Year-end campaign planning — the framework we use with every e-commerce client

By the time most e-commerce brands think seriously about their year-end campaigns, the lead time for good planning has already compressed to something uncomfortable. October is not early. September is. But if you are reading this in October and have not started, there is still a path to a structured Q4, it just requires moving quickly on the decisions that have the longest upstream dependencies.

The first thing we do with every e-commerce client in September is audit the asset inventory. Not the campaign structure. The assets: what product photography exists, what video content is available, what offer structures the business can actually support from an inventory and margin standpoint. Campaign creativity is constrained by what you have to work with. Discovering in November that you do not have video assets for Reels, when Meta Reels is your best placement, is expensive to fix under time pressure.

The offer architecture conversation

Year-end campaigns for Indian e-commerce involve a specific calendar: Navratri and Dussehra in October, Diwali in the first half of November, then the lead-up to Christmas and New Year for brands where that demographic applies. Each moment has different purchase intent and different creative requirements.

We map the offer structure for each window before we touch campaign settings. What is the discount or value-add for each period. How does the offer differ by product category. What is the minimum order value for promotions. What happens to margins at different discount levels. These are business questions, not marketing questions, but the marketing cannot be planned without answering them first. We have been in too many October briefings where the brand wanted to plan creatives before anyone had confirmed what the offer would actually be.

Budget sequencing

The instinct is to hold budget back and push hard during the Diwali peak. In practice, the cost per click and CPM on both Google and Meta increase significantly in the two weeks around Diwali because every brand is in the auction simultaneously. We have found better economics in building audience pools and retargeting lists in September and early October, then activating heavy spend earlier than the competition expects, and maintaining it through the post-Diwali period when intent is still high but competition costs have come down.

The clients who plan their year-end well outperform by a margin that is not explained by budget alone. Planning creates options. Urgency removes them. That is the framework: get the decisions made early so the execution has room to respond to what actually happens.