The session covered the following (and the good news is that nothing was overly new news to the team):

• Using AI tools & products to successfully navigate seasonality
• Laying the right foundations to capture growth opportunities & reporting on them
• Growing demand (cost-effectively) in peak periods when inventory comes at a premium

But, what were our more detailed key takeaways, if this is all new to you?

Note, some may seem more obvious than others, but it's good to remind ourselves of the brilliant basics!

Setting Objectives and ROAS Targets: Establish clear business, marketing, paid media, and campaign objectives before you even begin… Utilise tools like Performance Planner to forecast and optimise conversion values at different ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) targets, ensuring a balance between efficiency and volume.

Leveraging AI and First-Party Data: Integrating first-party data can double revenue and improve cost efficiency by 1.5 times if used strategically. Do you really want to talk to people who shop with you multiple times a year?

Implementing AI-powered campaigns with accurate conversion tracking enhances the effectiveness of advertising, particularly during peak seasons. Let’s not waste a penny and implement it straight away!

Audience Targeting and Smart Bidding: Utilise Customer Match and Smart Bidding to drive growth. Google says they’ve seen an average revenue increase of 6.2%; for cycling and outdoors, this has still to be benchmarked.

Segment and label customer lists for more precise targeting and adopt predictive metrics (e.g., purchase probability, churn probability) to optimise audience engagement.

Optimising Seasonal Campaigns: Differentiate strategies for high-margin, low-margin, and seasonal products using appropriate bidding and segmentation. Do you have limited editions? Perhaps consider a different strategy for those.

Communicating Value and Reporting: Use natural language search in Google Analytics for insights and anomaly detection - as it can be complicated to navigate the back end of GA4 (e.g., ask questions about your analytics data).

Measure and prove the impact across the customer journey with the latest conversion templates and incrementality testing. If you know, you know!

Planning for Q4 and want to know more? Or want access to the full deck? Drop Alex, our Media Planning Director, a note at Alex.faux@shiftactivemedia.com