You’ve got a few good digital advertising campaigns all set up to run through Black Friday, so you must be good to go, right? Not so fast! There’s a little more work left to do, considering the staggering number of consumers who have been shopping online since last holiday season. Cyber Monday advertising strategies should immediately follow Black Friday, as well as that ever-important (but often forgotten) Retargeting Tuesday.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of Retargeting Tuesday, no worries, we’ll bring you up to speed. This strategy is largely overlooked, yet vital to your digital advertising plan if you want to reap even more of the monetary benefits from the biggest eCommerce holidays of the year. Below, a few ways to keep those sales coming in even after the weekend is over.
If you missed it, learn about Black Friday advertising strategies in part one of our series: Advertising Strategies pt. 1: Black Friday.
Implement these post-Black Friday tips to make the most out of your Retargeting Tuesday and Cyber Monday advertising strategies.
Cyber Monday advertising: Create a full-funnel strategy
Build a full-funnel marketing strategy for Cyber Monday as early as September, before holiday shopping begins. Focus on bringing heightened brand awareness early on to your customers and create a robust audience of potential customers who have already been exposed to your brand before Cyber Monday. Additionally, test additional top-of-funnel targeting strategies such as site targeting, category and keyword targeting, and third-party data segment targeting to find in-market holiday shoppers.
As Cyber Monday approaches, ramp up your digital advertising strategies to reach highly interested audiences throughout the weekend. Be ready to increase bids 2-4x higher than current bids on reliable keywords and targeting tactics that have strong conversion rates. Keep an eye on your click-through rate (CTR) and turn off any lower-performing ads to keep your costs as low as possible leading up to Cyber Monday.
Cheatsheet: the industry average CTR is 0.07. Anything higher than this is a great number. If it’s below, try playing around with different creatives or messaging.
It’s obvious: Retargeting is king
Retargeting is a tool designed to help reach the 98% of consumers who don’t convert (buy, sign up, download, etc.) right away on Cyber Monday. By placing the Choozle Smart Container Tag on your website, you’re able to retarget consumers in your digital advertising who have reached certain pages on your website, AKA conversion events. Set up events in your campaigns that retarget those, for example, who have reached the shopping cart or “thank you for your purchase” page over the weekend to encourage further conversions and/or increased brand loyalty.
Some ideas for your Retargeting Tuesday offers: a limited-time complimentary workbook, gift card with purchase, free month of online service, shopping incentive in December for a November purchase, etc. Don’t forget to keep this trend going after Cyber Monday, and all the way through the end of the year – just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean everyone is done shopping!
Time matters
Of course, this applies to all digital advertising, but when the inventory is as sought-after as it is during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the days and times you’re putting ads out there are just as important as targeting tactics, bid pricing, and other strategies. As you can imagine, if your ad is served at 3:00 a.m. when virtually no one is shopping online, it’s a waste of budget. According to SaleCycle’s Ecommerce Stats Report, Monday and Thursday are the most active online shopping days of the week, and the most popular hours of the day to shop are 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Knowing this, it may be worth inputting custom scheduling into a couple of your ad sets to see if they perform better than others, then apply that knowledge towards next year!
