{"id":113074,"date":"2015-11-19T21:39:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/is-black-friday-already-dead\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:54:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:54:31","slug":"is-black-friday-already-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/search-optimization\/is-black-friday-already-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Black Friday already DEAD?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember, just a few years ago, sitting on a cold and gloomy November day watching news clips of people fighting over TVs and Barbies, thinking to myself this is insane!<\/em> It was, of course, Black Friday \u2013 the last Friday payday before Christmas where retailers offer hefty discounts.<\/p>\n

At the time I thought the phenomenon was simply \u2018too American\u2019 to catch on in the UK, that our sense of decorum would never allow us to punch a mother in the face over a half price Xbox while her two kids looked on. It seemed I was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u2026well, half wrong.<\/p>\n

With the shopping holiday moving increasingly online, the battles for discounts are being waged digitally. This is something the British public can get behind \u2013 some passive-aggression from the safety of their own home. Sure enough, sales went through the roof, breaking sales records every year since around 2011.<\/p>\n

But were the retailers actually making more money?<\/p>\n

Sure, sales volume increased dramatically, but with those deep discounts and additional marketing budget I wonder whether retailers have made more money. That\u2019s without even considering how Black Friday sales might have cannibalised sales for the rest of November and December.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably these considerations that have inspired some retailers not to take part in Black Friday this year. In the UK, Asda has said that they will provide discounts throughout December rather than offering Black Friday deals. In the US, sports retailer REI has grabbed headlines by saying they will close their stores on November 27th.<\/p>\n

So, is Black Friday already dead? Should it even have been born in the first place? Or did retailers create a monster they can no longer control?<\/p>\n

\"It's<\/p>\n

It’s alive!!<\/em><\/p>\n

The Data and Analytics<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The data around the overall profitability of Black Friday is mixed. Some retailers report overall growth, others don\u2019t. Profits have tended to rise steadily for most retailers anyway, so it is also difficult to pick out sales volumes and basket values from general improvement and inflation.<\/p>\n

According to figures from the ONS, sales volume went up by 6.4% year-on-year between November 2013 and 2014. That\u2019s far above the yearly trend in other months and higher than City analysts predicted.<\/p>\n

However, the differences in volume between different companies varies massively. Google Marketplace (which you\u2019d expect to be at the top of its\u00a0game) grew sales on Black Friday by 8.73% YoY, while Amazon sales grew by a whopping 76.91%.<\/p>\n

This indicates that, for those doing Black Friday well, there are huge opportunities to increase revenue. But, given the average growth (including outliers like Amazon), the increase seen by the majority of retailers will be far more muted.<\/p>\n

Doing a bit of analysis on the data from one of our retail clients, we can see a marked growth throughout the Christmas shopping season from 2012, when they first started running Black Friday campaigns. But interestingly, Black Friday didn\u2019t cannibalise sales for the rest of the quarter \u2013 they actually rose year on year. This indicates that, if you\u2019re doing Black Friday well, it will actually enhance your sales over the period, rather than cannibalise it.
\n\"Black<\/a><\/p>\n

As the graph above shows, Black Friday kicked off the Christmas shopping season earlier, but there is no huge trough in sales in the weeks following, which some might expect.<\/p>\n

One reason this could be is due to the clever implementation of paid media.<\/p>\n

Paid Media \/ Digital Advertising<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To make the most of Black Friday advertisers should be utilising RLSA, or Remarketing for Search<\/strong>, around Black Friday weekend. This means you can target people who have already visited sections of your website and bid on quite generic or competitive keyword specifically for these audiences.<\/p>\n

\"Search<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For example, bidding on “Christmas gifts” or “stocking stuffers” for your usual broad audience would eat your entire budget in about 48 hours with very little to show for it. But by targeting only those people who have already visited your site with these competitive search terms, you have a far better chance of converting, reducing your cost per acquisition and delivering great RoI.<\/p>\n

You should also have a remarketing strategy across the Google Display Network. Ideally you\u2019ll be using dynamic remarketing<\/strong> which serves up ads based on the specific items that shoppers were viewing but haven’t yet purchased. For example, if you viewed a new frying pan on Amazon, the ad would show that specific frying pan (or perhaps the most popular pan in that category).<\/p>\n

Advertisers shouldn’t just focus on Adwords either. A combination of Facebook Retargeting, ads in the News Feed, and sponsored content \/ boosted posts would go a long way towards supplementing the activity on social media.<\/p>\n

Highly visual and holiday-themed Facebook ads with the relevant promotions make your offers really compelling and easy to understand. Also the Facebook carousel \/ multi-product ads are ideal for e-commerce. Depending on the products available, advertisers can also consider Instagram ads (which can now be built in Facebook) and promoted pins on Pinterest.<\/p>\n

Read more about Facebook Dynamic Ads.<\/a><\/p>\n

With these Retargeting strategies in place, you can improve sales figures throughout December, even if the customer bought nothing<\/em> from you on Black Friday but only visited the site. In this sense there is very little downside to running paid media on Black Friday weekend, other than the higher than usual bid costs.<\/p>\n

However, these costs have been slightly offset by the ease of setup for Black Friday advertising. There are some brand-new extensions that Google have launched which basically add new headers and additional information to your ads. When set up, the extensions will run only during the designated time period (e.g. Black Friday) so you can make them incredibly specific without the worry of switching them all back at midnight.<\/p>\n

\"black-friday-structured-snippet\"<\/p>\n

These new formats can be a great way of highlighting opening times, discounts, special offers, shipping, availability and other promotions \u2013 a quick and easy win for advertisers.<\/p>\n

Heavily promoting deals and promotions will be critical to gaining new traffic. Beyond the new structured snippets, advertisers should be incorporating special offers into the ad copy itself, callout extensions, and landing pages.<\/p>\n

Additionally, advertisers will want to ensure that only their top-performing ads, as well as those which incorporate relevant promotions, are running on Black Friday weekend.<\/p>\n

A good ad format to consider would be Countdown ads which make use of ad text that updates dynamically such as “Sale Ends in 2 Days!”. Even little things like changing up the Display URL to www.example.com\/Black-Friday could have an important impact.<\/p>\n

Search Optimisation (SEO)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

With awareness of Black Friday at an all-time high, if you’re not labelling your sale as ‘Black Friday’ on your website, you’re probably missing out. The search volume for product searches along with the key phrase \u2018Black Friday\u2019 shoot up massively at this time of year, and getting good search rankings (and thus more people on to your site) is key for your remarketing strategy. Retailers without a dedicated site section for Black Friday are likely to miss out on a lot of highly valuable search traffic.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal is for properly segmented categorisation, i.e. having the right categories (based on search volume and intent) with the right products on your website. As such, you’ll certainly be wanting to create a dedicated \u2018Black Friday\u2019 hub on your site, and sub-categorise it accordingly.<\/p>\n

Outside categorising and adding \u2018Black Friday\u2019 to relevant page titles, there is a massive cumulative amount of product specific Black Friday search volume, “Black Friday TV Deals”, “Black Friday Laptop Deals”, and “Black Friday Cruise Deals”, for example. Categorising your offers appropriately (and technically optimising for the correct Black Friday search terms) will allow you to get in the running for these more valuable searches.<\/p>\n

Once the day is over, just quietly tuck your Black Friday section away for next year. You should keep the page live but change the content to an appropriate message, \u201cBlack Friday has now finished for the year, but if you want to take advantage of our year-round deals, drop your email in the box below\u201d, for example.<\/p>\n

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