In today’s episode, I want to share with you how to get the most out of your Facebook ads during the holiday season.

Here we are the end of October already and if you’re going to be advertising on Facebook between now and the end of the year, I want to share with you some things to consider and how to get the most out of your marketing.

This is mainly aimed at product based businesses but will also be really helpful if you’re advertising on the platform from basically now through the end of the year.

But first, I’m super pumped up to announce details for my upcoming live Facebook ads implementation workshop here in San Diego.

FBA Live is going to start on Thursday evening, December 7th with an opening night happy hour and then we’ll go Friday and Saturday, December 8th and 9th.

As I mentioned this is an implementation workshop so we’ll be actually working on your Facebook ad campaigns together over the two days and we’ll be having conversations around strategy and areas for improvement for your campaigns.

So much has changed with Facebook ads over the last two months, let alone this year and my goal is to have you walking away with things set up the right way and improvements made.

When you sign-up for the workshop, it will include access to or a large credit toward one of my training programs which you’ll need go through as much as you can prior to the event.

The reason is I want this workshop to have the biggest impact for you, so it’s not going to be for complete beginners.

If you’re already one of my students, you’re going to get a big-time discount off the cost of the event OR get to come for free.

Again, so that we can have the biggest impact on working with you, spots are going to be limited to just 40 people.

The link to go to for all the details and to reserve your spot is rickmulready.com/fbalive

I love doing these live workshops, hanging out with you for a few days and really moving your Facebook ads and business forward.

Can’t wait to see you here in San Diego in December.

Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you\’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.

Transcript of Today’s Episode

[00:00:06] This is the show where I bring you the best tips, tactics, and strategies for using paid traffic to grow your business on autopilot. You’ll also hear what’s working and not working right now from the top minds in online marketing so that you can get more leads and sales every day without having to empty your wallet in the process. All right let’s jump into it.

[00:00:28] Hey hey what’s up everyone. Welcome back to the art of paid traffic podcasts Rick Mulready here really appreciate you for giving me your time today and coming to hang out. Hope all is going well whatever you’re up to today. In today’s episode I want to share with you how to get the most out of your Facebook ads during the holiday season. Here we are at the end of October already and if you’re already if you’re going to be advertising on Facebook between now and the end of the year I want to share with you some things to consider and how to get the most out of your marketing during this time of year. This is mainly going to be aimed at product based businesses but this is also going to be really helpful if you’re advertising on the platform from basically now through the end of the year. But first I am super pumped to announce details from my upcoming live Facebook Ads implementation workshop here in San Diego. This is my FBA live event. I do this two times a year once in May and once in December and the December events going to start on December 7th. Thursday evening we’re going to kick things off with an opening night happy hour and then we’ll do all day Friday and Saturday December 8th and 9th. And as I mentioned this is an implementation workshop so we’re going to be actually working on your Facebook ad campaigns together over the two days and we’re going to be having conversations around strategy and areas for improvement for your campaigns.

[00:01:49] I mean let’s face it so much has change of Facebook ads over the last few months let alone this year. And my goal is to have you walking away from this workshop with things set up the right way and improvements made. Now if you’re already running Facebook ads you’re going to walk away with things working better for you lower costs better set up a lot of improvements and strategies made to your existing campaigns and doing something new for this for this FBA live here in December when you sign up for the workshop. It’s going to include access to one of my training programs which you will need to go through as much as possible prior to the event. And the reason I’m doing this is I want this workshop to have the biggest impact for you. So it’s not going to be for complete Facebook Ads beginners. Now if you’re already one of my students here you’re going to get a big time discount off the costs the event or get to come for free again so that we can have the biggest impact on working with you. I’m listening spots to no more than 40 people and the link that you can go to for all the details and to reserve your spot is Rick Mulready dot com forward slash FBA live. That’s Rick Mulready dot com forward slash. Be a live. I really love doing these workshops. Hanging out with you for a few days and really moving your Facebook ads and your business forward and really can’t wait to see you here in San Diego here in December. So let’s talk about holiday marketing now on Facebook.

[00:03:22] So there’s a lot of different things that you should be aware of that you need to be aware of if you’re going to be advertising on the platform pretty much now the end of October between now and the end of the year. OK. And so I want to share some key takeaways with you first and foremost here during this holiday season. Everyone is on mobile. OK. They’re on their mobile device whether they’re you know looking for products and services to give them ideas for once the holidays are here. Then as the year goes on or as the months go on here at the end of the year here then they’re moving through consideration and we’re going to talk about this here in just a second then through conversion when they’re actually shopping like on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and so forth. So everyone’s on mobile that is going to be the theme of what we’re talking about here. So what does that mean for you as an advertiser on Facebook. Well you need to be using ad formats that are mobile friendly OK whether it’s mobile friendly video whether it’s a canvas ad which you can build engagement audiences off of. Maybe it’s a collection at if you’re doing if you have products and so forth whatever you’re doing on that one Facebook make sure that you have a mobile friendly ad ad units. OK ad formats. All right now where I talked about before as far as once we.

[00:04:41] OK so now we understand mobile once we get into the thinking about how we’re going to be planning our strategy around holiday marketing it’s important understand there’s two phases that consumers go through during this holiday season and that first phase is that consideration phase okay during this phase you need to be gaining trust. And this is where you’re showing your products in action you know demonstrations or whatever. And again this is sort of before we get into the conversion phase which is Black Friday and Cyber Monday. All right. And so after October 31st after the end of one’s Halloween hits here in the States there’s a lot more consideration going on. OK. And knowing this mindset of the consumer and how it develops allows you to present them with the most meaningful ads at the right time. So understanding that between the end of October and the end of November essentially until we hit Black Friday and Cyber Monday they’re in that consideration phase. OK. So consumers are looking for products or doing research there. They’re starting to shop around to see what’s out there. And so this is a good time for you if you are advertising your products and services on Facebook during this time to understand this so that you can present them the right type of ads during this time maybe focusing on testimonials for your products demonstrations of your products maybe it’s videos or carrousel ads showing different types of products that you have. OK so again all with the mobile ad format in mind. Then once we move into the end of November around Black Friday and Cyber Monday around Thanksgiving here in the states that’s where people are comparing prices. They’re checking out their competitors. And you’ve got to be ready to present your offers for sale. Right. So be prepared with irresistible offers that your consumers can not pass up.

[00:06:42] OK so once we hit that point of the end of November once we hit Thanksgiving here in the States through the end of the year that’s where people are really starting to move into comparing prices hardcore checking out competitors and so forth and looking at the different offers so that they can purchase right then and there. Now speaking of purchasing There are some things to consider when we’re talking about the different types of audiences out there that we are reaching and the two audiences I want to talk about right now are the parents and the Millennials. OK. They’re both mobile shoppers and they’re researching on mobile. They’re also comparing products. OK I told you there was a theme here when it comes to what we’re talking about as far as holiday marketing and that is the that is the mobile device so they’re comparing products they’re ordering online and picking up in the store they’re looking for free gifts with purchase. They’re doing like price matching looking for coupons and they’re also really expecting very good customer service. OK. So this is another thing how can we be leveraging Facebook advertising maybe messenger for example on the mobile device to be providing that customer service that people are really expecting these days. OK. Now when we get into the Gen X audience they’re either buying on desktop or in-store and these are a lot of stats that that I’ve actually gotten directly from Facebook that they’ve been tracking over this over this year and in the past holiday seasons. OK. So understanding this buying behavior will help you with the type of ads and the type of offers that you are making with your ads.

[00:08:26] Now again Gen-X is either buying on desktop or in-store while the millennial audience is either purchasing on mobile or in store. And based on who you are targeting I want you to use this information determine what types of ad formats and placements and devices that you want to be advertising on. OK. Based on this target audience information that we are talking about here so who are you. Who is your ideal audience. And then based on that knowing these buying behaviors so that you can be presenting them with the right type of ad and the right type of offer at the right time. OK. So let’s talk about some best practices here. When it comes to Black Friday. So right after Thanksgiving here in the states make sure if you’re going to be running a Black Friday campaign make sure that you schedule it out in advance to ensure that it gets approved by Facebook because Facebook has come out and said that approval process could be slow if you were trying to do something last minute to get a campaign out on Black Friday. So don’t wait until the last minute. OK. We remember when we submit are ads for approval on Facebook. It’s sort of a two way it’s an algorithmic immediate sort of automated approval of your you know review of your ads and approval. But then don’t forget people are actually looking at your ads and approving them as well. So because of that the approval process could be slow if you are waiting to the last minute to get something out on Black Friday. OK.

[00:10:05] Now another best practice after Christmas this is when we have to remember again we’re going back to the mindset of consumers and their behavior. This is when all the special deals become available. Right after after Christmas they’re looking for additional maybe that you know people can get stuff that they wanted or whatever during Christmas. So they’re looking for special deals during this time and this is where when a lot of businesses have these special offers So what can you be doing to create special offers during this time during after after Christmas and then during this entire marketing holiday marketing period you want to make sure that you’re creating these custom audiences so people who are going through your checkout process people who are becoming buyers right. And people who are watching your videos anytime that we’re creating these custom audiences we can then create look like audiences of those people and we can also if people are buying from you let’s just say they’re buying from you on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Then you can go ahead and retarget them later. Maybe after Christmas or right around Christmas with additional deals to purchase. Right. So you can target them with additional offers. Now another big thing that I really want to cover before we wrap this up here is I’ve been getting this question a lot especially lately and people are asking is pricing going up is it costing me more to advertise on on Facebook. Well yes it is. The pricing has been going up the cost has been going up for the past couple of years. Right. But it’s never more expensive on the platform than during the during the holiday season. Right.

[00:11:54] I mean unless we’re talking about election period or whatever but during the holiday time. Absolutely. Expect higher prices. OK. Ads are going to be more expensive more expensive because of the immense competition that is going to be on Facebook during the holiday season. OK. So what is the more competition mean. What does that hyper competition mean. Well that means you’ve got to have a higher budget. You’ve got to be willing to spend more so that you can be winning the auctions on Facebook what do I mean by the auctions. Well Facebook is an is an auction based platform right. We are bidding against other advertisers on there who are trying to reach the same audiences that we’re trying to reach. So if you go in with a low but a low daily budget against a specific target audience and then somebody else wants to target that same audience as well and they have a much higher budget than you do. Well they’re going to win that auction. OK. That’s just very simplified terms here. So you have to remember that during the holiday season again this is regardless of whether you are actually advertising you know specific products or whatever to take advantage of the holiday season or if you’re just advertising during this time for your business and it’s not even holiday based expect higher cost expect higher competition and be ready to spend a higher budget.

[00:13:16] And my recommendation here is and I this is kind of crazy to be thinking about here but if you’re looking for a convert if you’re trying to do conversion ads I would try to I would be trying to think about doubling your budget if you’re doing app installs for example tripling your budget. Be ready for this type of increase in the necessary budget to have success on the platform during this time. Okay. So I just want to share these things with you short episode here for you for those of you who are going to be advertising on the platform pretty much between now and the end of the year. Hopefully you’ve already thought through these things but because we are in it now we are crazily enough we are in the holiday season pretty much now through the end of the year. So if you’ve not yet thought through this or maybe you already have you know a plan in place for your holiday marketing and you and some of this information has been eye opening for you. And you decided that that you’re to use this information to improve your current campaigns. Awesome. But if you have not yet you know set up your strategy here take this information to account. I’m going to have this this up over on the show notes page for today’s episode which is Rick Mulready dot com forward slash 1:59 I’ll have all this information up there for you so that you can review it as well. So I do hope this was helpful for you and thank you again as always so much for hanging out today really appreciate the fact that you’re giving me your attention later this week. I’ve got another episode coming up. This one is going to be with the one and only Noah Kagin. No it was one of the first employees at Facebook who’s also a very early employee at Mint.com.

[00:15:03] He’s also the founder of app sumo sumo Mediacom really really fun conversation with no one we talk about we talk about Facebook advertising we talk about online marketing in general we talk about how he’s marketing his businesses online. And he’s also good at. He’s got kind of a different thought process when it comes to Facebook advertising right now which mates might surprise you. Even though he’s average rising quite a bit on Facebook he’s got some different thoughts that I think are going to be really interesting for you to hear. And that episode is coming up later this week really looking forward to sharing that.

[00:15:38] With you. So until then my friends keep testing your paid traffic to find out what works for you and your business. And then more of what’s working and I’ll see you in the next episode.