Back in the day Black Friday was the day to go shopping. What could be more enticing than long lines out the door, grimacing security guards at the entrance and angry people ripping items from each other? (I grew up in Boston….people are always angry there. It has something to do with a mix of the cold, the sugar in Dunkin Donuts coffee and the Red Sox).
But despite all those joys that Black Friday entails, for some reason people would rather relax comfortably at home and shop online. This at-home, online shopping experience is called Cyber Monday. This year, it takes place on November 30th and it is big.
Big to the tune of $40 billion.
This very well could be the biggest revenue day of the fiscal year for your company and all your competitors know it as well. The competition on Cyber Monday is fierce for each and every online dollar, but it is worth it to reach these motivated online shoppers. In fact studies show that shoppers are so motivated on Cyber Monday that it is statistically the day with highest conversion rate of the year.
And for all of the above reasons you need to have your Cyber Monday ad campaigns tighter than Lil Wayne’s pants.
Here is how to do that:
1. Have a Deal and Let The World Know
In addition to removing all of the hassles of black Friday the number one reason people shop on Cyber Monday is…deals!
If you want to compete you need to have ‘em…… and not just good deals, but great deals worthy of Cyber Monday. Create deals that drive users to your online store. Deals where a user simply has to click on your ad. Deals that leave your competitors in the dust.
Even if these deals are loss leaders, you can recoup the investment via cross-selling, up-selling or through customer lifetime value.
Once you create the deal make sure that they are the most prominent selling proposition that you promote in your ad. I highly recommend putting the deal you offer in strategic places such as the headline of your ad as well as the description line 1.
As an example, you can see below that Saks 5th Avenue did a good job of making their Cyber Monday deal known by making the deal the main selling proposition and placing it in strategic places:
However, you can’t stop with just the ads. When users get to your landing page, make it exceedingly obvious that they are in the right place and that you are indeed offering a great deal on Cyber Monday.
You can see Macy’s does a good job with this below. They put the Cyber Monday copy in the most prominent place (the top of the page) and use contrasting colors to draw the user’s eye to the deal.
2. Increase Your Spend
Since the competition is going to be so intense on Cyber Monday, you need to change your strategy when it comes to spend. This is done in two ways:
A. Increase the Daily Budget
Traffic spikes dramatically on Cyber Monday. Studies show that across industries website visits increase by 23% on that day. If you keep your PPC budget the same as usual, you restrict the number of clicks that you receive. This is an especially big problem on Cyber Monday, because there is such an increase in clicks and those clicks are so much more likely to convert.
To remedy this, increase your daily PPC budget on Cyber Monday. Plan ahead as best you can – if you have the data from previous years then make an educated guess based on those numbers. If not you may have to just increase the daily budget to a level that you estimate can retain a positive return on ad spend.
B. Increase Your Maximum Cost per Click
Again, since there is bound to be so much more competition, the cost per click is higher on Cyber Monday and it continues to rise.
This is a simple matter of supply and demand – there is a massive increase in search volume but the same number of slots for an ad to appear on the search engine results page.
With this intense competition for the influx of motivated users, your competitors will raise their bids. If you do not raise yours you may not show in the ad auction and will lose out on those valuable Cyber Monday clicks and conversions. Plan your cost per click increase out ahead of time to see how much you can realistically pay for a click and maintain a positive return.
3. Perform a Test Run
When you set up for Cyber Monday you are doing something out of the ordinary and that means that there a million new things that could go wrong. With the stakes so high why would you leave anything to chance?
I have observed some Cyber Monday disasters in the past that could have easily been avoided had the online stores done some test runs. You need to follow the user path from the ad to the landing page to the purchase.
Some test runs you may want to try:
- If you are offering discount codes, enter in a couple of them and make sure that the system accepts them.
- Test to make sure your server can handle a massive traffic increase.
- Make sure all of the new graphics that you create work on both mobile and desktop.
How have you optimized for Cyber Monday?
Photo Credits
Deals from PhotoBucket
Saks ad from BrandVerity
Macy’s Page from ConversionVoodoo
Scrooge McDuck from chthomoson.co.uk
Crash Test from Clark Bunch
Lil Wayne from Style Bistro
About the Author:
Adam Lundquist (@adamlundquist) is the CEO of Nerds Do It Better, an Internet advertising agency for businesses. He has been featured in The Harvard Gazette, Search Engine Journal, PPC Hero, KISSmetrics, Certified Knowledge, Mtv, Vh1, Sports Illustrated, and Moz.
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