Are you a marketer trying to reach students and parents of school-aged kids for this back-to-school season? Then hurry up and start planning your marketing strategy.
While you might think that back-to-school shopping occurs near the first day of school, according to Facebook’s People Insight data their buying activity and research starts as early as July!
It looks like products related to apparel and accessories, school supplies computers and consumer electronics are often the centre of research and discussion on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. You can tap into the conversation by showing them ads that are relevant to them, engage them and excite them for the back-to-school season.
Following are a few tips that you can utilize in order to help you get the most out of the school season.
- Re-engage customers that purchased the same period, last year.
Export from your CRM the emails of people who have purchased from you last school season. Upload them on Facebook and create a Custom Audience to remarket them. Be sure to adapt your copy and creative to this audience and don’t be afraid to offer them a discount, a gift or even free delivery. - Extend the reach of your ads with LookAlike Audiences.
Who is more likely to purchase from your e-shop other than your customer? A person who looks similar to them! With that being said, it makes sense to create a LookAlike audience of the people that have purchased in the past. Facebook offers many options you can experiment with, starting with 1% LookAlike, which is consisted of people being very relevant to your source audience, up to 10% LookAlike. Other audiences you can use for LookAlikes can be people who bought more than 1 time or even people who spent, for example, more than 200$. - Create Page Engagement Audience of people who saw your videos.
If you have been posting videos related to the back-to-school season then it’d be a great idea to utilize them in your Facebook marketing strategy. Create an Engagement Audience consisted of people who viewed those videos on Facebook or Instagram. You can experiment with different membership durations and collect audiences that have interacted with your video up until a year ago.
Besides the aforementioned audiences you can utilize Facebook’s powerful targeting options to reach:
- Parents and/or mothers of school-aged kids.
Facebook offers a big variety of targeting options in order to reach your target audience. - Education options under behaviour targeting.
Use this to target people who study at a university that is close to your business. - Location targeting.
Target people who are within an X radius from your business. - Get to know your audience.
Utilize Facebook’s breakdown feature to get insights into the demographics of people you purchased from you previously. Be sure to combine them with some other form of targeting to create a more relevant audience.
Things to keep in mind
While creating your marketing strategy for the upcoming school season, it is good to have in mind the following:
- Build tension
As the school season approaches try to build tension and create a sense of urgency for your customers. Offer them time-limited discounts. You utilize Facebook’s Offer to create in-store traffic. - Invest in your creatives
We have already mentioned the importance of creatives and creating impressive visuals that will get your ad viewers’ attention. Many marketers advertise during this season so you may want to step up your game if you want people to click on your ad. - Same audience different bids
Although last year you might have been able to acquire customers with a good CPA, this doesn’t mean that you will be able to get new customers or even existing ones, in the same price. The reason being that with many advertisers embarking on Facebook in order to advertise their products and services, the higher the competition, which translates to many people competing in the same auction to get their ads seen by the same target audience. - Back-to-school-season is not only school related
Although the school is prominent in back-to-school, this does not mean that it’s only for school-related products and services. This period coincides with beginnings and fresh starts many aspects of one’s life. People choose this period to start new hobbies, change the workplace or the place they live in! - Be mobile ready
According to Facebook, the majority of Back to School-related posts, photos and videos were shared on mobile. This fact stresses the significance of optimizing your campaigns and website for mobile devices. Be mobile or be prepared to go home! - Don’t neglect in-store traffic
Yes, people grab their phones to search and buy but you should also focus on in-store traffic. Drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar store and offer incentives to lure people to your store by offering perks ranging from a free pickup and special sales to hassle-free in-store collection experience. These store-only incentives will not only attract customers but will also generate additional revenue.
What do you think? Are you ready to rock this back-to-school season?
