Introduction

To make the most of your Black Friday sales, here are some tactical best practices to make sure that your campaigns are running smoothly during Black Friday week.

• Ad and keyword creations
  
  Bulk uploading holiday ads and keywords in paused status at least a week before Black Friday will allow enough time for publisher editorial review. On average, object creations take 4 times longer than modified objects to get approved. Also, we recommend going live with specific campaigns or groups if possible. This method will keep your keywords live, but your campaigns and/or groups can remain paused until you're ready to go live.
   
• Keyword bid changes
  We recommend staggering your bid changes the week of Black Friday with the most important keywords pushed first. This will ensure that your top priority keywords go live first. For accounts with large keyword sets, we recommend building a dimension called Type to prioritize the keywords for this push. You can assign a 'priority number' for your keywords based upon the following criteria:
   
  • Priority “1”: Filter condition is >0 conversions.
  • Priority “2”: Filter condition is 0 conversions and >0 clicks.
  • Priority “3”: Filter condition is 0 clicks and >0 impressions.
  • Priority “4”: For new keywords without data. These can be filtered based on the creation date.
  • Priority “5”: All other keywords. Filter condition is impressions = 0
    
    You can then push keywords based on numeric value starting with the “1” keywords.

• Creative changes
  
  We recommend that you create new creatives prior to Black Friday, then activate new creatives and pause old creatives synchronously. It is not recommended you make massive creative edits in the days leading up to Black Friday. Modifying creatives creates new ads and you will want to leave enough time for publisher editorial review. The process of activating creatives will be similar to that of keywords. First activate:
   
  • Groups that have conversions. Filter condition is >0 conversions.
  • Groups that have click volume. Filter condition is 0 conversions and >0 clicks.
  • Groups that have impressions. Filter condition is 0 clicks and >0 impressions.
  • Remainder of groups

• Quality assurance of destination URLs
  
  Make sure that all Destination URLs have tracking IDs so revenue does not go unattributed. Marin allows you to create a report that alerts you when destination URLs are missing tracking IDs.
   
• Boost schedule
  
  Instead of changing keyword bids across the board, consider adding a 'Day of Week Boost' at the campaign level for Google or the group level for Microsoft. This can be set to your promotion period, then adjust back after your promotions end. Please revisit your past year's performance to determine the appropriate boost schedule.
   

And as always, don’t forget to utilize our Support Center and reach out to our support team with any questions.