As the school year starts, marketing teams are gearing up for the year-end rush. New collections, Black Friday, Christmas, school holidays, and winter sales — the end of the year is marked by several key moments. Advertising campaigns multiply, and budgets invested are often larger than during the rest of the year. So how can you best prepare for this pivotal period?
Here are some ideas to optimize your returns and finish the year strong.
Take a step back
First, it’s important to make the right trade-offs by analyzing past actions and their results. The start of the school year is a good time to approach this exercise with fresh eyes, thanks to the perspective gained over the summer.
Which levers contributed to meeting each objective: visibility, online/in-store traffic, conversions? Which message types performed best? Don’t hesitate to compare the subjects of your emails with the highest open rates, display banners with the highest click rates, or audience segments with the best conversion rates.
Then, put these learnings into practice for your year-end campaigns.
To build an effective media plan, be sure to carefully measure complementarity and interactions between each channel. The multiplication of advertising channels complicates this analysis, raising questions such as conversion attribution.
Think holistically
When analyzing, take the entire customer journey into account, not just the last action leading to conversion (last click). Most web analytics tools on the market let you visualize these paths in more or less detail. Use them to avoid missing key steps for your consumers.
Branding levers, for example, like display, TV advertising, or outdoor advertising, are often underrepresented among “last-click” levers. These are top-of-funnel levers, designed to generate visibility and interest for your brand but not necessarily to drive a direct conversion.
They play a role in purchase decisions, acting as initiators, even if invisible when only analyzing last-click conversions. The steps before purchase are essential to spark consumer interest in your brand and guide them toward conversion.
Without a macro analysis of conversion paths, the risk is to focus your budget on purely performance-oriented actions, which still rely on the strength of previous funnel steps.
Experiment
New formats on social networks (live shopping, reels…), audio development, new advertising inventories opening (such as Netflix recently), the end of the year is an opportunity to complement your media plan with new things to test.
The audience you target, their information and consumption habits, are all factors that influence your choice.
But not only that: analyzing your conversion funnel, as mentioned earlier, can highlight potential gaps at any stage.
-> For example, you may record many visits to your website but notice a high rate of abandoned carts or long session times. Is your campaign targeting optimized? Have you set up retargeting (display, Catchup TV, or social networks)?
-> Your physical stores may not be receiving the expected foot traffic? Various drive-to-store levers can help you gain visibility in a very localized way: outdoor advertising, SMS, or even mobile display offer some options to try.
At the end of this key year-end period, a new analysis of your conversion funnel will allow you to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of campaigns implemented and the chosen media mix.
Today, digital marketing is evolving constantly — whether in terms of regulation, media, or consumption modes. It is therefore essential to keep an eye on novelties and your own practices to stay performant.
