Benefits of a Pre-Black Friday Sale

Here at Zelst, we worked with our B2C Sporting Supplements e-Commerce client to run a Pre-Black Friday Sale as opposed to a Black Friday Flash Sale.

As displayed in the graph below, the volume of clicks this client received on their Pre-Black Friday sale was greater than on the traditional Black Friday Weekend. This worked to their advantage as they were able to achieve a CTR of over 9.86% on their search campaign in one day alone, despite it being the lowest discount on their tiered multi-day sale.

So, should you launch a Pre-Black Friday Sale next year? In this post, we share our top five benefits of creating a Pre-Black Friday Sale to achieve success with your paid media campaign.

The first benefit of having a Pre-Black Friday sale rather than a Black Friday sale is the reduced competition at your keyword auction. With fewer people running their campaigns during this time, there is a higher chance of visibility with your target audience as you do not have to ‘outbid’ your competitors.

Additionally, when there is less competition / lower auctioning costs, your cost-per-click (CPC) will be dramatically reduced. With a minimised CPC cost, you can re-allocate a higher budget to increase your chances of clicks to those Pre-Black Friday campaigns, or target additional keywords through another campaign, as opposed to spending more in a busier time to advertise, such as a long-awaited Black Friday period when CPC is at its highest.

As we’ve just discussed, Pre-Black Friday advertising is a less crowded time on many platforms, including Google Search, Pinterest, TikTok and Meta. Therefore, if you are time-savvy, you will be able to increase the likelihood of your ad being shown before your competitors have even written theirs. Despite it not yet being Black Friday, consumers are still on the hunt for those early deals and don’t want to miss out, creating a great opportunity to advertise.

This graph demonstrates the volume of search for Black Friday deals from as early as the 28th of October, up until the 23rd of November. As the number of searches gradually build up towards Black Friday, we can see that there are still shoppers looking for those early deals, creating a great opportunity to advertise with less competition; you are still going to appear to customers searching for early Black Friday deals, but in a less crowded market against your competitors.

This makes it easier to achieve greater results as your campaigns are more likely to be seen by your target audience, and an audience you may not have considered before. No matter what ad style you have chosen, whether it’s a responsive search, a visual creative on social media, or even a performance max, with fewer competitor ads, you will benefit from your ad being shown more frequently and a higher position in search which is likely to improve interaction and engagement rates. This will enable you to capture your audience, further your message and, hopefully, make a great number of Pre-Black Friday conversions.

A further benefit of running your campaigns during the Pre-Black Friday period is that you do not have to suffer competitive prices across your vertical market. Focusing on your own objectives rather than being led by your competitors’ reduced prices or bundle deals allows you to promote your campaign with your own price/sale strategy.

Advertising in a less competitive market not only allows your products to be seen more easily, but it also highlights your discounts on your shopping feed. This can result in your products receiving more clicks and conversions as they are more visible at a lower price to shoppers. Your visible discount can then work time-and-a-half without you having to, as if your products are being used in a generalised Pmax or campaign, it will be visible to your target audience in more campaigns. You can learn more about profitable Black Friday sales here.

For any business, planning a sale around the Black Friday period can be difficult. The benefit of choosing a Pre-Black Friday Sale rather than a one-day sale or Cyber Weekend Sale is that there is always room for improvement. In some cases, despite your best efforts, you might not hit your shareholders’ or own targets, or receive as high of a conversion rate as hoped. With a Pre-Black Friday sale, this can act as your trial sale, with the option of a second sale or to extend your campaign into a Black Friday Sale. By having a pre-established sale, you can adjust your strategy based on previous findings. Or, from a consumer perspective, you can give a returning customer the opportunity to return to the sale for a deal they missed, helping you achieve your goals.

What’s more, if you are using automation to achieve your KPIs, an extended Pre-Black Friday Sale gives your automated paid campaigns time to learn and adjust their bidding strategy to your target audience. The typical learning period for automated campaigns takes up to two weeks to learn, which allows for fluctuation and changes to the behaviour of your audience. Therefore, extending its learning period will help your campaign reach its full potential. This enables your ads to adjust with your platforms, appear to potential customers and re-join previous consumers in the buyer journey.

This means that, if you did not achieve all your goals during your Pre-Black Friday Sale, it is possible that your customer may re-start their journey of purchasing if you want to continue into a Black Friday sale.

With a Pre-Black Friday Sale, you can enter the consumer behaviour journey at any stage. The increased visibility of your campaigns gives you an opportunity (which is often under-utilised) to convert loyal customers before their disposable income is hit by other Black Friday sales.

Advertising during this time can also help you to build brand awareness with new customers who may be initially drawn to your products due to the reduced price. This opens up your re-targetting audience for future campaigns and can lead them to join your re-targetting strategy.

It also provides a re-targetting opportunity for lost consumers. By launching a Pre-Black Friday Sale, you can gain the attention of past, disengaged customers who are already aware of your brand before the Black Friday fatigue sinks in.