Back-to-School Success: E-commerce Marketing Tactics to Crush Q3 Targets
Today I will take you through the back-to-school campaign and why it is important? and I will share 3 points on how to capitalize on it throughout all your marketing channels to ensure you smash your Q3 targets.
The back-to-school period is an essential period during the year; in fact, it is the peak moment of Q3 for any e-commerce; why?
Because:
Demand increase as online shopping has a huge sales potential due to the increased need for supplies like stationery, books, uniforms, and electronics, creating a significant sales opportunity for e-commerce businesses.
Acquisition and retention: Offering deals and special discounts can attract new customers and encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases.
Inventory rotation, as it allows e-commerce to introduce new products
Relevancy, the back-to-school campaign allows e-commerce brands to receive more brand awareness.
Stand out by having a well-executed back-to-school campaign. You can differentiate yourself from the competition by tailoring a 360 campaign that doesn't focus solely on price but concentrates intensely on the customer and what is the problem they are trying to solve
So now that it is clear why back to school is an important campaign, you should go all in with it; here are my 3 points to maximize your back-to-school campaign performance.
Now, let's dive in.
1. Phase for success:
Phasing is an essential part of planning for a successful back-to-school campaign.
Are you going to have a one-week campaign or a month-long campaign? Understanding this will allow you to forecast your back-to-school sales better, and your daily performance budget should follow the phasing of the sales forecast.
Other factors to consider while you are working on the phasing:
Performance of each week is there a week always overperforming?
performance of weekdays of weekends
sam period last year's performance
last month performance
You can't spend your growth budget equally each day of the campaign and expect your campaign to be successful, Always try to maximize the impact of your growth budget.
2. Allocate more budget toward demand generation channels:Â
It is crucial to invest more budget toward demand generation channels (paid social - organic social - CRM) to generate awareness during big campaigns despite the low return your attribution model highlight; why?
Because this is a high season when many brands pump their budget in, and if you fail to let your customers know what kind of offers you have and how your offers are different, you have already lost.
Brands that don't allocate an awareness budget during tier 1 campaigns might experience high ROAS but less revenue than their competition, which means they are leaving money on the table.
So it is essential to prioritize the impact on the business, not just following ROAS.
3. Be creative with the back-to-school messages:Â
Many marketers usually overlook the messages and content because it is not easy to know the impact of a new message direction.
However, creative messages and content can ignite word of mouth or a trend among your target audience.
Here are my three steps process I use every time I try to audit campaign messaging:
1) Is it short? Since now the attention span is very short, we should always prioritize short content
2) Try to think deeper about the customer's need, don't just mention the discount or the offer. Try to go deeper into how the customer would feel after buying this offer instead, would they feel happy, winning, smart, released
3) Does it have a scroll stopper (a hook)? How can we make customers stop scrolling when they see our ads or organic social posts? You can start by asking a question or a bold statement.
(Bonus) Back-to-school messages example:Â
Using different messages for back to school campaign is essential to increase the sales of the BTS campaign; here are examples of effective messages I've seen:
Back to school = back to savings! Shop our back-to-school sale now for prices you won’t want to miss.
This back-to-school sale has outstanding test results: 100% good prices, 100% free shipping, 100% hassle-free. Shop now!
Back to school = back to [brand name]
Regardless of which back-to-school message you choose, you should be sure to use it consistently across all your marketing channels to provide a seamless experience for customers.
Is there anything you can add for a successful Back-To-School campaign?
Share in the comments below.
Your performance marketing and growth friend
Gamal