Ep 548: Strategic Levers to Build Massive Meta Momentum Throughout Q4

0:00Jocelyn K:There are a couple of larger changes on Meta heading into Q4 this year. One of the main changes that we've been navigating throughout this year is...

0:12Jocelyn H:Creatives are one of your biggest levers and you want to build up momentum. So anytime we have an opportunity to sneak in a Trojan horse of creatives when there's a promo leading up to Black Friday, we're going to do it.

0:24Jocelyn K:People don't know your brand. If it's top of funnel traffic, if you give them two options, they're more likely to bounce because they don't necessarily have time or care to put the effort in to figure out option A versus option B.

0:39Jocelyn H:Take away any roadblock so people can get to the purchase as quick as possible.

0:50Jocelyn K:It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric. This is the D2C podcast. And today I am here with two, not one, but two of the world's best Jocelyn's. Jocelyn K., who is a senior media buyer on our team, and then Jocelyn H., who is a senior strategist on the Pilot House team. You guys have both been here for quite, you guys are both vets of Q4. And we are talking about what's new on the platforms in Q4. What's different this year about Q4 than previous Q4s? Jocelyn Kay, we'll start from the buying side. There are a couple of larger changes on Meta heading into Q4 this year. One of the main changes that we've been navigating throughout this year is Advantage Plus shopping campaigns and some of the changes that Meta has made with those and just determining like the best way for each brand to scale heading into Q4.

1:48Jocelyn K:There have been different types of Advantage Plus shopping campaigns that have become available. They're different from the original that we have been running for like over two years now. But yeah, I think every account is different. You mean what they have access to, you mean? Where we see performance more so. So just the targeting options have changed. And then, yeah, some brands have different access to different campaign types. And then what works for one brand may not work for another the way that the original ASC worked for pretty much all brands. So, yeah, navigating that, determining the best structure for each account that we're working with, and then really setting ourselves up for success with a solid foundation in terms of campaign structure.

2:38Jocelyn K:Another change that we've seen over the last month or month and a half has been meta phasing out the site shop destination as an option and then removing or starting to remove checkout from Instagram and Facebook shops. So we work with a handful of brands that have seen a lot of success in scale by using the site shop destination. and with that being slowly phased out and just adjustments on platform there we've been rebuilding a foundation using site only and gaining more learnings with that as a destination as opposed to using the shop more heavily. And then Jocelyn H on the on the creative side I guess this is is this your first year as a strategist because I know I was just in a podcast with Abby and Henry and I think the strategist position is a newer one at Pilothouse kind of breaking out the strategy side of things.

3:34Jocelyn K:Walk us through that a little bit. And then any changes you're seeing on the approach this year?

3:38Jocelyn H:I think the biggest thing from a strategy standpoint is just having as many levers on hand so you can react to what happens in real time. There's only so much you can do to prepare going into Q4. And you kind of have to react to the buyer's behaviors as much as we like to look at year over year data and say, okay, pre Black Friday is the strongest for this specific brand. The next year could be complete different. It could be the post Black Friday, like the Cyber Monday week or the actual Black Friday day of. It's very interesting because every single brand fluctuates depending on the economics of the market and just how consumers are reacting.

4:14Jocelyn H:So you just want to make sure you're prepared so you can kind of react accordingly to push budgets and increase that year over year growth for our brands. The biggest thing, and we've been preaching it for years at Pilot House, is creatives, right? Creatives are one of your biggest levers. And I've written many DTC posts about this, which is I feel like it's just like common sense to us, but I realize it's actually not commonly known is you want to build up momentum. So anytime we have an opportunity to add or like sneak in, so to speak, a Trojan horse of creatives when there's a promo leading up to Black Friday, we're going to do it.

4:48Jocelyn H:Taking very broad promo messaging, whether it's like, this is it, last chance, nothing specific about like the 20 % off or the actual offer and mixing it in during different promo seasons, kind of like, say you do a spooky sale in something in October or Labor Day or any promo that you have throughout the year. So then Meta can learn behind it. It can gain momentum. It can gain social proof. And then when you go into Black Friday, you can just turn those ads back on and ride kind of the existing groundwork that was given. So that's just one lever that we play off of. More often times than not, like our evergreen and our broad messaging urgency creatives will actually overtake the specific Black Friday creatives just because Meta Trusts them more and we trust them more.

5:35Jocelyn H:So we have a lot more data to support the success of those ads so we can push more budgets behind that. So it's kind of having many of those at our hand going into that season and kind of keeping an eye on it so that we can kind of figure out where we can push budgets the most to get the greatest return.

5:50Jocelyn K:And I guess it's similar on the actual campaign structure and with these new ad types kind of coming up, You need to just have them tested so you know which ones to deploy, which ones to avoid kind of going into it. Are there any that are showing, I guess you said it's all different per client, but are there any of these new campaign types that you're particularly excited about, Jocelyn? Yeah, I've been running way more just standard BAU sales campaigns and using max exclusions. With ASC being phased out, we have a stronger ability, I guess, to target more specifically with the BAU campaigns. And then similar to what Jocelyn was mentioning, using existing ads that have been more broad sale messaging.

6:36Jocelyn K:And we use the post IDs typically and duplicate those into new campaigns. That's what allows us to carry over social proof. So right now I'm working with a brand that has a sale launching tomorrow, actually. And I just built out broader sale messaging that we'll be able to use for Black Friday and building up social proof right now. Same with Labor Day, bringing some of those ads over. And then, yeah, we'll be able to carry those through for Black Friday. And then we can also take those learnings and add and iterate using Black Friday messaging. So it kind of goes two ways. We also have access to Warp Drive.

7:15Jocelyn K:So with those ads where we are building up social proof now, we're using unique funnel links and gathering post-click data. And then once the Black Friday sale launches, if we have specific pre-sells and pages that we want to test, we can just pop them in the back end with Warped Drive and improve conversion rate without disrupting learnings within the ads. So that's another kind of key area of focus right now for us when we're doing more testing and learning heading into Q4. What are the vibes this year? We've got so many things. We've got tariffs. We've got AI pressures. We've got political unrest.

7:54Jocelyn K:We've got all of this stuff. Are there anything? Do you guys think, I guess you don't really, like maybe as media buyers, do you think about that kind of thing? Or what are the vibes, I guess, heading into Q4 this year? Are we expecting it to be as big as last year?

8:06Jocelyn H:I think what's interesting is like it's almost like the worst off the year was, the better the Black Friday season is. Just because everyone's kind of waiting for that offer or the best opportunity. or it's at the end of the year. So they have a little bit more cash on hand to use. And, you know, people are coming in from summer, like there's just so many factors that can attribute to a successful Black Friday. What's also interesting to not to pivot too much is I also have a lot of clients where Black Friday actually isn't their peak season. So spring is actually their peak season. So it's kind of this interesting thing where we're actually planning more product releases in Black Friday to kind of lift that season for them and give more of that, I guess, sense of urgency or desire to purchase during that down season.

8:55Jocelyn H:And then we're actually doing more prep work for Q1 of next year. Also something to not be disregarded because, you know, that's a big thing of where the overall costs go up in Q4, but so does the purchase volume and so does the volume of consumers that are on the platform and spending money. So if you're kind of looking to start mixing in certain things and planning for the quarter coming, it's actually a good opportunity to get some of that in because it's faster to react. There's more people on the platform. You have more volume to play around with. So you can kind of learn off of it and build off of it going into Q1 when that volume kind of naturally pulls back, but then so do the cost.

9:35Jocelyn H:So it's kind of this fun thing of levers, having as many levers as possible, having so many things like at your fingertips to kind of react to the environment. Because at the end of the day, we're not going to know until we're in it. So we're just kind of trying to set up our clients with as many opportunities to optimize as possible.

9:54Jocelyn K:One of the podcasts I did recently with a brand was just talking about how important it is when you are playing around with your discounts, either via Labor Day or Halloween, or whether you're starting your Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale, like at the start of November or something, how important it is to let your customers know if you're discounting early, that this will be the best price they'll get in a way, like somewhere on the landing page or something. So you so because I think that's, that's, that's the worry when you're doing a lot of price or discount testing, is that you'll customers will see and they'll be bitter, they'll be angry that they didn't get the best deal or whatever.

10:25Jocelyn K:So really letting people know that if you're going early, this is the best deal you're going to get.

10:29Jocelyn H:I mean, I think that's fair, personally. And I know, Jocelyn Kelly should definitely speak this is I think what's actually most important is understanding the offer structure that's most lucrative and most appealing for your consumers. I think that matters more than saying, hey, this is the best offer you're going to get. And this is something, again, another lever that we split test all throughout the year. And it's not too late if you haven't done this yet, because you do have kind of that October season where you can do like a spooky sale, which we do oftentimes, even if it's not big, you can still kind of get a data point to leverage.

11:01Jocelyn H:For example, split testing, you know, percentage off, tiered sales, dollar amount off, free gift of purchase, free shipping. Go figure out which is going to have the highest click through rate and the highest response, and then make sure that's what you're structuring your Black Friday sale off of. You know, people don't like confusing sales. So it's more make it as clear as possible, make it as easy as possible, make it as appealing as possible, but also make sure you're taking the data signals from your consumers. Don't just assume what they want, but actually listen to what they want. And I know there's a lot on the buying side that we do for that.

11:39Jocelyn H:And Jocelyn and I have worked on that many times with clients before.

11:43Jocelyn K:Yeah, I think from the perspective of discounting or offering one discount for the first half of November and then switching for the week of Black Friday, that's not the best because you do a bit of a bait and switch. And then if you do have loyal customers who have purchased in the first week of November, they're going to feel shafted. Unless you're doing some type of really specific segmenting with your emails where you are excluding people who have purchased for the last 14 days when you're sending out this steeper offer, then maybe it's a bit better. But otherwise, you're just going to cause people to be upset with you as a brand.

12:22Jocelyn K:They probably won't come back. And then you're going to have so many customer service emails and requests for refunds and returns and stuff. So yeah, I would suggest just running one flat offer for all of November. Another reason that that's a good idea for meta ads is that you can gain so much more momentum with your campaigns. It's a lot stronger typically to start November 1st. If you can swing it for the profitability perspective and just discounting, November 1st would be the way to go because it gives you that much more time to gather learnings within your campaigns. Generally, if you launch November 1, the ads that you start running right away, those are going to be your ones that scale through the highest and will make you the most money essentially.

13:11Jocelyn K:Whenever we try to launch newer ads partway through November, they typically don't scale the same way that the ones do that are launched initially. So having one offer for the full promo period is definitely recommended. And to Jocelyn's point about making the offer really clear, like people don't know your brand. If it's top of funnel traffic, they are not familiar with your product. If you give them two options, they're more likely to bounce because they don't necessarily have like time or care to put the effort in to figure out option A versus option B. If you propose like two offers, you're making someone think so much more about what, yeah, like what should I buy?

14:03Jocelyn K:And I saw this with a back to school sale. It was actually, it was featured in the newsletter where a decent size brand had like an additional discount off of their clearance items or a site-wide discount. And you just like, if you add to cart and you're trying to figure out the math of what's better, you, you bounce, like you don't buy. So yeah, clear, clear messaging, something that's easy to understand. Pre-populate it so that you don't even have to enter it in there. It reminds me so much of this book that right when I was getting into like internet marketing way back in the day, I had a boss who's like, you got to read the book, don't make me think.

14:41Jocelyn K:And it was basically like the approach to web design is entirely just like, keep it simple.

14:47Jocelyn H:I think the best way to put it is momentum is your moneymaker. Try to take away any roadblock as possible. So people can get to the purchase as quick as possible, but also on the ad side, right? Don't stop ads that are working. So if there's something where you're switching anything, or you're redirecting somebody, take that out. Like you're going to go so much faster and so much further and yield a higher return when you're building off momentum and allowing it to do that. So I think that's the biggest thing for Q4.

15:16Jocelyn K:I think that's a great chat. How do you guys think about, I guess it's brand specific and their appetite for, for, for spend, but I know we talk a lot in the run-up to Black Friday in, in Q3 about stocking the pond or just sort of like getting more customers like into your CRM into your retargeting campaigns into your funnel, so that when you go to Black Friday, you can kind of harvest all of them. How would you like in a perfect world? How would you guys like to be thinking about momentum? Would you want to be starting ramping up now? Does it start November one? How do you think about momentum?

15:48Jocelyn K:I guess Jocelyn H to start?

15:50Jocelyn H:I mean, we start in January, you know, when the last Black Friday is over, we're starting for the next one. Like every every decision we make every promo every evergreen is that momentum leading up to peak season right so it's not just necessarily if you're starting november 1st it's it's we're building up the entire year for this though it's not too late for people who are thinking about it we have done it before for clients that have never even touched any of that in the ad account going into black friday it's just now just act now start mixing it in start ramping up your creative velocity like even with meta's recent update i think it was in august where they're really geared towards creative velocity for their campaign structures and they're favoring it which is something we've been preaching for years but it's funny because now it's almost like meta's forcing their hand at it and if you're not feeding the machine then it's just gonna die out so it's really just start now get creatives in there get your data points making sure that you're listening to your consumers.

16:53Jocelyn H:Make it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. As for like stocking the pond, like one of the classic strategies, and Jocelyn Kow would love to hear your kind of like how you would structure this too, is like we do lead gen. So like sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't for specific clients. But if you do have like product releases in October, which a lot of clients tend to have specific things, whether it's like a fall themed or October themed, it's a good opportunity to stock your pond, right? Because you know, if the cost of acquisition is going to increase going into Q4. So you could start with like a lead gen effort of, hey, get on the list to get this release or get on the list to get early Black Friday access to get those emails.

17:32Jocelyn H:So you're acquiring customers at like$2 versus 50 or$150, right? So those are people you can retarget going into that. But I am kind of curious, like what you see best on the buying side for a campaign structure, because it is very dependent on specific clients, but there are some best practices around that.

17:49Jocelyn K:Yeah, you definitely want to be filling your funnel now. Prospecting and having a higher ratio of spend going into top of funnel is definitely key for having a really strong Black Friday. For lead gen, we do see some success with lead gen. Typically, we use sales campaigns though and send users to a landing page on site that generally yields a way higher quality of lead as opposed to using meta lead forms. Those are typically really weak quality just because it's generally an autofill. People don't think they just sign up and then you get trash leads. I think my Facebook email is a hotmail email too, by the way.

18:32Jocelyn K:So like, I think when people don't, it's a junk email. Yeah. For lead gen, definitely like offer is key. If you want to have a really successful lead gen campaign, ensuring that you're really enticing people with a really strong offer for them to sign up because you really don't know the true profitability of those leads until after you email them. So keeping it tight as well. So if you're doing lead gen, don't run it for a month, like just run it for two weeks. People are going to forget that they signed up. Give me an example of a great lead gen offers. Is it just like a bigger discount maybe if you sign up or early access to the same discount?

19:11Jocelyn K:Yeah, early access would be strong. Also product drops, doing lead gen for a really strong product drop, that can be a really good offer. So if your brand is launching new Halloween prints or a limited edition Christmas print for whatever your SKU is, that could be a really strong offer. if you, yeah, if you want to drive more urgency, maybe you include the quantity that you're ordering. So get on the list. We only have 500 pairs of, can't think of a product, but usually it's running shoes on this podcast. We could go leggings or something. I don't know. We sell it all. Yeah. Or like we sold out of our Christmas print last year within 12 hours.

19:57Jocelyn K:So sign up and make sure. Scarcity. Yeah. Yeah. just really honing in on urgency around that and then making sure that you're doing it like your actual email campaign goes out like in a timely manner so that you can capture and convert those leads. Jocelyn, I'd be interested in your take too on the update that Jocelyn mentioned last month. Is this, what's your perspective on how things have changed? Is it just, I think it's kind of cool to think we were, you know, ahead of the curve with the talking about creative being the new targeting, I think two or three years ago, probably. What's your take with, with, uh, on platform with this, with this recent shift?

20:34Jocelyn K:Yeah. Creative is definitely first and top priority when we're doing testing. Uh, copy testing is super minimal now. Like it's pretty much not, we do it, but low scale, it's not as large of a needle mover at all. Creative's definitely highest priority for testing. Um, and then with testing and launching new assets, the majority of spend goes to one ad generally within an ad set. So navigating the best way to test new creative is something that I would say has been a bit of a transition, I guess, for like the last three or six months. It's not new that Meta really favors specific ads, but figuring out the best way to find new winners within an account when the spend is so heavily favored towards one or two ads.