Mastering Q5: A guide to Successful Q5 Ad Campaigns

For many marketers, Q4 marks the biggest splash of the year. However, after Christmas, CPMs drop and remain low until mid-January, creating a unique window of opportunity known as Q5, or the “hidden quarter”. Despite just being a few weeks long, leading brands  gear up to make this quarter count. At Smartly.io, we define Q5 as the last stretch of the year– the season finale, where champions emerge. 

Marketers, like you, must remember that just because the holiday season is over, doesn't mean that the shopping season is. According to Google, 57% of holiday shopping events between December 26 and January 4 were self-gifting. With the new year, customers are looking for inspiration and buying for themselves, creating hundreds of opportunities for brands to reach and interact with new and old customers. With competition and CPMs up to 50% lower than Black Friday, there’s a great opportunity to start strong in 2024!  

We know the strategies you implement now, could make or break your game. So, what can you do to make the most of Q5? Our experts gathered some tips to help you prepare your strategies to better reach, engage, and learn about your customers this post-holiday season and beyond. Here’s a few things to consider:

The Smartly.io rule of Q5: 

• Plan as you did for the holidays: As the holiday season is coming to its end and the shopper mindset starts shifting, brands can center their entire Q5 campaign around the beginning of the year. The earlier you enter the market with specific initiatives and language, the more open consumers will be for you and your brand. Find out what's working, test, learn, and optimize your ad campaigns to reach your goals. 

• Speak your customers' language: The “Why Not” mindset: This is where careful planning comes in. Shifting from holiday gifting in Q4, customers now focus on personal growth and their New Year’s resolutions. This shift in mindset is your chance to connect on a deeper level. Speak directly to their ambitions and goals for the new year. In this period, digital ads work best when coupled with exclusive offers or bundles: free shipping, or a complementary first week of a free subscription are great examples on how to engage your customers. After Christmas, motivations may change, but desire for sales and discounts remains strong. Tailor your message, inspire action, and watch your brand resonate with your audience. 

• Be Omnipresent: Currently, consumers engage with an average of seven platforms a day, presenting brands with a continuous stream of opportunities for meaningful interactions and engagement. Therefore, meeting consumers where they are is key. Due to increased competition, demand for creativity has increased, making personalization essential to stop the thumb and connect with your audience. Delight, don’t overwhelm by maintaining a consistent, visually appealing presence across platforms. Stay engaging, stay relevant, and adapt to maximize opportunities. 

 Let Smartly.io do the heavy lifting: 

• Creative Editor: With features like Smartly.io’s Image & Video Templates, you can easily create and scale mobile-first assets across social placements and audiences, decreasing manual workload while catching up with demand for social. Smartly.io combines layers with visual elements and dynamic information from a product feed or catalog to automate the creation of ad variants at scale. 
  ⭐ ️Pro tip: Building templates makes your design efforts evergreen– quickly test, learn and apply your insights into Q1 and beyond! 

• Automated Ads & Optimization: Together, they make sure that your ads take full advantage of lowered CPMs in Q5 and incorporate language and visuals that speak to shoppers. Here’s how: 

• Budget Scheduling and Predictive Budget Allocation (PBA) puts your money at the right place at the right time! Scheduling budget helps marketers ensure spend is scaled up and down based on high-opportunity periods, while PBA works to allocate that budget to the highest performance within your campaign.
• Using Smartly.io Triggers ensures your time-sensitive content goes live and pauses at the right moments without manual interventions, and remains optimized. 
  ⭐️ #WorkSmartly: Check how Hopper achieved greater results with Stories Ads by automatically creating and optimizing hundreds of ads showing real-time. 

• Dynamic ads: Create relevant, timely and highly personalized ads based on the products people have viewed on your website or in your app. Easily pivot your assets from Q4 to Q5 and personalize based on content that resonates! 
  ⭐ ️ Knowledge Bits: For more valuable tips to harness the power of creative across all stages of the journey, download our latest eBook! 

Q5 isn’t just a wind-down from the holidays; it’s an opportunity for a successful Q1. Interested in kicking off a successful digital advertising 2024? Request a demo and see how Smartly.io can help!