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Black Friday Romania this year will take place on 11 November And being prepared has long since become not just recommended, but necessary (at least if you want to get anything out of it).
Also, Black Friday is no longer the phenomenal sales event of the year, other events such as Back to School, Christmas, Easter have grown in user interest, so the strategy in terms of campaigns in Google Ads (our topic today) in the coming period must somehow align with these changes (loosely translated – the Romanian has woken up to shopping, and the current economic situation calls for caution).
3 BLACK FRIDAY AND HOLIDAY TRENDS IN 2022 – It’s all about anticipation!
(Source: Google Search internal data, RO. Queries for Black Friday – 2019 – 2022)
- Consumers start preparing for holiday shopping early +50% of Black Friday searches are estimated to be placed before BF week
- Price changes will lead to an extended shopping period and brand loyalty will be key
- Multi-touch strategies will be key: PC/tablet, smartphone, physical & online store visits, online video, etc.
In conclusion, consumers expect good deals for a longer period of time (2 weeks) – 👇🏻 How to prepare for it? 👇🏻
23 PPC TIPS & TRICKS – It’s going to be all about preparation!
Black Friday offers a way to get more sales, and Google Ads is a great way to let people know about your sales events – hence the “love story” in the title.
Google Ads campaigns in brief (DO NOT make major changes on Black Friday):
1.Use Google Search Ads To generate excitement (teasing) with ads highlighting your Black Friday deals – add a countdown and use the promo extension, and on the day, use ads to inform people of current deals – include offer codes as part of the ad text
2. Remarketing ads by Google Display Network can be used to promote offers that will run that day – you can set up a series of one-day ads counting down to the day itself, maybe even a different offer each day
3. Use RLSA (= remarketing lists in combination with search network display ads) to attract traffic you usually can’t afford and bid on expensive keywords at a much lower cost, this is because you are targeting a small audience/audience that already knows your site (e.g. keywords “Black Friday Deals”)
4. Use DSA (Dynamic Search Ads – Google searches based on site content) to bring quality traffic and find opportunities to grow. Best used in conjunction with combined audiences to blend top affinity and in-market segments
5. Performance Max / Shopping has its own promotion feature that allows you to add discounts, free gifts and promotional delivery information to your product display ads. Set this up in Google Merchant Center and the information will be added as a “special offer” link in your listing. It is essential that your product feed is fully optimized and approved in Google Merchant Center well before Black Friday weekend. Also, run separate campaigns for products on sale and consider removing these products from regular campaigns.
6. Sequential ads YouTubebecause Google Ads now allows you to combine multiple videos to form a sequential series of video ads, displaying targeted ads to people based on what they’ve seen, interacted with, and missed in your video ad sequence. During Black Friday week, you can create a three- to four-step video ad sequence that blends lifestyle, product and creative offerings and target those people who have visited your site in the past 30 days but haven’t purchased, for example
Ad Writing and Extensions:
7. Write Black Friday ads at least one week in advance and reference Black Friday in them [Necesar]
8. Consider adding a countdown to the headline, urgency leads to a higher conversion rate [Recomandat]
9. Set up the Promotion/Promotions extension in Google Ads that highlights the Black Friday offer [Necesar]
10. For users specifically searching for “Black Friday deals”, you can use the Black Friday Extensions that are now part of the Google Ads inventory
11. Consider new sitelinks – specific to the offers you are advertising [Recomandat]
12. Consider Ad Customizers – adding referrals to inventory, how many products left [Recomandat]
13. In each ad group, you should have at least three different text ads. Google Ads will show the most effective ads, so you can get up to 15% more conversions [Recomandat]
Keywords
14. Add or reactivate keywords – keywords that were previously discontinued for the products you are promoting. The opposite is also true, with keywords increasing up to four times in search volume, you can interrupt where you don’t have promotions.
15. Advertise for “black friday + keyword”, but not so much for the keyword “black friday”. It’s too general to target effectively. (The exception being creating a campaign targeting only your remarketing lists and using the word Black Friday (RLSA campaigns = remarketing lists for ads displayed in the search network/Search Ads).
16. Increase exposure by using new BF and holiday specific keywords (e.g. “shopping near me/near me”) and specific searches such as “free shipping”, “discount”, “gift” etc.
Budget and Bidding
17. Increase your budget for the entire Black Friday period significantly, at least double it, and revise several times during the day. If limited, move from low-traffic campaigns
18. We recommend scaling up before Black Friday to slowly adapt your bidding strategies to higher volumes and make sure campaigns don’t run automated rules that could increase budgets
19. Use automated value-based bidding (Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS) / automated value-based bidding so that your campaigns target the searches that will bring the best return based on history/learnings (both of these are also true for Google Shopping, but in conjunction with feed segmentation)
20. Automatic Bidding/Smart Bidding can optimize for seasonal events, but you can use it even more effectively with seasonal adjustments – Bid Adjustment of bid amounts to apply an estimated conversion rate, and Smart Bidding will take that adjustment into account for the selected timeframe while trying to achieve the targeted cost per purchase/CPA. It is not recommended to use these adjustments for the first time on Black Friday or during any other major sales event of the year
21. Manual bidding is done with a few things in mind: – Download bid amounts with Google Ads Editor so you can restore your original bid amounts after the Black Friday period ends; – Proactively increase bid amounts; – Review bid adjustments (especially for mobile devices)
Audiences and Targeting
22. In terms of targeting, it is best to focus on visitors to your website and add remarketing audiences to your campaigns. Also, a good practice is to create a new audience the day before Black Friday that does not include previous visitors, so you can bid more aggressively for people who visited your site on Black Friday and another bid for people who visited your site before Black Friday. Reduce your remarketing bids after Black Friday
23. Google has created new audiences for Black Friday, so take advantage of this and use them in your campaigns. These audiences are:
- Black Friday Shoppers – Black Friday Shoppers
- Black Friday Shoppers / Online Shoppers – Black Friday Shoppers / Online Shoppers
- Black Friday Shoppers / In-Shop Shoppers – Black Friday Shoppers / In-Shop Shoppers
The basic recipe!
What’s next?….now get ready for Christmas! 😏
