Brands should start cultivating their audiences earlier than Black Friday so that they can focus on retargeting people then and not competing to get in front of brand-new audiences. Advertisers will be ramping up their budgets at that time and competition will be at its peak so getting in front of people before is a way to get more out of their ad spend. We recommend using the period before Black Friday to collect email subscribers, Messenger subscribers, Fans, and Followers with the premise that they’ll be the first to know about deals when they go live.
Stories placements on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger have been our secret weapon. Very few brands are making content specifically for this medium that looks like the Stories they’re used to seeing from their friends and they are a relatively cheaper space to get delivery. It’s the modern-day window shopping with how it gets in front of people and familiarizes them with new brands and products.
Don’t sleep on Singles Day. November 11 is becoming a worldwide shopping day based on the premise of having a day to buy something for yourself amidst all the gift-buying you’ll be doing.
Gabe Hernandez – Digital Marketing Director
ROI Swift
By this point, the major framework for how brands will be approaching the holiday should be set. But to ensure brands are optimized for the holiday, my top tip for final preparation is to leave no stone unturned in your planning processes. Black Friday weekend is not the time to be caught without a solution, so use these final weeks to iron out all contingency details for every possible situation your team can encounter: including alternating promotions based on demand, product stories to accommodate supply chain and operations needs, internal comms, etc.
Lean on your team and your industry group to identify all possible situations that drove anxiety in previous Black Friday weeks and plan your contingency solutions now so that everyone on your teams know how to respond.
Finally, a key thing to keep in mind this holiday season is that these are the last months before the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect in January 2020. While this law is specific to California, the reach of the law is very broad and is likely to impact nearly every brand marketing on Black Friday weekend, so ensuring that explicit opt-ins and updates to privacy policies are made is key.
Jenn Horner – Associate Director, Retail & Consumer Goods
DEG, Linked by Isobar
My absolute top tip for being ready for Black Friday is to start preparing on January 2nd. I know, you don’t have a time machine, so you’ll just need to bank this advice until next year. But seriously, the time to get started preparing for Black Friday is 6-9 months before Black Friday. Any optimization you do (whether organic or paid ads) needs time to take hold. While ad campaigns can be optimized relatively quickly, you want to have a solid track record of performance so you’re not scrambling with untested ads come the holiday. On the organic side, optimizations made now can take months to bear fruit. If you want to be in top positions for your keywords, do the research and optimizations now, so by the time Black Friday rolls around, you’ll be better positioned to capture the increase in search traffic.
Stoney G deGeyter – Vice President of Search and Advertising
The Karcher Group
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
