It is officially fall! For most people, it means leaves changing colour, pumpkin spice lattes and cozy sweaters. For retailers, fall is the most crucial time of the year to plan for the fast approaching Holiday season.

Content planning should not be rushed. There is still time to develop key strategies to win on Facebook this Holiday season. Here’s how:

Step 1: Define your Audience Segments

Before developing content, take a step back and define the audiences you wish to target. In this instance, you should have at least three audience segments:

Loyal Customers

These are people who have purchased your products in the past. They are the most relevant audience and will likely respond positively to the content you produce.

This audience is created in Power Editor via Custom Audiences. Once you have a pixel on your site, create an audience from people who have purchased your products online in the past year. If you have a customer database, this can also be uploaded to Facebook Audiences and layered into this audience.

Brand Fans

These are people who have visited your website, engaged with your content, completed your videos and/or visited your store. They have an evident interest in your brand/content. This audience is a Saved Audience layering multiple Custom Audiences together. You can create these in Power Editor.

Prospecting Audience

These are people on Facebook who are similar to your purchase audience but have never visited your website. First, create a look-a-like audience from people who have made a purchase on your website. Tip: Use Advanced Options to create a percentage range that you can alter to get an estimated audience size. (See image)

Once this is complete, create a Saved Audience and include your look-a-like audience. Make sure to exclude all of the custom audiences from the Loyal Customers and Brand Fans audiences.

Step 2: Planning Content

As the Holidays approach, advertisers usually alter their ad copy. For instance, words like “Last Minute Gift Ideas” are used to prey on individuals who left shopping to the last minute. Yes, timing does play a big factor in content planning, however, you should not have a “catch-all” strategy if you want to get ahead of your competition at the most important time of the year.

Start planning content for each audience segment for the awareness, consideration and conversion phases.

Awareness Phase (Late October/Early November)

Loyal Customers
Develop content around new products for the Holiday season. Create a collection or a canvas unit keeping users within the platform allowing them to explore content without forcing a specific action. The language used for the copy should be more personal to them as they are your key audience.

Example of a collections unit

Brand Fans
These audiences have already shown that they have an interest in your brand. When creating content for this phase, focus on predicted best-sellers for the Holidays. Develop video content or a canvas and showcase these products in a setting that will inspire this audience. The copy should speak about your brand and products in a way that is familiar to audiences. They have interacted with your content in the past so avoid anything too vague or off-brand.

Example of a Canvas Unit

Prospecting Audience
This audience is more than likely a net-new audience for you to target. In the awareness phase it is crucial to not focus heavily on driving an action. Imagine this audience as reactive, not proactive. Develop vertical video content to drive awareness about your products and target mobile-only as mobile creates far more discovery outlets to individuals in a day vs desktop. The copy used should be minimal as the sole focus will be on the video content. Tip: Vertical videos also increase user engagement 

Consideration Phase (Mid November)

Loyal Customers and Brand Fans
As you are moving these audiences further down the funnel, create separate custom audiences from people who have engaged with the canvas, collection or video content used in the Awareness phase. Create a Traffic carousel of the most popular products from these units and target these to the two separate audiences and alter your copy accordingly.

Prospecting Audience
Following the Awareness Phase, create a custom audience from the people who viewed the video. Retarget this audience with the pre-existing canvas or collection unit used to target Brand Fans in the Awareness phase. The aim is to encourage this audience to discover the products within the platform.

Conversion Phase (Late November/Early December)

Loyal Customers and Brands Fans
If you have a Product Catalog set-up, using Dynamic Product Ads to convert these audiences. Segment them at ad set level and alter your copy to drive the conversion. At ad set level, layer your custom audiences created in the consideration phase. (See image below)

Prospecting Audience
Set up a Carousel ad using the Conversion objective and optimize towards the Purchase event. Use copy that will resonate with them and encourage them to visit your website for the first time. These carousel ads can mirror those that were used in the consideration phase for your Loyal Customers and Brand Fans.

Using this strategy of audience segmentation, copy and content alteration you’re all set to dominate on Facebook this Holiday season. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. 

Quick Hot Tip: Categorize your content

Create a canvas or collections unit and categorize your content into buying guides for specific people. For instance, if you have items that would be perfect gifts for kids, put these items together into a collections or canvas unit and target parents.