As with most things in life, timing is key for the paid marketing of commerce content. While much of your content may be evergreen, seasonal or holiday-specific content can perform very well on social channels due to relevance ranking. In fact, for many commerce content publishers, holiday-related content in Q4 is responsible for the bulk of their commerce revenue for the year.
Therefore, when it comes to commerce content, it’s important to think about your campaigns across the year rather than planning and budgeting monthly. Some months may be slower than others in terms of e-commerce conversions, so it’s crucial to be able to dedicate additional paid distribution budget to the months that produce the best results. For many publishers, this is during the “holiday season” when people do most of their gift buying for the year. Recently, though, other events have also taken center-stage in many affiliate marketing strategies, such as Prime Day, the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, and Singles’ Day.
Start by creating a content calendar with your editorial team. Look at the whole year and decide — in addition to your core content — the holidays, sales, and special events for which you’ll produce content. Some holidays to consider for each month for U.S. focused publishers:
| Month | Events, Themes, and Holidays |
| January |
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| February |
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| March |
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| April |
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| May |
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| June |
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| July |
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| August |
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| September |
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| October |
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| November |
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| December |
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Once your editorial calendar is in place, start to work backward to create a marketing calendar. Demand on social platforms, and therefore the cost of distribution, tends to increase right before a holiday, so consider starting to post as early as possible while making sure the content is still relevant. Of course different content will be relevant at different points of the holiday lifecycle. For example, you can (and should) post an article about the holiday gifts that are most likely to sell out in October, but you should probably wait until late December to post an article about gifts that you can still get in time for the holidays if you order today.
Also consider when you will stop posting about holiday content. While Amazon Prime provides one-day or two-day delivery as standard shipping options, most retailers stop shipping about three to five days before the target delivery date. If that’s the case, you should stop distributing your content about that retailer in the same time frame, as conversion to purchases will be quite low.
To read more about strategies for the paid distribution of commerce content, download our eBook, How to Build a Paid Marketing Strategy for Commerce Content.
