5 Key Shopping Tactics For An Impactful Black Friday

With Black Friday looming, it’s hugely important for businesses to get prepared for what is gearing up to be yet another huge day for e-Commerce. Black Friday 2017 saw revenue peak at £1.39 billion, so it’s not hard to imagine the revenue possibilities available this year.

With this in mind, we’ve listed 5 quick tips specifically for Google Shopping campaigns. Admittedly there are lots of other things that you can do, but these should definitely help you on your way to yet another successful Black Friday.

Check the status of your feed

One of the biggest missed opportunities we see every day is the disapproval of products within the Merchant Centre. Simply check your GMC to identify whether any of your products are currently disapproved and fix any issues ahead of time. Ideally, your feed is updating every 24 hours, so we would recommend that you check your feed during this time period before Black Friday.

For all you know, your products could not be serving for something as simple as prices not matching the landing page, or even missing shipping methods. Don’t allow this to throttle your potential this Black Friday.

Plan Your Budget

Every year, we see clicks and conversions skyrocket on Black Friday. You should prepare for an influx of traffic, but equally as important is the impact of competition on your CPCs. We would recommend adjusting your budgets and bids accordingly.

Let’s be honest, the last thing you want is your ads to stop serving by midday due to an exhausted budget. Ensure you have the additional budget to avoid this scenario – ideally a standalone budget to go alongside your daily budget.

If you don’t have the additional budget, try to organise some. As long as your campaigns are set up correctly, the additional budget required for Black Friday should be dwarfed by the results you garner. It’s a crucial period for e-Commerce, so make the most of it.

Bid Adjustments for Device & Time of Day

As with most campaigns and channels, mobile devices will inevitably be the main driver of activity for the 24 hours. Make sure your bid adjustments are reviewed and you are happy that they are significant enough to maintain a prominent ad position. Remember that competition will be high, so bids will need to reflect this.

Black Friday deals kick in from the minute people wake up – with most waking up earlier than normal to try and grab a bargain before everything has been snapped up. Make sure that your ad scheduling reflects this pattern.

Something else worth considering is the use of “Accelerated Delivery”. Typically this is quite an aggressive form of campaign delivery, but, for capturing those early bird customers, this will probably work in your favour on Black Friday.

Maximising your Product Ads: Google Shopping

With almost 80% of e-Commerce spend being spent on Shopping ads, it makes huge sense to ensure that your ads are prepared for Black Friday. Ensure product titles are optimised – including colours, sizes, etc. – whilst promotion extensions are prominent. Be as granular as you can when adding promotion extensions, as this will help drive your Conversion Rate up in no time.

Remarket!

During what is possibly the most competitive 24 hours of the year for sales, customers are going to be shopping around for the best deal possible. Research suggests over 75% of users abandon their baskets. This is where Remarketing kicks in. Ensure that your brand stays prominent throughout the customer’s journey by doing as much as you can to re-engage with them within the 24 hour period.

Create dynamic remarketing campaigns that show the exact product that a customer viewed, to serve as a reminder to them of what they could be missing out on. This could prove very successful.

Bonus Tip: Google CSS

We know we said 5 tips, but this one is just too good to leave out. Additionally, this tip will also benefit your campaigns going forward, not exclusively on Black Friday.

Now, you might already be reaping the rewards of Google CSS. But if you aren’t, you really should be. The Google CSS scheme has been in place since June and offers advertisers discounted CPCs and a fixed percentage rebate on spend.

The sooner you get on board with the programme, the sooner you can start benefiting from the incentives Google are offering. You need to make the most of this scheme while you can, as it’s not going to be around forever.

Have a great Black Friday

There are, of course, plenty of ways to approach improving performance for Black Friday. Those we have discussed are just some of many of the pre-Black Friday checks and optimisations that can help you maximise performance.

We hope you can put some of them into action to help you have a successful and profitable Black Friday this year! For more information on running successful Paid Media campaigns, get in touch or read our 8 top tips for AdWords success.