Black Friday

8 Things to consider when preparing your Black Friday PPC campaigns

With Black Friday approaching, here are 8 things to consider when preparing your PPC campaigns for the peak period.

The value of spending over the Black Friday period has increased year after year, so here’s some help to ensure your accounts are fully ready for Friday 26th November!

  1. BLACK FRIDAY/CYBER MONDAY OFFERING

Confirm what your offering is going to be around this key period. This can be in the form of a % discount or £ saving. Consider specific product category discounts if that suits. Delivery-related offers also tend to work well, such as free delivery, free click and collect, reductions in delivery charge etc.

If your brand or client isn’t doing anything specific for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, still be aware of potential uplifts in traffic and spend.

2. AD COPY AND EXTENSIONS

Where applicable, mention Black Friday/Cyber Monday in your ads, alongside any discount or delivery offers. Align your ad copy with the messaging on-site, to ensure there is a consistent tone of voice.

If the offers are due to run for a short period, consider setting up countdown ads, to create a sense of urgency.

Use specific Black Friday/Cyber Monday sitelinks, price extensions, promotion extensions and callouts where you can, to display extra information.

If you need to enable/pause your ads at certain times (in the switchover from Black Friday weekend to Cyber Monday), then set up automated rules to implement these changes.

3. BLACK FRIDAY/CYBER MONDAY SPECIFIC CAMPAIGNS

Customers may be searching for ‘black friday + product/service’ related terms, so a way to try and capitalise on this is to create specific Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, across both Brand and Non Brand campaigns.

4. BUDGETS

Look at previous years traffic and spend trends to give you a rough guide on the uplift you expect to see in the run up to, and during, Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Ensure you have enough budget signed off, or have an additional pot of budget available, should performance surpass expectations over the Black Friday period.

Don’t forget to increase your campaign budget caps to allow for the uplift in spend!

5.TARGETS

Confirm with your brand or client if KPI targets still need to be met around this key period – ideally, targets would be relaxed temporarily as you will want to maximise on the uplift in traffic, and not restrict performance due to targets.

6. BIDDING

If Manual Bidding is being used, remove any ad scheduling/device bid modifiers in place to ensure full visibility over the key period. Alternatively, use previous years data to suggest an ad schedule/bid modifiers, that is reflective of performance around this peak time.

Consider setting up automated rules to push bids first thing in the morning, rather than waiting until you start work, as you may lose out on traffic in that time.

7. AUDIENCES

Review past performance of audience lists around peak periods, as there may well be an opportunity to up-weight bids more aggressively around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, especially for returning users.

8. SHOPPING

Review and optimise the Shopping Feed and check the diagnostics beforehand, to ensure any issues are resolved before the peak period.

Use Shopping promotions where possible, to highlight any discount or free delivery offerings.

Update product descriptions on relevant SKUs, to reference Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

About the author:

Bhavisha Panesar is the Head of PPC at CreativeRace, with 10 years of experience in PPC working across sectors such as retail, leisure, finance and property. She has worked on local and global brands including TK Maxx, Euro Car Parts, Topps Tiles, Mobiles.co.uk and Jabra.