Consumers are ready for Q4, but are you ready?

Ah yes, the lovely sound of Q4! The last quarter of the year is when ad spends go up, marketing budgets are pushed to their limit, and consumer spending goes up and up and up.

It is an exciting time for lots of consumer brands like yourself because this is where a lot of the revenue is made, and you can try new tactics when it comes to marketing.

Your actions in Q4 will fall short if you don't prepare today.

We are only weeks away until October, but you need to start thinking about your content and production today so that you have all your creative assets on time for Q4!

Don't freak out or panic; I will walk you through what to think about and how you can execute that production.

Start at the goal, then work backward

Planning is not as cool as creating the content, but trust me, you need to know what your goals are for this last quarter to build a strategy of what you will need to reach that goal. Here are some questions you should answer:

1. What marketing channels will you use to reach your revenue goal in Q4?

Before you architect a plan, you need to know how you are reaching your customers. You could reach customers through email, ads, influencers, etc. List out the marketing channels that you will use.

2. Of these methods, which ones need updated creative assets?

Some of these channels may not need creative assets, but if you are doing a special deal for Black Friday or launching a new product, you will need new photos and videos. You need to know which marketing channels require come creative asset updates.

3. How many photos and videos do you need of the methods that need new creative assets?

Once you know what channels need new photos and videos, you can figure out the amount of new creative assets you will need for Q4. You will most likely find that you need more than you think. It is better to know what you need now versus waiting till the week of Black Friday.

4. Now that you know the amount of content you need, what are the critical narratives you want to tell through photos and videos?

It is not enough to flash a Black Friday deal graphic and call it a day. Consumers will be flooded with ads in the next four months, so you need to stick out through the story you tell. What are the stories that you want to tell in your new creative assets? Knowing the answer to this question will give you clarity on how to create your photos and videos.

5. Who is going to help you execute the photos and videos?

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan is a great book that helps you find who will help you accomplish your goals versus how. Maybe you have held off hiring someone else for your content creation, but with Q4 as crucial as it is to your business, this could be the time to find a partner to create the content. At the very least, you need to see what team member(s) will be in charge of executing this content creation because it is clearly a need from the answers to the above questions.

Content ideas that will perform well

1. US vs. THEM

There are a lot of choices out there, so put yourself up against your competition to show consumers how you are the better choice. Graphics like this one would do well!

2. Ingredient Graphic

These graphics are totally underrated in performance. People are so used to seeing photo after photo on the feed, so when they see cool text or a graphic like the one below, it makes people stop scrolling.

You can play with what ingredients or benefits are most important to the consumer, but this is a type of content is a way to have a new photo that has some educational design layered on top. These ads perform well and do well in emails.

3. GIFs

GIFs are sneaky videos that can embed in emails, and I LOVE them. You can easily tell someone a benefit of your product quickly through the moving imagery of a GIF. Below is a GIF made for Jackalope Energy that makes protein muffins with the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. We wanted to demonstrate to people this idea that you can replace your morning coffee with this muffin.

4. Unboxing Videos

I wish I could embed videos on emails to show you but click here to see Magic Spoon's ad library. You can see that they do a lot of unboxing videos to introduce the products to viewers. These types of videos perform really well.