Black Friday is one of the biggest dates in the retail diary and one of the most PPC budget-hungry ones, too! Last year, the average PPC spend was £113 per person. So, when you’ve got high traffic, you want every single penny you spend to count. In other words, you want to get your ads in front of as many Black Friday bargain hunters as possible.
In this blog post, Infinity has put together some top insights into how you can do just that by paying attention to your call data. We’ve also got top tips for maximising ROI (Return on Investment) on Black Friday campaigns from Freddie Warner, Senior Paid Media Account Manager at Passion Digital. If reading isn’t your thing, discover all the insights in this podcast episode.
Black Friday 2024
Black Friday has shifted in the last few years in terms of how consumers and advertisers view the promotional period. Advertisers and brands start to put offers in way earlier than the actual period of Black Friday which is the end of November. Looking at Google Trends data from the past five years, interest for the term ‘Black Friday deals’ peaked in the middle/end of November, but last year this spike happened at the start of November which demonstrates the need to prepare much earlier for these sales periods.
People often ask, ‘when is Black Friday 2024’, but with the dissolution of clearly defined sales periods, Black Friday in the UK can run even past the end of November, all the way up to the Christmas period. Advertisers need to treat this period as a longer, end-of-year strategy. Equally, the stretching out of the promotional period, means that marketers have more data to play with to optimise their campaigns.
How do you optimise a PPC campaign for Black Friday?
Although this period is super valuable, especially for e-commerce businesses, the recommendations for a successful campaign remain the same across the board.
- Make sure that the data you’re feeding into ad platforms is of a good standard so that campaigns can optimise towards the results that you want
- Make sure you’re tracking offline conversions, including call data and bring that data into PPC platforms to get a fuller picture of customer journeys
How to target the right audience for Black Friday sales
Make the most of the AI campaigns available in Google like Performance Max. Performance Max uses the products on your site to serve ads to an audience that is actively looking for these products. Embracing AI will not only help you reach your target audience, but reach them in a cost-effective way.
How to create effective Black Friday ad creatives
Written by Hotwolf
There’s going to be a lot of Black Friday creative out at the same time, so you’ll win your click-throughs on the strength and clarity of the offer or with genuine stand out in the creative.
Produce cost-effectively. It’s a short run, so think smart about how you could reuse existing assets rather than create something brand new. However, go further than simply sticking ‘Black Friday Sale’ titles on an existing ad – can you change up the graphics, voiceover or colour schemes of a current campaign to grab attention of a familiar audience?
Be super clear about the offer. It’s arguably more important than product information and brand positioning; all people care about here is the deal. Of course, creative should be recognisably from your brand (so as not to alienate a warm audience just waiting for Black Friday), but perhaps more than any other time, your brand tone of voice could, if needed, be relaxed in favour of sales messaging. Bold titles, simple calls-to-action and get the sale/offer information on screen from the get-go; don’t wait for the end.
Create a sense of urgency. Consider producing multiple variants, with “Now On”, “Closing Soon” and “Closing Midnight” messaging.
Stand out. If timing allows, can you cut through with something more than just the offer? Self-aware humour (about your brand/category or Black Friday sales themselves) or break-out graphics (elements seeming to jump out of the frame). Could you target different audiences with slightly different creative variants?
Think ahead. It can take time to create effective assets and of course the best cost efficiencies come from good planning. But even if it’s last minute, there’s always scope to repurpose creative assets in the right way, with the right creative partner.
How to optimise paid ads with a reduction in media spend?
With a streamlined budget, brands need to narrow down their areas of focus to maximise the opportunity with fewer resources. One area that should be streamlined is conversion actions for the campaign(s). Having multiple conversion actions with less budget will lead to budget being spread too thinly, instead focus on one or fewer conversion actions for better results with less.
Brands need to be realistic with the goals that they set themselves with a lower media spend. There are of course efficiency gains to be made with changing ad campaign setups, but overall a decrease in media spend will mean marketing output will be reduced.
Although brands with lower media spend will want to just activate budget in the key periods (e.g. Black Friday), setting campaigns live earlier than you think you should means you can collect performance data to make important decisions to optimise your campaign in time for the key sales period.
Finally, make sure you include exclusion lists in your campaigns so you don’t waste budget appearing in auctions where huge competitors are present.
How do you maximise paid advertising?
Make sure you have the right goals in place and measuring the right elements so that you can truly judge the success of campaigns. Don’t neglect the importance of frequency, showing your ad to one person once is not going to open the floodgates.
How to measure the success of Black Friday campaigns?
Make sure you set realistic, but ambitious targets before starting any activity. You can only measure the success of a campaign if you have clear goals and objectives ahead of time. Keep in mind how much media budget and the competition around your campaign so that you don’t set yourself up for failure.
Some essential best practices for Black Friday advertising and effective call tracking strategy during peak periods?
If we look at the Infinity Hub call data for the retail sector, there have been significant increases in call volumes over previous Black Friday periods. 2023 saw a 41% increase in call volumes compared to the 2022 Black Friday period. What’s important to note is that, inevitably, not all these calls will be sales enquiries. Because Black Friday is so time-critical, you want to ensure agents are laser focussed on converting callers to customers.
With call tracking, you have full visibility over the online journey customers are taking before they pick up the phone. With that intel, you can set up rules to identify the high-intent customers and push them to the top of the queue to complete their sale. On the flipside, you can also use call insight to identify friction points in the online journey to optimise customer experiences and self-serve options online, freeing up more of your agents to close more of those all-important Black Friday sales.
Aligning Black Friday PPC activity and call tracking to get the best results from campaigns
With call tracking, you get granular insights into which keywords and PPC ads are generating those all-important sales calls. With this intel, you can plough more resource into the activities you know will generate a return and press pause on those that won’t, so your precious budget will work harder for you during this critical period.
You can take this a step further with a solution like Infinity’s Smart Match, which accurately links positive sales call outcomes to the PPC ads that drove them. Using this conversion data, you can guide the algorithm to get your top-performing ads in front of more customers that are likely to convert, guaranteeing a solid Black Friday return.
Top tips for success on Black Friday
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail! Get to grips with what’s driving your most valuable sales calls ahead of the Black Friday deadline so you can ensure campaigns are totally optimised and your budget will work as hard as possible for you.
With tools like Infinity’s Conversation Analytics, retailers can get their hands on the unfiltered truth from customers. This helps you understand what’s driving interest as well as highlighting any common doubts or barriers to purchase that might exist. This helps you continuously refine messaging to create harder hitting campaigns that will ultimately drive more conversions.
Managing PPC campaigns during Black Friday is complicated and competitive, however with the top tips above you’ll not only have a successful Black Friday period but set yourself up for continued success in 2025.
If you’re looking for assistance this Black Friday, drop our Paid Media team a message. They’re happy to provide their recommendation so that you hit your sales goals at this crucial time of year.