You must familiarize potential customers with your products and standard pricing well before you offer them your biggest discount of the year for two reasons. First, you want them to understand the magnitude of the deal you’re offering. And second, you want your brand to be recognizable in the inundation of advertisements your potential customers will receive over the busiest shopping weekend of the year. People buy from brands they know. Let’s say you’re a watch company. Do you think people are more likely to purchase a watch from a brand they’ve had their eye on for several weeks or a company they have never heard of until Black Friday? If you haven’t already, start connecting with your target audience now to communicate your value and generate demand for your product.
Olivia Deputy – Director of Content Marketing
Xponent21
I have always prepped my teams as if Cyber 5 were the playoffs or a championship game. Coming into the event we all knew what we were doing, and how the days would unfold. Right down to when each team member would be having Thanksgiving dinner to ensure we had someone on call. Over the course of many Cyber 5s for large retail clients we found 3 things that led to strong decision making and optimal client outcomes:
- Have a plan and a script on how to react to market conditions during Cyber 5. Know what to do with extra money, how to deal with new entrants to your marketplace, or favorable market conditions ahead of time, and get client buy-in ahead of time.
- Your team should be in code freeze on testing. Complete your copy, LP and bid strategy testing in weeks leading into Cyber 5. There should be no ambiguity on what works at this point.
- Automate as many things as possible. Budget increases/decreases, ad swaps, and expanded keyword or targeting campaigns built especially for Cyber 5 should be on a schedule. Let the billion-dollar machines do the dirty work to free up your team to create value for your client.
Spencer Helm – Search Director and E-Commerce Lead
Reprise Digital
My top tip for the Black Friday weekend is to have text ads ready to go weeks in advance using automated rules. This is also applicable to any Merchant Promotions you’re intending on running for shopping ads; ensure they’re set up and approved days, even weeks prior to Black Friday if possible. Doing this will help you get through any approval issues in your ads. Help yourself by getting ahead so you can be dealing with the potential increased demand in your workflow during this busy period. Be proactive rather than reactive.
Matthew Soakell – Senior PPC Trainer
Mabo
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.
