The 12 Days of Digital

In a seasonal spin on our How To articles, our Kinase experts offer 12 top tips for a successful peak period in digital

For many retailers, Boxing Day is the biggest day of the year. All eyes need to be on key metrics hour by hour, as if you get this wrong, you're going to spend a year trying to recover.

— Chris Smith, Paid Search Expert

It's essential to build audiences early, not only to capture early shoppers, but to also ensure adequate audience sizes further down the funnel ready for the peak period. This can be done by increasing Brand Awareness from as early as September.

- Karen Smith, Paid Social Expert

Ensure that creative and copy match the native style of each social platform - and don't be afraid to be playful and use emojis! 🎅🎄

— Rebecca Clark, Paid Social Client Lead

Make sure that there are enough products/ASINs in your Sponsored Brand campaigns with sufficient stock so that the campaigns do not go offline once stock is depleted. With higher conversion rates and search volume typically seen during promotional periods, competition is likely to be higher and bidding strategies should be adjusted to reflect this and secure higher value traffic.

— Solomon Kaffel, Marketplaces Director

Schedule messaging ahead of time to stay organised and save time later. Over the festive period in retail there can be lots of offers, or specific festive messaging, to keep track of. Google's rules or ad customisers can be used to schedule your messaging. This means you'll be organised and can just check that the messaging has changed over as planned when the time comes.

— Natalie McDermott, Senior Account Manager

Always sort before filtering a spreadsheet, especially if you need to delete rows. It requires a lot less processing power and so reduces the risk of your spreadsheet crashing and you losing all of your hard work!

— David Reed, Account Director

Plan your responses for a couple of the most likely scenarios in advance so that you aren't scrambling to get a proposal together and approved on a bank holiday.

— Richard Brooks, Kinase Co-Founder

Always double check the data you are downloading. Check you have the campaigns, date range and rows (especially in Analytics) you need so you do not waste your time analysing the wrong data.

— Elizabeth Duffy, Paid Search team

Consider using different Smart Shopping campaigns based on your strategy. Having campaigns with a scale of ROAS targets will allow for various volume and efficiency goals to be reached across product types.

— Emily Twitcher, Senior Account Manager

Utilising extensions as we enter a period of heightened competition to ensure you are using as many extensions as possible. Helping bulk up your ads and push your competitor down the page, whilst encouraging a user more to click on your ad.

— Charlie Mudd, Digital Analyst

Flexible working is key to a successful peak period - sales and demand don’t necessarily come during traditional working hours, so giving your team flexibility to work when accounts need it, and then take time off to enjoy the festivities is good for productivity and good for performance, too!

— Emma Farley, HR Director

Sectors which are not gift orientated see a dip in demand at the beginning of December, but that time has to be utilised to prepare for the increase in interest that happens from Boxing Day sales. The budget for the month should be weighted towards the last week to capitalise on the opportunities that the change in the market brings.

— Isabel Figueiredo, Senior Account Manager