1. Plan your campaigns 

For a successful Black Friday strategy, having a plan in place is essential. 

You need to know: 

• How much stock you have available 
• What you want to achieve 
• What offers you’re going to run 

If you don’t have a lot of stock available, you might need to be less aggressive with your ads so that you don’t run out before the end of the weekend. 

We also recommend looking at last year’s performance to find out more about what worked well and what didn’t. Consider your ad copy, offers and the audience you targeted. Is there anything you can do this year to improve performance? 

2. Create dedicated Black Friday PPC campaigns 

Whilst you can adjust bids on your existing ads to boost Black Friday sales, it’s important to know which products you want to push over the Black Friday weekend and create dedicated Black Frida campaigns for them.

Make sure you mention Black Friday and your offers in the ad copy to entice customers in. Remember that many customers are shopping around for the best deal on Black Friday nd are actively in market for the products they’re searching for so make the most of this increase in buyers. 

In addition, you’ll want to build a specific Black Friday landing page to direct traffic to that matches your ads. This will help you to drive conversions and provide buyers with exactly what they need to purchase from you straight away. 

3. Build a Black Friday landing page 

You know how important relevant landing pages are to the success of your PPC ads. And Black Friday is no different. 

For the best results over the weekend, you’ll need to provide a landing page with the best user experience which details your special offers and deals.

When your landing page matches your ads, it shows users that they’ve come to the right place and that you’re offering the same thing you’ve advertised. You’ll want your customers to make as few clicks as possible to find the product or service they’re looking for. 

Make sure your website is prepared for an increase in traffic too! The last thing you need is to drive a load of people to your site and then your site crashes.  

4. Increase your budget and bids 

There’s going to be much higher volumes of traffic and competition than usual over the weekend, so you will need to monitor your budget a little closer to make sure you’re making the most of the increased demand. 

Increase your budget in the lead-up to Black Friday weekend to capture those people who are researching early, and then over the weekend, make sure you’ve got enough budget to see you through to the end of the day. The last thing you want is to run out of budget halfway through Black Friday and have your ads stop showing. 

Watch your bids on popular products and increase if necessary to make sure you’re really capitalising on that extra traffic. 

5. Update your ad copy 

Your ad copy is going to be key to the success of your PPC campaigns. Plan your promotions and update your ad copy accordingly to make your ads as appealing as possible to your target audience. 

Make sure that the messaging in your ad aligns with your website and your landing pages. We also recommend creating a sense of urgency with countdown timers showing how long your Black Friday campaigns are valid. 

6. Utilise your audience 

To get the most from your ads, you’ll need to make sure you’re targeting the right audience. It’s much easier to convert people who are already aware of your brand or who have bought from you before than to try and convert people who have had no contact with your brand before. 

We recommend building retargeting lists prior to Black Friday so you can target past website visitors and customers who may convert again. Focus on basket abandoners and previous customers and make sure you’re reaching these customers through your email marketing too.

You can also build lookalike audiences of people who are similar to those who have bought from you before or who have visited your site in the past. You’re more likely to convert these customers because they’ll have the same interests and habits as these existing customers. 

Key takeaways…

Preparing your Black Friday PPC campaigns is more than just ramping up your budget and bids for a few days. To ensure you’re converting as many customers as possible, you need to be specific with your ads and this requires a little bit of planning in advance. 

A few weeks before the big weekend, start planning and thinking about what you’re going to offer to your customers. This will allow you to create the right ad copy and get your landing pages aligned. 

If you’d like to find out more about making the most of your PPC campaigns, why not request a free digital marketing audit from our team?