How to make the most/avoid the worst of Black Friday

It’s that time of year once again. Christmas is looming and despite your best efforts to focus on this and plans for next year, you’ve still got one other major calendar event to navigate your Paid Media campaigns through first – Black Friday.

Now for some businesses, Black Friday isn’t really a consideration. After all, if you’re not selling products direct to consumers, why would it affect you? Well, you’d be surprised at the potential impact (albeit indirect) it can have on your campaign, especially during the age of smart bidding.

In this article, we’ve provided some FAQs on the best ways to make the most of Black Friday if you’re taking part, and how to avoid any unwanted negative impact if you’re not.

When is Black Friday?

Friday 28th November is the official date, followed by Cyber Monday on 1st December. However, Black Friday sales start earlier and earlier each year, in a bid to get ahead of competition, so some are already underway!

And before you ask, it’s never too late to get involved. Yes, ideally you want to plan as early as possible, but it’s also something that can involve reactive strategies based on what your competition is doing, or how your sales are trending.

When is the best time to spend my budget?

The answer to this question will be different for every business, and ultimately comes down to when you start to see a return on investment that is acceptable for the discounts you’re offering. If you’re seeing a good ROI before the weekend itself, it can be risky to hold off going aggressive with spend, as cost per clicks are likely to rise, as are distractions. If however, your audience is waiting for further discounts or to see what else happens in the market, then holding back some spend for a big push on Black Friday itself may be the right move.

Looking back at UK interest last year, searches relating to Black Friday really start building up from around 10 days before the event itself:

How do I stand out among all the noise?

There’s lots of different tactics you can employ to ensure your adverts stand out during a period of increased competition. Here’s a few tips:

• Create a clear message for your customers. Something like ‘up to 40% off all items’ is much easier to connect with than having multiple, product-specific offers thrown at you. If you do have very specific offers on, choose the most attractive and run with that to get people coming to your site

• Use countdowns in your Google adverts, to inject some urgency. Are you more likely to feel compelled to buy something if the advert says ‘available from 28th-30th Nov’ or ‘be quick, sale ends in 6 hours’? Countdowns can be employed on Google Search ads with a dynamic hourly countdown:

• Create bespoke audience lists. Retargeting can be really powerful at this time of year, but how can you be sure you’re hitting those people with the highest intent? Create audience lists based on visits in the past 24 hours, 48 hours and 7 days, and ensure that you increase bids aggressively for the best performing over the Black Friday weekend

What if I’m not taking part?

If you’re a B2C business (particularly those e-commerce focused) not taking part, then Black Friday is still likely to affect most of your campaigns in terms of the amount you have to pay to remain visible. With smart bidding, platforms like Google and Facebook have to compensate for the additional competition for placements by increasing everyone’s bids. So the question really is this: how big a priority is it to remain visible during the Black Friday period?

Competition for placements isn’t just restricted to users searching for specific products either. Any display or video campaigns are typically based on user interests and historical behaviour, rather than the content they’re viewing at the time. This means that several very different businesses could be competing for the same placement in front of a given person. This is also where it can affect B2B campaigns, where the same person is targeted based on their professional and personal interests:

For any business, the best way to avoid escalating costs is to either scale back the aggressiveness of your bid strategy for a short time, or plan for the increase if it’s key to stay visible. Essentially, don’t get caught out.

So whether you’re actively taking part in Black Friday or not, the best advice we can give is to just be aware, and monitor your budgets and cost per clicks for any big changes.

After that, it’s just the simple matter of Christmas to consider!