Online spending over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend has continued to increase YoY with UK consumers estimated to have spent over £9bn online over last year’s BFCM weekend, 18.5% higher than 2020’s figures. Given their critical role driving conversions and sales PPC & Google Shopping are two of the most important channels for brands in the run up to and over the BFCM weekend so which tactics should you be considering in order to nail Black Friday?
Building your audience
Preparation is arguably the most important element of any Black Friday campaign. Ensuring your Ads are being served to a highly targeted audience is critical for optimising performance and the months leading up to Black Friday present a great opportunity for brands to collect this invaluable audience data.
While maximising revenue on this year’s Black Friday will naturally be a key focus, this year’s event also presents an opportunity to get ahead of the game. Google Ads Manager allows brands to store audience data for 540 days so collecting audience data on who engaged with your content this year can provide a solid foundation for future campaigns.
The relationship between short-term profitability and customer lifetime value is a key consideration for any brand on Black Friday. This may not work for a typical single purchase brand but brands with strong returning customer numbers can use Black Friday to grow their customer base and then focus on growth with a bigger pool of customers.
Google Shopping: Your digital shop window
Combining Paid Search with Google Shopping can be an effective tactic for brands during the BFCM weekend. The visual nature of Google Shopping enables brands to showcase their products in all their glory and provides essentially a shop window online.
Customising your Google Shopping Ads during the BFCM weekend is a key step for brands to complete.
Black Friday bidding
Due to the increase in traffic, brands should expect to invest additional budget in Paid Search throughout the BFCM weekend. How much by depends on your position within the competitive landscape but it’s important to ensure you allocate enough budget in order to not cut off spend. Monitoring performance across the week and having different tactics in place depending on initial performance will ensure you are using this increased budget effectively and optimising ROI.
Putting the ‘key’ in keywords
Finally, selecting which keywords to focus on is another vital piece of the puzzle. While it may be tempting to invest in generic terms such as ‘Black Friday’ or ‘Black Friday Sale’ this approach will lead to significant wastage and is very unlikely to drive conversions or sales. Specificity is the name of the game so be as targeted as you can around the keywords that are relevant to your brand.
If you’re a brand looking to maximise your PPC strategy for this year’s Cyber Week sign up to our webinar to find our how to put this advice into practice.