5 advertising best practices for small businesses this holiday season

The holiday season is a critical time for small businesses, with many reporting they make at least 50% of their sales during the last few months of the year. To help small businesses make the most of their holiday marketing budgets, today we’re introducing new guidance with tips to maximize the performance of their ads on our platform. We call these 5 best practices the Performance 5.

We know that small businesses don’t always have time to test and learn to find the perfect advertising approach, especially when consumer preferences are ever-changing. With these best practices, we’re taking the guesswork out. We analyzed hundreds of thousands of small business campaigns and identified 5 actions that consistently help small businesses maximize the dollars they spend on our platform, and ultimately reach more customers:

1. Capture short, mobile-friendly videos in vertical format and use a mix of video and static ads in your campaigns to get the most out of video performance.

Video has quickly grown to become our most popular way for people to engage with content on our platforms. Hrag Kalebjian, co-owner of Henry's House of Coffee in San Francisco, shot a video on a smartphone panning across the products in their stockroom to create an ad. Following our best practices, he captured it vertically for mobile, kept it under 15 seconds and used a single message with call-to-action—and it became one of the brand’s highest converting ads. This tip is simple, but Hrag helps show you don’t have to be a professional videographer to make an effective video ad. We’ve also launched a new Creative Hub to give you best practices and ideas to make your ads stand out.

2. Incorporate simplified ad sets by combining multiple ads running to ensure that one-off ads and campaigns don’t compete with each other.

Sometimes, less is more. Lele Sadoughi, a popular women’s accessories brand, was looking for a way to run more efficient campaigns on Facebook so they could reach more shoppers and, ultimately, drive consistent revenue. By consolidating campaigns and running fewer ad sets, they saw a 41% increase in conversions. Simplifying the approach ultimately paid off; Lele’s continues to scale worldwide. Take the opportunity to evaluate the campaigns you’re running to identify overlap and see where you can streamline.

3. Consider taking a broad targeting approach, reaching more people who might be likely to become customers. Small businesses who used broad targeting in their campaigns achieved a 12% lower CPA on average compared to campaigns that did not use broad targeting.

For Lele Sadoughi, expanding their targeting was a critical piece to their success. Rather than running unique ads targeting specific products like headbands and earrings to smaller sets of customers, they ran fewer ads for a number of products that targeted a wider set of US women ages 25–64, exposing more of their product line to potential customers. We often hear from businesses that they're surprised by their end customers. Don’t be afraid to let our systems learn from a bigger audience—you may see more success than you were expecting.

4. Try out ad testing, where you try and compare different formats to measure the effectiveness—like using a video versus image, or ads that drive customers to different ways to communicate with you—to see what has an impact on your campaign’s success.

A/B testing can be one of the most effective ways to get the most out of your ads. This was true for California-based small business consultancy RoamHowl, who decided to test 3 different formats to generate leads for their business and saw a 62% lower cost using lead ads compared to other formats. There are many ways to find what works best for your business and starting small with one or 2 tests is a great way to begin experimenting.

5. If you’re already using the Meta Pixel, it’s time to Integrate the Conversions API to achieve better performance. On average, advertisers with the Meta Pixel who set up the Conversions API saw 13% cost per action (CPA) improvement.

Some small businesses have seen even greater success unlocking value with the Conversions API. Calming Collars, a business that makes aromatherapy pet collars, wanted to see if they were allocating their ad spend the right way to drive sales at a lower cost. By leveraging the conversions objective, they achieved 50% more sales and 22% lower cost per purchase in comparison to other methods. Plus, integrating the Conversions API with their website helped to train Meta’s machine learning algorithm to find more people who would likely be interested in their products.

We encourage you to try out some or all of these tips in your upcoming campaigns. And remember to stick with it—many businesses see that results can continue to improve over the course of a couple of weeks after you make a change.

Check out the video below for more information about these tips and visit our Performance 5 hub for a guide on how to implement these tactics to maximize the performance of your ad campaigns.