We asked Bidtellect’s in-house creative services team for their mandatory tips for maximum holiday creative engagement. Remember, no matter how great your platform’s placement and optimization capabilities, bad creative will kill engagement faster than you can say “naughty list.”
It’s also a process – a circle of refreshing copy and images. Make creative recommendations throughout campaigns to optimize performance. “Going live” is just the beginning.
BTW, scroll down to download our onesheet!
1. It’s the Happiest Time of Year – Keep it Positive!
Keep it positive! Use positive adjectives in headlines coupled with happy images to increase CTR. Cold, monotone creatives do not bring joy. Bonus: add puns or rhymes to make it even more…puntastic.
2. Refresh Your Holiday Creatives Constantly
Switch up your holiday creative assets! Better yet: rotate based on the event, as you count down to Black Friday, that big holiday sale, or new holiday release. Bidtellect’s advanced platform optimizes to best-performing creatives (read more on Dynamic Creative Optimization) and our team will manually rotate creatives to find your best performance.
3. Keep the Holidays Front of Mind
‘Tis the season: remember to include at least one holiday reference in the image or copy, or you’ll risk seeming out of the loop (as well as suffering poor engagement).
Use the concept of “gift guides.” Offer helpful, valuable tips and create content that’s great to drive to. Think: find the perfect gift for “X” which doubles as calling out the targeted demographic, but in a fun, holiday way. Be a holiday thought leader – and help your shoppers out!
4. Make Sure You Offer Deals and Promotions in Your Headline
Everybody loves a sale – especially during the holidays! So include deals, discounts, incentives, and reward programs in your holiday creative copy. Bidtellect’s [b]+studio consistently sees highest performance for headlines including a discount. Examples: promo codes, flash sales, bundle deals, free shipping, etc. Combine promotions (discounts or a special offer) with the shipping deadlines to incentivize your customers to start shopping. If you have the budget for it, you could go a step ahead and expand the geographic zones you ship to. Whether it’s Truck transport to Slovenia, or cargo plane shipping to Thailand, you will have it covered. International shipping can be a big plus for your brand, and the reason why some people would choose you over a competitor. As long as you make sure your packaging materials, e.g. plastic boxes are sturdy and can withstand constant moving and handling, then you should have happy returning customers. This can potentially increase your customer base to include most of the world! Offering affordable shopping and shipping options to your customers could also encourage them to shop for more. Further, most predict consumers will start shopping even earlier this year.
5. Which Images and Creative Units Perform Best?
Photographs perform better than animated images. Always! On that note, children, pets, and people in images perform best. Or images of people celebrating holidays with dogs could also work.
However, going solo could also prove to be beneficial. If using images with products, know that one solo “feature” product can perform better than a group. That said, get hold of a professional photographer, perhaps someone from the likes of Evelyn Images (click here to learn more about them), who can give it their best shot for you. Remember that the key to grabbing the attention of customers is to use lively, colourful, and meaningful images. For instance, if you are selling Christmas decorations, then the best way to go about it would be to feature a little kid who is busy decorating their Christmas tree.
Besides this, take your static images up a notch with cinemegraphs, scroller units, and carousel units. These are highly effective at telling a short story and conveying a specific setting or emotion. They also drive maximum in-unit engagement. One advertising agency found that cinemagraph content tends to have more virality, with 71% higher organic reach than still photographs. Don’t believe us? Check out this case study or this one.
6. And Finally…
CHECK YOUR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR. Misspelled words and grammar errors (unless it’s a common colloquial phrase) are a bad look.
P.S. “Your” is possessive, while “you’re” is a contraction for “you are.” Apostrophe before an “s” indicates a possessive noun; drop the apostrophe for plural, i.e. Happy Holidays!”
Brands and advertisers, we hope tips for engaging holiday creative assets make your performance soar! The holiday 2021 shopping season is going to be a great year!
For more tips, check out our creative best practices: the naughty and nice list.
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