This is part of our August series about Q4 planning.

For ecommerce businesses, Q4 is often when we generate the most revenue with holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

It may still feel like Summer outside, but it’s never too early to start creating your Facebook advertising strategy for the end of the year. In fact, most advertisers report starting to plan in September.

One thing advertisers know for sure about planning for Q4 is that each year ads get more expensive, especially right around the holidays. We expect to see increasing cost per click and more competition for our audience.

But despite the increasing cost and competition, this time of the year is huge for retailers. Higher costs are often offset by increases in order volume.

So let’s take a look at how you can create a Facebook Ads content strategy to make the most of the Q4.

Build Your Content Calendar Early

Holidays are especially busy times for organizations, which is why it’s important to build out your content calendar ahead of time so you aren’t rushing at the last minute. A detailed promotional calendar should help organize which products are being promoted and during which days.

Here are some of the holidays you’ll want to plan for in Q4:

• Thanksgiving, Nov 25
• Black Friday, Nov 26
• Small Business Saturday, Nov 27
• Cyber Monday, Nov 29
• Christmas, Dec 25

Increase Average Order Value

When advertising costs increase, you want to improve profits by increasing the order value. Q4 is the perfect time for this as consumers are spending more money on themselves and others during this time.

Start thinking now about the different bundles you can create for products. Create imagery and video around those bundles for Facebook ads and offer them as limited-time specials.

You can also increase average order value through different promotions. For example, offering a free shipping threshold or a percent discount if orders are over X amount of dollars.

You might also have a lot of new visitors to your website as people are on the hunt for the perfect gift. Offering deals to new visitors can help increase average order value. You can provide this audience with a discount on their first order.

Fight Ad Fatigue

You’ll want to plan for more frequent creative refreshes than normal around this time to fight against ad fatigue. You’ll want to plan ahead for this or maybe even work with an outside partner to develop content for this time.

You’ll also want to think about developing holiday-themed creative to make ads more relevant to your audience. Make sure your ad creative and messaging shifts regularly throughout Q4, having different ads for different holidays.

Create Video Content

If up until now you haven’t been investing in creating video content, now is the time to start thinking about how you can use video in Q4. According to Facebook, “1 in 3 mobile shoppers surveyed in the U.S. said that video is the best medium for discovering new products.”

Video often takes more time to produce compared to images for ads, so start planning now for the type of video content you can create for running holiday ads on Facebook.

Plan Ad Spend

The weeks leading up to the holidays are just as important as the holidays themselves for advertisers. Consumers are starting to shop earlier and earlier and you want to plan your ad spend accordingly.

Almost 40% of consumers plan to purchase their gifts before Thanksgiving, so even before the Black Friday rush. Because of this, you’ll want to start scaling up your ad campaigns a few weeks before the holidays.

So you’ll want to scale up early but also don’t forget about after-Christmas shoppers. It seems like advertising costs on Facebook almost instantly decline on December 26th. Many advertisers have spent their budgets and sold their inventory.

There are still consumers out there who are ready to buy things with their Christmas money or purchase items Santa didn’t bring. That’s why the post-holiday shoppers can be incredibly valuable to ecommerce advertisers. Make sure you plan some extra room in the budget for this audience.

As an ecommerce advertisers, these are the things you want to start thinking about now in order to set yourself up for success on Facebook in Q4.

Do you have any other tips? If so, let us know in the comments below!