Revisit your targeting to maximize your revenue-driving audiences on the big days. Do you have a large pool of users who bought gifts or deals this time last year and haven’t purchased since? Make sure you get back on their radar during the consideration period pre-holiday, as well as using the list for a variation on your usual purchaser lookalikes. Also, top up your retargeting potential in advance with a higher proportion of budget going towards top-of-funnel campaigns in the run-up to Black Friday, including generic searches outside of your usual remit, which you can then layer with audiences to keep ROAS in check. Above all else – plan and implement with as much lead time as possible!
Lucy Whittaker – Paid Media Director
Ayima
Planting seeds early and often to present your products as potential gifting options will pay dividends. In a Metric Theory study, we found that advertisers who ramped investment in awareness efforts before the holidays saw greater revenue gains on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Try tactics such as previewing your promotions in advance of key promotional days to maximize success.
You should also ensure you are analyzing your site data from 2018 to determine key performing hours for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, respectively. Metric Theory client statistics revealed that the bulk of revenue on Black Friday came in the early morning hours and sometimes even starting Thanksgiving night. Whether or not you are leveraging algorithmic bidding, ensure your budgets and bids on your advertising efforts are adjusted to capitalize on these key performing times.
Ashleigh Shapiro – Director of Account Services
MetricTheory
Optimize your products (Product Feed/Product Pages), start your prep early, build your site to accommodate the rush, create hype through hinting the potential customers of the upcoming product deals – could be via newsletters, featured post, etc.
Optimizing the products with the right keywords will help customers discover your products through listed web pages of your site, via searches as well as search within your own website. Following the steps listed below is crucial for a successful campaign:
- Conduct keyword research on terms that can help boost traffic and sales, this would also mean critically analysing the product descriptions and titles to ensure that these top terms are included within product details
- Build backlinks to the e-commerce store by utilizing blog post, influencer shout outs, social network feature post, and bookmarks to help create visibility for your top-selling products
- Analysing the past data and performance of the products can help identify the most in-demand trends in the season which can help tweak the promotions and pricing for the best, this would also mean utilizing analytical tools to understand the demographics and psychographics of how the audience perceives the products. It can help improve product targeting for each audience by creating a personalized experience through the product feeds catering to their interest and engagement with the website previously.
- Also when optimizing the product descriptions and pages it would be important include terms that create a sense of urgency among the audience to act in a limited time.
- Suitable phrases would be: limited time only, last one standing, last chance, most viewed, act now, clearance, only one left, and hurry.
This should not only be limited to terms, but it could also be set out as graphical interpretations of a countdown ad copies, timers, or pop-ups that prompt the users to take immediate action.
While the points mentioned above are important to ensure that you get discovered and visited by the right audience, the factors listed below would contribute to how much time a visitor will actually invest in your website.
A full health check on the website is a must, and the given points should be cleared at all time:
-Load time
-Mobile-friendly/usability
-A seamless checkout process is a must
Shakila Liyange – Search Marketing Specialist
RTOWN
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.
