From a paid channel perspective, the most common mistake I see from my clients (even those with robust and mature programs) is forgetting to open set up aggressive bidding and while simultaneously opening up audience targeting. Black “Fiveday” brings two things to the party every year – aggressive bid competition and larger audience universes. I see lots of smart marketers raising their bids on Google and Facebook, but using their traditional audiences, or opening up audiences, and keeping their traditional benchmarked bids caps in place. Know your ROI limits where caps are concerned, but this is the weekend to be aggressive.
Alex DeLeon – Senior Digital Marketing Consultant
Pacific Northwest Digital Marketing
My number one tip to get ready for Black Friday is don’t forget about your current customers. These are either past purchasers that may have lapsed that you have the opportunity to re-engage, occasional customers that may just need to be reminded they need you, or brand advocates who love your product and look for a chance to stock up and tell their friends about you. Make sure these people know you are offering a deal because they are already familiar with you and are more likely to convert. Email is a great way to share your special offer with these customers. Offer up a sale a little early to get ahead of the noise or offer a unique discount. Remember to send a “last chance to save” reminder as the sale comes to a close to drive urgency for last-minute buyers. In addition to email, utilize your CRM database to show current customers ads in other places they may be browsing – including Facebook, Display/ Video Retargeting and RLSA for non-brand keywords to keep your message in front of them.
Narin Brooks – Senior Marketing Manager
GoDaddy
Integrate Your Channel Mix: Master the complexity and segment your activity per channel by reminding yourself that shoppers are as much online as offline. Bring customers to your retail shop offering an additional 10% off if they select free pick-up in-store, or an additional 5€ online voucher if they spend 50€ or more off-line.
Merchandise Your Offer: do not try to oversell the top SKUs. Everybody will exploit Black Friday, so there may be high chances that your 3Ps or partner will ask you to offer them the chance to get a 20% off to cut RSP’s on the same SKUs. So differentiate your merchandising offer as much as possible. Create a bespoke offer for Amazon (10pk bundles?), eBay (10€ bucket?), your platform (50% off for registered only?), Privalia (an exclusive gold variant of your top-selling product?) and so on. You have a palette of crayons in your hands, it is the right time to use them all!
Go Beyond Black Friday: Not ready to pay extra budget to compete on Black Friday deals or tripled CPC’s costs? Go for the long tail. Anticipate your deals with a dedicated CRM campaign 2 weeks prior to Black Friday day, or extend the promotional plan for the entire week following Cyber Monday. You may get better ROAS and more visibility. You can even set up a dedicated landing page that invites people to leave an e-mail to be contacted as soon as the promo starts. We are all there for the entire month looking for good deals. Opportunities are all over.
Alessandro Gambera – eCommerce Manager
RB Italy
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.
