Toucan Talks
Toucan Talks is a podcast for Wilmington-area business owners and entrepreneurs who are eager to learn from those on a similar journey. Each week, we talk with an area business owner about their successes, challenges, and experiences in business. Don’t worry – we keep it fun as we bounce from topic to topic.
Toucan Talks
How to Prep Your Marketing for Q4 Without Burning Your Budget
Feeling the pressure of year-end marketing goals while watching ad costs climb? You're not alone. The holiday season brings opportunities but also challenges as advertising platforms become increasingly competitive and expensive. In this return of our "Kickstart Your Week" series, we're tackling Q4 marketing strategies that won't deplete your budget.
Digital advertising costs, especially on platforms like Meta, see significant increases as brands compete for consumer attention around Black Friday and throughout the holiday shopping season. Your regular ad budget simply won't stretch as far during this period. But don't panic, higher costs don't necessarily signal campaign failure. We share practical advice on how to adjust your expectations and strategies accordingly.
One of our key recommendations is starting early with awareness-focused campaigns. These more affordable ads help build familiarity with your brand before the holiday rush, creating warm audiences you can later target with conversion campaigns when they matter most. We explain why keeping early messaging educational rather than sales-focused pays dividends when competition heats up. Additionally, we explore how email marketing provides a cost-effective alternative to paid social during peak periods, allowing you to nurture leads without paying premium prices for each impression.
Service-based businesses face unique considerations during Q4. While e-commerce brands naturally lean into the holiday shopping frenzy, companies with longer sales cycles might benefit from a different approach. We discuss strategic budget allocation that might involve maintaining presence during expensive periods while saving major pushes for January when costs typically decrease. This episode delivers practical, actionable marketing advice to help you finish the year strong without unnecessary budget strain. Subscribe to our channel and join us every Monday morning for more business and marketing insights designed to kickstart your week!
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Meet your hosts and learn more about Kickstart Collective at kickstartcollective.co
Kickstart Collective is a creative marketing agency based in Wilmington, NC. We offer our clients a creative advantage through creative content and marketing strategies.
Welcome to the return of Kickstart your Week. We started this back during 2020, when we were all working from home. So basically it was just quick little videos that we would send out on Mondays with just some marketing and business tips. It was short-lived, you know, probably during May, june, july of 2020. But it was fun. So we're like you know what? We got the podcast kind of rolling. Let's wrap this into two can talks and we're going to see how it goes. Let's do it. So, full disclosure. I tried to do this by myself on Friday. Joshua was here Me record by myself. It was tragic. Go ahead and select your time slot or something. If you're interested, do stuff.
Speaker 2:If you're interested. Blah, blah, blah. I'm sure you did better than you thought you did.
Speaker 1:No, we didn't finish it, we quit. Um, so I'm glad you're here. It's way easier to talk to someone than yourself or a camera. So, anyways, for this first one, since we are about to hit the end of Q3, moving into the last part of 2025, we are going to just talk a little bit about how to prep your marketing and your business going into Q4 without blowing your budget, because everything gets a little bit more expensive on the advertising side, especially digital, as we approach the holidays. So, without further ado, I'm Laura. This is Alyssa Hi.
Speaker 2:We work at.
Speaker 1:Kickstart Collective and we're going to kickstart your week with some Q4.
Speaker 1:Let's do it All right. So I think the first thing we're going to talk about is Facebook, or meta ad spends. It gets way more expensive, especially like as you hit Black Friday. Um, everybody, especially e-commerce, is ramping up ad sales, ad sales, ad spins, um for sales for the holidays. Um. So my like normal advice for people, especially if we're managing their meta ads, um, is one just be prepared to know if you're not going to raise your budget, it's not going to go as far.
Speaker 1:Your cost per click is going to probably be higher. Your cost per conversion is going to be higher. So don't panic. If it's all going well, increase your budget, because you still should be getting conversions. But If you don't want to increase your budget, just don't expect the same results you may have gotten like over the summer, potentially. So one way to mitigate that and get more out of your ad spend is to really hone in on your targeting for your audiences and just making sure that's specific and so that you're really getting your ads in front of people who are more likely to buy. And again, that's kind of looking at November, december timeframe. Um, but there's things you can do prior to that to help with that as well, which is where I will let you take it away.
Speaker 2:Thanks, laura. Yeah, one good tip for starting out in Q4 is to run some awareness ads. These are cheaper than conversion ads, so you know you're kind of saving on budget starting out and these are really just to get your name and your brand out there in front of people, get them familiar with you and in doing that you're building up a warm audience of people who know you know what you're about. So then when things do ramp up closer to Thanksgiving, black Friday, then you can then retarget them and push some stronger sales material to get conversions.
Speaker 2:And a good tip for awareness ads I would say is to just keep it low pressure, keep it chill. Don't come out the gate with the sales material. Low pressure, keep it chill, don't come out the gate with the sales material. You know this is the time to just let people know who you are, what your brand is, what they provide to people. If you're a service or if you're selling something, um, just educate people on that and get them aware and then you can go harder with the sales material. The closer to Black.
Speaker 1:Friday, yeah, yeah, and when you're setting up the meta ads or someone's managing them for you, when you select your objective as awareness, it really is just putting the ads in front of people within your target audience that you define or we define, but it really is just trying to truly build awareness. There's not really a strong call to action to go to your website or to provide your email or anything like that. So it really is awareness. But they see it enough times that when you're ready to push something, like you said, it is a warmer audience, so they're more likely to convert quicker, which is good, because then you can kind of optimize your budget that way, um, cool, um.
Speaker 1:Yeah, speaking of retargeting, um, one thing you can do, um beyond ads and I guess it's not technically retargeting, it's email marketing, um, another cost effective way to reach your audience, for sure, um, especially if you already have an email list, um it's you already own those contacts that you can crank out emails. Obviously we don't want to spam people or go overboard, um, but you're not necessarily paying per email or per click in that situation, um, and kind of like back, going back to the awareness ads, if you wanted to run some like email capture, facebook ads, leading like during October, leading up to November, black Friday. Um, that's another good opportunity. Um, cause, once you you're paying per email, in that case with the meta ads, but once you have it, you have it, and then you can email them as much as you want.
Speaker 2:Um, but again, those, those people are warm. Yes, they know who you are. They signed up to get emails from you, yeah, so they're familiar with you and would probably be easier to convert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and you're sure you're competing with people's inboxes, but you're not competing with all of the noise on social media, which is which is helpful. Um, so yeah, I think those are kind of the main things. I don't know. Is there anything else? Email marketing we could probably talk about that all day, but we don't we don't need to on your Monday morning.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So I think, yeah, going into Q4 really just building up that audience, um, so that you have a warm audience to reach out to, to nurture as you, you know, approach Black Fridays.
Speaker 1:I guess one thing I would say to counteract everything we just said if you're not an e-commerce brand, if you're maybe a sales, very sales focused business but obviously there are end of year goals you need to hit for sure, um. But if getting new clients in November and December isn't like your biggest priority, it might not be worth your ad spend, like black Friday, thanksgiving to you know, the day for Christmas, um, so you might want to just run cheap awareness ads just to somewhat stay top of mind versus, you know, running lead ads or conversion ads that are going to be way more expensive, um, again, that's probably a small sector of people, cause I think everyone's trying to crank out as much as they can at the end of the year. But it might make sense to push some of that budget to January if the way your business and budgeting allows for that. So just food for thought for those more service-based businesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would still be beneficial to start the awareness ads now, but you might just want to ramp up closer to the new year, rather than Black Friday Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. Well, welcome back to Kickstart your Week.
Speaker 2:Welcome back.
Speaker 1:Welcome back Um stay tuned, stay subscribed. We'll send these out Monday mornings via our email list. Um, they're also going to be on our YouTube channel and we'll share a little clips on social Um, so you can subscribe to our YouTube or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. I think we have Pinterest. Follow us on Pinterest. Hey, we'll find out.
Speaker 2:We'll put a link if we do, if not, we'll set it up.
Speaker 1:It's been. It's been a minute, Um, but yeah, thanks for joining us and y'all have a great week. See you soon.