By Rachel Zalta and Gal Salomon
The holidays are big business for retail and eCommerce—adding Taboola to your ad campaign mix this season is your best bet for success. This is part two of our holiday series; to see our recommendations for planning your holiday campaign with Taboola, start here.
The creatives for your holiday campaign can make or break your success—and this is a crucial time of year to get it right.
According to eMarketer, November and December will account for 23.6% of all commerce sales in 2017. Mobile ecommerce is expected to grow by 38% to account for 34.5% of all ecommerce sales in 2017.
The growth in online sales this year is just another reason to diversify your holiday media mix. These are our creative recommendations for building the biggest, baddest holiday campaign out there.
The Ultimate Holiday Marketing Playbook (Broken Down by 11 Industries)
Create a holiday landing page that converts.
The landing page you use for your holiday campaign is half the battle—this is where you’ll convince your visitor that they need your product.
- If there’s content on your page, it should inform first and sell second.
- If you’re sending users to a product landing page, there should be multiple options for them to convert.
- Don’t focus on multiple actions, it should be clear the one thing you want users to do.
- If the product is personalized, gamification is best.
In one case, we saw a fashion retailer increase their mobile leads by 960% with a gamified funnel.
Bombfell sees 960% increase in mobile conversions.
Bombfell, a personal clothing service for men, saw immense success on a mobile platform with a gamified funnel. People visited Bombfell’s landing page and were greeted with a gamified form that took them through a personalized clothing recommendation journey, before asking them to subscribe to the service at the end.
Once your landing page is complete, the ad creatives are the next step. Set yourself up for success with our recommendations for campaign size and creative direction.
How many ad creatives do you need?
Running one creative, or combination of photo and headline, isn’t going to cut it. You need several creatives to best optimize your campaign as it runs—but just how many is several?
Our research shows that globally, across the gamut of verticals, the best performing number of ad creatives for a campaign is seven. Campaigns with 11 creatives did second best, while those with 14 did third best.
When we dive into specific verticals, the best performing amount of creatives varies. Test the amount of creatives for your vertical to optimize your campaign as it runs.
- Autos: 26
- Entertainment: 2
- Food: 2
- Lifestyle: 7
- Beauty: 29
- Family: 16
- Gambling: 5
- Pets: 1
- Business: 21
- Fashion: 12
- Health: 9
- Sports: 1
- Dating: 13
- Fitness: 2
- Home: 5
- Tech: 27
- Education: 20
- Finance: 22
- Investment: 17
- Travel: 27
As we said above, the number of creatives is indicative of the number of headline and image combinations. So, for example, if the recommended number of creatives for your vertical is 15, you’ll want to write 5 headlines and select 3 images at the start.
You can then mix and match these headline and image combinations for a set of 15 different creatives to test and optimize.
What should your creatives look like?
Image and headline trends change all the time—you can track these changes at trends.taboola.com, a destination that’s updated weekly for marketers. We’ve created a tab specifically for holiday insights that make recommendations based on data from the 2016 holiday season.
There are some notable trends for both images and headline keywords that stand out:
- Use Images with people during the holiday season—they have an 88% higher CTR, versus only 35% this week.
- Don’t use images with food during the holiday season—the CTR for images without food is 45% higher during the holiday season then now.
- Use images with animals during the holiday season—the CTR for images with animals is 65% higher CTR during the holidays and this week.
We also took a look at some trends in the US, UK and France:
- US and UK fashion marketers should use the keyword “Free” in their headlines during the holidays.
- UK marketers should use images of women—the CTR in the UK is 85% higher, with no difference between men and women in the US.
- French marketers should use images of people taken outside—the CTR is 52% higher during the holiday season.
- UK marketers should use images of people taken inside—the CTR is 9% higher during the holiday season.
- For UK marketers targeting french people in the UK, the uplift in images take outside still holds—the CTR is still 66% higher for images of people taken outside.
There are two main keys to creating the best ads possible for your holiday campaign—test them early for success and play on holiday themes. Being specific about your holiday offers will help qualify people as they move forward in their buyer journey.
Once you’ve built your suite of creatives, the next step is to set up and execute your campaign.