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A mobile advertising holiday roadmap for retailers

Kate Burn, global marketing manager at Shuttlerock, explains how brand success depends,in part, on visually dynamic and engaging ad creative, especially video, that reaches customers instantaneously on their devices.

Photo by istock.com

November 11, 2019

By Kate Burn, global marketing manager at Shuttlerock

The number of consumers shopping via mobile devices during the holidays continues to grow; last year, nearly three-fourths of all online holiday sales were made via mobile, and its importance cannot be overstated. Brand success will depend in part on visually dynamic and engaging ad creative, especially video, that reaches customers instantaneously on their devices.

Holiday advertising must reach across multiple platforms, so mobile creative needs to be adaptable and scalable. Building custom creative and delivering convenient, dynamic experiences can drive conversion around key shopping dates. During the peak holiday season, recapturing shoppers’ attention — think flash deals and fresh advertising — will break through the noise and increase profitability.

Video is one of the most powerful tools in the holiday mobile advertising arsenal, as viewers retain 95% of a message delivered by video, versus just 10% via text. This is one of the reasons video ad spending is expected to reach $29B this year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, accounting for 49% of all US programmatic ad spending in 2019.

It’s easy to adapt video assets for non-mobile mediums — such as TV campaigns or in-store video — for mobile and serve them via social feeds and stories. This exponentially increases audience reach versus keeping those video assets siloed in non-mobile channels.

The following roadmap provides key monthly checklist items that will help in preparing your mobile ad creative, and edge closer to holiday campaign success. 

November

The media landscape is more fragmented than ever, which means your campaigns need to follow suit by reaching across numerous platforms. Now, at the peak of the holiday season, adapt and scale your creative for every touch point while staying authentic to the nuance and tone of each platform.

November checklist

●    Take your learnings from pre-season concept testing and use them to build custom creative for key dates such as Black Week.
●    Set up scheduled campaigns to boost spend and drive conversions around key dates.
●    Scale top-performing creative concepts from earlier tests across different platforms and placements.
 

December

Holiday advertising is hitting its peak — and this is where the months of preparation will really pay off. Convince last-minute shoppers with deadlines, flash deals and fresh creative to recapture attention amidst all the noise.

December checklist

●    Create urgency and drive conversions with lightweight direct-response creative.
●    Drive audience members to seamless in-store or in-purchase options on mobile.
●    Take stock of performance to execute appropriate campaigns during the post-holiday period that takes place post-Christmas through the beginning of January.

Christmas does not signal the end of the shopping season. After all, how often do you get everything from your own wish list during the holidays? Use the early days of January to convert shoppers who want to treat themselves after the bustle of the holidays.

January

January checklist

●    Use holiday sales data to target your new customer base with related products in order to drive repeat purchases.
●    Give it one more shot with those who did not previously convert by sharing a post-holiday offer that uses gathered data to appropriately target your potential customer.
●    Associate your brand with the positive energy and self-improvement motivations of the new year.
 

Peak holidays: Black Week / Black Friday

Black Week takes place from November 25 to December 2 this year and is the biggest shopping week of the holiday season as it incorporates U.S. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.  

Creative best practices:

●    Many take this opportunity to use a specific discount as the focal point for their creative. If you follow suit, keep it simple with a short, single message video that drives action to your website.
●    Get your branding front and center in your ad creative and share the message wide. Attract the attention of those customers who are ready to shop now and those who will make their purchasing decisions later in the holiday season.

Recommended steps:

●    Run brand awareness ads every day from November 18-22, to build excitement for the holiday shopping season in general, and the ramp-up to Black Friday in particular.
●    Pre-black week is also a good time to start teasing Black Week and Black Friday deals, due to the level of competition for impressions in Black Week, it's much more cost-efficient to reach customers early with a message that will make them remember your brand come purchase time.
●    Set your biggest deals live either on Thanksgiving or the day of Black Friday to push the shopping hype to its absolute peak.
 

Cyber Monday

This year, Cyber Monday falls on December 2 and in 2018, sales totaled $8 billion in the US alone.

Creative Best Practices:

●    Avoid ad fatigue by freshening up your creative. Make the most of the buzz created by Black Friday and push your ads well into the new week with creative that will stand out from the noise.
●    Highlight different products than Black Friday to attract a new shopping audience — and given the online shopping focus, items that are easy and cost-effective to ship. Animating images that appear statically elsewhere is a good tactic to take here.
●    Keep the excitement high with your choice of messaging and clear call to action.

Recommended steps:

●    Providing a seamless shopping experience in mobile is crucial, so make sure your site is functioning properly and optimized for mobile.
●    Update ads with Cyber Monday-specific content highlighting the convenience of clicking through ("Finish holiday shopping now and save — swipe up!”).

The difference between a ho-hum holiday season and a successful one comes down to your ad creative. Designing visually dynamic and engaging mobile ads is an important part of your holiday mobile marketing plan, especially when delivered in video form.

Give consumers the gift they've been looking for — convenient, dynamic experiences through seamless mobile shopping — and celebrate your ad wins into the new year.