Christmas is the season for giving, and what better way to spread holiday cheer than by boosting your Christmas sales? Recently, we got the chance to collaborate with our friends at Big Spy to deliver an exciting webinar on this year’s latest consumer trends and accurate ad tracking.
We covered some pretty big ground, including the latest 2023 consumer trends, some e-commerce industry insights, and how to utilize accurate tracking to drive sales and business growth. We also took our time to analyze some good ad ideas, while also pointing out the 5 most pressing challenges businesses will face during their ad tracking process. There was also a thorough demonstration of how NestAds can help advertisers navigate the challenges of inaccurate ad tracking. Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? Now, let’s dive into the event’s key highlights!
Table of Contents
Some webinar key highlights
The webinar unfolds in two captivating segments. First up, we took a look at the vibrant consumer trends shaping 2023 and discussed some brilliant marketing ideas for this festive season. Once we’ve got our inspirations for the ad campaigns, we seamlessly transitioned into the second half – the importance of ad tracking. From unraveling the top metric KPIs to unveiling insightful measurement methods, we navigated the challenges of the ad tracking process and zoomed in on the top-performing channels and campaigns. Ready to uncover the key highlights from our webinar? Let’s dive in!
How to boost sales with the latest consumer trends for Christmas?
Christmas – one of the year’s biggest shopping events, presents ample opportunities for brands to drive engagement & sales. However, running a successful ad campaign isn’t just about spending a lot of money and expecting your ads will yield positive results. It’s also important to make sure that your campaign objective & key message resonate with the customers’ needs. And for this to happen, you need to do thorough research on both the market and your target audience beforehand. Here’s what we discovered.
Latest consumer trends
Unsurprisingly, price & discounts rank among customers’ main drivers to buy. According to data from Brandwatch Research, between the 5 months from June 1st to November 22nd, 2022, there were 400 thousand searches related to Christmas shopping and discounts, 9% higher than that of the previous year. Thus, price still significantly influences customers’ decision to buy. Additionally, consumers are displaying a shift towards local shopping in support of small businesses. Regarding this season’s hottest products, Christmas presents, clothing, books, and consumer tech are taking top places. Lastly, take note of one pro tip from us: Target the 25 – 34 year old customer groups for maximum impact.
Customers’ Christmas preferences
As we have mentioned earlier, price is still a huge influence on customers’ purchase decisions. Along with that, the up-and-coming social media platform – TikTok, is emerging as not only a space for short video-based entertainment but also a promising online marketplace for young people. With this insight in mind, brands should leverage this exciting platform to connect with a wider group of audience.
Christmas marketing ideas
To make your products stand out from the rest of the competitors, consider blending Christmas elements seamlessly within your products or the packaging. Position your offerings as delightful Christmas gifts that spread joy and warmth. Additionally, you should leverage Christmas-themed user-generated content (UGC) in your advertising campaigns. This not only adds a festive vibe to your content but also increases your brand’s credibility, creating a more authentic and engaging connection with your audience.
How to measure ad performance & optimize your ad campaign?
Once we’ve done our research and settled on a few advertising ideas, it’s now time to create & run your ad campaign. However, your job doesn’t stop there, as you also have to closely monitor & optimize them to gain valuable insights and impactful results. This leads us to the second half of the webinar – a complete guide on how to navigate ad measurement & optimization.
Top advertising KPIs
Generally, there is a list of popular metrics that all advertisers should keep an eye on when running ad campaigns. These include 6 metrics: CTR, ROAS, CPM, Frequency, Amount spent, and CPP. However, tracking all of them at once might not be such a good idea. It is actually better to measure different sets of metrics for different phases of your ad campaign. For the testing phase where you’re identifying winning ads, focus on CTR and ROAS. Meanwhile, for the scaling phase where you’re trying to maximize your results, shift your attention to CPM, Frequency, Amount spent, and CPP. Looking into these strategic metric KPIs will help brands gain insights into the customer journey, as well as the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.
Ad performance measurement
Leveraging built-in analytics tools like Facebook Ads Manager or Google Ads Manager and external analytics tools like NestAds are among the 2 most popular methods to measure your ad performance. About the first option, the best part about using built-in analytics tools is that they’re usually free of charge. Another advantage is their ability to automatically sync data from the corresponding advertising platforms in mere seconds. The whole setup is also quite easy, with only one trickier part being the platform pixel. But once you’ve figured it out, it should be a breeze. However, if you run ads on more than one platform or have more advanced tracking requirements, then the other method might be a better option.
Challenges in ad performance tracking
So, now that you’ve got an analytics tool, what’s left to worry about? Well, data tracking & analyzing isn’t always that straightforward, and there are many challenges businesses might face throughout the process. These include:
- Delays in real-time data: From a couple of hours to a couple of days, real-time data delay will certainly hinder business sales & growth.
- Tracking blockage issues: iOS 14, iOS 17 and Google’s 3rd cookies phase-out are only 3 among the many data-privacy policies that have already and will continue to block tracking access across the web.
- Marketing attribution issues: Restricted marketing attribution models and attribution windows might result in incorrect tracking and wasted budget allocation.
- Multi-platform issues: Ad performance monitoring across multiple advertising dashboards is complicated, time-consuming, and ineffective.
- Tracking code issues: The setup is difficult and usually requires a lot of resources and technical expertise to complete.
For businesses to run impactful ad campaigns and drive growth, these challenges must be addressed. But how can we do this?
External analytics tools
Despite sounding so intimidating, conquering these challenges is indeed possible, and the key lies in employing external analytics tools. Not only are they completely unaffected by tracking blockage policies like iOS14, iOS17 or Google’s 3rd-party cookies deprecation, but they also offer the assurance that customer data remains secure and intact, safe from accidental erasure or loss. Not to mention, these tools will help you centralize all cross-channel performance data into a unified dashboard, simplifying the data monitoring process. At the same time, we can’t forget its ability to update real-time data, unlike other built-in analytics platforms. And the most exciting part? No technical expertise is required to set up tracking. All is done within a few clicks to sync data from your advertising channels to the analytics tools. This approach combines simplicity with convenience, offering an effective solution to navigate these challenges
How to determine the top-performing campaigns
Once we’ve settled on an analytics platform, whether built-in or external, our next step is to determine the top-performing channels and campaigns. This way, we can allocate an appropriate budget to the high-performing touchpoint and scale up our winning campaigns.
Afterward, we gave a demonstration via a demo of how NestAds can help businesses navigate through the challenges of ad tracking.
Conclusion
Through the webinar, NestScale and BigSpy have walked viewers through the latest Christmas consumer trends, as well as the complete advertising process. From the early stages of seeking ad idea inspirations to the complex ad performance analysis, we’ve unraveled the factors shaping customers’ purchasing decisions. The ultimate takeaway echoes loudly: data is King. It not only directs decisions but also molds creative strategies, elevating advertising ventures to new heights. In the fiercely competitive online market, success means embracing the exceptional power of data.
Webinar recording & NestAds Demo
In case you couldn’t make it to the live webinar, we’ve got your back! The recording will soon be available in our Resource page for you to check out. And feel free to leave us any questions or feedback in the comment section.
If you want to experience the NestAds demo, sign up to try it out yourself. Explore how you can level up your ad tracking & analysis in just a few clicks. And it’s completely free too!
