Google Event Recap: Crushing Q4 in a Digital Space
Crushing Q4 means different things to different brands at different stages of their growth as companies. Most brands start their fiscal year with annual goal and the most agile among them recognize the pivotal part that their peak season plays in achieving this goal – for most companies, Q4 is a kind of Big Game but for all companies dealing with digital and online marketing, Q4 is an active and competitive time of opportunity, even if it’s really just setting the table for the future.
adQuadrant invites all brands to take a data-driven approach to their strategies going into Q4, potentially even having a bit of an identity crisis to understand who they truly are. Are they a Rocketeer company prioritizing long-term gains or are they a Profiteer company prioritizing short-term efficiency? These personas have different priorities but their considerations are the same. Here are 5 things to consider heading into the Q4 season:
1. Destination
Before you go anywhere it’s important to figure out where you want to go. How are you supposed to set smaller goals when you don’t know where exactly you’re heading? In establishing this, you need to be able to answer the questions: what are the total number of sales or new customers you want and how profitable do you want to be?
2. Route
So we know where we’re heading but what avenue to do we want to take? With your brand in mind, it’s incredibly important to now decide what platforms are going to work given the audience you’re trying to reach. Is the product restricted on some channels? Is a younger audience channel such as Snapchat going to benefit performance more?
3. Customer LTV
Here comes an incredibly important question. Ultimately, you can’t go anywhere without the trust and value your customers bring to your business. This begs the question, what is the lifetime value of their customers? Your first goal as a business is to get people to buy your product. The second is to get them to continue doing so. Would someone buy more than once? Is the customer buying experience so enjoyable that they keep on coming back? Do they have up-sells or cross-sells at the time of purchase? Do they have a continuity or subscription model? And finally, do they have a post-purchase remarketing strategy they ensure they come back. If you’re not answering these questions, then candidly, you’re way behind.
4. The Right Trajectory
It’s time to question your efforts aggregately. In order to find out if they’re on the right trajectory, there are a few questions to ask. Are conversion rates where they need to be? Is the right kind of traffic being driven to the site and is that traffic converting, and spending the right kind of valuable time on the important, educational pages? If you’re not asking these questions it’s hard to appropriately understand if you’re heading in the right direction.
5. Resources
Do you currently have the resources to get to where you want to be? This includes budget, how efficient their internal and external team is, and what kind of relationships do they have at the various platforms. Knowing this low hanging fruit can help you set yourself up for success.
adQuadrant’s plan for its partners will look like this with variations based on the specific details of their business:
Q1-3 Lookback
- We will leverage calculators to create and define Q4 models
- Reconsider goals for a successful Q4
- On and off-platform performance outlook
Early Q4 Testing Strategies
- Lock in top-performing creatives
- Confirming landing page and conversion-flow viability
Leveraging platform relationships to outline strategies
- Vertical specific expertise
- Ad-product specific learnings and expertise
Deploy Q4 Google Strategies
- Leverage contemporary, proven strategies that might include
- Smart Shopping
- Discovery ads
- Custom audiences
- Augment machine learning
- Application and adjustment of bid strategy
- Automated Ad performance
- Automated targeting like in the cases of smart shopping, display, and search
- Use of new, dynamic and smart ad units
- Strategies on historically difficult platforms including YouTube