What Will It Take To Win Peak 2026 - Soar x Fospha

0:00Olly:Welcome back to another episode of DTC Diaries. For those watching on YouTube, you will be noticing a slightly different intro today. That is because this episode is a pre-recorded webinar that I completed with Phosphor, the attribution software for fast growth e-commerce and enterprise e-commerce brands. A couple of weeks back, covering all things peak. We're in that crunch time. We're coming up to Q4. I believe it's less than 10 days away. Now, in this session, we went through all things peak preparation, what brands need to be thinking about to maximize the period this year, what's changed from last year, and some of those fundamentals that stay the same each and every Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

0:48Olly:So hopefully this can kick off your prep. It's certainly going to be a start of a four to five video series on this channel covering everything from offer, creative, distribution, post-click, all of those areas that you need to get right to maximize that Q4 period. So be sure to subscribe, like this video so you can keep up with future episodes covering all things Black Friday and I hope you enjoy. Thank you very much.

1:26joined by Ollie from Seoul with us today. Thank you so much for coming. So today, we're going to be doing a bit of an all-in-one stop shop for what it takes to win at Peak. So we've seen a growing delta between the brands in our data sets of who's really nailing it last year at Peak, and who's been winning all year round. And we wanted to bring in the real experts on performance to give brands the last minute tips and what they need to be doing right now in order to make sure that they're prepared for what's coming up pretty soon, isn't it, Ollie? It is, yeah.

2:03Olly:It feels far away, but so close at the same time. Thanks for having me back on as well. Excited to be back on a webinar with yourself. Absolutely. Look forward to going through this for sure. Great. Let's start with some introductions for anyone who's not familiar with Phosphor or Sourther. So I'll start by introducing Phosphor as the measurement operating system for e-commerce brands today. So brands in market today facing a number of challenges, understanding the holistic and actionable side of their measurements. So we always say, and I'm sure you get this all the time, Oli, that brands feel like they have to make trade-offs when it comes to either seeing a number that finance can look at every single day or the routes where they can actually understand where sales are coming from.

2:51And with measurements sitting upstream of decision making, really make sure that they're plugging the numbers in that are going to drive their business growth. So Phosphor combat that with a range of tools centered by our daily MMM and also bringing in incrementality testing and elements of multi-touch attribution as well. So Oli, we'd love for you to talk with us and how you're helping clients win at peak.

3:15Olly:yeah for sure um yeah we saw we're a group of agencies helping dc brands grow uh so acquire new customers we do that through supporting across meta google and tiktok shop and then we also create a lot of creative um so high project high production ugc creative statics all focused on how do we acquire more new customers every month for the brands we work with um so yeah excited to dig into some of the tactics we're looking to deploy this year for p for our brands amazing well i think we're going to dive straight into it starting with the creative strategies at peak and how you're guiding clients through the preparation but also what to actually do in in the moment when it all hits uh we'll then review some of our peak playbook findings and see how that aligns with some of the strategies you're bringing in I think we've got some time for the audience to open up questions that I can see already coming through.

4:13So let's kick off with that creative piece for Peak. So I'm curious, across your client sets, what are you defining as Ready for Peak and how are you getting clients there?

4:29Olly:Yeah, I think Ready for Peak, I guess, is a combination of different things. Firstly, it's like clarity on what the strategy is going to be. So that strategy can look very different depending on the brand. So what is the offer? What are we trying to achieve? Are we trying to focus primarily on new customers without decaying our existing base, say a subscription brand? Are we trying to move stock that maybe we've been sat on for too long? If we're a fashion business, for example, with a larger SKU range, I think it's sitting down certainly in Q3 as soon as possible if those conversations haven't been had and really eyeing out what's the goal, what's the KPIs, what are we trying to achieve?

5:14Olly:And then it's trickling that down through offer, how we display that on our website in a best in class way, clarity, landing pages, creative. How do we capture attention through that period with the right creative execution, the right creative volume, the right diversity, which we can go into in a bit more depth over the next five minutes, I guess. And then it's what's our strategy within the ad account. I'd say that ad account piece or ad accounts across channels, I mentioned that last because I think it's the least important of those three. So we need to get the offer, the conversion journey and the creative right.

5:54Olly:And then the ad accounts and the media buy becomes very easy. So we're spending a lot of our time with clients right now on helping and work through that, getting prepared because it takes time to turn around assets. We need to be proactive in that planning and generating that volume for the period. But yeah, really focusing on those different levers to ensure that we maximize the period. Awesome. So let's assume you're a brand who's got the big picture pieces in play, you know what you're trying to achieve, you have the stock, everything lined up. I think as you said, one of the biggest levers that the brand then has is that creative piece.

6:36So let's, let's double click onto that. And we've got like the volume, the forecasting, the diversity of it. How do you help brands navigate what the different requirements are across those different aspects?

6:51Olly:yeah um it's complex in some ways uh i guess but also simply in others um i guess when we when we zoom out i'd assume that most businesses hopefully that are watching this uh or operating this space are probably making like 10 times more at least creative than they were this time year last last year when i feel like we were still early in that whole adoption curve of like creative is the lever we need more volume into meta we obviously need the right volume it's not all volume it's quality as well and intention and diversity but hopefully there's a there's an engine in the business that's able to generate a lot more assets and it's about ensuring that as we come into q4 we're naturally spend ramps up that we're doing the right level of rigor planning and we're having the right level of rigor in our processes to make sure that we're not leaving ourselves short from a creative perspective in order to hit our goals.

7:51Olly:So for us, it's looking at that target, like what do we need to be spending on Meta? What do we know about our creative process, our hit rate, our average spend per asset, our churn rate of creative, making some educated assumptions around how that maybe will develop into Q4, and then using that as a guide for that, How many assets do we think we need to make over November and December, that period of peak, to really deliver on our targets and not leave ourselves short? And then probably applying a little bit of a buffer. So we're starting there and then that gives us a volume target and expectation about how much resource we're going to need.

8:36Olly:And then we're splitting that across the production process. So how does that look? what are we handling as a business what's the client handling internally what can they pull from their creators maybe any partnerships with influencers etc to start layering in that diversity across the different formats but I really do think it needs to start with that forecasting and that planning to ensure that you're not leaving yourself short and try to turn around an extra 200 ads in like two weeks before peak or even into the period when we're not on target or getting the performance we maybe want. I guess the diversity question is maybe the second layer to that.

9:22So, yeah, so we're talking about sort of a mise en place approach where you've got to make sure the ingredients are ready for when you're cooking in the kitchen at peak. So that makes sense. But then, agreed, it would be great to dive into that diversity piece. So intentional diversity. How are you guiding your brands to think about the different levers they can have because as you said there's a huge volume requirement now so what are the some of the quick wins that a brand can be checking off to make sure they're heading that diversity and how would you get them to approach making sure that that diversification is intentional and really

9:53Olly:driving the end results they need i think a lot the brands that win the biggest over that period are always the ones that have done the hard work in the six to nine months before um so hopefully that there's a bit of clarity around personas, some of those formats that maybe work really well for a brand, whether that's just UGC or high production, statics, partnership ads. We approach that diversity through layers. So like persona, angle, format, the things I've just mentioned, and then the vehicle within that format and how we actually present that message. so hopefully there's a lot of data you can pull on from the last nine months and use that to plan at peak but it's really mapping those out you can again make some assumptions that around over that period you're probably going to be doing more towards the bottom of the funnel in terms of messaging phases so more products more solution more offer-led creative.

11:02Olly:Hopefully in the months prior or certainly through like October and early November, you want to be probably trying to spend more in those assets that are more problem-aware, more upper funnel, and more education-driven, under-index on CPMR, help you reach new audiences on these channels. Because that lays the foundations, that creates a bigger market, at a bigger pool of audience to go after through Peak. But yeah, it's about taking those learnings from the year, maybe even this time last year, and intentionally layering them through different asset formats. So statics obviously always feels like the quick win through that period, like lower funnel statics, very product-led, very offer-led.

11:48Olly:They'll work, but in order to really unlock meta, there needs to be enough diversity across those in terms of visuals. So maybe you're doing a very headline heavy offer led static, but then also maybe you're doing a native like products in hand, long form story tech static. And those present a similar message, but in a very different vehicle. Or maybe you're taking that static and you're doing a short video that's again, quite product driven, but is a video creative and is an iteration on that message. And that, again, helps you get in front of a different audience. I think it's important to really map that out towards the bottom of the funnel, especially to ensure that you're getting that diversity and you're not capping your reach over that period.

12:40Super clear. So I think we can start. And I agree, it gets very complex when you get down into the weeds. But zooming out of the big picture, the brand needs to be thinking, what are we trying to achieve at the different stages? what is the data telling us works for all of those different stages and how do we hit those levers i'm going to go back to one thing you said because i think it might you mentioned it should be one that most brands are aware of but there might be some brands who hear that 10x that 10x diversity of creative year over year and freak out a little bit because they maybe haven't got there over the course of the year is there any guidance you would have for a brand who feels like they're a little bit behind on that particularly with some of the developments that come on our platforms and how they can use the next month to really ramp up

13:29Olly:yeah this is a conversation that having a lot with with brands i would like to caveat that by saying that it's not all about volume um a lot of the time i'm sales calls and conversations with maybe brands that are in our pipeline or looking for some support more frequently recently we've been having conversations with people where they've just started. It's natural, I guess, when you experience a problem, you see all this noise around creative. You just throw more and more volume at it. So there may be some brands that are low on volume. There may also be some brands that are like, there's too much volume and not enough intention.

14:05Olly:It's about finding the balance between the two. But if you are needing to scale up creative, maybe you're behind competitors or you're earlier on in that journey. um i think it's about trying to think about the ways you can approach that through um like almost like an effort versus impact uh matrix it's like so we know that statics work very well they're relatively easy to produce you can leverage things like higgs field and ai to do that very quickly and so quick win would be to start there and start to scale that volume out The key to that is doing it right. So appreciating that you need to still do statics well.

14:51Olly:So you need clarity of message. You need simplicity. You need to be really focused on one customer per ad. You need to be focused on one benefit or outcome. So doing them well is key to not just doing a lot of them. Then it's like, right, how can we recruit some creators? I think it's a growing wave of UGC creators through things like Triby or just direct contacts or working with someone like ourselves to help pick up some of that load into peak. I think those are two really quick wins. Maybe you can pull some, if you're active on TikTok shop, maybe you can pull some of those into meta. I think there's quite a lot of ways to drive volume.

15:36Olly:but I think the thing that's really important is like the strategy, the briefs being right, the messaging being right, the customer research being strong, so that when you do produce that extra volume, it actually translates into results and not just more ads and less new customers. Yeah, that's fantastic. And so those two themes year over year, increased AI ability and adoption, and then the prevalence of creators now. um i think it's something like the creator spend is now growing to over 40 percent of global spend so those those two levers a huge bliss you say it puts more of the emphasis on the taste the judgment the mapping of what you what you're actually doing it for so hopefully that gives some some clear takeaways of uh how to level up um one final sorry one final point i'm really bullish on partnership ads into the end of the year whitelisting running things through third-party identity on meta it under indexes like it's cheaper cpm which i think is really important in q4 and it links to the point of you mentioned around creator spend um so we'd just go dive into that if you're not already it'd be a quick win i heard it here first um now we're going to dive into some of the data points we have from phosphorus new peak playbook And I'm particularly keen to get your thoughts on how brands can actually action that and make sure that they're taking the learnings we have across hundreds of enterprise commerce advertisers.

17:12So the first theme that we're seeing, I think we've touched this already, is about the preparation beating aggression. So we hear this a lot from clients like, do we just have to go full send at peak week itself? and what does that actually look like? And actually the data says, and I think you pulled this out one of the LinkedIn posts for this webinar, in the top performing brand segment, so we're defining that as the top 25 % for the ROAS that they achieved over peak. Those brands ran 51 % more campaigns in BAU versus peak. So it's the flip side of what a lot of brands are asking us about. So that means they're using the low stakes months to test the formats, creative directions, like all those audience strategies that you were highlighting.

18:01And then when peak comes, they're actually consolidating significantly. So is that in line with the conversations that you're having with your brands? Is that how you're guiding them as they go into peaks? It's like, do less rather than more.

18:19Olly:Yeah, do less better for sure. I think the point you meant the brands that get the best results over that short period have laid the foundation in the last nine months they've laid it in terms of learnings so understanding what really works from a creative perspective from an offer perspective usually they've tested the offer earlier in the year through some form of other activation that's like a duplication of peak but a smaller size because of the seasonality. And they've just proven out a lot of the mechanisms that they're going to apply through that period. I also think it's one of the things that I think some brands are going to get caught out for this year is you see some of the businesses we come across getting in this reach hole where they're just struggling to reach new customers.

19:15Olly:Their frequency is going up over time on channels and they've not got enough top of funnel awareness. And largely that's down to the creative strategy, but it's a really hard problem to fix very quickly. And I think that'll compound Interpeak if you've not worked on that earlier in the year. But yeah, I think you want to be making informed bets Interpeak and keeping things very simple. I always think that there's a real bias to complexity as well, often within brands. So they end up running offers that are really hard to understand. You just need to take a step back and be like, is this really simple?

19:56Olly:And then, yeah, I guess on channel with the consolidation, yeah. I think consolidation on these channels has been a big trend over the last 12 months. And we use it a lot. We also deviate from it at times. It really depends on the strategy, but it's definitely a trend we've seen. yeah it's really interesting and that that theme of being able to consolidate what's working um alongside solving that reach problem you you highlighted it it resonates very much with one of the other key stats we found so um we always talk at foster about full funnel for a long time we've been the full funnel measurement provider and we see that brands investing in full funnel grow faster but it's not just that you know you invest in full funnel at peak you grow faster we're actually seeing that the top performing brand segment again they're not just ramping full funnel just for peak but that line item in the budget of awareness consideration bringing in people new to your brand is at 22 to 24 percent of the budget in every single quarter um and then the lower the basically the rest of the brand segment is around nine to eleven percent so it's a consistent 2x gap and so to your point it's not just okay let's solve this problem at peak but it's actually year round let's make sure that we have the creative the strategy a consistent line item in the budget to reach people new to our audience bring them through the funnel and so at peak you can then convert more easily um i think we're seeing this like i say some brands are seeing new opportunities and partnerships ads but the and things like that but the ones who aren't are going to be stuck on the same competitive holes same rising cpms and then it just becomes very difficult.

21:48Olly:Yeah, I agree with that for sure. I think you have greater exposure because of your brands, aggregate brands being a bit bigger than maybe the more DC native ones that we work with. But that view of like 20, 30 % of spend being on upper funnel objectives, I guess we look at that as like 20 to 30 % of spend being on problem aware unaware, top of funnel, creative. I think that's very similar. It's like if you're going into this period and all of your ads are very product-led, I guess like UGC from two years ago where it's like product in the first few seconds, there's no education, there's no narrative, there's no starting with the customer and the emotions behind that decision.

22:37Olly:You're going to be targeting a very limited pool of people. And therefore, it's going to cost you more and you're probably not going to hit your targets. So I think I definitely agree with that. Well, that's the warning. And then it says it's all about consolidation. So we're seeing the brands that then really understand what's working. And this is probably a great flag that I'm sure my marketing would love me to plug of knowing really what is working. because once you figure out what the high performers are, we're seeing the top performers are growing spend by campaign 48 % year over year last year.

23:16So spreading budget thin across everything, that's not going to work so well. You really need to understand how you engage those customers, how you actually effectively bringing them into market and converting. And so hopefully brands will be able to do that going into peak this year. the final topic that i think we've got lined up here and it's a theme that i think you are um very well aligned with it's just on the automation side of things and how in particular that raises the need for creative um that we've been discussing about so some of the key stats we've got here so uh meta advantage plus and tiktok smart plus are the big drivers of this year over year but i think we've seen it across all the ad platforms snap now has a and automated media buy products as well so does reddit with reddit max so it's happening across the board um so the really standout stats though so just plus growing 17 year over year and peak last year with brands seeing better roas um 35 more new conversions um and then similarly for the smart plus side of things we're seeing the revenue there growth grew 15x year over year for foster brands during peak so there's a bit of a growing delta between the brands that are successfully adopting this automation and then those that aren't doing so well with it and now there's obviously as you know a lot of things that go into nailing an automated system so like the signals feeding it and having better signals going in what are you seeing from a like creative requirement perspective and guidance perspective that really enables brands to take advantage of these products?

25:03Yeah,

25:04Olly:that's a good question. I think from last year to now, that trend has really accelerated in terms of automation within the channels. It seems like you're losing options in meta almost every week. They removed the option to exclude certain placements this week, which is, again, further removing the ability, moving more towards a black box sort of system driven by ai delivery um it's definitely the platform now versus last year definitely feels like it's more capable of delivering great outcomes for for advertisers but it puts more focus on those inputs so creative being the one we've talked about a lot um but also the offer, the quality of your offer and the quality of your conversion journey because the higher the action rate, the better the conversion rate, the better the signals are to meta, the more you get rewarded, the more auctions you win, etc.

26:13Olly:So it's pairing creative diversity with the best customer journey, the best products that really wins. But yeah, it's really shifted that That requirement towards, I guess it comes back to diversity, like to reach more people and consistently grow new customer revenue month over month through these channels, you need a really robust strategy that revolves around messaging different personas, different buyer personas who are motivated by different things, who are experiencing different problems, who have different objections, different failed previous solutions, all of those layers to that and then are at different stages of the funnel relative to your products and the ability to package that up in a way that's very compelling and drives them to click and take action and you just need to evolve that over time as you spend more i think there's that real clear correlation regardless of channel even in tiktok shop you can see brands get stuck because they make too much content that's very lower funnel very offer very product-led therefore or they can't spend more and they hit a revenue ceiling.

27:23Olly:So it's like, how does that evolve over time relative to your objective and your brand goals on these channels? Absolutely. I think TikTok Shop is a great example of this where the game is no longer one in input, one in output. It's a game of setting guardrails and having a way the creators do the right thing. So that's where, to your point, the clarity is so important because as that message is cascade down to then production, it's no longer as clear as like i'm going to review this creative make sure it aligns exactly with how i want it to look it's i'm going to put some guidance out into market and hope that that brings round in the way that i need to have it back yeah yeah for sure amazing so i think we have some on the spot fireside questions to close with then we'll open that up for q a i think the we've touched on a few things that can happen here and but are there any watchouts you would share of where brands are really going wrong today and how they prepare creative for peak not spending enough time in research so really going deep into customer messaging and how those different segments of their customer base need to be spoken to in different ways and then probably what i mentioned a minute ago about making too much content that's far down the funnel and therefore doing a really good job of converting people who are aware of the products or are ready to buy, but not doing enough of that sort of creation of new demand that's going to serve them very well into that period.

29:01Olly:I would say the main two things. Amazing. And then once you've hopefully got those building blocks in place, question mark on basically when you pull your different levers. So when you've got a channel creative set, how do you know when to scale it versus when to pull it back?

29:24Really depends.

29:25Olly:Like it's very brand specific. But say, do you mean in Facebook or Meta specifically or more broadly? I mean, it could be any channel. But if you think it's different for Meta versus others. Maybe I'll use Meta because it's where I spend all of our time. But we're very focused on obviously like CAC and new customer efficiency. For us, we've run a majority of things on that. So we are looking at things on a rolling seven day basis and making those decisions. I think the nuance to that is we're increasingly giving things a little bit more buffer if they are really good at that top of funnel. So they're really good at creating new demand and awareness.

30:10And maybe that asset isn't directly hitting our target, but it's clearly lower CPM.

30:19Olly:It's lower CPMR, so CPM times frequency. It's doing a good job of bringing new people into market for the product that we're selling. And that demand is then trickling down the other assets that are in that portfolio or ad account. We'd give that a little bit more breathing room. um but yeah that's that's a general approach it's still very like outcome driven very new customer driven yeah and that's really interesting that you're having to put that nuance in for especially the full funnel piece and we we see that across our client base that the top performers are investing more um and it's one of the biggest challenges our brands come to and say how do i justify this spend um there's a few pieces that really enable a brand to see and to take to finance that it's working.