For online shopping retailers, Black Friday is one of the most important days of the year. In fact, online shopping reached $9 billion in sales on Black Friday in 2022.
This week marks halfway to Black Friday — the perfect time for your e-commerce business to make sure your Amazon Ads strategy and Google Shopping ads are in good shape. Here are a few insights from our search engine marketing experts on how you can amplify your Black Friday marketing efforts now in preparation for the big day.
How to Prepare Right Now to Improve Your Amazon Ads Strategy
Use what you learned last year this year.
Research last year’s Amazon Shopping sales to see which products sold best, what messaging drove sales, and from which product ad placements the most profit occurred. With this data, you can start to test now new ways to promote high-performing or similar products for Black Friday, via:- Product ad placements on Amazon natively and/or through Amazon DSP to reach a larger audience
- Product descriptions: Test variations of what worked best last Black Friday to determine what may work best this year
- Product photos and/or videos: Play around with angles, lighting, composition, etc., to find out what resonates most with your target audience
Don’t skip the days leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Planning your promotions to run longer than on just Black Friday gives you the chance to reach more customers. If you have the opportunity to promote your Black Friday offers at least one week before the big day, do it! Shoppers are also planners, so giving them a “sneak preview” of your Black Friday promotions will only aid in them adding your products to their cart instead of similar competitive products. Also become aware of how your audience shops on Cyber Monday. Can you make the most of the time (and budget) you have now to have enough advertising dollars available? Consider:- The total advertising budget required to run the week before Black Friday, on Black Friday, and through Cyber Monday: Do you need to make cuts now or in the months to come to allow for more advertising dollars in November?
- New messaging and creative you may need to promote leading up to Black Friday and for Cyber Monday: This takes more time than you may realize! Start testing messaging and creative now, so you can get your final ads designed, approved, and placed before you need them to start running in earnest.
Keep a competitive edge.
When advertising on Amazon, prices can vary based on competitor retailers (called “Competitive Price Threshold” or CPT). Do some research and monitor the conversion rate for your most popular and price-volatile items. But, keep the following in mind before adjusting prices on your products to remain competitive:- Don’t lower your prices beyond where you won’t make a profit. Taking a hit just to stay competitive is not how you grow your business — it’s how you find yourself in trouble.
- Keep in mind the “perceived value” of your products when considering a pricing update. If you change your pricing, will consumers think less of your brand and product quality? Or will this change actually improve their perception of your company?
How to Optimize Google Shopping Ads to Broaden Your Reach
The reach on Google is vast, especially during the holiday shopping season. You can do the following to learn how to optimize Google shopping ads so your products get discovered by millions of potential customers:
Start thinking about what promotions may work best for that time of year.
Do you sell a certain product or product line that aligns with the holiday season? Like Christmas trees, outdoor holiday lights, or toboggans? Or even gift sets that have sold well around the holidays in past years? Thinking about how to advertise these products now allows for plenty of time to plan for Black Friday. Consider:
- The keywords you want to bid on and how much you’re willing to pay for each keyword. As you know, “Christmas in July” is a thing, so use the month of July to test new keywords around your holiday-specific products and product lines.
- How long you want to run your promotions for around Black Friday. For example: Do you want to run ads only on Black Friday, or increase their run time to be the week leading up to Black Friday through Cyber Monday? If you would like to run ads longer this year than you have in the past, start budgeting advertising dollars now to allow for those longer placements.
Optimize your product feed (i.e., titles and descriptions).
Take a look now to see what worked extremely well for your store last Black Friday. Based on these learnings from last year’s data, updating your titles and descriptions may help shoppers find (and buy) your products faster this year.
Get campaigns up and running now so they can collect data.
Have a new product, product line, or version of an existing product you want to sell hard on Black Friday? Running Google Shopping campaigns now for these products allows you to shed light on what is going well and what isn’t catching on. When you monitor them over the next few months, you’ll get better insight on how you can optimize them in November.
How The Omnitail Difference Takes Your Amazon & Google Shopping Campaigns to the Next Level
Omnitail is disrupting the digital marketing landscape with our unique profit-driven approach to e-commerce marketing. We teach our clients to measure success through profitability instead of vanity metrics like ROAS, which provide greater accountability, integrity, and transparency around the health of a business.
Because we use proprietary in-house technology for managing and reporting on your campaigns, we’ll help take your Amazon Ads and Google Shopping accounts to the next level in time for Black Friday. As a dedicated e-commerce marketing agency, we take the time to analyze the whole story of your accounts and optimize programs based on what’s best for you and your bottom line.
Black Friday Marketing Strategies that Keep You Prepared
Don’t wait until November to start improving your ad campaigns and accounts. Instead, count down the days to Black Friday knowing you have a Google Shopping and Amazon Ads strategy that helps your online store grow and become more profitable.
If you need planning assistance, our team at Omnitail will help you with Black Friday marketing so you increase your profit on the biggest shopping day of the year. Reach out to us to set up a strategy call today!
