Black Friday countdown #9: Target your audience early through PPC

We all know how hectic it can be for retailers during the folly of Black Friday, so wouldn’t it be great to get a head start on the competition by raising your visibility early? You need to draw attention to your brand so that consumers are aware of, and can properly consider, your products and services.

An objective to drive newsletter sign-ups or register with your site before Black Friday is valuable.  This strategy is highly effective through PPC.

AdWords display

Through the Google Display Network, you could set up image and text ads that show on websites that are relevant to your potential customers. These promote your brand and can include a call-to-action of signing up for alerts before the Black Friday sale kicks off.

Through Display you can target people in different ways:

• Through ‘placements’ i.e. showing your ads on specific websites and adjusting bids accordingly. So, if you own a cricket store you may want to show your ads on selected sites that are related to cricket and sports gear. Through placement targeting you can do this and adjust your bids for the most valuable sites to you.
• Interest targeting – another useful feature on the Display Network. Here you can target people if they have shown an interest in your particular product. If we take the cricket example again, we can target people who are seen as “cricket enthusiasts” and show your Display ads to them.
• By keywords through the Display Network. A good example here would be to target keywords like “cricket bats”, “cricket gear” etc. and Google will show display ads on contextually relevant sites related to your keywords.
• By topic; showing people ads which are specific to certain topics relevant to your business. For example, we can target people who are interested in cricket by advertising on cricket websites.
• You can also target by demographics, i.e. who you know your product is specific to. So for cricket bats, if you know your audience is predominantly males between 18-45 you can target this audience on the Display Network.
• Finally, through the Display Network you can use remarketing to show ads to past visitors of your website. This reminds previous visitors of your brand and offers available during Black Friday. You can also target people who have similar interests to this audience. Furthermore, you can set up audiences for particular types of products, such as those who have previously viewed Adidas Cricket bats and another audience for Kookaburra Cricket bats, while showing unique ads to each type.

Facebook & Twitter PPC

This is a useful way to generate interest early for Black Friday and to get people to sign up for alerts.

They work similarly to AdWords display – you mainly target by interests/followers. Here you could target people interested in Black Friday on Facebook, and undertake keyword or hashtag targeting of Black Friday on Twitter. You could boost this further by targeting people interested in Black Friday and also cricket, making it even more specific to your key audience.

Another really useful thing on social PPC is you can target by email lists, so if your company has an extensive email database, we can use this to show ads to these people.

You can also remarket to people through both Facebook and Twitter PPC. Again, a subtle reminder to people of your upcoming Black Friday sale.

Overall verdict

Both Display and social PPC are really useful ways to generate interest in your products with early awareness for the Black Friday sales. They will be very useful as a visual way to generate early alert sign-ups, so you can easily sell to these people when the sale goes live.

Check out these other tips in the series

Black Friday countdown #8: Get promoting on social

Black Friday Countdown #7: Google’s new Customer Match feature

Black Friday Countdown #6: Make your ads stand out

Black Friday Countdown #5: How to optimise your shopping campaigns