During the week and over the weekend of Black Friday, you’re going to see a substantial increase in search volume, conversions and, competition.
I have a belief that in most accounts you can see the Pareto principle at work. You likely have 20% of your campaigns/keywords drive 80% of your high-value conversions.
With that in mind, consider this: Q4 drives the majority of conversions and profits for most businesses. Within Q4 you have a few peaks: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 2nd week of December, 22nd December and 26th December. Success on those ~5 days will determine if you’ve had a successful Q4 and potentially a successful year.
My tip would be this: Spend the next few weeks ensuring that 20% of your absolute best campaigns are fully ready for the start of the holiday season (i.e. Black Friday). Also, look at increasing budgets over the period, the very last thing you need on Black Friday for your best performing campaigns is a ‘Limited by Budget’ status.
Byron Tassoni-Resch – Head of Search Engine Marketing
Deliveroo
The one thing that retailers need to get right is the strength of the offer. With so much competition and the rise in popularity around this event, you need to make sure that your brand stands out from the crowd with a compelling Black Friday offer.
When you are setting your Black Friday Offers and Codes, the things you need to consider are:
- Your profit margins and whether it is site-wide, category level or product-specific
- Whether this is a loss leader campaign
- What types of promotions have been successful in the past
- Competitor awareness – what other offers are in the market at key periods of the year
Emma Bhatti – Client Services Team Leader
Commission Factory
The most important approach and mindset that marketers can take going into the Holiday season this year is the importance of understanding the totality of the Holiday marketing landscape and the table stakes at play.
Table stake #1: Plan with the mindset that your brand is not only in direct competition against rival brands for holiday shopping dollars. 2018 Holiday ad spend exceeded $23B in Digital Advertising alone. The real competition is the entire field that is vying for Consumer Mindshare and a piece of $1 Trillion holiday spending. Brands have to evaluate every piece of content and message they put out. If it’s not meaningful or relevant to the end consumer it’s just noise. It’s common knowledge of how noisy Feeds and Inboxes have become. The Holiday Season is absurdly crowded and noisy. It starts earlier and gets louder every single year.
Table stake #2: Consumer expectations and demands have radically shifted and meeting or exceeding them is key to grabbing your piece of that Trillion-dollar Mindshare. Free Shipping, 2-day delivery, BOPIS (or click & collect). These are not just “nice to haves” they are the new reality and modern consumer psychology that retailers need to account for. If your brand isn’t meeting what are the new consumer standards and requirements they will have their need states met elsewhere. Products are bought (by people), not sold (by brands).
Table stake #3: Technology has given consumers leverage over retailers which means that brands have to meet consumers where they are. One area, in particular, is the explosion of Affiliate and Loyalty/Cash Back programs. “Affiliate Marketing” isn’t the dirty word and black hat practice that it used to be. Last year, 2.8 Billion consumers were a member or participated in an avg of 13 loyalty or cashback programs and are regularly active in over six per user. Brand loyalty is dead, less than 13% of consumers are brand loyal and don’t shop around for deals and rewards. People like free stuff and saving money (gasp!) Vendors like Honey, Piggy, Ebates, Dosh, Ibotta & Empyr have skyrocketed in users. These programs don’t degrade brand value. They allow your brand to meet price-conscious and savvy consumers where they are starting their purchase journey. When done right, your brand can leverage these platforms to provide value and satisfy customers while delivering them curated products and services that they are interested in. Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Loyalty, and Advocacy can all be built on the backbone of these platforms.
Chad Anderson – Senior Digital Marketing & Paid Media Mgr.
Helzberg Diamonds
See more tips from Ayima, MetricTheory, and 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.
