How to Make Your Marketing Ads Stand Out Amongst Holiday Campaigns

The holidays are a busy time for everyone – especially when it comes to holiday advertising! Everyone knows that the holidays are a big shopping season, with consumers predicted to spend an average of $1,430 on gifts, travel, and entertainment this year (PWC.com). With businesses putting out their holiday ads in droves, trying to compete in this sea of advertisements can be difficult. How do you stand out from your competitors and cut through the noise of ads that are constantly bombarding your customers?

Thankfully, our marketing experts here at Envision Creative have created this blog just for you! We break down some of the best ways to make your holiday ads and marketing efforts stand out amongst the competition and reach your audience effectively. Keep reading for some of our top recommended holiday (& non-holiday) marketing tips and tricks!

Understand Your Audience

It’s important to understand your audience in every type of marketing, but it can be one of the most important aspects when running paid ads (digital & print). This comes into play in two essential parts of advertising:

• First, is creating the target audience for the ad itself. This means that the ad will be shown to the audience you choose. You can set demographics, location, interests, and more when creating an audience for your ad. If you need help determining your target customers, check out our Free download, “How To Create Accurate Buyer Personas,” to get started. 
• The second is creating content that will resonate with your target audience. It’s important to create ad copy and visuals that will work best with your brand and the product or service that you’re advertising, but that will also simultaneously engage your audience and entice them to click on your ad. 

Know Your Value Proposition

We always say to our clients that you know your customer the best, however, when it comes to creating a marketing campaign ad, you must think from the end user’s point of view. You may know why your product or service is amazing, but getting your audience to realize the same thing can be tricky. Knowing your value proposition, and communicating that clearly within your ads can go a long way towards increasing engagement, like clicks on your ads. Keep in mind that the different products or services your business offers will most likely have different value propositions from each other – this is true for 52% of companies. Talk about the benefits your product or service holds for your customers, and what they can gain by purchasing it. Does it solve a big problem in their lives? Will it work better than your competitor’s? Ask yourself questions like these and see what you come up with.

Another item to discuss within your ads is what deals, specials, or sales you may be having. About 93% of shoppers will use a coupon or discount code throughout the year, so it’s a very good thing to talk about if your business offers something like this. In today’s economy, people are looking for the best bang for their buck – especially when it comes to holiday shopping! If you have any enticing ways to save your customers money, talk about them! It may be the deciding factor when your customer is deciding between you and a competitor.

Create Engaging Content

You may have an ad that’s technically perfect (by metrics) and optimized, but if the content itself doesn’t engage your audience, it could end up being ineffective. Consumers want to see content that is relevant to their lives, but that is also informational, visually appealing, and even entertaining! Writing copy that features strong call to action (CTAs), with snappy language that draws your customers in will help in a big way to gain more ad engagement.

The visuals you use in your ad are just as important. Use images that are of high quality, employ strong design elements, and can be informative for your audience. If you use text in your visuals, don’t make it too small, and don’t use too much of it. Video can also be a great way to include more content in your ad, and many platforms – like Facebook and Instagram – are pushing video in a big way. Forbes tells us that 64% of social media users are more likely to purchase a product after seeing a video about it.

Think Outside the Box

Sometimes there are other tactics that don’t fall under your normal advertising plan. This could be anything from creating geofenced ads (ads that show up when someone enters a physical geographic space set by your business) or creating personalized emails thanking your customers for their loyalty and continued patronage. Social media is a great, often low-cost way to advertise your businesses to your audience, and there are many strategies and platforms to choose from. In fact, 87% of Gen Z shoppers look at platforms like TikTok and Instagram for holiday shopping inspiration. Get creative with how you can advertise to your audience in ways that will grab their attention. 

Best Practices

Digital advertising can increase brand awareness by 80%, so you’ll want to be sure that you are creating ads that adhere to the best practices laid out for each platform. Pay attention to things like character limit and the size that your visuals need to be in order to display correctly. Ads that follow only some best practices run the risk of low performance or the appearance of being unprofessional. This can affect your ROI, and mean that you are paying for ads that cannot reach their full potential against the optimized ads of your competitors. 

Someone who is familiar with the best practices of each platform you intend to use for advertising, and who stays on top of updates and current trends will be a great help if you feel overwhelmed. Those on our team of Marketing Experts have deep knowledge of Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, and more, and are always up-to-date on the latest ad trends. We hope that these strategies have helped you to understand how your ads can cut through the noise of all the other holiday ads out there!

Advertising during this time of year is important as it is a key shopping time of year for consumers. However, we understand that the holidays are busy for everyone, and some businesses simply can’t find the time to overhaul their advertising strategy alone. If you’re one of those businesses, Envision Creative can assist you with any of your advertising needs, as well as other marketing tactics like email, social media, and more! Contact us today! We’d love to help you reposition your marketing strategy for success!