But competition and advertising costs are high, as businesses look to make sales when their customers are in a buying frame of mind (high-intent purchasers).

As a startup without a big-brand ad budget, how do you stand out from the crowd and make profitable sales?

Here are 3 steps to make Meta Ads work for your business in Q4.

Get ready: plan

Planning and forecasting is a year-round activity, but if you’re looking to run ads in the most competitive quarter, you’ll need to get started as early as possible and before October hits.

Don’t be tempted to just focus on your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and how much revenue you want to make.

Know how much you’re spending on your advertising in relation to how many customers you gain (profitably) after you’ve paid other business costs. 

Look at your plan for your inventory and stock, can you fulfil the higher demand for your bestselling products to meet your revenue goals?

Make sure you have a website that converts now, ideally with a rate of 3% and other marketing channels working hard to support your ads.

Your aim at this stage is to check the foundations are in place, before spending more on increasing traffic.

Get set: warm up

Going in cold with campaigns in October/November won’t get the best results.

With costs and competition for ad space high, test and find your winning campaigns, ads, messaging, and creatives ahead of time. Then you can put your best foot forward.

As a startup brand, you have an advantage over your bigger competitors. You have insight into what your customers want and why they buy from you.

The ads algorithm rewards engaging ads that speak to the customers at different points of the buying cycle. Use your creative to reach new pockets of your audience and new angles for growth.

Create offers based on your revenue targets and profitability. Don’t attempt to compete with big retailers slashing prices for loss-making offers.

Instead think about your bestselling products and margins and how you can create bundles to incentivise people to buy more to increase Average Order Value (AOV) or get free shipping.

Free gifts alongside purchases can work well in place of discounts.

Go: launch time

Now you’ve done the prep, you’re ready to go with your campaigns.

Increasingly, brands run sales and Black Friday deals for longer periods across October/November rather than focusing on the big sales dates. Consider how to spend your ad budget strategically across the quarter to make the biggest impact on your profits.

If you focus all your ad budget on November, you’ll miss out on key opportunities for sales. Some shoppers like to get ahead and buy early, others wait for the best deals or buy last minute – have a strategy to cover all bases.

If you can’t compete with the high ad costs over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, moving spend earlier could get the same results at a better overall cost.

Or End of year sales can often be profitable for smaller brands, with an audience of phone-scrollers and lower ad costs than at peak times.

Each Q4 is different, be ready to adapt and evolve. Take your learnings and use them as the starting point for your next year of growth.

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