Facebook will remain a dominant force for marketers throughout this year as ad-spend surges, with Valentine’s Day playing a pivotal part.
This Valentine’s Day, Facebook offers an advertising platform with relatively low costs (as CPM’s drop in the new quarter) and an array of targeting options at your disposal to unearth lucrative pockets of potential customers.
Here are a few of our top tips for quick wins this Valentine’s Day…
1. Get the Valentine’s look
Refresh your creative by implementing Valentine’s related imagery, colours and copy.
Take for example our client Love Layla, a leading UK card retailer that has found a market for more of a tongue-in-cheek approach to gifting.
In changing their ads to include a Valentine’s Day themed background, the company’s paid social activity saw a 12% decrease in CPA, a 6.8% increase in ROAS and a 27.2% increase in click-through rate.
Original
New
Whilst the promoted products and copy remained the same, the change in theme helped Love Layla’s ads stand out as a Valentine’s product, drive more traffic to site than any other ad and capture 17% more customers than their original ad has.
2. Find the goldmines by testing alternative targeting options
The case of Love Layla also exemplifies successful segmentation and targeting in the run up to Valentine’s Day, through breaking out their campaigns and allocating separate budgets to different genders, relationship statuses, stages of life and interests.
Targeting interests in the broader Valentine’s topic was, as expected, one of many targeting lines for this company, which drove impressive results and low CPA’s.
However, identifying more niche and more importantly, less competitive targeting lines can often be far more valuable than the broader and more obvious options.
Through niche interest targeting, we found pockets of potential customers who shared a similar level of intent to those within the Valentine’s interest targeting, but at a far lower CPM and with far less competition.
Whilst competitors bid aggressively against each other for the same ‘Valentine’s’ audience at higher stake auctions, we utilised Love Layla’s audience insights to build an alternative Valentine’s target market.
Combining marital status, age and interests in other celebrations where couples give gifts, such as weddings and anniversaries; we discovered an undisturbed goldmine to target, that in turn increased Love Layla’s return on ad spend by 21% through lower costing impressions.
3. Remind your customers… for their other halves’ sake, and your business’!
As we see consumers demonstrate a preference (or panic) for a last-minute gift, ensuring your paid social campaigns are reminding your site visitors to complete their purchase all way up to Valentine’s Day is key.
Retargeting potential customers is a tried, tested and proven strategy that often leads to success, but even more so when customers have a deadline! Serving a final ‘reminder’ ad that implements urgent messaging and relevant (or if possible dynamic) creative can help see a last-minute surge in purchasers from less fussy customers.