Should you turn your ads off for Xmas?

Should you turn your Google/LinkedIn/Meta Ads off for the Xmas/NY break?

Before I get into that, I’ll let you know that this will be my last blog of the year. I’m going to enjoy spending time with my little Christmas angel, born just three weeks ago!

Merry Christmas from me, the family and the Rocket SaaS team 🎄

SaaS Christmas ads. Yay or nay?

If you run Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Bing, etc, ads, you’re probably wondering whether you should pause your ads, lower the budget or continue to run them over the Christmas/New Year period.

The ad companies will find a way to spend your budget

You may think, “It’s cost per click. If people don’t click my ads during the holidays, then my budget won’t get spent”. This is not always true in my experience. The ad companies will find a way to spend your cash! If you’re using max conversion bidding, then be careful. With fewer impressions, your CPC is going to climb dramatically.

Let’s break down the pros and cons…

Keep them on if…

You’re B2C

Each case is unique, but generally speaking, it makes sense for most B2C brands to keep ads running during holidays. Customers don’t run on “business hours”. People spend more time on Facebook and Instagram during the holidays.

You can get a bargain

For B2B businesses, it’s highly likely that at least some of your competitors will be pausing their ads. It could lead to cheaper Cost Per Click and Cost Per Conversion while there’s less competition.

You’re worried about going back into the Learning Phase

If you pause your ads, when you restart them, they could go back into the “learning phase”, which is a few days or weeks of Google automatically experiments and optimises your campaigns to learn what works best for you. Campaigns often perform badly during this phase. Ad rank could also be negatively impacted.

If you want to avoid campaigns going back into the learning phase and slowing you down once the new year begins, you can instead just lower your budgets. Don’t go lower than 20%, though. A bigger change could result in entering the learning phase.

Pause them if…

You’ll have no staff

If you don’t have the staff available to fulfil requests, then it’s best to pause the ads. If a visitor tries to book a demo and the next available slot is 2 weeks away, they are likely to do a U-turn or no-show.

Likewise, with free trials, if manual onboarding or support is needed and nobody is available from your side, the customer will be very unlikely to upgrade.

You want extra budget for Jan

January is often a great month for B2B brands due to new budgets and the New Year’s resolution attitude of “I must solve X problem this year!“. So pausing ads in December and moving the saved budget to January makes sense for a lot of brands.

You want to focus on other areas of growth

Some people will find this hard to believe, but business is not all about sales and leads! If you’re a small business, it may be wise to embrace the slowdown in sales during the holiday season to focus on other areas of your business, such as mapping out your 2024 marketing strategy (hiring Rocket SaaS should be top of your list 😉 ).

My conclusion

Every account is different. Hopefully, the above points will provide you with some guidance. In short:

B2C account? Keep your Ads running and take advantage of potential reduced competition and increased demand.

B2B account? If users are unable to get in touch with your team, consider turning your ads off to avoid wasting ad spend. Push the saved budget into January. But watch out for the impact of sinking back into the campaign learning phases. Hopefully the extra budget in Jan will make it worth it.

You can focus ads higher up the funnel

For most SaaS brands, bottom-of-funnel intent will drop during the holiday season (booking demos, free trials, etc). However, the top/middle-of-funnel searches often continue to be strong. So, a change of strategy to push your thought-leader content harder during this period should be considered.

Whatever you decide to do, be sure to document your decision and the results, so you can know exactly what to do next year.