Preparing Black Friday: Using Programmatic Ads to Retarget and Drive Additional Sales

With Black Friday being among the most sought-after seasons to shop online, it bears importance to brands who want to hit a home run during the holiday sales. With online spending still growing year-on-year, brands must adopt strategic targeting approaches that will engage potential buyers.

Let’s look at these programmatic strategies that will capture consumers' interest long before the Black Friday day it set out to maximize sales.

1. Preparing a Custom Audience Before Black Friday

The first step of dominating the sales on Black Friday starts with the audience stage. This is how to collect data and determine your custom audience:

• Make The First Move: Make use of social media to run social ads aimed at people who have never heard of the brand before. Make them want to explore product pages and have them sign up for alerts about Black Friday early sales.

• Collect First-Party Data: For instance, encourage the visitors on the website to subscribe for alerts or notifications for Black Friday deals. First-party data like email or telephone numbers can come in handy when running retargeting campaigns as customers who possess any of this data have shown some level of interest toward the brand.

2. Segmentation: Sending Personalized Messages for Black Friday Deals to the Appropriate Customers

Programmatic advertisement allows for advanced segmentation that helps customize the adverts based on the habits and preferences of shoppers. Here are some segmentation category examples that you can apply to your strategy:

• High-Interest Viewers: Reach out to customers who have re-visited the pages of a product more than once and offer them countdown adverts or early access launches to stimulate interest.

• Past Customers: Target segment with past purchasers who are more likely to execute repeat purchases and run ads with reminders on what they purchased previously or related products that they might want to buy this Black Friday.

• Occasional Shoppers: Some people only buy on Black Friday and during sales. Get back visitors who interacted with last year's ads and focused primarily on Black Friday ads, and show them similar ads now announcing the offer.

3. Dynamic Creative Personalized Ads

Use dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and real-time data to personalize every advertisement content automatically.

• Personalized Product Recommendations: Other customers may be persuaded to buy other products based on advertisements of other items they previously viewed on the site or advertisements of related products based on site activity.

• Countdown Ads: Thanks to DCO you can create a countdown clock ad. To build anticipation, these advertisements encourage consumers to register for exclusive access or encourage them to revisit the site on the day of the sale.

• Adaptive Messaging: Don’t forget about the advertising copy, as it changes depending on the state of the shopper. Whether he is a new person, a frequent visitor, or someone who has seen a Black Friday promotion, advertising messages can be customized. A new guest may see “sneak peek” promotional messages, while regular visitors may see an early bird promotion message instead.

4. Using Real-Time Bidding (RTB) to Stay Competitive on Black Friday

During the countdown to Black Friday, advertisers usually experience a rise in advertisement prices and aggressive competition for customers. However, with the use of RTB marketing on programmatic systems, advertisers can control their expenses hence overspending is prevented.

5. Optimizing Mobile Ad Experience

As Black Friday represents a rush for bargains, it is no surprise that most of the browsing and buying is done on mobile devices. Programmatic advertising can be expanded by the effective use of ad placements on mobile devices.

• Responsive Ad Formats: Most programmatic platforms are outfitted with a responsive design which is dependent on the various screen dimensions giving the user experience a comprehensive feel.

• Fast-Loading Content: Most high-intent shoppers convert better when the advertisements load faster, are adjustable and preferably shot into the screens of mobile devices.

• Mobile-Specific CTA: Mobile users should be encouraged to click on the mobile CTAs such as “Tap to Reveal Deal” or “Shop Instantly on Mobile.” Such CTAs could be quite effective where there is a definite action as well as improving the potential click rates and conversion figures.

6. Building Hype with Sequential Messaging

Sequential messaging techniques can prove to be on a higher side useful in anticipation of Black Friday where it would maintain the shoppers' attention and maintain their ‘bargaining hunger’ about the discounts that are going to come.

• Phase 1: Teaser Ads: At the start, focus on ads that hint at Black Friday promotions that will stand a specific product on sale but do not mention the level of the discount. Such Teasers create curiosity and help generate some traffic which can be used to target the users later.

• Phase 2: Sneak Peek Ads: As the date for Black Friday nears, advertisements should enable more details to be unveiled to the users, such as the time-sensitive general promotion advertisement, or discounts for popular items.

• Phase 3: Reminder Ads: The last phase that needs to be accomplished during the campaign is the delivery of reminder ads with clock counting down or set specific call to action urging customers to ring the alarm for the sale.

The Black Friday season is the time when brands should think about multi-channel advertising campaigns and step out of the box about traditional marketing models. Due to the progress made in technology and artificial intelligence, brands can leverage programmatic ads to create effective campaigns for targeting Black Friday.