How to Maximise Your Sales this Black Friday Using Paid Social [Updated for 2020]

It’s nearing that time of year again. Black Friday means one thing – time to make some serious profit as an eCommerce retailer looking to maximise your sales.

We generated £63,743.72 from £307.70 on the weekend of Black Friday for Rebellious Fashion back in 2017. *drops mic* And we believe every retailer, with the right strategy, can make the most of it. Here are a few tips to incorporate paid social into your marketing strategy.

Get clever with your offers and discounts

Sometimes an across the board discount, such as 50% off everything on site, can seriously impact your product margins and profitability. However, for some retailers, an across the board discount won’t affect their product margins.

Whether it means choosing a few select areas of your website to use discounts on or running across the board discounts on certain days, you can get really clever with your Black Friday strategy! If you’re wondering what we’re getting at, here are a few ideas:

• Accelerate your discounts during the Black Friday weekend on certain days e.g. 50% on Friday, 40% on Saturday etc. However, keep your advertising generic and simply change the offers on your website to avoid sending ads back into the learning phase and disrupting your performance.
• Choose certain sections of your website, such as all dresses or all high heels, to base your promotions off of.

Pay attention to search volumes and push more of your budget into cold audiences

We’ve been advised by our Facebook Account Manager to push our budgets into colder audiences in the lead up to Black Friday. Searches for Black Friday begin to slowly increase mid-November and naturally peaking on the weekend of the event. We recommend multiplying your standard monthly budget by five during this period, and scaling up spend as the month progresses.

Retailers should be pushing for new users in the lead up to Black Friday, as you’ll have a greater chance of getting them to convert via retargeting on the week of Black Friday. As these are cold audiences, you will probably see a lower ROAS, and in general, throughout September and the beginning of October, we do see dips across retail as users wait for Black Friday. Make the most of this period, and invest in your cold audiences. And there you go, loads of new customers that are aware of your brand, helping maximise your sales!  

Convert those cold audiences with retargeting to really maximise your sales

You’re probably already seeing great returns from retargeting. But imagine what it’s like on Black Friday! We like to convert all those cold audiences from previous months straight into customers! We like to push even more of our budget into retargeting, in order to gain you new customers that are aware of your brand.

Now let’s retain those Black Friday customers

We find that users sometimes will make several purchases from the same brand in the week of Black Friday. Start your retention activity for Black Friday as soon as it hits. You could increase your discount specifically for this audience to increase brand loyalty.

Love it or hate it, Black Friday is here to stay and consumers are trained to wait for those sweet deals on everything from TV’s to beauty products. Creating a Black Friday marketing strategy that fits you and your brand is crucial in the lead up to it and you’ll want to be starting ASAP!

If the pre-Black Friday panic is beginning to settle in, get in touch! We’d be happy to audit your accounts and let you know where things could be tightened up. Or drop us a line on social.