Performance marketing campaigns have a lot in common with stock trading.
Before focusing on paid advertising, I worked for some time as a trader and I remember it as one of the most stressful periods of my life. Both activities are evaluated by results – things go right or go wrong. There are no half measures.
Either you make money with your advertising, or you lose. Either you make money with your trade, or you lose.
Now, let’s discuss the topic of seasonality and how it affects performance marketing campaigns.
We have been working with this amazing female-focused supplement brand since early Q4 of 2022, and we had a lot of challenges to face. However, was just around the corner, and we were able to leverage this period with very good results (way better than the previous year).
Then it came December. People don’t make fit decisions during holidays.
You can’t expect sales at a time of the year when people don’t use or want your product. This is thy why fashion brands run off-season sales, for example.
Product demand has the greatest impact on your conversion rate.
You should take this into consideration and plan your strategy accordingly. We decided, together with the brand owner, to reduce the budget for the month.
First takeaway: take seasonality into consideration when you plan your budget.
To compensate for the lower demand, we launched a series of promotions, but not all of them yielded the desired results. Promos are a great way to make up for a lower conversion rate during this time, but they might not be enough.
Then January came, and we all know about New Year’s resolutions: people want to get back on track after eating more than usual, so it’s a good time for the brand. We started the new year with a promo, but then we realized that sales from evergreen campaigns were not going as expected.
This is when we decided to focus on a specific product, a fat burner. We could see from both the business data from the past year and from Google Trends, that this is the right time of the year to push this product so we launched a series of new creatives leveraging this angle.
The strategy paid off.
Now, please forget about the RoAS. It’s not the topic of the day and we all know how unreliable this KPI is if you track it through the ads manager.
It’s about planning and budget allocation. Here are today’s takeaways:
- The #1 driver of your sales is customers’ demand
- If your niche is seasonal, take this into consideration when when developing your strategy and media buying plan
- Promos are not always enough to make up for low demand in certain times of the year
If your business has historical sales data, use them together with Google Trends to understand high-low demand periods. If the business is new or doesn’t have enough history, then Google Trends is your best option.
Shout out to Artur (media buyer), Ale (project manager) and our amazing lead designer Mimi who worked all together to achieve these results.
Until the next time.
Luca
