Black Friday weekend is the biggest shopping event of the year – last year, retail spending in the UK reached 8.57 BILLION pounds over the Black Friday period. A solid paid strategy has always been vital – but no more so than during this pandemic – and indeed lockdown – where more shoppers than ever before will be flashing the plastic online in lieu of lengthy queues and crowded stores. Here’s just a few of the recommendations we’ve made to our clients ahead of this unique Black Friday:
Set up your ads TODAY
Yep, you read right. If you’re planning on setting your Black Friday ads live on, well, Black Friday – or even on Thursday – think again. Facebook Business Manager has crashed for the last 4 years – avoid an meltdown by setting them live early this week. Indeed, even Facebook themselves recommends to advertisers that Black Friday ads are set live on Monday 23rd November.
Increase your placements
There’s no better time to invade new ad territories than during Black Friday. Make use of lesser-used placements such as Right Column and Audience Network which won’t have quite the same intensity of bidding war as super popular placements such as Stories, to give the delivery system more flexibility to drive better results. Be sure to keep an eye on results at a placement level though – so that there aren’t any that are burning through your budget without producing results.
No editing!
Make minimal changes to your ads once they’re live. Keep your ad copy fairly generic (one size really should fit all during Black Friday), commit to your creatives and focus on changing promos on site, rather than on social. You really want to avoid editing to avoid your ads going back into the learning phrase during this period. Adjusting budget at a CBO level will also avoid the learning phase!
Upweight your DPA’s
Dynamic Product Ads are an excellent way to show users tailored products which they have shown interest in previously. At a time when reaching audiences can be five times more expensive than normal (CPM’s always double as a minimum!) – make sure that users are seeing exactly what they’re interested in.
Re-engage last year’s customers
The maximum amount of time that people will stay in a Custom Audience from your website or mobile app is 180 days, which isn’t helpful to tap back into Black Friday 2019 insights – so don’t underestimate the value of your CRM data for your paid social activity. Build custom audiences from your customer list not only to re-engage and retarget, but also to create new new lookalike audiences.
Invest in Collection ads
Video should absolutely be the primary medium for all of your Black Friday ad activity – but for additional impact, invest in a number of Collection ads which pair video AND DPA’s to create a stand out user experience.
Bid Manually and bid HIGH
To capture a significant impression share, enter a bid that will win as many auctions as possible. Unlike usual circumstances, forget auto bidding and bid manually – and to maximise delivery, bid even higher than what Facebook recommends.
And one early tip for next year . . .
Drive traffic at scale to your site 3 weeks BEFORE Black Friday
An event as big as Black Friday should not be taken lightly – invest time and effort into your strategy even months before it begins. Make use of lower CPM’s in early November to grow your remarketing audiences, so that during Black Friday itself you can maximise your results. Your ROAS will take a hit in the short term but will pay dividends when looking at delayed attribution post Black Friday itself, we promise.