EP232 - Q5 Paid Social Tactics to Successfully Wrap the Year

0:00 Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the PPC chat Roundup in today's episode. We have the awesome Julie bikini being joined by another awesome PPC. Chad Community member, a guerrilla DeFazio. So she's our co-host today and they both will be talking about Q5 paid social tactics to successfully wrap the year. Now, you might be wondering Q5 what is Q 5. So, we are counting that not quite the last quarter because obviously quarters three months the last bit after Black Friday out to like, you know, back Friday Cyber Monday Roz. So yeah, we're talking about like the last few weeks, 45 weeks, I have left of the year. So yeah, there's got to be some ways of doing, paid search, paid social and how that works.

0:47 After the big burst of sales and Retail frenzies and Retail campaigns going all crazy. So yeah, how do you really get effective in the last few weeks? Weeks of the year. How do you stand out? And how do you ensure that you and the year on a high on a positive right up until December 31st? So, yeah, I hope you enjoy the expert advice. Has that we give today? Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the PPC chat Roundup a podcast where I round up the Twitter discussion that happens on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. GMT.

1:32 I'm your host, Andrew. And I'm recording from my studio here in London UK. And I am used as using this platform to share, not just expert, but also my ideas and considered best practices about paid media and the direction, the All industry is going in. So if you want to keep up to date with my tips and tricks and get the latest on the podcast that has been called your go to, if you don't make it to the PPC chat live discussions and even if you do then like, follow share retweet, and that's right. Twitter with my handle, the marketing, and you and join us on our LinkedIn Group, which is the PPC chat Roundup podcast. Or if you're on Instagram, why don't you check us out at PPC, chat underscore Round Up, to get quotes and Snippets from Yes episodes.

2:17 So we have Julie joined with Advil. Ed Fazio on a topic about Q5 paid social tactics to successfully wrap up the year, but I was usual. She goes with a, how is everyone doing? And apart from a gorilla? With God, Lawrence Chase as well as Julia Vice with. Also have Ashton Clark Boris. Becker Eric joins us a little bit. It's almost lunch time for him. Sweetie, stay with us for too long. Robert, Brady as well. A joins us and yeah, many more as well. I'm sure. But the usual PSA that the Julie Chavez is before we get to questions, this chat is intended for PPC, Professionals of all levels.

2:57 If you have something you want to share, please do we are a friendly and supportive Community, please don't be afraid to participate. Lurkers are, of course, always welcome to. And we have yeah, Julie taking us on straight into question one. So she asked is Q5, so that's December. 50:35. So I thought it'd be right after Cyber Monday. So, it's between December 25th to 31st. Is that a time? You are familiar with? And if so, do you plan for it, specifically know, I even announce that I'll just be lacking because I'm not really into paid social, but I love hearing about it. I have some clients who do paid search on the side, but it's always good to be interested in it except response.

3:40 No, I hadn't heard about that needed, I, but sometimes, definitely definitely I was thinking about I see different kinds of buying Trends, post-sales till holiday and New Year in every kind of retail and corporate markets. As we look goes, there's a shift in consumer mindset. So if you can craft some assets to offer something to them, during this time, it may be worth a test actor goes. Yeah, I'm working on some pet projects to test. Recently, I got the chance to drill the service based sales. So I'll test my learnings for marketing, advertising and sales hydrilla response to the Itself going quick, but sometimes Mighty little Q5, we do plan for it, specifically with some clients, but not all clients depending on their budgets goals. And if it's on brand she continues, Black Friday Cyber Monday.

4:30 Gets the most attention in terms of dollars. But if we can angle and or message with an end-of-year promo or kick start the new year with customer purchasing benefits, then we do example, start your new year with X improve. Of your health or style or life or work reduced energy bills with X Etc. Lawrence response. Saying this specifically for health-related clients this small time frame can be huge as folks transition from holiday habits, to healthy habits again, I really goes, well said, there's definitely a shift in mindset, clenched metal a response to question. One saying, huh, Q5, that's a new one to me, likely because we're all B2B and we have Julie advice as well responding to question 1. Yes, I'm familiar, but it doesn't apply to my clients. In fact, for most of mine, it's actually Q3 right now. Public sector Q4 is Jan to March just like B to B. So, yeah, some very interesting out of the ordinary cues. Melissa goes.

5:31 Yeah, haha. Yeah, we have several clients with weird Financial years. There's much to Fab fabric to Jan, July to June. Yeah, all over the place, Julie response to question once. And I will admit that prior to setting up this chat topic. I was not familiar with the term Q5 but I don't do much e-comm PPC for most of my clients. It's actually a very quiet period so yeah, that can be nice and quiet. I'd rather it sees the same thing. Quiet is quite nice if you do partake set up ad scheduling ahead of time so you can relax during this period is a win for all. Yeah, at scheduling I did a question on LinkedIn about when you try to stop sales ads, do you?

6:15 Do ad scheduling thankfully. Most people do even though phrase Andrews on Twitter earlier on had said that he's shocked that nobody seems to be doing. I had scheduling. Don't worry, Fraser people still do that scheduling and then we have Lawrence Chase responding to question. One saying that time frame is really fast, but I have a couple clients who do have things that happened during that period and can be very successful as well. Sam response saying, we plan for it for some clients especially if it's an area where they might be. Be able to close out the year strong or drive incremental sales for a lot of gift. Heavy Brands. Q5 is the critical period to minimize returns. Plus drive up sales from recipients Boris response to question. Once he never heard of it until now. But I used to work for a company in the photo finishing industry that had extremely seasonality and those dates definitely strike a chord and then we have my list of McKee responded. Question one saying it's interesting we refer to Q5 As carrying the previous year strategy into q1 of the next year.

7:20 Obviously a different for B2B than e-comm and then we have Julie tecna's on to question 2, saying, how have your paid social efforts gone so far this holiday season and we have a gorilla responding saying, what did you see working well for you this past weekend, if you ran back Friday or Cyber Monday promotions? If you work outside of Legion, how has November been for you so far, any differences from Previous years like to respond saying last year, I was working heavy on lead gen but this year, I'm working with e-comm infer productized, Services lead gen Etc and I have interesting data to compare with. For example, post crypto bubble, people are reconsidering their spend but still buying stuff.

8:04 I really response to question to say, overall, well, profitable analysis and Reporting this week. It wouldn't be Black Friday Cyber Monday. If there wasn't some craziness paired with excitement even Being overly punctual to begin strategy or asset Dev. And some last-minute changes it keeps us on our toes and employed, right? I really responds. We ran ads across meta, mostly Tick-Tock quora next door from day-to-day analysis, meta top of funnel greatly out performed. Bottom of the funnel retargeting for the first time in my career, for e-comm da, be a and interest bundle targeting with static images equals to hire. Purchase Volume Plus rho.

8:47 As the ABA, we need to add that to that Christian page. Andrew Fox will respond saying based on the reading from our own clients and those from our membership majority are up in gross sales numbers from 2021 Friday to Monday Black Friday Cyber Monday but about 20% maybe it's our group but it's also crafting good offers and keeping it simple structure and creative wise and Drew magary response. I've never seen the week before, Black Friday Cyber Monday. We pull back that Heart before. Luckily, the weekend, numbers were Stellar accident response to question, two saying, I would say quite profitable and more than expected, good, traffic from long tail keywords with strong offers and creatives. But I'm rather curious on post sales season and looking forward to see the stats from the holidays time and we have Julia voice responding to question to say not bad so far. Meta underperformed compared to plans but overall it's doing what it needs to do.

9:45 Some So far, so good, definitely seeing some strong numbers versus 21 for some Brands, especially health and wellness. Apparel plus experiences. Meta has been better this year than it was last year. Tick-Tock has been up and down, but a solid second degree. Contributor, he continues. There's obviously a ton more to do especially in maximizing the Black Friday, Cyber Monday cohorts, through the end of Q4 + reactivating into q1 Q2 but that's mostly a running up the score problem. We stayed Focused on first order profitability, even with Black Friday, Cyber Monday offers a gorilla response. Nice work, Sam, definitely share your sentiments on meta performing better this year than last. I think the algorithms got some nice Updates this year given performance and features some goes. Yeah, but that's to be expected.

10:34 IOS 14.5. Rolled out 13 months ago. Hard to believe and Capi has been in place for many brands for quite some time. Not surprised machine learning was able to pass. Ouch, some of the holes, even if we can't see exactly how it did it. He continues also Metals 2022, Rd of 30 billion 234 billion dollars, only around 10 billion dollars of that has gone to reality Labs. The rest has gone to fo a phrase and response. Still feel like Tick-Tock has a few bits to iron out some goes hundred percent. Great in some cases are in others, lots of potential though and they've clearly prioritized it.

11:15 Proving their ad product. That's evident just looking at yet. 21 verses 22 is Tick-Tock in a nutshell. I agree. Yeah, some goes but Tick-Tock doesn't have to be the Superstar player in your marketing. Mix metal Google can do that. You just need incremental conversion. Volume below your metal, Google CPA, which Tick-Tock can deliver in B and chunks. If you expect to talk to me metal or Google, you're going to be disappointed despite what the guru say. But if you take it for what it is, It is a strong supplemental platform. Play to its strengths like using it to hone your creative. It's amazing phrase. Andrews goes, yes completely have. Interestingly found that brand uplift spikes nicely with Tick-Tock campaigns. This is site-wide, but the conversation about how Tick-Tock isn't the land of milk?

12:05 And honey is definitely one. I've had with clients Boris. Becker corresponding. I've dropped paid social from my portfolio to fully concentrate on paid search. So nothing had to share here. Williger's, how have your campaigns been performing on the paid search side? I used to do paid search but dropped it for social a few years back to Julie goes. I've heard from several committee members, about cpcs, being really high and increasing more than expected throughout Black Friday. Cyber Monday, period, Lawrence takes response. Most of my clients in econ are outperforming last year. The costs are absolutely up. However, I work with some clients on the opinion else, the price to ship and for Sighs in our up, as well as costs of goods.

12:48 This will impact the overall profitability versus last year. Glenn smartly respond saying, sadly. We see cpc's that have nothing to do with e-comm being affected by Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And then we have Lawrence responding to question to say, I hate to jinx myself, but they have been great. This year in meta has done better than last year, which is really nice to see. That's very interesting considering there has been a lot. There's always a lot of meta complaints and You know the business manager been quite below. A desired performance. I will respond saying you got through Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So doing better is awesome and past jinxing learns girls. We still have a few big weeks of shopping to get through. We are pushing to keep the momentum, I really goes true. True and May the rest be profitable and smooth sailing. Yes.

13:36 May the rest be profitable and in response to a question to have phrase Andrews going have found that in general whilst we're seeing an increase in lead volume from a Quality standpoint. This has died. A little from a reporting standpoint, it's great. But obviously we actually want to be giving quality we have Robert Brady responded question to saying it has it been great for my econ clients the higher cpms that lead gen client soul with a bummer but expected with the higher competition for those Impressions and then we have Julie taken us on to question 3 going what are the benefits of advertising during Q5 a gorilla? Spawn saying seize this opportunity to get in front of people that are on holiday of work.

14:21 Browsing might have more Focus perhaps some of your audience members didn't receive what they wanted as a gift. So use that as an opportunity to entice them to shop. Guilt-free for themselves Aguilar goes, if you have remaining inventory, you want to offload especially if seasonal run a sale if your brand and margin support to that. If you offer services, get a head start on the getting to site up or free trial or etc for the new year, get in front of decision, makers active response, you get the opportunity to monitor the data. In still markets, influenced markets and post influence. That is when the market goes back to stability, it gives a hm of insights on how people behave with no external influence versus after getting influenced and then a guerrilla response to question 3.

15:13 Same leverage this period as costs will Closely back to pre-holiday rates less competition. Again, more impression, share stretch your budget further, gain more reach, and visibility we have Boris also responded to question 3 going when competitors pull back and think they can save budget, it's a great opportunity to sneakily, get some more sales. Yes. You can always do things in terms of competition, whether your social or not and we have Julie advice responded to question 3 saying. Well, Boxing Day, the 26th has been at tradition of hair much longer than Black Friday. It's a great time to offer discounts and turn returns into profitable exchanges. If you can plus everyone who got a phone for Christmas, is ready for your brand ads and then we have Lawrence responding to question, 3 saying lower competition and different consumer mindsets.

16:06 After holiday, you will have a lot of gift cards users, folks, searching for healthy lifestyle stuff and other things. If you have never done anything, it's a Time to test and then we have Sam responded to question. 3 seen aside from benefiting from staggeringly low add costs yay it's a great chance to capitalize on money in hand audience. Lots of people get dollars or gift cards for the holidays. Also great chance to offload your remaining inventory without excessive discounting. And then we have Tim hollering responded. Question 3 saying I've seen sub based or newsletter clients do well in Q5 especially with a A well-timed New Year offer with a steep annual discount and Shop landing page. Also, if your e-comm client sells Health Products, but you don't normally focus on category, Q5 is a good time to push it.

17:00 And in answer to question three Ashton clock goes competitors might not be as active, so there's opportunity to be more visible. Also, even if search volume is lower, the people searching in that week might have higher intent to convert. So we recommend all our clients Keep campaigns running in Q5, and then we had Duane Brown as well. Joining us saying, usually CPC cpms are way lower as everyone else. Spent all their money. People have gotten money or gift cards and are ready to shop for themselves. Lots of opportunity. Jillian, takes us on to question forcing, what type of messaging have you seen work? Well for Q5 advertising or do you plan to test a trailer herself? Response saying, use urgency in your copy? In its limited time before the ball drops. Work on closing deals with warm audiences, but don't be shy. In also sharing the value of what you're selling plus year and plus yet and promo with prospecting or top of funnel audiences at gorilla continues.

18:03 Another effective messaging tactic is to focus on prospective customers. That may not have received what they truly wanted or everything they wanted for the holidays. This is your time to make. A day so they can treat themselves. I really continues. Using this period as a way to entice people, to stock up on certain products, signing up for services. That will improve their life personally, and professionally. If you sell Services, promote them as an investment in someone's life, she continues. If you don't discount and your product is truly or higher quality angle, your copy and compliment your creatives in ways that someone may want to splurge on it for themselves. Maybe they've had their eye on this product or service or year test that approach.

18:51 And yeah, she finally goes with many people looking into personal development within coming New Year resolutions, if your brand can help others, this is the optimal time to encourage your audience's with messaging about a better. You a better year because of, in Serbia, value prop there. And this was one last month, one more tip that she has for saying I'm for e-comm, if your brand discounts run an end-of-year Clarence, Easier to stand out in Q5. Then during Black Friday Cyber Monday, focus on inventory. You want to sell mentioned percentage or dollars off. Make it easy for people to shop if you can skip promo codes and do, site-wide sale, do that. And some response to question forcing, I think there's two questions hair.

19:33 What kind of Q5 Advertiser are you basically? What are you trying to accomplish in Q5 and to? How did you do it? He continues. If you're looking for Q5 to be an incremental sales, Al's driver Ari, you've got inventory to move, then you're probably going to do. End-of-year offers, if you are looking at Q5 to be a sustained play, IE minimize returns upsell gift, recipients. That's something else. So I'm continue saying. If Q5 is a get ahead of 23-3 time for you where you want to book Revenue but not the corresponding expense re Fitness or travel, or you want to accelerate B2B revenue for tax purposes. That's an entirely different CG at the response.

20:17 Great breakdown. Sam strategize like you would for any other season campaign goal promotion. It just happens to be a shorter run time and then we have Julia voice responded. Question forcing brand and drive through for my restaurants. Actually work really well at this time of year habits are disrupted and people have permission to indulge on a personal level. I will see any movie at that time, no matter the trailer or marketing, it all works on me at this time. We have Lawrence responded to question forcing so many to list here. It really depends on your Market but some common ones, free shipping percentage of orders over a certain amount. Category discounts, tried to push aov or create urgency at Villa regards, leverage those gift cards to push a v. Yeah, and we have Julia voice, continuing saying yeah, travel Trends do work well.

21:09 Also the 26. It s is a time of work. When plans can be made more easily. Choices can be made in a row and tickets cabins activities booked and then we have Julie take notes on to question five the last question of the chat. I believe saying what tools do you use for Q5 campaign and messaging inspiration Aguila already answers saying yeah we you can select industry example, Auto e-comm Education Health retail, travel & More as well as the holiday event Q5 and generate copy recommendation allows As for Creative assets downloads provides data and other resources that can help Inspire and form strategy.

21:53 What is this tool that she's talking about because you didn't actually mention the tools, you just wrote something. That goes I have an econ business, I would like campaign suggestions for Q5. Does she says another favorite book Mark where the tool for inspiration? I often uses the meta at the library. See what competitors and other verticals are doing see if you can mold their Active and or copy to work. Similarly for you, but I just to be on brand she continues often times. I look at what big brands are doing and find creative ways of how we can use it for another branded that is unrelated and smaller, save time, resources and budget. If you don't have much to work with and try this out and then we also have Tim hadn't responded to question forcing specifically, for e-comm, the best hook is free shipping right now across the board.

22:44 That's what I'm Seeing with my accounts but that's difficult for most retailers to do because it cuts into margin significantly. So we'll usually pad the margins by on orders dollars or more Angela voice response saying I mostly lead with the offer if there isn't one right now. It's about time. Anything more detailed is product or client specific. And Lawrence chases well, response to question five saying, yes, to this, also might answer when at Village said The Meta launching a campaign ideas generator last year. Yeah, it's a great tool to get some inspiration. Also, just talking with your customers and hearing what they are asking for, what problem they want to solve Etc. Sometimes the best inspiration is just listening to your customers and we have actor.

23:35 Responded question, forcing, I guess use your message. Strategies that I have. However, this holiday season I'll be working with omni-channel search social and natives for different Industries with multiple step, conversion for each funnels. So I'm super excited to explore this and we have Tim Halloran responding to question fighting. I've been using this AI copy generator tool this past three months and it helps with inspiration a lot especially when I'm not in copywriting a mood. $59 lifetime cost. On appsumo. So that's a PPS you Mo.com and we have Judy down continuing to answer and question five saying, you all know I'm an old-school girl so if you visit competitor sites, you will also see their retargeting ads and on social you will see competitor ads cause your interest in product X or service. Why?

24:28 We'll put you in their audience targets. Oh, so I was wrong. We do have one more question for the day and this is the last question as mentioned by Julia herself. She goes. To question 6, have you run Q5 campaigns and AD in Prior years? What worked, well, or didn't for you, Aguila goes, we have copy that worked. Well, kick off the new year, with a fresh look. Skip resolutions, get results. Get ready for the new year to step out in style and comfort. Start the new year with xx and Energy savings. I really goes. What hasn't worked? Well was a gift with purchased from a consumer standpoint seems like it's Left over from Black Friday Cyber Monday.

25:11 Which admittedly is often the case. If people buy added in, if you need to offload and let it be a surprise. Gwp alone is unlikely to lift. The sales. Delivers goes really, I don't want to carry around more stuff. I will accept samples from Sephora or Lush but that's honestly it-it's so often something that will just go to a landfill and then actor, on this question 5 starting off, very interesting, but she goes, I'll tell you a Stuff I explode. I love that's a very good way of change research. Sweet there are ads as well as industry spine tools for looking at the volumes usually in Arbitrage and I was exploring it the other day while I was talking in communities of sales and marketing where these people were exploring how to train tools, like GPT 34 predictive analysis of market trends and performance and I was thinking of how to connect all of these. If that makes sense.

26:06 Anjali responds to deliver. I If she had gone, well, I don't want to carry around more stuff. Julie goes, completely anecdotal, of course, but Beauty brand I had had good sales offers for black Fridays but Cyber Monday. Everything was full price again and had a gift with purchase as the only so-called offer did not buy. The things I put in my cart on Friday, I'll buy when I'm running low. Now, who did it goes? Which brand is probably actually happy about but I'll wait for my quarterly. 20% of coal. It. And when Brown response to question for saying, talking about treating yourself, improving yourself and all about being a better version of yourself that in answer to question for to question five, he goes read customer reviews and tap into people's, why for buying the product.

26:55 Also great test messaging, you think we'll hit delivers response to question six saying, well, as an old Canadian, what I've run is boxing day or week campaigns not Q5 and yes they absolutely. Early work. A lot has worked from content to travel to drive through learns response, to question 6 saying, yes, a lot with companies who focus on help especially also companies who do a lot of business with gift cards. The copy is going to be more about them versus gift-giving, get in touch with the customer and what they want, or need can hollering response to question 6 and I have a few times, the most successful ones was for toy brand that Time that the release of a new product at the same time, it's movie hit theaters. Another time we pushed a client's Health Products with a free shipping discount, over x amount and that did really well too.

27:51 Sam himself response saying with run a bunch. Their stuff that tends to work in my opinion is a bit more authentic versus the fancy holiday offers and or transactional Plus solution-oriented for B2B angles but for retention mostly. Cross-sells plus upsells. Now Julia This goes nice to that. And on that note, we come to the end of our chat this week. I hope you've taken some great takeaways. If you are into paid social, I hope you found some very interesting and useful tactics there. There was a tool that a guerrilla mentioned that. I hope she responds to my tweet about before I end. Let me check that before I go to see if you responded to that.

28:32 No I'm not saying that she did but that's okay it. She responds to it later. I will try to retreat. That will just check my timeline to see whether you find the answer. So yeah, hope you've taken some great takeaways. They are, they have confirmed that they will be back on Thursday, continuing, this chat about best ways to do Spade social advertising in the last week of the year. So, join us for that at 5 p.m. GMT and 12:00 p.m. eastern time. If you'd like to give me any feedback about the podcast, I mean, any correction on anything. I've shed. Please get in touch with me on Twitter. My DMs are open on my handle the marketing, a new, or on LinkedIn. Just search for my name and I think Bola, we do have a PC chat Roundup group so you can ya get in touch with us on there as well.

29:22 It'd be great for any of my long-standing members or brand new listeners, to give the podcast a review or a rating. If you just go to Li and Katie re e.com, /p P c-- chat underscore round up. You'll be able to enjoy a few seconds. Leave a rating on Spotify. Also, want to put a nice little plug for PPC, live UK, the 2nd of February. We're going to be having four amazing speakers people who have spoken advertise here, the PPC stages and you know be done an amazing job if you've got even azim Ahmad who actually spoke on the main stage. So yeah, amazing speakers here as well as Tiffany shares as well as Sophie Logan as part of Victor's has been a sponsor of PPC live UK and Maddie Crawford, who is an amazing young lady up and coming and doing amazing stuff in paid search as well.

30:14 So join us for that. If you just go to PC live at UK.com you'll be able to buy tickets directly from the home page even and finally remember for your campaigns and businesses to Glide smoothly. There's a lot of hard work needed beneath the surface so keep your son's kicking by and speak to you next week.