By Becky Dickinson
It probably wasn’t that long ago you were working on your Christmas advertising campaigns, but now another holiday has rolled around and it’s time to use it to boost your sales!
A great way to boost your sales this Valentine’s Day is through Facebook ads. Advertising on Facebook offers lots of options for targeting your ideal audience, which makes it perfect for selling Valentine’s Day gifts.
Nowadays consumers don’t limit their buying to just roses. Jewellery, travel, lingerie, experiences, perfume, technology and home appliances are all in the mix as a way of showing our partners our appreciation.
Valentine’s Day by the numbers…
- Over three quarters (76%) of the nation celebrated Valentine’s Day in 2021
- Out of those celebrating Valentine’s, each person is estimating to spend on average £23
- Men were more likely to be spending the bigger amounts – they’re 3x more likely than women to spend more than £201
- Valentine’s Day seems to transcend generation, with a near equal amount of millennials (68.8%), Gen Xers (69.3%) and baby boomers (68.4%) planning to celebrate
- On average, Gen Xers were spending the most (£33.94), followed by millennials (£25.75) and baby boomers (£25.47).
- Most people planned to treat their wife or husband (59.6%), followed by their boyfriend or girlfriend (28.2%) and then their children (4.7%).
- The next most likely candidate was pet dogs, with 4.5% of Brits planning on doting on their pups. Cats, on the other hand, get less love than their doggy-counterparts – only 3.0% of Brits plan to spend money on them.
Source: Finder
Hints and tips
If you’re an ecommerce site, don’t miss out on this chance to boost your sales. Here are some things to think about before you get started with your Facebook advertising:
Get creative
Facebook and Instagram are visual platforms, so you need to put a lot of focus on your creative. Look at it: does it make you want to engage or click? Is it clear what the creative is about? Make sure you are also tailoring your creative for each placement – this will help improve your quality score (and the ads will look nicer!)
Don’t over complicate it
We see a lot of ads that seem to have an essay in the copy! Keep your messaging short and sweet, your creative should be doing all the talking. If you are running an offer, make it simple and easy for people to redeem.
Go broader
Valentines might be a great opportunity to acquire some new customers. Don’t be afraid to loosen your targeting options during this time. The Facebook machine has become such a powerful tool and we’re seeing some great results by going broader.
Think about your objectives
We see a lot of accounts where advertisers are using conversion objectives to go after prospects, however, depending on your campaign length and type of product, you might want to consider bringing the objective further up the funnel.
Think of the sales funnel, will these people buy off you on a first visit to your website? If the answer is no, choose a cheaper targeting option first such as landing page views. Your remarketing campaign can then push them to buy with conversion objectives.
Budget, audience and frequency
If you have a short time to sell your product, you’re going to need to get your frequency up to a certain amount (this is a huge subject and the optimum frequency will depend on industry and campaign etc ) but make sure your audience reflects your budget and frequency objectives.
Essentially, don’t try and target 45 million people with a £5 a day ad spend! You will never reach a high enough frequency to get optimum results.
Valentine’s Day isn’t just for couples
Think outside the box, with Facebook targeting options, you have the option to find the exact audience you want!
Us Brits splash out on friends, families and pets too, so if you’re a business specialising in pet supplies, you could target pet owners, offering them a pet gift set. Or, if you’re a family resort, you could target parents with young children and give them a Valentine’s offer. If you sell women’s beauty products, you could target mothers with teenagers and show them an offer for a teenage beauty present.
Take some time to think about potential audiences and play with the targeting options in Facebook to find your perfect niche.
Your ad is only as good as your website
Every person that clicks on your advert through to your website wants to see a landing page relevant to that advert. For example, if you’re offering 20% off a particular product and they go through to a page that doesn’t show that product or offer, then you’re likely to lose that customer. You only have a short amount of time to catch the attention of the user, so make the deal obvious and give the customer an easy journey to convert.
Don’t forget to optimise, but don’t play too much either!
Check your Facebook campaign regularly to see what’s working but avoid making any changes in the first 7 days of a campaign when Facebook is learning. We try to have at least a couple of media types per ad set so Facebook can learn what type of creative works best per user.
However, this will depend on your budget, if you have a small budget, you don’t want it spread too thin, consider your budget and how many ad sets, creatives etc you could have with your budget.
And that’s it! Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to acquire new customers, as well as re-engaging existing ones. If you need some help getting geared up, get in touch with us today.
