Black Friday Google Ads Preparation

Rachel: 00:00:11

Gina here with Starter PPC.

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Happy Halloween.

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I'm wearing my ghost earrings.

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I have my bats up and because it's

Halloween, we are in the depths of prep

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pairing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday,

which begins the last Friday of November,

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so this year it'll be like the 23rd or the

24th or something like that of November.

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Yes, we prepare almost a month

ahead of time because there's

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a lot of, things to think about

and moving pieces, to consider.

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I want to run through a list of things

to think about to help you guys prepare

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for Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend.

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If you're an e commerce company.

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The first thing and most important

thing is to plan your budget, right?

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So if you've been watching my channel,

you'll know that most months out of the

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year, we like to do over pacing on the

budget for the first two weeks of the

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month and then under pacing of the budget

for the last two weeks of the month.

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November is the one

exception to that rule.

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We usually do one of two

things, and we will ask the

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clients which one they prefer.

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So either we keep the budget, what

it is, and we actually underpace a

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little bit for the first three weeks

of November so that we can reserve.

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Budget for Black Friday,

Cyber Monday weekend, right?

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Because the market is going

to balloon on those dates.

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So you want to make sure

you have an available budget

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that you planned for that.

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You can capture that extra those

extra conversions and not just

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let the holiday pass you by.

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so that's one option.

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The second option is to spend the way

that you were spending previously, right?

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We might not do the over

pacing under pacing.

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but we might just take the monthly

budget and just spend divided by

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30 and spend it, and then have a

separate dedicated additional budget

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just for Black Friday, Cyber Monday

weekend, which I think is four days.

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I've even seen where clients will say,

hey, for that, for those four days,

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go ahead and spend whatever you want,

just put a target row as, Restriction

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on it because I don't want the ROAS to

just go all the way down to 30 percent

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on that day, but like a reasonable

100 percent ROAS is good because that

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means I'm getting like 200 percent

MER and, I don't mind that it's not

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my 250, which is my goal and the are

because the holiday weekend and I

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want to build my list of customers

who are hopefully going to maybe buy.

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another thing in the spring.

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So these are things that you might

want to think about and consider

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a couple of options for you guys.

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something to keep in mind is that

the sales in the first three weeks

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of November are usually a little bit

down, and that's because a big chunk

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of the market knows that Black Friday

is coming up, and if they want to

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buy something, they might actually

be waiting to buy it on that weekend.

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Which sucks, but that's

the way that it is.

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So that's part of the reason

why we don't do over pacing for

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the first two weeks of November.

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It just doesn't make sense.

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Why would we spend the money then when

we can probably spend it, a lot easier,

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with better performance, and the last

week of November, all right, so budget

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plans, budget does the other way.

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Let's move on to other things.

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First of all, for your black Friday,

Sale, it's recommended to just do

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like a storewide discount, right?

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Nothing too fancy, not like a buy to

get a free gift or anything like that.

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mostly because that's just what

everyone's expecting for black Friday,

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cyber Monday, that is the holiday.

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It's like just, storewide 30 percent

off or whatever you want to think about.

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What is the most amount I can

discount all my products and still

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make a little bit of a profit.

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Keep in mind, you're going for volume

that weekend, you're not going for return.

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And when you have three times as many

conversions, you don't have to make.

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as high of a return, because you have

three times, the, revenue coming in.

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And each time the conversion is made,

you make a little bit of profit.

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Yes, your profit might be more

slim, but you're making a lot of it.

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So it balances out.

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And then you have all these new, customers

who are familiar with your brand.

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And I don't know if you guys have

ever heard this stat before, but.

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Once somebody has already bought

from you, they are 10 times more

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likely to buy from you again than a

cold lead coming to see you for the

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first time is likely to buy from you.

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something to consider.

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All right.

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So once you've come up with what

your discount can be, how steep.

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put it up on your site, right?

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so obviously, if you can just

put up a banner, that's the most

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straightforward way to do it.

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However, I would recommend having

it in like a section as well.

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So when I say banner, I'm talking

about, how like Shopify stores have

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that little black banner right below

the, main navigation menu or right

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above the main navigation menu.

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But since it's Black Friday and it's

such a big weekend, you might also

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consider creating like a dedicated

section of the homepage of your site.

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you could make a thicker banner.

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you could have somebody

design it on Canva for free.

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And you can design it on Canva for free.

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I actually pulled up Canva cause I

wanted to show you guys what I would do.

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To my website, I would go to canva.

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com, get the free version of

Canva, search for Black Friday,

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Black Friday sale.

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How's that?

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And Canva has tons of ideas.

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So I would just create a really thin,

banner and I would shove it right on

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top of everything on my website, like

right below the main navigation menu.

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I'd put it right there on the homepage.

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I'd put it on the product.

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categories pages.

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and, I would just put it all

over something like this, right?

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This is a very, I'll, click on it.

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You can see,

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yeah, these are great.

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This is a great example of the type of

like banner I would put on my website.

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Obviously, you don't need to

have this text because they're

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going to be on the site.

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So just change this out.

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You can start with a template

and customize it from there.

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you also can in Canva, you can

just tell it what dimensions you

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want and start from scratch, right?

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Click create a design.

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You don't have to start with a design.

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you do have to be careful.

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Some of these are pro, which means you

have to upgrade in order to use them.

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some of them are paid, which means

you don't have upgraded pro, but

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you have to pay for that template.

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usually it's just a few dollars

and then some of them are free.

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Like here's a free one.

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It doesn't have a little

icon in the corner.

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that's what I would do to my website.

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Okay.

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And then, the third thing I want to

talk about is shopping ad promos.

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So for those of you who don't

know what I'm referring to,

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I pulled up some examples.

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once you have a promotion

going on your website.

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it's really important to display

that on your shopping ads, and

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you'll know what I'm talking about.

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Cause if you've used Google

shopping at all, you've seen

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this, it says special offer.

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And when you hover over it, it

tells you about the special offer.

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sometimes the promotions

don't show up like that.

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Sometimes it shows up like this

5 off if you buy 100 or more.

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sometimes it just shows

like a discounted price.

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And to be honest, I think those

are, the way it's displayed is

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automatically chosen by Google.

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but you do have some control over it.

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So there's a couple of

ways to go about this.

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First of all, some stores, like

I think Shopify has, this has

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something called automated discounts.

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So you can Google automated discounts

and read this article right here

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in the, Google support page.

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And it talks about how to turn this on.

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And that means that Google will do

its best to communicate with Shopify

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and figure out what promotions are

already set up in Shopify and it will

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automatically display on the shopping ads.

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Now, if you're like me and you don't

trust that to work and you want to

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make sure that it's actually working,

on Black Friday, because you have four

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days to get it across, then what you're

going to want to do is go to merchants.

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google.

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com, log into your Google Merchant

Center, click on marketing and

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then promotions and just set it up.

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And in order to set it up, you have to

understand how the promotion works, right?

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So before you do this, go to your.

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eCommerce store, build the

promotion, and then go over to

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Google Merchant Center and set it up.

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As you walk through this process,

it's going to ask you questions like,

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which categories are you promoting?

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and if you say the total store, but over

in your eCommerce store, you set it up to

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do the entire store except for sale items,

the promotion is going to get disapproved.

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On Black Friday morning, because it's

going to see the settings don't match.

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and so you have to be really specific,

really, detail oriented and really

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accurate when you're setting up promotions

in Google Merchant Center, right?

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You have to know exactly how you

set it up in your e commerce store.

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If it's for the total store,

it's for the total store.

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If it's for total store, but sales

item, except for sales items, you have

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to say it's for all these categories

and not list the sale item category.

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just be very specific with

how you discuss the promotion.

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It's also going to ask you, does it

automatically apply at the discount?

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Is there a code people

have to copy and paste?

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How does it work?

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So these are all things that you're

going to have to know in order to get a

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promotion to show up on your shopping ads.

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hi there, quick interruption.

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agencies have minimum budget thresholds

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So what happens is the business owners

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And the problem with that is

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geared towards larger accounts.

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And the advice doesn't have any of those

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the algorithm into giving a small

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So it often just doesn't work.

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Okay.

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Back to the video.

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Okay.

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moving on, let's talk about

creative assets like images for

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image ads and videos for video ads.

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I think this is a little bit above

and beyond for a promotion that

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just goes on for only four days.

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depending on how much you benefit from

Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend,

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maybe you've done it in the past.

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You were like, wow, that was amazing.

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I can't wait to do it again.

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you might want to pull out all the stops

and build image ads just for black Friday.

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and you could even do video

ads just for black Friday.

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if it was me, I'd probably just

be building assets for Christmas.

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And because those are going to run, for a

few weeks instead of just for four days.

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but it's really up to you.

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it depends on, how creatively

inclined you are, How much you like

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this holiday and things like that.

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First thing you can do is you can

brainstorm, some ideas for image ads by

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just literally going to Google images

and searching black Friday image ad.

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no joke, you guys, this is a great way

to get the creative juices flowing.

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or those Canva templates are great.

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don't have to use Canva templates

just for making section of your site.

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You can also use Canva

templates to make image ads.

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when you're making image ads, I

would make a square version and

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a 2 to 1 ratio rectangle version.

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Of each ad.

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So you could just make one set, right?

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A square and a rectangle, or you could

make three versions of it, but make a

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square and a rectangle of each version.

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send it to your ads manager, or you

can hop into the ads and, if you have

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a display campaign going already,

a display image campaign going

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already, I would just go in there.

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Duplicate the ad, swap out the images

for just the Black Friday images.

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honestly, I would just temporarily

turn off the non Black Friday ad

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for those four days, and then turn

it back on when you're done with

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the Black Friday version of the ad.

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So you have two ads the same campaign,

but you're going to turn the one

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off that's been running, and turn

on your Black Friday one that only

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has Black Friday images to force

budget into those images real fast.

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If you try to feed those images

into Google, I'm not even

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sure if it's going to use it.

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And honestly, Google doesn't even

give us much data on how much

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budget is dedicated to every image.

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Anymore these days.

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So your best bet is to force budget

into a copied version of your image ads,

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in order to get it to go quickly and

spend a lot on it during those days.

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Another thing that you can do is I

really like the facebook ad library.

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You can go here select all ads

and then literally just keyword

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search for like black friday

because it just helps me see what?

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Other people are doing with their ads.

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Okay.

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Here's like an example of a video ad.

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Here's an example of an image ad.

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granted, these are all Facebook

ads, not Google ads, it is

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something helps to brainstorm.

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Obviously social media ads

are a little bit different.

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They're usually like more casual and more,

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Social, you can also go to the

ads transparency center on Google

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and try to search, but I have not

found much luck in here because you

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have to search for an advertiser.

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So you can't just put in a keyword like

black Friday and see what comes up.

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You have to find one of your competitors

and the only ones you're going to find

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in here are the really big competitors.

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So if you have a big competitor

that you someday want to be like.

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Go to the Google ads transparency

center and look for them and you

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can see what their Google ads look

like, which is really powerful.

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It's just sometimes hard to

find what you're looking for.

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video is hard, but I just wanted to

recommend one thing, which is if you

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already have videos that you use as

ads, it's really easy to take that

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video and slap a five second opener

onto the front, the beginning of that

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video that says, our black Friday sale

is on it's You know, this much discount,

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and it's running on these dates.

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And then you start the regular ad.

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now if you're thinking, gosh, that is

a lot of work and then I have to upload

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it to YouTube and then I have to upload

it to Google and then I have to make a

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duplicate of the ad and I have to try

to get it to spend on that image ad

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just for those four days, I feel, yeah,

I probably wouldn't go that far, but

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again, it's a personal preference thing.

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It just depends on a lot of

things about your business.

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And whether you want to do video

ads just for Black Friday, Cyber

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Monday, just throwing ideas out there.

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Okay.

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there's two more things I want to mention.

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One is, ad text.

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so a great way to add Black Friday ad text

is to go over to the assets section over

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here, instead of your Google ad account

and add it using a promotional asset.

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if you're like, that's not enough.

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I don't just want it to show up in

a promotional, a promotion asset.

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assets are like those extensions

that you see on the bottom of the ads

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and they don't always show, right?

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It's up to Google whether to show it

or not On your text ads, you're like,

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that's not enough for my text ads.

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I really rely heavily on text ads.

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I want it to be in like my main header.

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Again, duplicate the ad, make a Black

Friday, cyber Monday version of the ad,

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and temporarily just turn off the main.

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Ad for those four days and turn it back

on at the end of the weekend, no big deal.

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And you can swap out the text

all you want, inside of that

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duplicated version of your text ad.

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All right.

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The last thing I want to

mention is email, right?

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It doesn't have much to do with

Google ads, but it is something

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that's super powerful and I

didn't want to skip over it.

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Don't forget to set up a couple of emails.

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Not just one, a couple around Black

Friday, Saber Monday, everyone who's

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on your list, whether they're just

a lead or whether they're a past,

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customer, tell them about your discount.

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all right.

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That's about it.

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Thanks for watching.

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Best of luck.