How to prepare for Black Friday: a simple guide for media buyers
Black Friday, traditionally the day following Thanksgiving in the U.S., marks one of the busiest shopping days of the year, kicking off the holiday season for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers. It’s a time when consumers are highly motivated to spend, spurred by deals, discounts, and holiday excitement.
In recent years, online sales during Black Friday have surged, with record-breaking figures highlighting the opportunity for brands to capitalize on increased consumer spending. With such high stakes, advertisers need to stand out in a highly competitive environment.
In this article, we'll explore expert strategies for maximizing Black Friday sales and ROI, helping advertisers to drive conversions, boost brand loyalty, and capture a significant share of the lucrative holiday market.
Let's get into it!
Common challenges for advertisers
Despite the opportunities, Black Friday also brings challenges for advertisers. Higher competition leads to increased costs, including higher CPCs and CPMs, which can reduce ROI if not carefully managed. Moreover, brands often struggle with standing out amidst crowded ad spaces and ensuring their campaigns convert at profitable levels. These challenges emphasize the need for a carefully crafted and data-driven approach. To thrive, marketers must have a solid plan in place that includes optimizing budgets, choosing effective channels, and preparing for potential hurdles.
Step 1: Start with data-driven planning
Planning is the foundation of any successful Black Friday campaign. Diving into data from previous years can provide essential insights into what to replicate and improve. A data-driven approach helps you make informed decisions, ensuring you don’t waste valuable ad spend on what didn’t work in the past. This step will guide you in analyzing past performance, setting goals, and understanding your audience:
Review last year’s performance
Analyzing past Black Friday campaigns can offer valuable insights. Start by assessing key metrics from previous years, such as total ad spend, ROAS, conversion rates, and customer acquisition costs. Identify high-performing campaigns, landing pages, and ad creatives that drove conversions and analyze underperforming ones to understand what didn’t work. Look at channel-specific data to pinpoint where your investments were most profitable.
Set clear goals and KPIs
Establishing clear, measurable goals is critical to Black Friday success. Define specific KPIs, such as target ROAS, customer acquisition costs, and conversion rate goals. Setting these goals early will guide your decision-making as you allocate budgets, select channels, and measure performance throughout the campaign.
Segment your audience
Use historical data to segment your audience into categories like VIP customers, deal-hunters, and holiday-only shoppers. By creating these segments, you can tailor ad messages and offers to specific customer types, increasing relevance and engagement. High-intent segments like repeat buyers might be more responsive to exclusive deals, while first-time visitors might require an introductory offer to convert.
Step 2: Optimize your ad strategy
Your ad strategy is at the heart of your Black Friday success. With increased competition, it’s essential to have ads that stand out, are visible on the right channels, and speak directly to your audience’s needs. Meanwhile, this step focuses on refreshing ad creatives, choosing the best-performing platforms, and implementing retargeting tactics that drive results:
Revisit your ad creatives
With so much competition during Black Friday, standing out is crucial. Update your creatives to reflect Black Friday themes with bold visuals, compelling CTAs, and urgency-driven messaging. Consider creating new visuals that highlight special Black Friday deals, limited-time offers, or exclusive products. Using strong colors, clear discount tags, and countdown timers can help capture attention quickly.
Choose the right channels
Review last year’s performance to determine which channels were most effective, and allocate your budget accordingly. Major channels like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and Native Ads can be particularly valuable, but also consider testing new channels, such as TikTok or Pinterest, to reach untapped audiences.
Leverage retargeting campaigns
Retargeting is essential during Black Friday, as it allows you to re-engage users who showed interest but didn’t convert. Set up dynamic retargeting ads to show shoppers the exact products they previously viewed. This keeps your brand top of mind and can help convert potential customers who need a nudge to make a purchase.
Step 3: Implement advanced tracking and attribution
Tracking and attribution are key to understanding what’s driving your campaign’s success. With proper tracking, you’ll be able to monitor performance in real-time, identify high-value touchpoints, and make data-driven adjustments on the go. This section highlights how to set up tracking correctly and why attribution matters:
Set up conversion tracking early
Ensure that all tracking pixels (Google, Meta , etc.) are configured and firing correctly well before Black Friday. Test your tracking for key stages in the buyer journey, including add-to-cart, checkout, and purchase events, to ensure you’re accurately capturing conversions.
Use multi-touch attribution models
With multi-channel campaigns, single-touch attribution can fall short. By adopting a multi-touch attribution model, you’ll be able to see how each touchpoint—across email, social, search, and display—contributes to conversions. This helps in accurately understanding the customer journey and making more informed budget adjustments.
Real-time monitoring and adjustments
During Black Friday, real-time data is crucial for quick optimizations. Platforms like RedTrack provide live data across all your channels, enabling you to monitor performance, detect any leaks in the funnel, and make immediate adjustments to boost conversions.
Step 4: Scale your campaigns smartly
Once you have a solid campaign foundation, the next step is scaling up without losing control of your budget or ad performance. Scaling effectively requires a gradual increase in spend, prioritizing high-converting segments, and adjusting bids strategically.
Black Friday presents a unique opportunity for advertisers but require certain things to avoid downtimes. In this section, you’ll learn how to expand your reach while maintaining efficiency:
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Gradually increase ad spend
Rather than pushing your entire budget at once, start ramping up your ad spend in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. Monitor performance closely to ensure you're scaling in a cost-effective way and avoid overspending too early.
Focus on high-converting segments
Prioritize your budget toward audiences that have previously shown high conversion rates, such as retargeted visitors, VIP customers, and repeat buyers. By concentrating on these segments, you can maximize your ROAS and avoid wasted spend on lower-quality traffic.
Bid adjustments for key days
On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, be strategic with bid adjustments. Increase bids for high-intent segments and specific geographies that have historically converted well. Adjust bids based on device type, time of day, and performance trends to ensure your ads stay competitive.
Step 5: Create a seamless customer experience
User experience can make or break a Black Friday campaign. A slow or cluttered website can turn away even the most interested shoppers, so your landing pages and checkout process should be as smooth as possible. Here, we’ll focus on optimizing customer experience to drive higher conversions:
Optimize your landing pages
Your landing pages should load quickly, feature clear messaging, and be mobile-friendly, as many shoppers browse and buy on mobile. Use scarcity tactics, such as countdown timers and limited stock notifications, to create a sense of urgency and encourage quicker purchasing decisions.
Simplify the checkout process
Minimize friction at checkout by reducing form fields, offering a guest checkout option, and providing multiple payment options. A simplified, secure checkout process helps prevent cart abandonment, particularly during high-traffic events like Black Friday.
Personalize the customer journey
Use dynamic content to tailor the shopping experience based on visitor behavior. For example, show relevant products or recommendations based on past browsing, making it easier for customers to find what interests them and increasing the likelihood of conversions.
Step 6: Prepare for high traffic & scale
Black Friday’s surge in traffic can be a double-edged sword. While more visitors increase potential sales, they can also strain your website’s infrastructure. In this section, we’ll cover how to ensure your site can handle the load and set up alerts to quickly address any issues:
Ensure website stability
With increased Black Friday traffic, website stability is paramount. Test your website’s capacity to handle large traffic volumes and have a contingency plan in case of technical issues. Website crashes or slow loading can result in significant revenue loss during peak periods.
Set up alerts for key metrics
Use your tracking platform to set up alerts for important metrics like traffic drops, conversion rate changes, and budget spikes. Having these alerts in place allows you to quickly respond to unexpected issues and optimize on the fly.
Step 7: Post-Black Friday optimization
Black Friday may be over, but optimization doesn’t end there. Reviewing your performance, planning retargeting campaigns, and documenting insights are vital for building on this year’s success in future campaigns. This step outlines the best practices for post-Black Friday analysis and follow-up:
Analyze and report
After Black Friday, conduct a detailed analysis of your campaign’s performance by segment, channel, and creative. Look for what drove the best results and identify areas that could be improved. This analysis will provide valuable insights for future campaigns.
Create a retargeting plan
Follow up with shoppers who didn’t convert by creating post-Black Friday retargeting campaigns. You can also reach out to new customers with loyalty offers or thank-you ads to encourage repeat purchases and build brand loyalty.
Document learnings for next year
Compile your findings into a Black Friday playbook, noting which strategies, audiences, and tactics were successful. This playbook will serve as a valuable reference for your next Black Friday campaign.
9. RedTrack’s role in Black Friday success
In a campaign environment like Black Friday, having a reliable tracking tool can make all the difference. RedTrack offers real-time insights, multi-channel tracking, and custom reporting that simplify campaign management and optimization.
How RedTrack can help
Using a platform like RedTrack can simplify tracking, reporting, and optimization. With real-time insights and multi-channel tracking in one place. RedTrack provides the data you need to make quick, informed decisions. Custom reports help identify which elements are working, allowing you to adjust as needed without juggling multiple platforms.
Conclusion: Final tips for a successful Black Friday
As a final recap, remember the importance of early planning, data-driven decisions, and agility during Black Friday.