Every September I have the same conversation. Roughly six times.
A small ecomm business owner DMs me: ‘I want to start running Facebook ads for Christmas. Where do I begin?’
And I have to be the bearer of bad news: you should have started this in July. We’ve now got six weeks until peak season, three of which are in the most expensive ad auction of the year, and you’ve never run ads before.
We can still do it. But you’re learning under pressure. Margin for error: nil.
If your business depends on Q4 – gift shops, Etsy sellers, candle makers, ecom brands that do the bulk of their revenue between October and December – this post is for you. Read it now. Don’t be the September DM.
Why summer is the cheap season
The Meta ad auction is supply-and-demand like any other market. Lots of advertisers bidding for the same eyeballs = expensive CPMs (cost per thousand impressions). Few advertisers bidding = cheap.
July and August are the cheap months. The big retailers (John Lewis, M&S, Boots, Argos) all pull back on spend. They know their customers are on holiday, decision-making is slower, big purchases are being deferred. So they hold their budgets for autumn.
That means YOUR ads – assuming you’re running them – face less competition. Your CPMs drop 20-40% compared to October-December. Your reach for the same budget goes up. The audience is slightly less convert-ready, but cheap reach lets you test what works.
By October, every retailer in the UK is back in the auction. CPMs spike. Click costs climb. Frequency drops. It becomes the most expensive marketing month of the year.
You don’t want to be testing in October. You want to be SCALING in October. Testing happens in summer.
What ‘testing in summer’ actually means
Concrete plan if you’re starting today and Christmas is your big quarter.
**July (now):**
– Set up a Sales objective campaign
– Run 2-3 creative tests at £10-£15/day
– Broad audience (UK, your age range, maybe an interest if it’s genuinely relevant)
– Goal: identify which creative gets your strongest engagement and click rate
– This is NOT about making Q4 sales yet. It’s about learning what works.
**August:**
– Take the winning creative from July
– Run it slightly hotter (£20/day)
– Add a retargeting layer (people who engaged with the July ads but didn’t buy)
– Goal: confirm the creative still works at slightly higher spend
– Start building your warm audience for autumn
**September:**
– Add new creative tests – the winning July formula with new hooks
– Increase spend to £25-£40/day
– Build seasonal angles into the creative (start to nod toward Christmas without going hard)
– Goal: be ready to scale on Day 1 of October
**October:**
– Scale to whatever spend your unit economics support
– Run the proven creative hot
– Keep testing new variations alongside
– This is when Q4 starts paying back the summer’s testing work
**November:**
– Peak season. Maximum spend you can profitably run.
– Run BAU. Don’t break the campaign with new tests now.
– New creative only if something’s clearly stopped working.
**December:**
– Last-chance gift-buying messaging
– Pull back ad spend mid-December once shipping cutoffs hit
– Start planning January’s organic strategy while ads do the heavy lifting
Common pushback (and answers)
**’But I won’t make many sales in July. Why spend the money?’**
See, I have a bit of a bug bear with this. Story time. I once had a client who I offered consultancy on. She ONLY ran ads in Nov/Dec and made a killing on them as they were very ‘giftable’ products. Ridiculously good numbers! She wanted to try them outside of Christmas as she was frustrated with getting barely any sales through the year. And, she did and compared to industry benchmarks, she got GREAT results. But because they didn’t compare to Q4 results, it was decided they didn’t work outside of Q4. She had become conditioned to thinking that Christmas results would be the results you would get on a rainy, slightly depressing, February weekend.
Now, you won’t make as many sales in July as you will in November. That’s true. But you’ll still make sales and you will also be spending far less and will get way more bang for your buck – paying roughly 30% less for impressions. The test isn’t about July sales – it’s about figuring out what works so November works harder. Treat July’s spend as research as well as revenue.
**’I haven’t got the cash flow in summer to test ads.’**
Then save and start as soon as you can. The smallest viable test budget is £200/month for two months. £400 total. Yes that’s real money. It’s also less than you’ll lose if you launch in October with no clue what works.
**’My organic audience already buys from me at Christmas. Why do I need ads?’**
Two reasons.
One – your organic audience caps your growth at the size of your current following. Ads bring in new buyers.
Two – your existing followers also see ads, and a paid retargeting layer over your organic audience often dramatically improves conversion in Q4.
The honest version
Most Christmas-trade businesses I work with started ads in October the first year, struggled, and went into Q4 stressed. The second year they spent all year learning what worked. Then scaled in October, and made significantly more money with less stress.
July-you doing the boring testing work in cheap auction time is November-you’s best friend. Don’t make November-you start from scratch.
Start now.
Keep going.
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