Scaling Your Holiday Ads Across Multiple Platforms

The holiday season is barreling toward us, and e-commerce brands are hustling to make the most of peak consumer spending. Consumers are out there, doing their homework, shopping around, comparing deals. Competition is fierce. To stand out, you’ve got to scale your ads across multiple platforms. Because a well-rounded strategy for your ads means that your brand isn’t just visible to consumers, but also that you’re actively engaging with them – which, if we know anything, means you’re top of mind and most likely to be the company they buy from. At 4XDigital, we use the GAIN framework – Grow visibility, Attract interest, Increase sales, and Nurture loyalty – in order to help brands make the most of their holiday advertising efforts.

Here’s how…

The Importance of Multi-Platform Strategies

Visualize your shopper.
They’re not just going to hit one site and check out with the first product they see. They’re checking their options.
They’re asking questions.

Who has the best product?
Who has the best deal?
Which business offers the quickest shipping times and best shipping prices?

While doing all of this, they’re also interacting with multiple touchpoints before making purchase decisions.

According to ZoomInfo,

98% of Americans switch between devices in the same day, and 72% of online shoppers are more likely to buy if they engage with your brand on multiple channels.

This is exactly why scaling your strategy across Google, Meta, Amazon, and other platforms is key to an optimized approach. Not only do you reach more people with your ads, but you meet them wherever they are in the buyer’s journey. Love is real, and in the world of business as in love, the right person (or company), right time leads to the perfect match.

Boost Your Visibility: Start with the Right Mix of Ads

Visibility starts with a smart mix of platforms. Google Ads and Meta Ads (Instagram and Facebook) dominate holiday ad spend, but there are outlier (even though they’re catching up) platforms such as Amazon and TikTok which are growing in relevance for retail brands. Using a combination of search ads, social media ads, and shopping ads help you to maximize your brand’s visibility.

Google Ads: Google can be used to generate a ton of search-driven traffic and intent-based purchases. This can help you target bottom-of-funnel shoppers looking for specific products or deals.

Google Ads allows you to run ads focused on sales, leads, general website traffic, app promotion, awareness, in-person store visits, or a campaign without a goal’s guidance. This will help you to run ads specific to each customer’s stage in the buyer journey.

Meta Ads: Utilized best for brand discovery and retargeting. This remains true as Facebook and Instagram continue to drive social commerce.

Meta also allows you to develop ads for each stage of the buyer journey/funnel.

Amazon Ads: If your products are listed on Amazon, the holiday season is an ideal time to scale your campaigns. As shoppers on Amazon are always in a “buy-now” mindset, it’s a no brainer.

Amazon offers sponsored ads, brand shopping experiences, and then some other ad formats. Two of the more “out of the box” ad formats are out-of-home ads which will put your logo and signage on boxes delivered to homes and their device ads which will run advertising on Amazon streaming devices.

Attracting Interest: Make the Most of Your Data

You have the traffic and visibility, now it’s time to generate interest in what you’re selling. For holidays specifically, it’s a literal sea of ads and sales—everyone’s pushing a sale.

Your ads require personalization.

According to data from Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. We’ve talked about dynamic ads and retargeting before, and this is where they’d be a very powerful tool.

Dynamic Ads: On platforms such as Meta or Google, you can adjust your settings to allow for dynamic ads which adjust your creatives to match a user’s behavior. For example, showing users products they’ve browsed or similar items they may be interested in.

You can select to run dynamic creatives on Meta at the ad group level. Be careful to check it on or off before you publish ads as this setting cannot be edited afterwards.

Audience Segmentation: Use segmented audiences to show personalized ads based on user interests, behaviors, and demographics. Whether it’s targeting previous buyers with your own special offer or reaching new customers with holiday discounts, personalization will be a contributing factor to your success as it helps to engage consumers during crowded holiday seasons.

On Google, go to the “Tools” section on the left hand side of your ads dashboard > “Shared Library” > “Audience Manager” > “Custom Segments” and then you can generate an audience segment based on purchasing intentions or preferences as well as recent search terms.

Increase Sales: Optimize your Budget

You can settle on using your visibility and interest to drive engagement, but most companies don’t get the most of their efforts when they do this. Instead, try focusing on increasing sales. Holiday ad spend is competitive, so optimizing your ad budget across all your platforms is key. It’s not necessarily to spend more but to allocate spend where it will be most effective.

Bid Strategies: Google and Amazon both allow for smart bidding, which will use machine learning to adjust your bids in real-time based on performance metrics. This can help you focus ad spend on higher-intent shoppers which will boost your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Google allows you to choose bidding based on campaign goals

Cross-Platform Budgeting: Rather than just putting all of your focus on one platform, use data to shift your budget across platforms dynamically based on where your ads are converting better, adjusting spend accordingly can optimize results without increasing overall costs.

Nurture Loyalty: Retargeting for Long-Term Gains

Remember, a raving fan base or a loyal fanbase for your business is what builds long-term success.

We’re just talking about the holiday season but it isn’t just about making a one-time sale – it’s about nurturing your customers to be long-term buyers.

You want them to come back!

After the initial purchase, retargeting can help bring customers back and keep your brand top of mind.

Email Retargeting: Combining your ad efforts with your email marketing campaigns for the holiday season can offer personalized recommendations or exclusive discounts that can drive repeat purchases. Some data suggests retargeting emails have an open rate of 45%, much higher than standard promo emails.
Loyalty Programs: Encourage your customers to come back and buy more by promoting your loyalty programs at the same time. If your customers are having a great shopping experience and really enjoy your brand during the holidays, offering them loyalty rewards or early access to future deals can help nurture long-term relationships.

Takeaways

Making the most of your ads across all your potential platforms for the holiday season is a must, it’s essential to maximize your reach and ROI. By following the GAIN framework, you can ensure your strategy covers all the bases – growing visibility, attracting interest, increasing sales, and nurturing loyalty. The holiday season isn’t a sprint to capture attention, it’s an opportunity to set the stage for your long-term growth.

Add a good, balanced mix of platforms and use data to personalize it all. When you’ve done that, you can set and optimize your budget wisely to ensure that your holiday campaigns deliver not just in the short term, but also drive raving fans and loyal customers meant to last a lifetime.