By Claire Antill, founder at Little Olive Social
According to Shopify, Global e-commerce sales are projected to hit $6.56 trillion in 2025.
And, for online retailers, the last quarter of the year means big business, with many relying on this time to make a significant portion of their annual revenue.
Key sales dates such as Prime Day, Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and end-of-year sales are a crucial boost to profits.
But, with fierce competition from retailers, the stakes and ad costs are high, as shown by Meta’s Q4 earnings which were $48.39bn in 2024.
What can you do to stand out and maximise profits at this lucrative time of year, even if you don’t have a mega-brand ad budget?
Here’s a 3-step strategy to break it down.
1.Planning & Forecasting
Start your preparation early.
For those who mean business, this is a year-round activity, but if you’re new to e-commerce ads at peak times, plan over the summer months.
Now is the time to look at your forecasting, numbers and revenue goals. Calculate the cost to gain a customer (profitably). Your guiding benchmark for Meta ads is to work out what you spend on your marketing in proportion to how many customers you gain. Without this, you won’t have a measure of success or know your potential to scale your ad investment. Many businesses fall into the trap of focusing solely on their return on ad spend (ROAS), which in isolation doesn’t indicate profitable growth.
Next, make sure the infrastructure is in place.
This is more than just checking stock levels and ensuring distribution is ready to service higher demand.
For online stores, this means a high-converting website (ideally at a rate of 3% or above) to maximise the commercial impact of sending additional traffic with ads.
Email marketing, SMS and organic social & marketing channels should all be optimised to support your Meta ads activity.
In the build-up to Q4, your goal is to ‘fill the funnel’ and bring as many potential new customers into your brand’s world as possible, so when the time is right, they are warm and ready to buy.
2. Warm up: campaigns & offers
Q4 is a marathon, not a sprint.
Part of the process is getting your Meta ad campaigns warmed up and ready.
Pre-test your audiences, campaigns, messaging and ad creatives, so you can put forward your winners from October onwards. With high ad costs and competition at its peak, untried, cold campaigns will flounder and your ad budget won’t have the same impact.
The ads algorithm rewards highly engaging ads and looks at signals to find the right people to take the right action, at the right time. Smaller retailers who are in tune with exactly what their customers want and use language and buyer psychology cues to prompt action can stand out from the crowd.
Having done the number crunching (see Step1) develop your merchandising and offers strategy. Not just discounts, what offers can you create to increase Average Order Value (AOV)? Can you offer bundles of products to incentivise higher value orders or to meet free shipping thresholds, or exclusive, time-limited free gifts alongside purchases?
Profits and margins should guide this.
Don’t attempt to compete with big brands slashing prices. There’s no point making the biggest sales of the year, only to lose money.
Consider how and when to best spend the budget on your ad campaigns to make the most profit. If you can’t compete with high ad costs over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, shifting spend earlier could get the same results at a better overall cost.
3. Execution: adapt & evolve
Q4 is like a year of sales in one condensed and fast-moving period.
It has its peaks. But increasingly, as demonstrated by running campaigns over the past 5 years, sales are more sustained throughout, as retailers seek to stay competitive across the quarter. This means early bird offers or Black Friday deals that run from the beginning of October through November.
Remember that if you focus your spend on November, you’re missing out on key opportunities for sales. December is a shorter month due to last posting dates. You may capture last-minute buyers, but what about those who are looking for early deals to get ahead with their shopping? Cover all bases with a sustained strategy.
Equally, don’t forget year-end sales. These can often be highly profitable with a captive audience at home scrolling on phones and ad costs lower than at peak times and powerful messaging around ‘last chance to buy’.
Finally, Q4 isn’t just for Christmas, it should be a year-round focus. As with many things in marketing, the longer the runway, the bigger the launch. Take the learnings and use them as a starting point for next year’s growth.
