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Black Friday is just a few clicks away. Is your PPC campaign ready?

The year is almost ending, which means that the holidays are right around the corner. ‘Tis a time for shopping, and we’re all ready to make those purchases for loved ones, friends, colleagues, and ourselves.

November 26th is near, and the ongoing pandemic could once again lead to surges in online sales. Many shoppers continue to avoid crowded stores, preferring online shopping from the comfort of their homes. Think about it; your potential customers are probably skimming your store for prices already and evaluating what to purchase for their gift (or wish) list.

We’re all looking for that discounted price, maybe even free shipping. So, what can you do to generate that awareness?

Step one. Make your first move!

Build a strategic approach for Black Friday. Use all the tools available from your PPC efforts, including Audience Manager, Google Trends, Google Analytics. Your first moves can:

• Boost existing campaigns to make sure to keep the content of your ads up to date. Use performance data from existing campaigns to carefully focus on the right ads, keywords, devices, and audiences.
• Focus on a holiday-themed campaign. Let the festive spirit show in your Black Friday offers. If you have an existing holiday campaign, “rules” will be your best friend. Use “automatic rules” to control when your holiday campaign should complement your regular campaigns.
• Prioritize a set of products. Select a particular product or entire product range rather than a general approach.
• Align your website. Make sure that your website’s speed and presentation are optimized for the expected jump in visitors.
• Open up to new ways. If you haven’t already, maybe it’s time to try social media. Running a paid social campaign that aligns with your organic social post will push your brand using Facebook’s unique audiences. Social platforms such as Facebook allow you to upload your existing customers’ data. This information can later produce audiences known as lookalike (Facebook) audiences.

Step two. Before you begin, let’s review the specific areas to focus on in Google Ads.

• Audiences. Proactively building an audience is never a bad thing. Remarketing is a critical tactic to creating Black Friday campaigns. You can remarket to them with a Black Friday promotional code. It will be helpful to make use of the remarketing lists populated with November users. That way, you include the consumers who were likely researching their holiday purchases.
• Extensions: Promotion extensions allow you to add value to standard search ads. They highlight sales and promotions to people actively searching for a product or service like yours.
• Ad Copy: Add “Black Friday” references to your ads. A specific Black Friday headline and description is intentional and up-to-date.
• Keywords: This is an excellent time to use broader keywords and capture new variations of generic non-brand terms. Review paused keywords within your campaigns. It may help to enable these to capture as much traffic as possible over the sale period.
• Ads schedule: Monitor your ad delivery settings, so campaigns don’t go offline during crucial shopping hours and days.
• Bidding strategies: These are important in preparations for Black Friday. The higher competition from other active brands brings expensive auctions and higher CPC even weeks before November. Using automated value-based bidding ensures your campaigns target the searches that will get the best return through historical learnings.

And Finally, this season is all about your offers.

The most successful Black Friday digital marketing campaign is well planned, so start with some research. Look into your competitors and find out what they are offering, what they offered last year. If you had Black Friday promotions running the previous year, how successful were they? Identify everything you did well and not so well, and use this to build a solid Black Friday strategy.

Make sure your landing pages reflect your ad text. Including any promotions in the text should also be highlighted clearly via banners and images on your website.

Conclusion

Now is a good time for you to make some moves. When preparing your paid media efforts and campaign strategies for Black Friday, stay aware of your paid media efforts and campaign strategies.

Use our guide with the tools you have and put your brand out there for a successful holiday season.

If you are interested in learning more about the tools and services we provide to our clients, reach out to us for a meeting.