Digital strategy
Websites & technology
Paid media
Search marketing
Digital engagement
First off, do you need to get involved?
Black Friday 2024 absolutely smashed previous records, with $10.8 billion in online sales – an increase of over 10% from 2023 -, but before you dive too far into this, ask yourself this important question.
Can you afford to get involved?
Before you race to launch ads, check the maths on your margins. A “race to the bottom” promotion can wipe out profit if average order values are low or fulfilment costs are high.
Some brands push back with value-led campaigns (for example, pledging a charity donation for every order) or skip the weekend altogether to protect your average ROAS .
If the numbers do stack up, move quickly though, because – November will be here before you know it.
We’ve worked with clients in the past who we have even advised to pause their ads during Black Friday to avoid getting conversion rate drops or increased cost per sale levels from those clicking on ads and expecting a promotion.
But, there’s no escaping the fact that Black Friday is here to stay and can be a very profitable sale period that is increasingly globally recognised, so you better start planning now.
Start Planning Now
It may be July, but November will come around in the blink of an eye. There are some things that you can start doing now for Black Friday lead up which can help support you when the time comes.
- Page Likes
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- Build your following up before you announce a sale to them, both on social platforms and emails. Warm audiences are cheaper to convert during the sale and could be the difference between a good ROAS and a bad one
- Email Sign Ups
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- Give your newsletter signups something no one else gets.
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- “Get all the latest news, product information & exclusive sale releases before anyone else.” type offers can give you access to customers you may not have had before.
- CRM Tagging
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- Tag new contacts with “Black Friday VIP” so you can market to them later without inflating costs on cold traffic.
People are expecting more from Black Friday now, customers are savvy and there’s thousands of companies out there doing what you do, so make sure you’re ahead of the game.
Did you know: Around 40% of shoppers abandon their carts during Black Friday, citing shipping costs as the primary deterrent.
Get Flexible With Budgets
Google is keen on the importance of flexible budgets throughout the year, rather than fully sticking to pre-agreed budgets.
If your ad budget is £120,000 for the year, you may be tempted to allocate it evenly at £10,000 per month. However, planning yearly spend in buckets to load additional budget into the Black Friday window, if early results look strong, can yield great rewards.
Talk to your finance teams, the worst they can say is “no”. There may be reserves to tap into if things are going really well, and no finance director in the world is going to be saying no to making more money.
Campaign Advice for Black Friday Sales
Should you set up a dedicated campaign or asset group/ad group within your existing ads?
If you’ve got a limited product range, or one hero-offer that’s leading the way then you could create a dedicated Black Friday campaign / Performance Max asset group which means you can keep your learning from these focused, and it lets you pause everything very simply when the sale ends.
If you’ve got a very wide catalogue of products, or you have rolling deals which may change then you may want to layer your Black Friday ad groups into your evergreen campaigns that you’re running, which means you can preserve historical data and smart bidding signals for your SKUs later on.
A promotion asset/promotion extension will be your catch-all account-wide to draw attention to your sale. Using an all-encompassing “Up to 50% off” type of offer will allow it to be relevant across the board, and linking to your Black Friday sale page will give you the best chance of selling.
Feed & Promo set-up advice
- Merchant Centre sale prices
- Make sure that your product feeds are showing your offers. Sale prices may pull in automatically into your feeds from your website information, but if your promotions rely on codes (E.G. BLACKFRIDAY20 to save 20% off) then be sure to add and schedule them as a promotion in Google Merchant Centre ahead of time.
- Sale Window Attribute
- set sale_price_effective_date to run for your chosen promotion window – e.g. 00:01 Friday to 23:59 Cyber Monday in your own time zone and in UTC. This prevents Google showing the wrong price to customers who browse early.
- Supplemental feeds for rapid tweaks
- Keep a lightweight spreadsheet ready so you can push price drops, add flash deals or pause out-of-stock products in minutes without touching your core feed.
- Shipping and returns attributes
- Confirm that cut-off dates, free postage thresholds and extended returns policies are reflected in the feed; they show as highlights in Shopping ads and reassure deal hunters who might already be thinking about Christmas.
- Meta Commerce Manager parity
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- Mirror every price change and promo code in your Facebook and Instagram product catalogue to avoid ad rejections and preserve smooth retargeting across channels.
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Did you know: 35% of shoppers admitted to buying items not on their planned list due to aggressive discounts.
Messaging to cut through the noise
Shoppers are drowning in “Biggest Ever Sale” headlines. Position your ads with:
- Urgency
- “Ends Cyber Monday” beats “Ends soon.” – be clear about exactly when it’s ending and dispel any ideas that they can wait around as long as they want. Get your audience buying now!
- Gifting Angle
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- Many users are already Christmas shopping in disguise, so you can tie in your messaging to reflect that
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- Scarcity
- “While stocks last” is fine, but “Only 100 pairs in sale” is much stronger as it gives a clear, quantifiable number. FOMO is a powerful tool in the marketers toolbox.
Also, make the time window obvious; Black Friday seems to stretch every year, so do not assume your customers know when you stop shipping discounted orders .
Website Updates, Creative Assets and Technical Advice
It’s not enough to have just one of each advert, you’ll want to have a bank of things to send out so that you can test what’s working and what isn’t a focus on the best ones. Also, you’ll need to make sure that you’ve got assets in various sizes and formats, and ready to go out across a variety of channels; there’s a lot to think about.
- Countdown Timer
- Add a Google Ads countdown customiser ({=COUNTDOWN(…)}) to to automatically shows “Sale ends in 3 hours”, then “Sale ends in 32 minutes” etc as the clock runs down, a proven click-through lift on Black Friday. You can set up countdowns in any responsive search ad, text ad, or Dynamic Search Ad.
- Creative ratios
- Export final artwork in 1:1, 4:5, 9:16 and 1.91:1 to cover Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Discovery placements without cropping headaches.
- Landing Pages & Page Add-Ons
- Have dedicated sale landing pages set up and consider adding a lightweight promotional or stock bar (“only 12 left”) for mobile views especially – make sure you test the speed impact though. Shoppers decide in seconds when on mobile, so making those CTA’s and information drops impossible to miss will win you sales.
- Home Page Banner
- It sounds simple, but make sure that your sale is clearly displayed on your website home page. Not everyone is going to see your adverts leading to a landing page, and some loyal customers may go directly to your site so you don’t want them to miss out.
- Tracking & QA
- Fire a test order through every channel (Search, Shopping, Meta, TikTok) to confirm GA4, ad platform pixels and CRM tags capture revenue, coupon and purchaser flags. It’s not a fun job but it’ll make sure that everything runs smoothly.
- Digital Wallets
- Make sure that your website is set up to take advantage of these payment options, over 45% of mobile purchases in Black Friday 2024 were with things like Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Did you know: 71% of online sales on Black Friday in 2024 were made via mobile devices.
Don’t Panic, You’ve Got This
Hopefully you’ve found our initial advice helpful, and we know there’s a hell of a lot of things to consider to make everything work, but you didn’t get into marketing because you thought it’d be easy…right?
Keep your head in the game, make sure you’re doing regular checks of your campaign performance (2024 data shows conversion spikes early morning and late evening) so you don’t miss anything.
If it all sounds like a lot – we’ve got you! Reach out to us and our PPC experts are here to help your Black Friday sale a success.
