The holidays are coming and if you’re advertising during the Cyber Five,
it’s go time.
We’re diving into how to drive more e-commerce sales.
On today’s episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for Go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce, Insightly, and LeadsRx.
Today I’m joined by Jonathan Naccache.
He is co-founder and president of Webistry, a performance
marketing agency that helps brands win on meta.
And he’s also a big repeat offender for coming on Unbounce shows.
Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on today.
Thanks for having me.
It’s always nice to be here. Awesome.
So for those who don’t know,. Jonathan did a webinar for us
on, Black Friday and it blew us all away.
And so we invited him back, to talk a little bit
about what’s going on in 2025 for the holiday season.
So I’m going to ask him, start out by painting us a quick picture
of what the holiday landscape looks like this year.
How is it shaping up for e-commerce marketers,
and what should folks be thinking about if they’re planning for the Cyber Five?
Yeah, that’s a great question.
And, I mean, some trends are accelerating this year.
They existed last year and the year before.
They’re still worth, mentioning and reiterating,
a reminder that Q4 is very important
for any online shop as well as any service based business.
In November, December alone, we’re talking about $1 trillion
in consumer spending. That’s not nothing.
Conversion volume is about 4 to 6 times higher
during Cyber Five, Cyber Five being that weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
We’re seeing a bit of a trend around tariffs and pricing.
There’s some pressure on growth, higher prices.
Younger shoppers are mostly impacted.
So keep that in mind.
A lot of shoppers are willing to buy a lot earlier,
in anticipation of the holidays and gifting.
So take advantage of that.
There’s a continuing retail shift.
Online sales are still growing at a lower rate than usual, but they’re growing.
Keep in mind, and everyone everyone’s
talking about this AI and social shopping
and how to be, on AI and how to appear and platforms like ChatGPT.
That’s a whole other topic.
Just keep in mind an important statistic that 40% of shoppers,
used AI during their shopping journey.
So. And that percentage is growing.
They’re using it for the holidays,
and they’re using it for any big, life event as well.
That requires a lot of shopping.
This is going to sound like a repetitive one.
Mobile.
We’ve always said that.
I mean, it’s been years and years.
We’re talking about mobile being important.
It’s not just important.
It’s a non-negotiable.
We still see a lot of, brands and freelancers
and agencies, designing for desktop first.
Today that’s become unacceptable, in my opinion.
Happy to debate that.
Mobile has surpassed desktop in terms of shopping by far.
So all UI and UX, all creative,
must be prioritizing mobile and must be prioritizing,
shopping behavior, which is low attention span, very fast.
And you have to
follow, you know, the the overall trend on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok,
which is very quick and and and witty.
One important way.
One buy now and pay later.
That was a trend last year or the year before, but it’s accelerated
and today it’s reached 40% of all sales moments.
So offering that option has also become a non-negotiable, in my opinion.
Wow, I mean, I feel like there’s so much in that response we can unpack.
I do want to zero in on one thing you said about
really that holiday season expanding, right?
So like it was super focused on the Cyber Five. Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
But really now we’re seeing
all through the month of November and all through the month of December,
really this extended promotional period that never stops.
Yeah, absolutely.
There was a time that I remember very vividly where we’d have one promo
for Black Friday only, and it went live at eight in the morning on Friday,
and it was gone by midnight that same day.
And then we’d wait, and then Monday, same thing again.
And then it would be over
and then
Black Friday expanded into the weekend, and Cyber Monday went into Wednesday.
And every year that expanded and expanded.
So, you know, it’s both a curse and an opportunity
we have to take advantage of buyer behavior.
That’s just the way it goes.
And right now you’re looking really
at the entire month of November and almost the entire month of December.
Black Friday isn’t just for Black Friday.
It’s for the holiday shopping period.
People are shopping for the holidays on Black Friday and up until Christmas.
So really, it’s it’s a big period. And,
unless,
you know, you want to get away from being seen as a discount brand,
it’s become unavoidable to, at least adapt your strategy during that period.
I agree, so creative always has to evolve to keep up with what’s working.
What are some of the core pieces that marketers should be focusing on
as they build a creative strategy and toolkit for this holiday season?
Yeah, I can name a few, some more,
you know, specifically on what to do execution wise on the platforms.
Let’s talk about meta, for example.
Similar rules on other social platforms.
There is a misconception that video works better than static,
and that might be true for part of the year.
In reality, you need a mix of both.
However, during Cyber Five and into the holiday period, static works
a lot better than video, and it accounts for 75% of the conversion volume.
So you really need to put
a bigger emphasis on static creatives, banners and images.
They have bigger conversion rates, lower CPMs.
You still do need some video.
Videos will target different users and will bring users
into the the customer journey and into the funnel.
Might convert a few as well.
But I would say a majority of your creatives need to be static.
You know, creative themes, of course.
Offerings are important.
That’s an obvious one.
Urgency.
So your discounts have to be very clear.
Use countdowns. Use scarcity.
Use very clearly defined dates for the end, of your promotions.
Talk about gifting.
As much as you can.
I would say another tip is you
do not always need net new creatives for that period.
Although you should always experiment.
Take your best performing creatives and adapt them visually for the theme.
So if we’re talking about Black Friday or Cyber Monday or the holiday period,
take that same visual and add a few elements.
Visual elements.
Whether it’s the headline or a graphic to adapt it for that theme.
What a great idea. I know we always were.
Marketing teams are always pressed to do more with less.
So what you’re saying essentially is if you don’t have time
to create a whole new campaign, pull a really well-performing campaign
and dress it up a little bit with some visuals and relaunch it
and, you know, save yourself a lot of effort knowing that this is a pre
tested and already a campaign that you already can see results on.
Yeah, there’s a very good reason for that.
The algorithm recognizes which creatives worked well in the past.
And they can be slightly different from one another.
It still sees it as the same theme and the same creative theme.
So we using that may accelerate the learning.
Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be experimenting with net new.
Ideas and creatives.. You need a mix of both.
Of course.
So a little self-serving here, but I’d like to talk about landing pages.
What are some of the most important conversion focus pages
marketers need in their toolkit heading into the holiday season?
Yeah.
We can talk about a few concepts.
You know, there’s a conception, or an idea that
you only need one landing page, and that’s your best performing one.
Users will land on it, and either they will be converted or they won’t.
That’s a misconception.
Especially today.
You want you want to diversify your landing pages.
Just like you diversify your ads and your creatives on the ad level.
So we’ve seen that,
using multiple landing pages iterations works best.
An interesting stat is 70%.
This is by meta by, by the way, 70% of spend goes
to collection pages or product pages.
However, during Cyber Five in the holiday season, we do see that seasonal
pages of thematic pages see a sharp increase approaching that period.
So you need a bit of all of that.
And you have to experiment around that.
Important landing page types to keep in mind.
Collection pages.
Very important.
People are browsing.. They’re shopping around.
They need to see options, product pages, well-designed product pages.
Of course.
Your home page has to be thought of.
And this is where you can use a platform like Unbounce to play around
with, with your homepage without changing it for all your users.
And then seasonal pages, as I mentioned earlier.
So it’s offer led, it’s timely content.
Reinforces user intent,
leverages urgency cues and countdowns.
It’s really focused on the theme of your campaign.
You alluded to this earlier, but I want to hop back into
how much of Meta’s engagement happens on mobile.
And so we already talked about mobile design has to be incorporated.
You’re saying mobile first design.
But what do marketers need to know about mobile
first design so that they get it right?
Yeah.
I mean, we can just think about ourselves.
How do we behave, when we’re on, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or TikTok?
And the truth is, this is a shocking
statistic and have changed since the last time I heard it.
Our attention span on a newsfeed,
measured by how fast we scroll, is about 0.01 seconds.
So that’s the attention span
that as an advertiser or a brand, you have to work with.
And we’re talking about mobile first.
So short concise, quick clear.
That’s the sort of content you want to work with on the ad level,
but also on the landing page level.
Your mobile landing page can be different in content versus your desktop.
You don’t just take all your desktop content and stack it.
You have to think of functionality and design.
Know for example, tab sections, collapsible sections, pop ups.
You have to also think about reducing the content,
down to the necessary convincing content.
And this is why landing pages are important
because a lot of existing websites don’t are not built for that.
And you may not have the time or the luxury or the budget to change
your entire website.
That’s where the landing page opportunity comes into play.
I hope that answers your question.
It does.
And I want to say I was today years old before when I learned that,
the phrase thumb stopping visuals.
I’ve never heard that before, but. I knew exactly what it was when I read it.
So, I love, love learning new things, but it’s true.
What what you have to do to entice someone.
As you said, you have a fraction of a second.
So putting an amazing visual in there
that works on mobile is a really good strategy.
Yeah, and I can add a little tip for that.
On your creative level is experiment with different hooks.
That first two seconds that gets someone’s thumb to stop scrolling.
So, you know, a lot of people know this already, but try to experiment
as much as possible with that first two seconds and change it up.
Nice.
So once marketers have their strategy set, how can they lay the right foundation
with their channel choices and account structure
just to get the most out of the campaigns that they’re running this season?
Yeah.
So let’s talk social.
You know, not to discount Google at all.
Google is very important in their strategy or any search engine.
If you’re big on any others, with Google being the main one,
you know, on Google it is a lot simpler.
You know, changing your ad copy.
Changing your content.
Of course, if you’re running Pmac’s or YouTube.
But the real opportunity, in my opinion, for that period of the year is on social.
So if we’re going
to limit our conversation to social because we don’t have all the time.
Let’s talk about account structure.
You would want to do two things is you would want to create
a standalone campaign for Cyber Five.
Cyber Five being Black Friday,. Cyber Monday and the holidays.
And this has all your
activity, your creatives, your offering and promotions within that campaign.
Now this is crucial and most people skip that step.
You also want to go into your business as usual in your evergreen campaigns,
and you want to pepper in some of your Cyber Five creatives in there.
Add them to your existing assets.
Because that’ll help those assets compete with
with the auction and with all advertisers that are competing for impressions.
And so when the season is over, when your assets or your,
your business, usual campaigns need to be go back to normal.
It’ll help with that transition.
If not, if you don’t do that, your business as usual campaigns
will see CPM skyrocketing, performance will fluctuate,
and you’ll have a hard time going back to normal.
So two things is one standalone campaign.
But to take those same creatives, add them to existing business
as usual campaigns or AdSense.
I was like that, balancing it out.
So it’s really tempting.
And it really is possible
to burn through your whole holiday budget in just a couple of days.
So how do you avoid that and stay competitive
so you can play throughout the whole peak season?
Do you have a timeline that you recommend?
Yeah. And we’ll keep it high level.
And of course it could vary by brand or typical answer,
but if you want to follow a a high level plan,
you know, it might be a little late in the game for some if you haven’t started,
but October to mid November, you want to warm your account up.
You got to warm up your account, warm up your audience.
You want to test certain promotions.
There’s some opportunities to test out what works and what doesn’t.
Prime Day in October Halloween,. You know, if you missed
those opportunities, you can invent certain, opportunities.
For example, pre Black Friday day,
you know, may be good for some brands, not good for others.
The goal is to find opportunities to test out promotions and and offers
to see what’s going to work, around the holiday period or Cyber Five.
Another idea is an early bird access to collect emails,
provide people with a VIP early access, collect their emails.
One is you’ll get to see what creatives work.
You’ll get to collect emails.
You get to understand what creatives are working best.
And that gives you a list of people
that you can reach out to by email and by retargeting.
So that’s up until mid November.
Mid November it’s time to scale.
And we’re talking doubling your budget.
So that could be an overall guiding compass.
Whatever your budget is mid November expect or really aim to double it.
Compared to October baseline.
And start worrying up your Cyber Five creatives don’t just one shot.
Work your way up there.
So the goal here is you want to build up scale and when to hit the peak scale.
Later on.
And finally, when it comes to Cyber Five.
So that long Friday, the Monday period,
is where you want to be at your peak scale in terms of budget, we’re talking about
4 to 6 times your October baseline
in terms of spend.
That’s the overall guideline there.
And then we have the gifting season.
Focus on gifting, messaging.
Expect a second big bump in performance.
Now it doesn’t have to be 4 to 6 times your baseline,
but a good two times to three times is is expected.
And then depending on the brand,
anywhere between December 26th to New Year,
expect CPMs to drop drastically.
This is a time to rest.
But also if you’re in the health industry, if you’re in the gaming industry,
it’s a good time to prepare for Q one or what we call Q five.
So the new year.
And take advantage of those low CPMs to build up your audiences.
Great.
Thank you for being so detailed and actually giving us numbers.
Really helpful for a lot of the digital marketers out there.
I do want to chat a little bit about offers.
So what are some do’s and don’ts in terms of off in terms of the offers
people should be putting out during the holiday season?
Yeah.
You know, it’s a tough one.
I like to give examples, concrete examples.
But the truth is, it’s a case by case scenario.
Now, there are a few musts and must not.
Delivery is important.
You know, we’re competing with Amazon in a lot of cases,
even if your brand is on Amazon.
Your store is competing with your own brand on Amazon.
So fast shipping is definitely key all year.
But in Q4 it’s instrumental.
Of course, promotions are,
you know, you can’t get away without a promotion nowadays.
So an appealing delivery promise is a must.
And it’s not just a must to get that purchase.
It’s a must to get the repeat purchase.
So 60% of customers will not return after a bad post-purchase purchase experience.
Be very, very
clear about your cut off date for for the holidays.
People want to get their gifts on time for their celebrations.
So keep that in mind and be very transparent.
Perhaps include some free shipping thresholds.
That’s a tough one.
You know, I see a lot of thresholds that are not appealing.
Look at your average order value and use that as, a compass.
Your free shipping threshold should be right above your AOV.
And in general, try to take advantage of your check out page for upsells.
This is where content is at its highest.
So bundle things up.
Try to offer, you know, similar products or complimentary products.
Some discounting.
Those are the the big musts, I would say.
Post purchase experience. Again, very important.
Don’t lose sight. About that.
You can use the, order tracking page as a high intent touchpoint as well.
Small tip.
So you can communicate on that page about, you know, your package location
and offer personalized coupon for a second purchase.
So it’s a good opportunity to to drive some repeat purchases.
Wow, I love that idea.
I’m always checking that page to track my purchases.
So really an opportunity out there for those in e-commerce.
So we need to wrap up, just any last tips to make the most out of the
this eight week holiday season period? Yeah.
I mean, some of them will be reminders.
50% of shoppers are expected to plan their gifts way ahead of time.
So keep that in mind.
You want zero friction this year?
So make the journey as easy as possible.
You know, dedicated gifting collections.
Create a page for that in your menu.
Gift guides could be very helpful.
Keep in
mind, you know, AI, the. AI conversation now,
it might be a little late in the game, but it’s never too late.
So we can have another webinar about this,
but I’ll give you a few quick tips.
Your product pages are very important.
Be very descriptive of, what your product is, what it does,
and why people need it.
I’ve seen way too many product pages be, lacking in content.
So that’s how AI will find you.
Context and description.
For the content marketers there, you’ll like this.
Also an opportunity to stock up on reviews,
whether it’s on your website or third party sites.
Get some PR out there.
PR doesn’t have to be expensive PR for me.
Reddit counts as PR.. So be active on Reddit.
AI will have an easier time finding you if people are talking with you
and about you.
So some some tips, that people may not think of this year.
Those are so great, Jonathan.
Thank you so much.. I feel like we could talk for hours.
Where can folks find more about you and about Webistry?
Yeah, you can find us on www.Webistry.com.
All our handles are quite simple.
Webistry, w-e-b-i-s-t-r-y.
If you do reach out, most likely than not, I’ll be the person
you’re going to speak to. I’m our sales team.
So I look forward to chatting with anyone who wants to talk shop.
Wow. A sales guy who knows the ins and outs can’t beat that.
Jonathan, again, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
All right. And thanks to all of you for tuning in to Closing Time.
Remember, you can get this episode
and all the episodes delivered right to your inbox.
Just click the link in the show notes.
We will see you next week and get started on your holiday promotions.
