In this insightful session, Ruben Quinones, VP at Amsive, speaks with digital marketing experts Inna Zeyger and Laurin Bobo to share actionable last-minute strategies for optimizing Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. Covering everything from Google Ads adjustments to audience retargeting and creative approvals, this LinkedIn Live is packed with tips to drive maximum conversions during the busiest eCommerce season of the year.
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The Importance of Consistency in Google Ads
[05:27]
Maintaining consistency and continuity is crucial, particularly when using Google and algorithmic bidding strategies like TCPA or TROAS. It’s important to be mindful of the potential impact that campaign creation can have on the algorithm.
Inna explains that creating new campaigns right before Black Friday often leads to algorithmic disruption, resetting learning phases and diminishing performance. Instead, marketers should make adjustments to existing campaigns to maintain their momentum.
Leveraging Google Ad Extensions
[07:18]
There are two key tools that are often kept in the toolkit for short promotions, especially during holidays. The first is extensions on Google, particularly the promotion extension, which creates a subset of the ad below the main content to highlight the sale, such as 30% off, free shipping, or a free item with purchase. This approach doesn’t disrupt the ad’s learning phase and allows the existing ads to continue running while incorporating the Black Friday and Cyber Monday messaging. The second is using sitelink extensions or callout extensions to highlight the promotion, further drawing attention to the sale and expanding upon the key message.
Laurin highlights the use of promotion extensions and account-level headlines to share holiday deals without creating new campaigns. These tools allow marketers to enhance ad performance quickly and with minimal disruption.
Budget Management and Bidding Strategies
[12:35]
TROAS and CPAs are expected to be significantly different from those seen during non-promotional periods. While these metrics have changed over the years, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday no longer being the sole focus of promotions, user behavior still follows a familiar pattern. Even though many promotions may start well before these key dates, consumers will continue to check in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, hoping for better or stronger deals, despite there being no new promotions.
Inna emphasizes the importance of adjusting TROAS and TCPA bids to accommodate increased holiday demand. She also advises against pausing campaigns, as doing so resets algorithmic learning and negatively impacts performance.
Optimizing Social Media Campaigns
[15:18]
It’s still recommended to introduce new creative within existing campaigns. While some businesses create new campaigns for new creative, if algorithmic bidding is used— which most social platforms do—it’s best to avoid significant disruptions and maintain the historical data on those campaigns. Overall, social platforms provide a bit more leeway, but businesses need to assess this based on their conversion volume.
For businesses generating only a few conversions per day, keep campaigns running to maintain their history. However, for businesses with a higher conversion volume, there’s more flexibility to create separate campaigns specifically for the holiday period. Ultimately, the decision depends on a business’ standard conversion volume.
Avoiding Creative Approval Delays
[16:42]
Laurin warns that the timing of when ads are set live is crucial for Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, as these periods involve high volumes of ads being uploaded, all of which must go through a review process. Ads can sometimes be disapproved for minor reasons, leading to delays as they’re resubmitted for re-approval.
To avoid this, it’s recommended to upload ads at least seven days before the sale starts, ensuring they go through the review process and are ready to launch on time. Waiting until the last minute to upload ads can lead to missed opportunities, especially during critical sales events.
Audience Targeting and CRM Data
[22:33]
One effective strategy for businesses with access to CRM data from at least the previous year is to leverage customer behavior during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. User behavior during these sales periods differs significantly from regular periods, so businesses can create targeted audiences by identifying Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers from the previous year. These lists can be uploaded to various platforms to build lookalike audiences or retarget past customers who made purchases during those sales events.
The Role of Seasonality Adjustments
[31:01]
To account for performance dips after Cyber Monday, Inna suggests using Google Ads’ seasonality adjustments and data exclusions to recalibrate campaigns and optimize spend. This tool allows advertisers to adjust for expected drops in conversion rates, telling Google to reduce ad serving and spending during periods of lower demand. By proactively setting this adjustment, businesses can avoid wasting budget on ads that would otherwise result in poor performance.
Shifting Campaigns to Retail Platforms
[36:48]
In scenarios where inventory is low or shipping deadlines are missed, marketers can pivot by redirecting campaigns to retail platforms like Amazon or Walmart, ensuring sales continue through alternative channels.
For advertisers using platforms like Google Ads or paid social, it can be beneficial to shift advertising efforts to drive traffic to these larger retail sites, especially during high-demand periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While this may not result in sales on the advertiser’s website, it can still capture sales through these platforms.
Key Takeaways
[40:35]
The panel concludes with advice for staying organized and adaptable.
- Maintaining consistency in bidding strategies, especially with algorithmic bidding (TCPA, TROAS), is crucial.
- Leveraging Google’s promotion extensions, sitelink extensions, and callout extensions allows marketers to highlight holiday sales without disrupting ad performance
- Ads should be uploaded at least seven days before major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to avoid delays in approval.
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