Issue 5 - Preparing for Black Friday

Halloween ? Bonfire night ? Let’s move onto Christmas but just before that, let’s talk Black Friday and Cyber Monday.???

• Date - 7th November?
• To - Those who agree Christmas songs shouldn’t be played until December (ideally 15th onwards)
• Subject - Preparing for Black Friday?

This week's newsletter focuses on Black Friday & Cyber Monday and what brands & marketers can do to get ready within paid social, pay-per-click, email and affiliate marketing.??

We can’t deny that the impact of Black Friday isn’t the same anymore, everyone promotes earlier and earlier and a lot of the promotions are the same as the week before, however it still remains an important trading time for online businesses. And at least it moved online so we’ve stopped fighting over TVs in Curry's now!?

In November 2021 still had 1.5 million searches in the UK...

There were 673,000 searches in the UK last November for ‘when is black friday’. In fact, searches for this are on the increase. Likely due to less press and brands pushing earlier online, potentially causing confusion as to when it actually is.?

This year is going to be an interesting one as we are about to enter a long recession, customer confidence is low and bills are sky high. On the other hand, more than ever, people want something to make them smile and treat themselves and if we can make a saving at the same time - brilliant! So, I wouldn’t rule out this year as a very successful one.?

So, how should we be preparing for Black Friday? I'll explore things you can be doing on paid social, Google Ads, email marketing and affiliates.

Facebook & Instagram Ads?(or should I say Meta)

Start your Black Friday paid social ads strategy right now and bring as many users into the purchasing funnel without spending huge amounts:

• Run a giveaway on your social accounts?
• Focus on reels using vertical video assets
• Run lead generation ads to grow your email database

Prioritize the following; 1. Creative 2. Ad copy?(messaging) and 3. Audiences?

Here are some guidelines to consider when crafting your creatives:

• Use at least 3-5 creatives per offer/angle - and cover for all placements; story, feed etc
• Turn user-generated content into video creatives
• Use different creative in line with where the audience is in the funnel; high funnel (inspirational, memorable, brand led), middle funnel (more product/service focused which invites engagement), low funnel (helps to drive action).?
• Keep your messaging clear and simple
• Be consistent - users will see your ads more than once and if you are using 3-5 different creatives, you want them all to complement each other and be recognisable that this is from your brand.?

Remarketing is the most cost-efficient audience type and to take full advantage you’ll need to make sure you can grow these audiences as much as you can before costs rise during Black Friday and for the rest of the year.

Some recommended audiences lists include:?

• Video viewers?
• Followers of your Facebook and Instagram page
• Facebook and Instagram engagement audiences?
• Website custom audiences?
• Email lists

Google Ads?

Volume in Google (and Bing, let’s not forget Bing too) goes up massively in Q4 and peaks around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here’s a few things you can do to be ready for this period and really capitalise on the extra volume:

Set up campaigns targeting searches for [brand + black friday] and/or [product + black friday] so you are bidding separately on very relevant keywords, giving you the chance to get in front of potential customers with a tailored message.?

The competition is generally quite low and it astounds me when I see brands not taking advantage of this tactic. Here’s just some examples of keywords which have a decent volume:

This works best by splitting out these terms into their own campaign to benefit from it’s own bidding strategy and budget. We’ve run bespoke Black Friday campaigns in retail (niche & big competitive products) and leisure over the last few years and they’ve always worked well to drive additional sales & achieve a good impression share i.e be above competitors.??

Segment Performance Max campaigns into priority products and higher margin products or categories. If you have just one Performance Max campaign which is pushing all your products, then you rely on the algorithm and Google to decide what to show, when & how often, so if you have real priority products or product lines, a great way to get better results and more control is to create multiple campaigns. This can be done by grouping all products in a particular category into one campaign or segmenting by margin levels; hero to zombie products. Use this time to do the analysis on margins and performance to help when segmenting the campaigns.

Get your ad copy & creative ready - Have all your Black Friday copy ready in Google Ads Editor, using a combination of messaging in your responsive search ads, promotion extensions, and standard sitelink extensions. And if you’re running retargeting / display and Performance Max campaigns having bespoke creative for Black Friday can work wonders.?

An under-utilised feature in Google Ads is using ad customisers, which you could use to add a countdown to an offer ending.

Set up promotions in Google Merchant Centre Stand out in the Google shopping listings by showing a Special Offer alongside your product. This can be used for free shipping, ￡ or % discounts and buy X get Y promotions.

Email?Marketing

Still sending out promo emails to your whole database? Does Janet who hasn’t even been on your site in over a year get the same email as Dave who bought 3 weeks ago? Use this time segment your email lists by different intent levels and behaviours so you can utilise a more advanced strategy.

There are many good email platforms to be able to use clever segmentation, Klaviyo is a personal favourite of mine. Whilst creating segment, you should have your funnel in mind;

• Top of funnel = Users who opt into your newsletter but are showing low intent to purchase i.e Didn’t look at a product page, or haven’t visited the site recently
• Middle of funnel = Starting to show more signs of wanting to purchase visited certain pages or opened a previous email
• Bottom of funnel = Very close to making a purchase ie abandoned a cart purchase

Another way to prepare your email marketing in the build up to Black Friday is by improving flows & email templates. And / or flow statements are great for creating bespoke emails to a segmented audience.

Affiliate Marketing

The planning for the affiliate channel starts much earlier than now, particularly for the big brands. Q4 in general is a very busy time for advertisers, publishers and the networks. The biggest and best placements on publishers websites go quite early on, but don't fear if you don't have everything confirmed just yet. Here's a few tips for affiliate marketing for Black Friday / Cyber Monday:

• Plan out the promotions and communications ASAP & work with brands on creative
• Pick up the phone - Get speaking to your top publishers and see what opportunities you have to promote the brand(s) you manage
• Don't be afraid to see what increased CPA (iCPA) deals you might be able to go. There will be last minute / unsold tenancy placements and if you don't have budget as such signed off, there still could be golden opportunities for promotion by increasing your commission rate - or a hybrid option

That's a wrap for this week. Thanks for reading. Anything I've missed for preparing for a busy period? Let me know!