Have you already launched your back-to-school ads? You may have noticed the influx of shoppers as early as June, with a significant spike expected from August to September. As the peak of this retail season approaches, it’s not just about generating impressions and views for your back-to-school ads on social media. The ultimate goal is to attract audiences, convert them into leads, and transform those leads into buyers. 

To achieve this, you need to guide your audience from simply knowing about your brand to making a purchase. Here are five strategies to maximize your profit markups this back-to-school and back-to-college season.

5 Back-to-School Advertising Strategies That Generate Sales

The winter holidays may be the biggest advertising event throughout the year; however, back-to-school marketing promotions come to a close second. Hence, competition can be fierce as school and college necessities are among the first items that back-to-school shoppers seek. But you should be good to go if you have the right strategy to tap into those markets and appeal to those interests.

Whether you’re running a back-to-school weekly ad for college dorm furniture or recurring social campaigns for the trendiest school bags, these strategies for your back-to-school ads are designed to drive your audience from their screens to their shopping carts.

1. Develop Funnel-Focused Campaigns

Within the Meta platform, Facebook has allowed brands to promote their back-to-school ads effectively, from raising awareness and building consideration to ultimately driving conversions.

By creating a well-structured funnel-focused campaign, you can guide your Facebook audience from becoming aware of your brand to increasing brand recall by targeting those who engage with your brand and similar brands. The next step is to present them with engaging back-to-college and back-to-school ads that build trust, ultimately converting them into leads or buyers.

Here’s a sample media plan that takes your audience from awareness to conversion:

Using Advantage+ audience targeting, you can expand the reach of your back-to-college ad campaigns while applying detailed targeting options such as age, gender, interests, demographics, and behavior. Custom audiences, such as lookalikes and those based on Meta engagements, can also be utilized with Advantage+.

2. Implement Advanced Audience Targeting

Just as you can target sports audiences for a non-sports brand, you don’t need to be a back-to-school supplies brand to succeed during the back-to-school advertising season. YouTube, combined with Google’s advertising ecosystem, reaches up to 600M+ users and devices. While this reach is excellent for brand awareness, the ultimate goal is to narrow it down to funnel your audience toward conversions.

By leveraging YouTube and Google’s advanced targeting capabilities, you can optimize audience targeting to maximize your sales during the back-to-school and back-to-college season.

Get on the Big Screens

With families spending time at home during the summer break, it’s the perfect time to utilize Connected TV devices, which are present in 83% of U.S. households. This year, the top back-to-school shopping destination remains online, with 57% of shoppers expected to shop from their desktop computers or mobile phones.

Expand the Summer Sales

Target “summer” searches and interests while integrating summer themes into your ads to blend with users’ searches and browsing activity. 

Shoppers have already started as early as the 4th of July, with others waiting until Labor Day. These periods provide the best opportunities to capture shoppers’ attention and drive purchases for school and college supplies.

3. Excluding Negative Keywords and Topics

With regard to YouTube brand safety and suitability, it is imperative to remain informed about any potentially adverse issues that may arise, particularly when employing a specific geo-targeting strategy. It is essential to avoid any association with negative news or controversial topics, as such headlines can harm brand perception and reputation.

Video & Channel Placement Exclusions

You can exclude your ads from appearing on news channels. While news channels can be an effective way to reach parents, they can also negatively impact your brand if your ads are shown alongside undesirable news. 

Additionally, exclude your ads from YouTube Kids channels to prevent unintended clicks that can skew your ad performance.

Negative Keyword Targeting

Similar to keyword targeting, you can create a list of negative keywords that you don’t want your ads to appear with. Set this up at the account level to apply a default set of negative keywords to all your back-to-school and back-to-college YouTube campaigns. 

You can also create negative keyword lists at the campaign and ad group levels.

Category Exclusions

Using category exclusions in YouTube ads gives you greater authority over the contexts in which your advertisements are displayed. By excluding categories like tragedy and conflict, profanity, rough language, sexually suggestive content, and other sensitive topics, you can ensure that your back-to-school and back-to-college ads appear alongside content that better aligns with your brand’s image and values.

4. Boost Your Sales Using Spark Ads and UGC

Spark Ads on TikTok allow brands to promote User-Generated Content (UGC) and their own organic content as sponsored ads within the platform. According to TikTok’s data, Spark Ads have a 20% higher landing page arrival rate than non-Spark Ads. Additionally, brand recall on TikTok increases by up to 27% when brands partner with TikTok influencers.

• Promote Trust: Utilize content from TikTok users who post about your product or service to build trust in your brand.
• Provide Authenticity: Showcase authentic experiences with your brand, enhancing credibility.
• Foster Collaborations: Develop good relationships and potential collaborations with TikTok users who can promote your brand to their audience.

For example, a mini printer brand showcased its product by demonstrating how cleanly it prints a skeletal system diagram, which the student in the video could easily stick to their notes.

Another example is a portable stove pot, where a college student shows how easy it is to prepare a quick meal without leaving the dorm bed.

5. Maintain Brand Recall with Proper Campaign Pacing

Utilize always-on advertising to keep your brand top of mind for back-to-school shoppers. While you don’t need to be the top bidder or show up constantly, it’s crucial to be visible during peak back-to-school sale days. With proper campaign pacing and strategic timing, you can maintain a consistent presence on users’ feeds, increasing your impact when they decide to purchase.

Take note of these peak retail events, during which 68% of shoppers plan to make their purchases for school and college supplies. These are the times to increase bids within your campaign duration:

• 4th of July
• Prime Day
• Labor Day