Black Friday Campaigns: Everything you need to know to succeed in Google Ads

Written by

Aina García

SEM · 14 / 11 / 2018

A good Black Friday campaign offers many sales opportunities for companies with online presence, but how can you compete with the rest of the market? Don’t worry, with these Google Ads tips you’ll have it done!

As you know, the Black Friday, the date that marks the beginning of Christmas shopping every year. It is an opportunity that companies, and consumers try to make the most of, looking for the best discounts – and when we refer to Black Friday, we are talking about the whole weekend, finished in the expected Cyber Monday.

So now that we’re at a great time for e-commerce, this is a great opportunity to maximize your sales. This means that you can also prepare your Google Ads campaigns in this direction. Although we do not know your strategy, we assure you that the following tips will help you maximize your potential.

Pay attention to each and you’ll find out how to make the most of your Black Friday campaigns.

But before we start creating campaigns…

1. Plan your time with time

The first thing you have to do is clear: plan. There is no better time to start planning the Black Friday and Christmas campaigns than now, so create a calendar with all your actions and times.

Most users do a fairly long search process before deciding to purchase a product, so the sooner you get to know your special offers from Black Friday and Cyber Monday much better. 

2. Prepare for increased demand

Make sure you have stock in all your products. If you do not, users will be able to enter your website and discover that some products are “unavailable”; In this case you will have paid for unnecessary clicks that will not have achieved your goal.

Do not become a company that offers the best prices and then can not meet the demands of its customers. 

3. Optimize your website

In the same way as the demand of the users, it will also drastically increase the traffic to your Web site. Your usual setup probably won’t be able to manage all of this, so there are some points you should consider before this period.

  • Server: Make sure you have updated the capacity of your server to manage the traffic and that no drop occurs.
  • Loading Speed: This is one of the most important points. Do you know that 25% of visitors to your website will abandon it if it takes more than 4 seconds to load? The higher the speed, the better Google will rank you. PageSpeed Insights It is a very useful tool that will allow you to know the loading speed of your website.
  • Functionality: perform some tests weeks before to test your website. A/B tests are a great way to understand what characteristics are most valued by visitors and which ones are not so much.
  • Easy and convenient browsing: the titles must be clear and help the user to surf the web, as well as the product cards, where you can appreciate their price.
  • Payment Options: The variety of payment options also gives users confidence. In addition, you should check for errors during payment processes. Payment gateways often do not work properly and jump unexpected errors that could stop the purchase process.

We start with the Black Friday campaigns!

You must decide how you will start promoting your offers, not only on your website, but also on an external basis.

This is where they come to play the Google Ads campaigns. Online media today play the most important role in promoting a product and bringing traffic to your website.

4. Adjust budgets

Before we go any further, we must first talk about the Google Ads budget. Setting budgets for November higher than other months is mandatory.

But don’t limit yourself to this. If you make a huge increase in budgets for this period without considering anything else you may limit yourself to spending the money on Keywords That they will not have results. That is, you can greatly increase the traffic to your website but it is not relevant.

For this reason you must first ask yourself if you can afford it. Study your metrics (impressions, clicks, quality of keywords and ads, conversions and CPC), and if the results are favorable you can go aumentándolos progressively according to results. You should continually analyze the activity throughout the day and we suggest you set a higher CPC especially when the percentage of impressions is low. If your ads aren’t showing, you’re probably losing potential customers.

Since web traffic increases significantly during Black Friday, you will have the opportunity to capture more customers, so never have budget-limited campaigns or a low daily budget.

5. Create campaigns and ads specific to the Black Friday

Thanks to this you will adjust more to the searches of the users and also you will ensure better CTR, more quality and therefore more conversions. Within these, each product should be in a different ad group.

Both banners and advertisements are our way of communicating with the client, so if you separate them in this way, each one can count on their own, which must be customized and be attractive and specific, as well as indicate in the copies your offers and discounts for each one of them.

Includes the words “Black Friday” in the ads and reports the duration of the offer. 

Tip: You can also create automated rules to make the ads active and stop at the right time by scheduling the start and end date. 

6. Dare with the DSA campaigns

With These dynamic search campaigns and your ads you will be able to maximize the coverage of yourkeywords, as well as finding new terms that may be relevant to you.

The titles of these ads are generated according to the search made by the user and the content of your website, avoiding the rigidity of the keywords you have included in the other campaigns; While the descriptions do you determine, in which you would include “Black Friday” and describe your offer.

7. Analyze your keywords

Keywords are the basis of Google Ads campaigns, so they are the most important part to consider for the Black Friday.

Note that they are very simple; Terms that users can easily search for. In addition, they have to be specific and include that they belong to the campaigns of the Black Friday. This will make them more relevant and quality, and also ensure that users see what they are really looking for.

8. The best extensions for your ads

You should never put aside the use of extensions; Much less on the Black Friday. We explain briefly the most important for this period, but calmly!, we leave here another article where you can learn to use Google Ads ad extensions In more detail.

  • Site Link: the extension par excellence! It will allow You to take users to the different sections of your website directly from the ad.
  • Featured Text: It allows Us to add more text to the ads, as short phrases to show features or offers that will help the ad stand out over the rest. For Example: 24-hour delivery, free shipping…
  • Location: It Is An important extension for e-commerce with physical locations, so that users who are nearby can find you easily. 
  • Call: With Google Ads Call Extension We can add our phone number to Google ads. This makes it easier for us to be called from the search engines, especially on mobile devices.
  • Price: The Price is the first thing that users consider when making a purchase, therefore showing it directly in the ad will catch their attention.
  • Promotion: They allow You to show special offers and discounts on your ads. This way your potential clients will be able to see the specific promotions according to the date or festivity that is celebrated. 

9. Continually monitor your bid settings

The CPC’s rise from half a 20% During The Black Friday, and this rise starts almost mid-October. Increasing them on these dates is obligatory. If we don’t, as competition increases, our ads can drop many positions and not be as relevant as before.

Do Not Let any keyword be below the first page bid, and instead of bidding on generic keywords as just “Black Friday”, we suggest that you bet, as discussed in point 7, for terms related to your Products (for example “Black Friday Computers offer”).

10. Don’t lose sight of mobile devices

From November to mid-December, conversion rates increase as users search for information about their holiday purchases, and only on mobile devices are increased by 30% From Black Friday, as most Users already buy through the mobile.

Therefore, it is imperative to have a website optimized for mobile devices in order to provide the best user experience. If you don’t have this in mind, think about everything you’re missing!

11. Segment your audience and create remarketing lists

Thanks to the segmentation you will be able to communicate relevant messages to each one of your audiences according to their behavior; For example, based on: the time they’ve been on your website, the products they’ve seen, the things they’ve bought, etc.

These are the segmentation strategies you can use:

  • Prospecting: with the study of the behavior of existing customers you can contact new customers with similar practices that may be interested in your products.
  • Page Views: Someone who has visited more than one page of your website can be a very interesting user for you.
  • Products viewed: Depending on the type of product that certain users visit, you can get an idea of what you should show them and what copies you should use in your ads.
  • Cart: According to studies, more than 50% of users have ever left the buying process while in the cart. Customers rethink their purchase when they finally have to pay. If you haven’t considered this audience before, do it now! Launching campaigns for these users is a must.
  • Converters: Finally, you can use these lists of people who have already purchased before to create a campaign directed to them, where you show some kind of discount. This will help you keep your list of customers and make them buy again.

There are also many other marketing techniques you can use during this period.

For example, you can create a specific landing for users to register for the previous week and be the first to find out about your offers. This way you can attract new customers and get their e-mails, phone numbers… In order to continue to contact them when this period passes.

Think about using also some action of E-mail marketing, Pixels on Facebook

12. Conversions Tracking

Make sure you are measuring all the actions well; thanks to this you will be able to use all the information for future campaigns.

There are several ways to verify that conversions are registering correctly, you shop on the website in this case, and you can solve any problem with a conversions tracking tag (the code snippet installed on the website).

You can verify that Google Ads can “see” that tag and if you are registering conversions within your account, in the “Conversions” section. Once there, look for the conversion action you want to check in the “Conversion” column, and then “tracking status” in the same row.

These are the different options that may appear:

  • Unverified : The label is not yet verified on your website.
  • There are no recent conversions: it is correctly, but no conversion has been registered in the last 7 days. Make sure that all your campaigns are running and that the users who click on your ads are directed to the correct Web page.
  • Conversions Recording: conversion label and conversions registered in the last 7 days.
  • Inactive Label: The label is not found and no conversion has been registered in the last 7 days. In this case, if no conversion has ever been registered, the label may be on the wrong Web page or have never received traffic from your ads on this page. If on the other hand there have been conversions before, but no longer register, something has changed on the website or in your campaigns.

And finally, 12 plus 1. Dare with Google Shopping!

The Shopping ads contain images and text of each product, so they are more attractive when it comes to encouraging the user to click and finally convert.

From Digital Menta We recommend you to test and analyze the performance of your campaigns a little before the Black Friday to be able to determine which products work best and to be able to create campaigns with these “top”.

Here we leave you an article from our colleague Marc about How to boost your Shopping campaigns That sure will come in very well to multiply your sales opportunities.

As you can see, the Black Friday is a very special day for us, the PROFESSIONALS of PPC, in which we have to make the most of what we do.

We hope that these tips will help you get the most out of your campaigns in these special dates and have learned with us.

If you want to know more tricks to manage your Google Ads campaigns, among many other things, do not hesitate to visit our blog in the coming weeks. We’re waiting for you!

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