Meta has recently unveiled their “Festive Season Performance Guide” a comprehensive playbook designed to help brands run successful holiday campaigns across their platforms.
Below, you'll find the key takeaways, ensuring your Meta campaigns are optimised to maximise sales and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Festive shopping behaviours
According to Meta’s 2023 data, 77% of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers said Meta technology helped them make purchasing decisions, and 55% of festive shoppers reported that Meta influenced their decision to buy seasonal items.
This highlights how critical social media – and Meta specifically – is in influencing your audience’s buying journey. With more decision-makers turning to social platforms, we’re seeing a rise in users seeking the best deals and products via social media.
Step 1: Plan
Carefully outline your media budget to build the foundation for your festive campaigns.
Key consideration: Plan now for high-volume shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or time your festive campaign to align with periods of increased purchasing intent.
Simplify your campaign setup
When setting up your festive (and future) campaigns, Meta advises against running multiple ad sets targeting similar audiences and objectives. Streamlining your ads helps you exit the learning phase sooner, leading to more stable cost-per-result figures and improved overall performance.
Set up a catalogue
Catalogues are an excellent way to showcase your product range while efficiently managing your data.
Meta highlights that catalogues not only enhance your festive campaigns but also help build customer trust and boost conversion rates.
Step 2: Test + learn
To refine your campaigns, test different strategies and ad creatives to understand which combinations deliver the best results.
Key takeaway: Measure your results consistently to make data-driven decisions.
Tracking variations
When experimenting with different variables in your Meta campaigns, it’s essential to track each change and test one variable at a time for clear and accurate insights. Here's how to approach it:
Track each change: Keep detailed notes of every adjustment you make—whether it’s audience targeting, ad copy, or creative format. This ensures that when you analyse the data, you can pinpoint which variable led to the change in performance.
Test one variable at a time: To get reliable data, change only one variable per test. For example, if you’re experimenting with different audience segments, keep the creative and ad copy consistent. This way, you can be certain that any performance differences are due to the variable you’re testing.
Create distinct ad changes
Ensure there are clear differences between your Meta campaigns.
Make clear adjustments: Testing small changes, like targeting an audience of 25–27-year-olds versus 30–32-year-olds, may not provide conclusive insights because the groups are too similar. Instead, create distinct variations by testing ads with more noticeable differences, such as testing a broad age range, different interests, or entirely new creative concepts.
Refine after results: Once you’ve run these tests and gathered data, you can then begin to fine-tune by narrowing down audiences or honing in on the creative elements that performed best.
Trial different media types
Experimenting with different media formats is also crucial for optimising your Meta campaigns. Meta has highlighted that Reels are a powerful tool to “supercharge” ad performance:
Leverage Reels for higher engagement: As a Social Media Manager, this insight from Meta signals that using Reels can significantly boost your festive campaigns. Reels are designed for high engagement and reach, and Meta is currently rewarding advertisers who adopt them. Including Reels in your festive paid ads should be a priority to take full advantage of Meta’s algorithm favouring this format.
Diversify your media mix: In addition to Reels, test other formats like carousel ads, video ads, and static images. Each type may resonate differently with your target audience, so experimenting with a variety of media ensures you're maximising engagement across all touchpoints.
Step 3: Drive sales
Meta has provided us some great insights into how to maximise potential sales this festive season and it’s important to listen to their recommendations.
Avoid big changes
Making significant changes to your ads while they’re live can negatively impact their performance and push them back into the learning phase, which can delay results and reduce efficiency. Here’s how to avoid disrupting your campaigns during critical times:
Plan ahead: Ensure all major adjustments, such as creative updates, audience refinements, or budget changes, are made weeks in advance of key sales periods like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. This allows your ads to settle, exit the learning phase, and operate at peak performance.
Stability matters: Ads perform more consistently, and cost per result is typically lower once they have moved beyond the learning phase. By locking in your campaign setup early, you allow the Meta algorithm to optimise properly, which is crucial during high-traffic periods when competition for ad space increases.
Minor adjustments only: If you do need to make changes during a live campaign, keep them small—such as slight budget increases or extending the campaign length—rather than overhauling targeting or creative. This prevents your ads from re-entering the learning phase, ensuring continued stable performance during important sales events.
Implement your learnings
By Step 2, you should have gathered enough data to determine which creatives, audiences, and tactics work best for your campaigns. Now it’s time to put those learnings into action:
Prioritise top performers: Focus on the strategies that delivered the highest engagement, conversions, or return on ad spend (ROAS) during the test phase. Whether it’s a specific audience segment, ad format, or creative message, allocate more budget to these top-performing elements.
Refine your audience targeting: Now that you’ve identified which audiences resonate most with your campaigns, further refine your targeting. For example, if one age group or interest category performed particularly well, focus on expanding or fine-tuning this group to drive more conversions.
Enhance your creatives: Based on your test results, make sure to double down on the creative assets that generated the most engagement. Whether it’s a festive-themed video, eye-catching carousel ad, or compelling copy, the next phase should be driven by what has already proven effective.
Actively monitor your ads
Even after your ads go live, continuous monitoring is essential to ensure your campaign performs at its best. Here’s why:
Ad fatigue management: Over time, even successful ads can experience a drop in performance as the audience becomes overexposed. Regularly check your ad frequency metrics to identify when your audience has seen the ads too often, and refresh creatives or targeting as needed.
Real-time adjustments: Regular monitoring allows you to make real-time optimisations. If an ad is underperforming, pause or tweak it to reallocate your budget to better-performing ads, which can boost short-term results. Conversely, if you see a sudden spike in conversions, you can quickly adjust budgets or targeting to capitalise on the momentum.
Trend analysis for future planning: While making short-term adjustments, track long-term trends. Analyse which strategies are consistently effective and which audience behaviours shift over time, providing valuable insights for future campaigns.
Final takeaway: Elevate your festive campaigns
By following these steps, you’re on track to create a winning Meta campaign this festive season. If you’re looking to maximise results and take your campaigns to the next level, our social media experts are here to help with personalised strategies, optimisation techniques, and hands-on campaign management.
Social Media Manager
