Facebook Advertising Must-Tries for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Despite being historically a brick-and-mortar holiday, Black Friday is becoming more of an online shopping event to complement Cyber Monday. In 2017, retailers brought in $7.9 billion during Black Friday and another $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday. Approximately $5.03 billion from the Black Friday sales came from online platforms, with $2 billion coming from mobile phones alone.

Analyzing the trend of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending spree, two things are apparent: First, these days are still vital to a retailer’s bottom line. Second, advertisers must have strong, digital components for both retail holidays.

Many advertisers will be turning to Facebook for that digital component, which currently hosts over 200 million Americans. This means that competition will surely be high. In order to stand out, here are three things that you should be testing this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

1) Collection Ads

Collection Ads start like standard Mobile Newsfeed ads, but, when clicked, open a customizable landing page inside the Facebook environment. This landing page is less restricted by image and copy specifications, making it an ideal place to showcase your products.

In terms of sophistication of creative, these tend to be more involved than your regular Carousel Ads. However, the extra work needed to put these together can pay off in response.

2) Dynamic Product Ads [DPA Ads]

Dynamic Product Ads are a great marketing tool to use any time of the year, but can play an important role during the hectic days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Dynamic Product Ads are linked to your e-commerce platform, changing their creative in real-time. To start, retailers have to create a “Catalogue” in Facebook, which links your e-commerce platform to Facebook’s Business Manager. Once linked, you can use the categories defined by your e-comm platform to select the products you would like to ultimately showcase in an ad.

When the ad is served, Facebook references what they know about each user in your targeted audience to tailor the ad to that individual’s own interests and buying behavior. In addition, Facebook can update ads to remove items that are out of stock, making sure you’re never disappointing your customers.

To learn more about DPA ads, visit Facebook’s Blueprint platform: https://www.facebookblueprint.com/student/activity/176925?fbclid=IwAR0BJao03L_i-C0Dj0nY8r29OuzFZ4zcCfz1POGt0oKrtVXLM13k6wgg-pM

3) Broad Audience Targeting

Imagine having the ability to reach your competitor’s customers with only the products that they are interested in. This is possible with Broad Audience Targeting.

Advertisers start with a Dynamic Product Ad that is linked with your e-commerce platform. However, instead of setting a strict audience of individuals to show the ad to, you set loose parameters and let Facebook be the ultimate decision-maker as to who sees the ad.

Behind the scenes, Facebook once again references what they know about each user in order to determine individuals who have not been to your website, but would be the most interested in the products featured in your ad. For example, if you are a travel company who sells tropical vacations, Broad Audience Targeting can be used to pinpoint individuals who have been on your competitor’s websites searching for tropical vacations in the last 30 days. Best of all, you can suppress your recent customers, so this can be a full-fledge acquisition effort.

Learn more about Broad Audience Targeting on Facebooks website.

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