Hosted by Julie F Bacchini, this week’s PPCChat session was focused on Black Friday & Cyber Monday. Experts shared their thoughts on the Black Friday & Cyber Monday campaigns, how did the campaigns behave compare to last year, did anyone platform significantly over or underperformed and more.
Q1: Were you running any Black Friday (BF) or Cyber Monday (CM) specific campaigns this year? If so, on which platforms?
I was not running any BF or CM campaigns for clients this year. It was delightful to not have to stress about work during the holiday time! @NeptuneMoon
No Black Friday / Cyber Monday campaigns here. But if you need a Medicare Advantage plan in PA – I’ve got you. @Galliguez
Yup, ran BF & CM campaigns across Google and Facebook/Instagram. @dylanppc
I wasn’t running any BF/CM campaigns this year, but anecdotally I feel like I noticed BF/CM ads start earlier this year. We’ll have to wait and see how long some of them extend to (intentionally and unintentionally lol). @_GilHong
Supported with running a few – yup! fun times. @TheMarketingAnu
We ran BF/CM Ads for EVERY client. Not all clients needed a dedicated campaign for it though. Mostly ad copy, extensions, things of that nature across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and social channels. @BrettBodofsky
I was, Google+Bing, and while performance was strong, def wasn’t as strong as last year on a return standpoint. @JonKagan
Q2: How did your BF and CM campaigns do this year? How does this compare to last year’s performance?
While I didn’t run any specific BF/CM campaigns, I did see a pretty big drop in traffic across my B2B clients, fairly typical due to the holiday. @_GilHong
Good. but not as good as last year. I blame @JuliaVyse only bc she isn’t here to defend herself. @JonKagan
Every client on my roster saw YoY BF/CM growth and either exceeded our targets or came close. BF/CM did not disappoint for the mass majority of e-commerce clients. @BrettBodofsky
Our lights company – did extremely well. beat targets. @TheMarketingAnu
Yep, did some BFCM action. Sales numbers were good. Seems like consumers behaved differently though. @robert_brady
Hit and miss – 2 great performances, 1 average and 1 extremely underwhelming. Last year and years before, BF was a much bigger hype here in SA. This year people either didn’t seem bothered or aren’t in the best positions financially at the moment. @dylanppc
Growth was frequent across the board but not 2019 or 2020 type growth. Few brands doubled YoY growth. Biggest difference for me were brands who have a brand and brands who are pushing product. Brands who’ve developed a community, trust are winning in Paid too. @RyBen3
Didn’t ran just bf cm specific campaigns but we saw a huge uptick in revenue and aov. One of my cpg ecom brand closed the month at 1.2 mil in sale revenue with 9.0 avg. ROAS. @sonofgorkhali
Q3: Did any one platform significantly over or under perform for you? Any thoughts as to why?
Google. Google. Google. A little bit of Social. But mostly Google. @dylanppc
TikTok emerged for me as a solid platform for those with 1. quality content and 2. quality offer. Those who tried to do a mediocre offer or mediocre content to “just get by”, weren’t strong winners this BFCM. Competition is high, cream rises to the top. @RyBen3
Q4: As a consumer, what was your impression of the BF and CM sales offers this year?
Honestly, Black Friday messaging was so early and so frequent that I started to tune it out. Cyber Monday blew up my inbox. @robert_brady
I felt particularly inundated with sale offers, probably because the BF emails started in October? The offers were not spectacular. I get why they wouldn’t be, but it was noticeable. Oh, and all the sales are extended anyway, so…@NeptuneMoon
Knowing there’s often a lot of markup and “made-for-black-friday” products, I haven’t hunted for BF/CM deals in quite some time. It would be interesting to see with the shift of more brands reducing BF/CM promotion if it eventually dies back. @_GilHong
No sales really struck me as impressive. I saw a lot of “become a member and get x% off your purchase” kind of deals, which personally I’m not a huge fan of. @BrettBodofsky
They were pretty lackluster. All my feeds were full of BF ads, but nothing attention grabbing and nothing that made me want to buy. Deals weren’t impressive and every ad looked the same. @dylanppc
I didn’t see many deals that were like “wow! I better capitalize on this today!” There were also a significant amount of deals that stretched past BF/CM into today, minimizing the urgency to buy day of. @sonika_chandra
Saw a lot of really small discounts this year. Like 10% off being touted like it was some kind of amazing deal. Again, I get it, but maybe don’t lean into BF/CM if you don’t have a great offer? @NeptuneMoon
Similar to what everyone is already saying – came too early, none really impressed me and for me it really came down to – i will spend what I think a good price of something is based on my budget not by an “impressive” 40% or so off! no impulse buying for me this time. @TheMarketingAnu
Q5: If you are not running e-comm accounts, did you notice any changes in your accounts during this period (such as higher CPCs, impression changes, conversion rate changes, etc.)?
I do think there were less impressions than we would normally see for our non-retail clients. @TheMarketingAnu
I didn’t notice anything wildly out of what I’d expect for my accounts, which are all non-e-comm right now. @NeptuneMoon
Q6: For non e-comm accounts – did you pause your ads? If so, on all platforms or just some?
I did not pause anything this year. But have in years past, by client request. @NeptuneMoon
Just monitored and adjusted bids as needed. Last two weeks of annual enrollment. No turning things off! @Galliguez
Q7: Do you have anything planned for December to try to keep sales flowing? Have there been any disruptions that you’re dealing with?
Q8: Anything weird you ran into that you’d like to get an opinion on from the PPC community?
PPCChat Participants
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Dave Galliguez @Galliguez
- Dylan Online @dylanppc
- Gil Hong @_GilHong
- Anu Adegbola @TheMarketingAnu
- Brett Bodofsky @BrettBodofsky
- Jon Kagan @JonKagan
- Robert Brady @robert_brady
- Ryan Bennion @RyBen3
- Roshan @sonofgorkhali
- Sonika @sonika_chandra
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