Is Q1 really such a sleepy time for purchases? It doesn't have to be...

We've come to expect that Q1 will be a rough quarter after the havoc of Q4 and it's clear why:

🏷️Black Friday/Cyber Monday was a 10 day long period

🏷️Last minute sales start as early as 5th December

🏷️And the old 'Boxing Day Sale' is now the 'Fifth Quarter' - a week long period between Christmas and New Year!

But it's not all doom and gloom because:

Advertising costs drop considerably in Q1!🙌

The below graph shows how the cost-per-click on Instagram drops from Q4 to Q1. Similar, sometimes even more severe drops are present on Facebook, TikTok, and also in the cost per 1000 impressions (CPM).

If you've been spending high, and can afford to keep that spend high - DO IT. You'll get more for your money.

There are a few caveats to this though - you'll need to do a bit of homework first:

❄️ Evaluate the seasonality of your product or service - is it fairly flat throughout the year or does it rely heavily on winter months or gifting?

❓ What will your competition be doing? Most businesses scale back at this time of year, with their strategy to save budget for the big Q4 push. Its this scaling back that reduces the ad costs in the first place, so this might be the time to get eyes on your product over your competitors.

🧪 Time to test! Lower ad costs mean you can test new ad creatives and concepts without having to spend big. If you're an ecommerce brand, a huge amount of your efforts in Q1, Q2 and Q3 should be testing, ready to deploy your best creatives and messages in Q4. Start early!

👋 Raise awareness and stay top of mind. Your ads don't all need to be conversion campaigns. Because people might not be in such a 'purchase ready' mindset at this time of year, consider switching to awareness and traffic campaigns. You get MUCH, much more for your money in terms of impressions and an even cheaper cost can stop your brand being forgotten in these slower months.

🏷️ Entice with an offer. In these cold, dark days of Jan and Feb, sometimes people need a bit of retail therapy. But the cost of Christmas can make spending in these months hard. A deal or sale might be just what someone needs to treat themselves to what you offer.

Don't forget that there's many other areas you can test at this time of year - consider your landing pages, online store, Amazon listings, pricing, and message. Here's some useful previous posts we've done on testing:

🔗Test test - but watch the spend... the simplicity of Meta A/B Tests

🔗It's the little things: testing product detail pages