Winning Q4: Paid media strategies to maximise ROI

For many advertisers, Q4 is the most important period of the year. It can make or break your annual performance report, and set the tone for the following year - not to mention budgets and key resources. Success starts with early planning, driven by insights that turn historical performance data into winning creatives. This is the roadmap to achieving and sustaining peak performance in Q4.

Research and planning for Q4 success

Peak planning means you set clear goals and objectives for every stage of your Q4 strategy, and you achieve them.The thing is, setting goals that are both achievable and ambitious enough is tricky, especially when Q4 performance is remarkably volatile. You need to know what success looks like this year and plan accordingly.

Year-on-year trend analysis

Year-on-year (YoY) trend analysis compares Q4 patterns from previous years. It helps you understand why performance fluctuates annually, so you can forecast outcomes for this year. Ultimately, you want to identify the variables that impact performance outside of your control:

• Economic climate: What economic factors are affecting consumer habits, and how could they impact performance in Q4?

• Consumer spending: What does consumer spending look like heading into Q4, and how could it impact your goals/outcomes?

• Consumer attitudes: What are the standout consumer attitudes this year – are they going greener, treating loved ones, buying experiences over products, etc?

• Seasonal trends: What are the most popular products, styles, and other trends that could affect interest and sales?

• Demand analysis: How strong is overall demand for your products/services vs. Q4 averages?

This analysis helps you predict outcomes for Q4 this year and set appropriate targets.

If demand is trending up, you can increase budgets and stock levels for your most popular products. If consumer spending is down, you might need to reassess your target audience’s priorities.

Audience insights

Once you have a solid picture of general consumer and industry trends, dive deep into audience insights. Don’t assume your ideal customer types are simply following the crowd. Analyse their behaviours, compare them to previous years, and map them out against the current trends. What are your audiences doing differently this year? Are they following trends, bucking them, or somewhere in between?

Also, dig deep into customer data to identify patterns and anomalies from previous years. Look for any behavioural differences in new customers that should inform your strategy this year: avg. CPAs, avg. purchase value, shifts in product popularity, different product combinations, etc. Pay close attention to your oldest and most active customers, too. Does their activity in the build-up to Q4 closely align with yearly averages, or do they show any new behaviours that you need to respond to?

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis for Q4 has two key phases: the planning phase, plus ongoing analysis throughout Q4 to inform your creative strategy.

1. The planning phase: Review your competitors’ historical offers, their best creatives, and forecast their prospects for Q4 this year – who are your strongest and closest competitors, and what will it take to achieve your goals this year?

2. Ongoing competitor analysis: Track your competitors throughout Q4, analyse their best creatives and offers, then feed these insights into your own creative strategy.

In phase one, you’re sizing up the competition to make sure you know what you’re up against.

In phase two, you’re tracking competitor creatives and campaigns in real-time to see what works, what doesn’t, how audiences respond, etc. - and to identify creative ideas or inspiration to test for yourself.

Turning insight into paid media goals for Q4

By using data to set ambitious, achievable goals for Q4, you can set specific targets for every month, key events, channel, and platform in as much detail as possible:

• Revenue targets

• Return on ad spend (ROAS)

• Cost-per-acquisition (CPA)

• Average order value (AOV)

• Conversion rates

• Click-through rate (CTR)

• Impression share

• Cart abandonment rate

• Retention rate

Apply trend, audience, and competitor analysis to set your KPIs – eg: revenue targets. Then, you can set out the performance objectives required to achieve them. For example, you can predict sales volumes for different product categories (top sellers, most profitable, etc.) throughout Q4, based on historical performance and seasonal trend analysis.

Now, you can set revenue targets for each product category for each month and every key event (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.), along with target ROAS, CPAs, conversion rates, and everything else. Piece all of this together, and you can calculate the budget required to achieve your Q4 goals – and how to allocate it.

Paid media audit: are you in shape for peak performance?

A paid media audit analyses the performance and technical shape of your strategy, campaigns, and assets. You’ve set your revenue targets, plus the conversion rates and other performance objectives required to reach them. Now, it’s time to make sure your paid media strategy is in prime health, to give you every chance of achieving your goals.

1. Audience reach and targeting

• Are you reaching the right audiences across all platforms?

• Do impressions and engagement levels on each platform support your goals and objectives?

2. Account health and performance

• Analyse the overall health performance of each advertising account

• Check quality scores and equivalent ratings across accounts

• Evaluate the profitability of each platform and campaign: revenue, ROAS, CPA, etc.

  
  

3. Website audit

• Review UX and technical performance

• Monitor page speed and loading times (images, video, etc.)

• Check website and landing page conversion rates

• Check cart abandonment rates

4. Product feed analysis

• Check the overall health of product feeds for each platform

• Identify any gaps in product data

• Evaluate the quality and consistency of product photos

• Review product titles, descriptions, and other assets for quality and consistency

• Ensure all pricing information is accurate and up-to-date

5. Logistics review

• Do you have the right stock and supply levels in place?

• Do you have sufficient customer support in place?

• Are your delivery services ready to handle a surge in demand?

• Are you ready to handle a surge in demand, should projections fall short?

This audit is your final check that everything is in place to achieve peak performance, and address any technical issues that could prevent campaigns from fulfilling their potential.

Ramping up creative production

Research and planning put you in a good place to achieve peak performance, but your campaigns and ad creatives ultimately have to deliver. Creative production is the key driver of paid media performance. Across £140M in paid search and social, we see a strong correlation between ad spend and the volume of new creatives.

Brands that outperform their paid media rivals in Q4 consistently share the same characteristics:

1. Produce a high volume of creatives

2. Quickly identify top-performing creatives

3. Test variations of top-performers to maximise performance

The thing is, peak performance for new creatives only lasts a few weeks. This means you have to ramp up creative production, so you can refresh campaign creatives every 1-2 weeks and sustain peak performance. That’s a demanding creative production cycle for the busiest consumer period of the year. You can only reach this level of creative production by applying data to an ongoing cycle of research, analysis, and testing.

This feeds consistent inspiration for new creative ideas. Meanwhile, you track performance, identify your top-performing creatives, and test variations to max out performance. Most of this analysis is automated and you can speed up manual analysis tasks with AI. You can ask tools to summarise insights, generate data visualisations, analyse competitor creatives, and plenty more.

Learn more about how we do this by applying data to creative production.

Are you ready for peak performance in Q4?

Our paid media teams are ready to help you plan for peak performance in Q4. Leave us your details and our team will get back to you, or take a look at our paid media services for more info.