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ECommerce: Top Tips for a successful Christmas season

ECommerce: Top Tips for a successful Christmas season

The season is almost upon us, particularly if you run an eCommerce website. 

Not a lot of people know but I ran an eCommerce site for 11 years, until 2018, so I remember the stress of it all. I recall getting orders in August for Christmas! Realistically though, mid-October is when the sales start to ramp up. The biggest weekend is the Black Friday through to Cyber Monday, (26th-29th November 2021), and then it’s just head down, have no life to speak of until a few days before Christmas Day, when you cannot guarantee Christmas delivery anymore. Phew!

I remember those months well and am quite happy I do not have to deal with the stress anymore but on the same token, when you look back in January and look at how much you have sold, it makes it all worthwhile!

One important lesson I did learn from those 11 years was that if you were not prepared for the season, it could easily pass you by.

So, when it comes to setting up your ad campaigns, whether they be Google ads or Facebook & Instagram ads, here are my top 7 tips to help you make the most of the season and look back in January proud at what you have achieved. 

1. Become your customer

Place an order on your website, on mobile and on desktop. How easy was it? Did it work fast enough? Was everything clear? Were there too many hoops to jump through that would put a potential customer off. All sales should be able to be completed from adding to basket to completing the checkout process in a few clicks.

Is your refund & shipping policy displayed clearly on the website? Are there customer reviews showing on the site? Make it as easy as possible for the user to trust your business.

2. Allocate your budget now

How much are you placing where? What is your revenue goal? Set you KPIs. Be aware the costs of advertising rise in this period due to competition, consider this in your plans.

3. Create a promotional calendar

According to Google one third of festive weekend purchases were driven specifically by promotion. Synch up your social media posts and emails with your promotional calendar so that there is correlation across all the channels.

4. Make sure you know your customer

This is integral when you are running Facebook/Instagram campaigns. Knowing your customer leads to lower advertising costs!

5. Facebook

With Facebook test as much copy as your budget will allow and keep a close eye on it. Switch off ads that are not working, feed in new copy all the time.

6. Google

With Google, keep an eye on those negative keywords, you do not want to be paying for irrelevant clicks!

7. Check your accounts daily

Whichever channel you use, whether it be Google ads or Facebook/Instagram ads, keep checking the accounts daily. Cap costs to ensure that you are not overspending and be prepared to change direction if the stats are telling you to do so. Don’t be over emotional with your brand and push a category because you ‘think’ that’s what your customers want. Read the stats, understand them, and adapt your campaign accordingly.

Good Luck!!

I have been running Google, Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns for my clients since 2019. If you need any help with your campaigns, contact me and we can set up a meeting.

Natasha Fitzpatrick

Google Ads & Paid Social Strategist

Google ads V Facebook Ads

Google ads V Facebook Ads

You know you have to advertise but you are not sure where to allocate your budget. In this blog, we are going to attempt to differentiate between the two platforms and what they offer so you can make the right decision for your business.

Both platforms excel in what they offer, and both totally dominate the market when it comes to online advertising. They can work very effectively together just by the nature of how they work to find new business. 

Google Ads

Google ads, commonly known as PPC, Pay Per Click, is exactly as it says, you pay as the user clicks on your ad. Google is the world’s largest search engine and there are more than 5 billion Google searches a day!

The two most common forms of Google ads are:

  1. Search – The user types what they are looking for e.g. ‘builder North London’ and the first 4 listings that appear are ads. As a company, you enter an auction against other companies who have added these keywords into their campaign. This is a highly effective form of advertising as the intent from the user is already there.
  1. Shopping – this is for eCommerce businesses. These listings appear on the right-hand side of the page and show an image, reviews, shipping and price. These a highly effective as the user has already showed high intent by searching for that product.

Google ads is great for eCommerce businesses as you can effectively sell your products online. It’s also great for business targeting a local area as you can target your ads to only show in certain geographical areas. There are other forms of advertising on Google, such as display, video and Google ads retargeting. Together these can ensure that all parts of your sales funnel are catered for, from top of funnel brand awareness down to the bottom of funnel, sales and leads. 

Facebook Ads

Facebook works in a completely different away. Primarily it is a social network, so users are not on there to search for a product or service. Any advertising on there is considered interruption marketing, where your feed is interrupted with ads. This does not mean you should ignore Facebook in your marketing strategy though.

Facebook has 2.5 billion active users. Facebook also knows a lot about their users. They know what they like, what they engage with, what area they live in, age, gender, what shops they like etc…the list goes on and on. And on that basis, advertisers can use that information to target their ads. For example, you may follow the clothes shop Zara on Facebook. Zara will definitely be able to retarget you with ads, but also other similar companies with the same user demographic will also be able to target you with ads. 

Facebook’s retargeting options are fantastic but also their ability to find and target a similar audience to your existing audience is also a really effective feature that they offer. You can advertise to a completely new audience that has similar likes as your seed audience, so  you get your ads seen by totally new potential customers who are more likely to buy off you. 

So which one is better? Google ads or Facebook ads? 

Well that totally depends on your company objectives. Both work well separately and can be highly effective working hand-in-hand. 

If I was a newbie starting out though I would stick to the following rules

  • If your objective is sales or leads – both Google ads and Facebook ads can cover both these very effectively.
  • If you want to sell products directly, use shopping ads on Google
  • If your objective is to build your social following, Facebook is your channel.

I hope this helps you make your final decision. If you would like help setting up and running your ad campaigns, that’s what we offer here at Satsuma Social. Please drop us a line and we can go through your business objectives and how best to achieve them. We offer full management across both channels.

By Natasha Fitzpatrick

Natasha is a Digital Marketing Specialist & Founder of Satsuma Social. She specialises helping growing business increase sales and generate leads.

Find out how Natasha can help your business.