Last Top-Tips for Black Friday

With Black Friday and Cyber Weekend looming right around the corner, we asked the team for some last minute top tips to help see you through the four day extravaganza. Covering everything from audience optimisation and tailored ad content, to interactive creatives and lead generation ads, here are their thoughts.

Matilda Rose Moir

Stand Out Creative Design

“Over the Black Friday period users are saturated by content, so ensuring your creatives stand out is vital. Including interactive formats and creatives that drive user urgency such as, countdown timers in your creative strategy is a great way to ensure you don’t become lost in a sea of content.” – Ethan Vaughan, Creative Development Executive

Amazon Ads Strategy

“When it comes to Amazon, make sure you’re utilising all of Amazon’s advertising features and start showcasing your brand well before Black Friday (keeping the momentum going all the way  through – until the end of the year). Black Friday sees a 129% increase in traffic, and a 250% increase in sales compared to the October average so I recommend using a three step approach over the course of the weekend, focusing your product strategy on:

  • High potential products before Black Friday
  • Product deals during Black Friday
  • Top performing products after Black Friday

With 30% of users on Amazon planning to make Christmas gift purchases in November, advertisers need to understand their customers and tailor their seasonal keywords accordingly, as well as increasing bids & budgets to allow for the spike in demand.” – Peter Munton, Senior Performance Manager

Display

“Make sure you remain flexible over Black Friday and Cyber Weekend as it’s hard to predict how consumers and competitors will behave during this time. Running ads focused on lead generation in the lead up to Black Friday will allow you to generate excitement and guarantee you an audience ready to retarget over the weekend, and on Cyber Monday. 

You should also consider your target audience, tailoring your content to target deal-savvy users, who purchased last Black Friday, and advertising on deal websites where users will likely be browsing options before purchase. 

Lastly, as time spent on YouTube has rocketed during lockdown, ensure you also take the time to consider your YouTube strategy, as well as a brand measurement piece, to get a better idea of the impact this activity has on users.” – Alice Malthouse. Account Director

PPC Optimisation

“My top tip would be to build out specific Black Friday campaigns with extended keyword coverage on both exact and broad modifier match types, rather than integrating these within your existing search campaigns. Not only will this enable efficient budget management, but you’ll also find it easier to monitor your bids – as these will likely have higher CPCs due to the rising competition associated with the holiday season. 

Advertisers should also remember to preserve enough budget to spend on both the day of, and Cyber Weekend,  remembering to double check campaign budget caps to avoid capping out. A good idea would be to check how much each Black Friday campaign spent last year and get an additional 20% on top of that for this year, giving a rough idea of what to spend each day. 

Additionally,  make sure you’re fully taking full advantage of the variety of audiences you can create; from last year’s Black Friday purchasers, to users who have visited your deals page but have not completed a purchase. Targeting cart abandoners is always a good audience to focus on, as they tend to have a higher intent to convert than ‘just browsing’ customers.” – Emma Pilaviou, Account Executive

Social Urgency

“In a society where everything is at the touch of one’s fingertips, now is the perfect time for advertisers to get their brand in front of their audience, creating a sense of urgency and demand for their product. My top tip for Black Friday would be for brands to use the time sensitive nature of Black Friday deals to play the ‘for a limited time only’ card, boosting the consumers’ sense of urgency, and incentive to buy. 

Brands should be optimising the Facebook platform, to generate this sense of urgency – creating clear and straightforward ad content that targets intended audiences. Although Facebook has declined over the years on the hierarchy of Social Media Platforms, it still remains the best platform for targeting specific user demographics. Brands should also be using Instagram and the stories feature to interact with users, identifying which ads are resonating with their audience and which are not.” – Louis Basileo, Partnership Sales Associate

There’s not long left until the big day, but with these top tips you’ll be able to pick up some quick wins across the Black Friday weekend. If you want to get some external insights into how your campaigns are performing, get in touch with the team today.

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