Peak Planning For Black Friday

We are often asked how we deal with Black Friday and how the massive spike in demand impacts the bidding algorithms. Prior to joining us, some of our client’s have found this a difficult period to navigate. Often they have found their accounts underbidding prior to peak season and then the Google Automations don’t catch up.

Advance Strategy #

The key to successful Google Ads planning for both Black Friday and Christmas is to anticipate the demand and start increasing the budget/bid based on previous years. Our team of PPC experts start planning for peak season as far in advance as July. We roll out peak season planning sessions to all our clients at the end of September and through October.

From a technical point of view, we rely less, where warranted, on automations by creating a strategy ahead of peak with spend forecasts. Having a minimum ROAS target and increasing spend whilst maintaining an above target ROAS is a key strategy for building up to peak season . This depends on account size, business objectives and past performance.

Seasonality Adjustment #

Our team also uses the ‘seasonality adjustment’ feature in Google ads. This allows us to instruct Google’s algorithms to expect a conversion rate increase across a given period of time. This can be applied to specific campaigns, or account wide and helps to combat the algorithms normally slow adjustment timescales. Adjustments of this type are ideal for short events of 1–7 days.

If you would like further assistance with peak season planning, please contact your Client Manager who will be happy to help.