Seize the Opportunity Valleys
Capture sales post-holiday and at key moments throughout the year
As performance marketing experts, we pour over charts and datasets every day to determine how we can efficiently drive sales for our clients. While every brand is unique, we’ve noticed some overarching trends after crunching the numbers all these years.
We’ve identified what we call Opportunity Valleys: moments when digital advertising costs decline while market demand remains elevated. These Opportunity Valleys often precede or follow holidays or other large seasonal events associated with consumer spending.
During these times, fewer competitors are spending big, consumers are still motivated, and this environment presents a unique opportunity for brands to efficiently capitalize on the momentum.
Identifying The Year's Peaks and Valleys
We look to CPMs (cost per mille, or the cost of 1,000 ad impressions) as a barometer for competition in the digital ad market. The fluctuations in the graph below represent annual revenue trends — but also CPMs. For marketers, the “peaks” like Memorial Day or Black Friday are pay-to-play, and the price isn’t cheap. However, driving demand during less competitive times — the “valleys” — is likely to yield a strong return.
Many brands put the majority of their efforts toward the peak sales opportunities in their industry. For example, an outdoor furniture company might build their entire calendar around Memorial Day weekend, preparing for the holiday all year, and spending a large amount of their ad dollars within that short window.
This makes enough sense. However, it doesn’t optimize year-round revenue, because this peak-centric strategy only focuses on sales growth while the marketplace is most expensive.
As you can see in the graph above, there are several Opportunity Valleys throughout the year. The biggest ones occur after the Christmas holiday and again in the middle of summer, however, there may be additional opportunities more specific to your brand and product type.
Picking Your Moment
Q5 & January: take down the lights, keep up the ads
Come January 2, you may take down the Christmas tree, return some ill-suited gifts, and start to lay off the sweets. Fair enough. But if you’re an e-commerce brand who’s been marketing like crazy all of Q4, don’t take your foot completely off the gas pedal.
Why not? During Q5 — or the period after Christmas and into January of the New Year — ad costs decrease while shoppers remain actively engaged.
Try the following tactics in Q5's Opportunity Valley:
— Appeal to gift card shoppers and retarget them to convert new customers into repeat purchasers.
— Promote year-end sales to your brand loyalists, first-time Q4 shoppers, and gift card newcomers. And don’t forget, these sales can catch the eyes of customers exchanging and returning gifts.
— Connect your brand to New Year’s resolution themes. This isn’t just for the dieting and fitness products; consider what elements of your brand play into overall wellness and goal setting.
— Refresh content to help last year’s shoppers overcome ad fatigue and engage new audiences.
July & August: make it about you
The middle of the summer is notoriously slow for e-comm brands–customers are on vacation, brands are taking a beat before the Q4 rush, and there isn’t a whole lot of promotional urgency following July 4th. We get it, everyone needs a break and summer seems like the perfect time.
But resist the urge to put things on autopilot. This is an excellent time to drum up artificial demand with a moment entirely of your making!
Here’s a few thoughts to get you started:
— Create a branded holiday to tell the story behind the product and drive incremental sales. You don’t need to be an Amazon or Nordstrom to create a moment dedicated specifically to celebrating your brand (and your customers)!
— Consider launching strategic partnerships to create buzz around your brand. Been talking with a TikTok creator about a potential collab? Now’s the time to run it!
— Launch a giveaway to drive leads and reach new people that are unfamiliar with your brand. This new list of potential buyers can then be used to augment your Q4 email marketing efforts.
October: test, learn, and fill the holiday funnel
Every Q4 involves so much build up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And while they’re absolutely critical marketing holidays, the weeks before offer many lower-cost conversion possibilities that could be overlooked while all eyes are on late November.
During the month of October, put your brand in the best possible position for the holidays while driving additional revenue.
Here’s how:
— Engage with new customers while costs and competition is lower — and don’t forget about them! These early shoppers are prime additions to your holiday retargeting campaigns.
— Give past customers special treatment with exclusive discounts and early access to product drops before they sell out. While boosting pre-holiday sales, this can increase brand loyalty.
— Test influencer campaigns to drive widespread awareness before the holiday and get a head start generating demand. You may reach customers outside of your target audiences who can supplement your growing retargeting pool.
Don't Forget Your Always-On Strategy
It’s not all about the highs and lows
We believe Opportunity Valleys are key to augmenting your holiday sales. But there’s something just as important as driving sales at these critical times — and that’s driving sales all year long.
While leaning into Opportunity Valley marketing campaigns will help significantly, we also suggest creating an “always-on” evergreen media strategy to supplement your peaks and valleys.
Consistently run year-round content like:
— low-maintenance automations
— top-performing static ads
— permanently in-stock bestsellers
— light-motion brand gifs
Add in more peaks — like your own branded holiday or new product drops — to fill in valleys further.
Over the course of the year, refine your always-on ads to continuously improve performance, while incrementally increasing budget to scale your business’ success.
When a big sale event comes up, increase your ad spend more than you would during slower periods and create new, relevant ads. However, keep running your top-performing always-on ads as well. Simply adjust them to incorporate seasonal messaging so they have even more impact.
In the same way, generating demand in Opportunity Valleys will improve your evergreen content’s performance; the rising tide raises all ships. Scaling evergreen campaigns will grow the foundational budget for your business, and this building momentum will supercharge your peak sales campaigns.
The result? Better, more stabilized revenue all year long.
The New Frontier
It’s easy to play by the rules: Follow the same marketing calendar year after year, use January for goal setting instead of executing, place your ad budgets on autopilot. Plenty of times, conventional marketing wisdom is right.
But what about when it’s not?
Be the marketing partner — or find the marketing partner (hint hint) — who flags misconceptions and believes in a better way forward.
At Strategy Labs, we noticed statistical trends. We evaluated tons of different metrics. We saw opportunities for our clients. We tested them out and found success. And now we’re sharing our discovery with you; call us pioneers.