This means that digital plays a significant part of the mix for almost every brand during this shopping season. But given the challenging economic climate, every brand wants to make its digital spending work as hard as possible.

Success comes from knowing and understanding your customer so that you reach them at the right place at the right time with relevant messages.

This, in turn, enables you to:
  • retain high-value customers
  • keep the costs of attracting new customers down, and
  • get a superior return on ad spend.

It's a daunting task, with businesses scrutinising every rand they spend and looking for that all-important ROI. The good news is that programmatic platforms — such as Google, Spotify, Snapchat and Meta — have some powerful features that can help you enhance your online customer experience, in turn helping you to boost sales.

Here are eight proven tips that can help your business to maximise ROAS:

1. Invest in your Google Search and Performance Max campaigns

Search engines are essential in the initial stages of the customer purchase journey.

According to GWI, 41% of South Africans use search engines for brand and product discovery and 65% use search engines for online brand and product research. This compares to a global average of 32% and 49%.

Google's Performance Max gives you access to new inventory, formats and audiences across all Google channels, including:
  • YouTube
  • Search, and
  • Discover.

It's a powerful way to drive engagement.

2. Be a part of the customer's road trip or party

GWI's stats show South Africans spend more time than the global average on audio mediums such as radio, podcasts and music streaming.

They'll listen to even more audio during the festive season when many people are hosting parties or taking long car journeys. A great place to reach them is on Spotify, where users with free plans receive ads every 15 minutes or so. You can even sponsor personalised playlists.

3. Look beyond Google and Meta

Google and Meta dominate digital ad spending in South Africa, but many other platforms remain surprisingly popular.

Depending on your audience, they might offer you the chance to reach key customer segments with less noise and competition than you face on the big two. Snapchat, for example, had 6.25 million users in South Africa as of early 2022.

With Promote Place, a new objective on Snapchat, you can promote your business's SnapMap profile, which is similar to a Google My Business profile. You can then target people based on their proximity to your store.

4. Don't overlook AR

Many, if not most, South African businesses are sleeping on the augmented reality (AR) features offered on social media platforms like Snapchat and TikTok.

It is a pricier ad format, but you can bring your brand to life through an immersive experience. The market for this format is unsaturated and ad campaigns are memorable. Thus, reach and ROAS are high.

5. Leverage the power of user-generated content (UGC)

UGC is a great way to build a relationship with customers by giving them a voice and letting them share first-hand brand experiences with people just like them.

It shows customers that you value their feedback and creates authenticity and trust around your brand. Authentic word-of-mouth can occur among your audience within your pages and profiles, which also helps your ad ranking in the auction.

6. Use video content, which is the wave of the future

The Global Digital Overview October 2022 shows that more than nine out of 10 Internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 watch video content weekly.

Video is a flexible, engaging medium with long and short formats and the algorithms love it. That applies irrespective of whether you advertise on:
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • WhatsApp
  • Instagram
  • WeChat, or
  • TikTok.

It's a win-win for both the audience and the business.

7. Meet the demand for discounts and free delivery or shipping

Audiences expect discounts and free delivery during the November and December festive season.

Consider ways to make discounted prices, bundled offers, value-added services and sample products exclusively for online purchases the heroes of your campaigns.

8. Harness AI

Looking for time efficiency and lower costs?

Advantage+ Shopping Campaign on Meta should be on your list of campaign options for the festive season. This campaign type enables you to harness the power of artificial intelligence.

The advantages of this campaign type are that all your audiences are in one ad set; you can use catalogues, dynamic ads and existing content from your business profile, and the cost per acquisition (CPA) is lower than your standard conversion campaign.

For more information, visit www.plusonex.com. You can also follow +OneX on Instagram.