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PureRapid Logo Pink Duck Digital Marketing Agency Glasgow



Happy New Year! We hope you had a profitable Q4 and you’re ready to dominate Q1 in 2022.

 

How were your Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Festive period sales results? Did your business create offers that your customers couldn’t refuse? Did your Facebook Ads deliver to meet your expectations? Could your ad funnels have been simplified to reduce time and money spent only to provide a better return on ad spend? Or did your most significant discounts and promotions for the year fall short?

 

There are many good questions to ask going into the year ahead, but one of the most important questions for those who achieved our sales targets is, do you know how you obtained your best campaign results? And, can you repeat and better your Ads funnel during the January sales to hit a new 1st quarter record? Too much too soon? It shouldn’t be, but if your business offers a one time of the year only sale, is it Black Friday? And are you already planning for the next BFCM?

 

For us seasoned advertisers, we take a lot of awareness for granted. We all know Q4 is one of the most expensive times of the year to advertise, and Black Friday has most definitely turned into a highly competitive month-long sale for a lot of you.

 

Whilst we were ramping up our clients Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads funnel 4-8 weeks before the big BFCM weekend, a lot of other agencies, consultants and in house marketing teams failed to do so and blew their allocated ad budgets by concentrating on prospecting the few days on and surrounding actual black Friday and Cyber Monday.

 

What’s wrong with that? To be blunt, everything. Attempting to convert cold audiences during black Friday week can be Ad spend suicide for most businesses. The bidding war on Facebook is fierce during seasonal sales periods, so CPMs are typically at an all-time high which means results will cost more.

 

If you are running a Shopify store selling products, your number one campaign objective will be conversions, but it’s also the most expensive when it comes to cost per result. That’s why the top of the funnel and warm-up stages of your funnel should be in place throughout the year, and your ad spend for conversion campaigns should be highly focused on warm and hot audiences during these hot periods.

 

Not every eCommerce store or service-based business has the luxury to go direct to offer by going straight in for conversion or Lead generation. If you do, fantastic. The reality is some businesses need to partially or fully utilise the awareness and engagement stages of the funnel and be retargeted on and off-platform to achieve that desired lead or conversion result.

 

In the weeks and months leading up to significant sales periods, you want to be increasing your top of funnel efforts if you’re not already doing that throughout the year. That’s what grows your audience size. You always want to bring awareness and engage new audiences, provide value and entertainment for some and gain trust for all. Then during the sales periods, whether that’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Labour Day, or Boxing Day sales, you can retarget all of those custom audiences that have been reading, liking, commenting, sharing, watching, and visiting your content with conversion and lead campaigns.

 

How did your distribution of ad spend perform? Did you allocate 80-90% of your ad spend towards the top of funnel campaigns in the weeks and months leading up to Black Friday? Did your Opt-in rates increase? Did your customer mailing lists grow? For every one of our clients who implemented that approach, you bet they did! Average Order Values were up, and sales reports, compared to previous years, were surpassed in every case and obliterated in some accounts where ad spending was ramped up.

 

We are on the flip side of Q4. The highest discounted promotions of the year are over for a while. Businesses did battle with their competitors more than at any point of the year. But what about this year?

 

Q4 can be a do or die period for a lot of businesses. Some businesses rely heavily on top-performing Q4 results to make it through Q1. If you don’t or cannot acquire new customers during that period, it will naturally dip earnings targets. Suppose a business relies on the anticipated revenue during that highly competitive period. In that case, almost all companies need to create their most competitive offers of the year. And have the cash flow available to sustain the lower margins whilst increasing their ad spend adequately to achieve the target levels set out.

 

The question for many then becomes, do you participate, or do you hibernate?

 

Suppose your business doesn’t have repeat purchase opportunities, and it is working with low margins on low ticket items. In that case, you shouldn’t participate during that period with any of the top advertising platforms mentioned. Also, accept that your sales will dip as your target audience will be spending their money with your competitors as they will more than likely be serving them with their highest discounted offers of the year. In this case, the best thing to do is reduce ad spending on prospecting during the period and accept that it is not an option on the ad platforms at that time of year.

 

If your business benefits from repeat purchases and the Life Time Value delivered from your customer’s purchases allows you to create highly desirable discounts, then do it and bring in repeat business during that period.

 

Suppose you choose to opt-out or maintain ad spend without creating competitive offers during the most competitive sales period of the year. In that case, the drop in sales has to be translated to just how vital these advertising platforms are for your business objectives along with an attractive offer. A lot of eCommerce businesses out there, in short, lack a competitive offer. Either they don’t participate in BFCM and the festive period sales, or their offer is not appealing enough to their target audience to make the conversion take place.

 

There are times of the year when specific service-based businesses have little or no demand. The service businesses that fail when utilising Lead Generation campaigns can be due to a mixture of poor timing, the wrong price point, and lack of trust. If you’re starting a business, get to know the industry inside out, identify your competitors and their efforts, find an exploit, then make your move. Knowing your market is vital for aligning expectations with reality.

 

So what is your playbook for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022? What offers and promotions will you bring to your customers to outperform your results last year? What percentage are you planning to increase your Average Order Value by, and what funnels will you include throughout the year to achieve that? Can you go it alone another year, or are you finally ready to make 2022 the year you propel your business to the top?

 

Have you been burned by a marketing agency or Facebook ads consultant in the past? Unfortunately, our industry can sometimes get a bad reputation due to some bad players entering our space. It’s the same old story. Someone typically buys a guru course on YouTube, starts an agency, then panics when it comes time to deliver what they promise. We see and hear of this all too frequently. These individuals often reach out to agencies like us when they find a customer after failing to successfully implement the best fit for purpose funnel for their clients. Worse still, they try to do it on the cheap themselves or by contracting cheap “talent” only to burn money experimenting with approaches that no longer work. The bottom line, we are all here to make money, but we have a tried and tested process.

 

Here is our initial checklist when considering an inbound enquiry.

 

  • Does the enquiring client genuinely have a fantastic product or service?
  • What are they doing better than their identified competitors?
  • Is their offer irresistible or at least enticing?
  • Is the timing and market conditions suitable for the campaign objectives required?
  • Where in their sales funnel needs to be optimised?
  • Does the client know their numbers? If not, can we identify them and calculate feasibility before commencement?
  • If the enquiry is from a startup, what are client expectations vs reality? And, does the budget stack up?

 

If you have a minimum monthly marketing budget of £1000 and require lead generation for your service-based business, schedule a free 20-minute call with us and tell us what you have currently and what you want to achieve.

 

If you have a minimum monthly marketing budget of £2000 and require more conversions for your Shopify or WordPress store, schedule a free 20-minute call with us, and we can see if we are a good fit.

 

Why choose to speak to us? We are a UK based digital marketing agency from Glasgow, with over 20 professionals delivering results for our global client list. We specialise in Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, TikTok Ads, Google Ads, Shopify eCommerce, WordPress Websites, Landing Pages for Lead Generation, Email & SMS marketing automation.

 

New to Digital Marketing? Not sure where to start? Get in touch. We can help you with one part of your digital marketing, or we can do it all for you. Look at stages 1-7 below and identify where your business is currently. We would love to hear from you.

1. Strategy

My business needs to start with the groundwork. Often the best place to start. Here, we help you with getting to know your data insights, your services, your products, your target audience, your competitors, creating your offer, planning your sales & marketing funnels, and measuring the key metrics to make the correct decisions to achieve your campaign objectives and future business goals.

 

2. Building

My business needs to create an eCommerce store, website, landing page(s), conversion or lead generation funnel. Shopify and WordPress are the eCommerce and CMS website platforms we work with. If your website is built on Wix or SquareSpace, we can also work with those. Alternatively, we can migrate your site to Shopify or WordPress. Ask us about the benefits of that. Either way, we can attract, convert, and retain quality customers for your business.

 

3. Engaging

My business needs help producing creative content for social media and my website. We deliver product photography, video editing & compelling copywriting. We can work with your in-house marketing team or create it all for you. What about influencer marketing? Yes, we do that too. We have built a lot of great contacts in the last ten years, and it can be a viable way for you to reach new audiences and gain trust, but only when done correctly. We can quickly spot an effective brand influencer from a bad one with our tried and tested methods.

 

4. Advertising

My business needs experts in Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads or Google ads. You’re looking in the right place! We’ve spent millions on these platforms. We create & manage your ad campaigns with conversion rate optimisation as a priority. Get the most from your ad spend with our highly experienced ad account managers.

 

5. Nurturing

My business needs help with automating its marketing & remarketing processes. Not a problem! We can help you with automated email flows, SMS, chat, web & CRM integrations. An omnichannel approach is often overlooked. We can fix that for you and maximise your otherwise missed opportunities.

 

6. Optimising

My business needs help with conversion rate optimisation. Whether you are running your own websites & ad campaigns or using another agency or consultant to manage them for you, we are willing to bet the house that we can improve upon your current results. If we don’t think we can, we will tell you before offering our services to your business. We focus on building lasting business relationships. Our average lead generation client works with us for 11 months without pausing parts of their account. Our average eCommerce client works with us for 17 months without pausing parts of their account.

 

7. Scaling

My business has steps 1-6 above in place, and we are super happy with everything our business has achieved so far, but we want to see how much further our company can go. Exciting! You’re ready to commit to a more significant investment in your business. That is awesome! You are doing better than the majority. Did you know 96% of companies fail within ten years, and only 4% succeed? If you want to be in the 4%, don’t stand still, we help outstanding businesses thrive.

 

Schedule a Call and find out how to take your business to the next level.