making them seasonally appropriate. Start with a seasonal color palette and make changes as needed for each ad. Can you seasonal aesthetics such as snowflakes, falling snow, etc.? Consider video ads, which studies show create the greatest brand favorability, consideration, purchase intent and ultimately, sales. Festive imagery, seasonal music, and subtitles can help. It’s also a good idea to adjust keywords for the holiday season as many shoppers will also search for gingerbread, snowman, Santa and the likes as well as holiday deals. Creating varied content such as gift-guides as part of your ads can provide additional customer value and drive higher engagement too during the decision making process.
Simplicity for Sales
You should expect high competition for your customer’s already distracted attention, so strategies that can cut through the clutter and target effectively are key. Keep holiday ads seasonal but simple, focusing on one idea, one main customer benefit and one emotion per ad. They’ll stand out in a sea of overly complicated holiday creative that can create customer fatigue. And don’t forget current customers and brand fans too. So much focus is put into generating awareness and engagement from new customers. Look at sales data and plan to put some of your ad focus and effort into re-targeting shoppers from last year’s holiday rush. Lastly, make sure you save some budget for sponsored ads. They follow the customer through every part of their journey on Amazon, they’re the most popular and they invariably offer the highest conversion rates.
There’s a lot of demands on your time and attention in the run up to the holidays, but take the time to focus on this holiday ad checklist and you’ll have a firm foundation for holiday sales success.
If you need more specific holiday advice our Channel Key team is happy to discuss custom strategies and support for your sales.
