Google Ads Black Friday Cyber Monday Strategies & Results

Glen: 00:00:00

We're called Colby Osama Glenn.

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Kusagl.

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Welcome to Kusagl, everyone.

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Welcome to the show.

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Welcome to the show.

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in our weekly show, we talk about, All

things TikTok and Snapchat marketing.

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Don't forget Facebook,

the key to everything.

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Today, let's talk about our

Black Friday Cyber Monday, What

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did we do on each account?

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Let's talk about our accounts.

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I'm going to pick them on the start.

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Colby, you're it.

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Let's I want to do some year over

year comparisons from google here.

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Start on the 20th.

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We'll go to 27 and we'll do previous

year I can talk about my little

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breakdown here that I've got.

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for Black Friday, I've been

using a cool little script.

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I'll talk about it in a second.

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what do we got from Warren's perspective?

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ROAS down a little bit.

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while that sounds like it might

be something to be concerned

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about, we can see that we've

increased the budget by 65%.

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And we actually increased budget, More

than Facebook had in this period and we're

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still able to come out on top For the

brand from a year over year perspective.

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So that was super cool to see One of

the things that we're touting here and

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we're really enjoying using right now.

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Of course, we're not using Pmax We

are using standard shopping the reason

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we like standard shopping is you

have much more room to actually Push

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budgets and not run into any sort of

weird ceilings that you can't see.

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you also just get a better

sense of cold traffic.

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So let's just go standard shopping setup.

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and then when we're looking at the

ROAS by time, we can see that, getting

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around 450 here and that is, oh, sorry,

we got 256 here and this is in app.

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So when we go on Northbeam, this number

is actually going to be higher because

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Standard shopping is so terrible

at being attributed through google.

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One of the things I want to talk about

here is the flow boost labelizer script

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that i'm using And i'm just going to

try to simplify it as much as possible

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So basically you install a script into

your google ads account and then it

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will categorize Your products into Four

categories might be four or five and

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there's under index over index near

index Index and basically all that's

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based off of the target row as you pick.

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It has a look back window And basically

it will look every 30 days minus the

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conversion leg, and then it'll start

to populate items I had near index,

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and over index, and I was able to

create a campaign based on basically

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the visibility and performance.

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My products

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And so the way i've set this up is knowing

that my under indexed products Those

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are the ones that i'm selling too good.

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I'm going to give them a higher zero

as so I started this out Basically

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looking at the different categories

I'm sure if you had a really wide

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account and lots of budget you could

make campaigns for all but I basically

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put All my better performers in one

campaign The no index, which we like to

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refer to as those that aren't getting

enough love, and then your under

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index, which are your under performers.

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Before I assigned these target ros, I

basically, just took a look at it and

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knew that my near index, over index

and index, these are my performers.

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So I started out and gave

them a really low target roas.

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I gave it 50%.

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And I just knew that way, all the

guardrails would be taken out, Google

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could just go all out, and from what I've

been seeing, it's not only spending all

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of its budget, but it's continuing to, get

a better ROAS than its target, and then

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when we look over Northeam, we're seeing

that it's also delivering there, and then

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I just followed that same idea, no index,

I picked somewhere in the in between,

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right now that's not what but I'll get

there in a second, And then for under

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index, I gave it what I call a safety.

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So I was at within the three or

400 row as, so then you have a nice

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little safety blanket where you can

be the most aggressive in your items

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that are going to perform and then

have that, level of safety for those

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products that might not sell as well.

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And so the next thing that we

actually been doing here, is we've

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been noticing something interesting

within Google and do this.

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You have to actually log

into, the Google mobile app.

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I'm going to the settings.

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try to adjust your target ROAS or

TROAS, it will give you a recommendation

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for what that TROAS should be.

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And we've been adjusting that, some

of us do it daily, some of us do it

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every three days, the more the better.

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I'd say during Black Friday, though, I was

a little more careful during this period.

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But, we've just been adjusting that,

and basically, it seems that Google

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can continually hit those TROASs.

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And we are also beginning to

get full spend from those days.

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I don't know if you want to call

it a hack or what you want to

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call it, but it's working for now.

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John's been posting in his socials

about how he's been using the Google

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app that you can download on iOS and

Android, then you log in the accounts

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and then, for argument's sake, let's

just pull up one of those campaigns

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and see where it's got bidding TROS.

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Just change bit and just

pick something else.

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I'm not anything really just go

instead of target row us now let's

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change it to maximize clicks.

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Now.

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Each day you go in there, You won't

see recommended target rollouts.

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You don't see that in the web.

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However, inside the iOS.

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And Android app, in each

day, it might change.

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as part of a scaling strategy that we've

been using over the last two months or so,

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on, and what John's been disclosing to us,

we go into the app every day, And we will

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look at that recommendation and we'll look

at the account and go, will we change it?

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Why don't we change it?

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Now, this isn't a, I haven't

been doing this religiously

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and changing it religiously.

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I've been looking and doing a few

modifications and looking at something

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going, if it's looking at a campaign

saying, oh, you need to change your

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ROAS to 300 to 450, I'll go, no.

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I don't want to swallow my campaign.

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So I might go 300 to 320.

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but sometimes I might, it all

depends on what I'm doing now.

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I kicked off in at the start of October.

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So we were prepping for Black

Friday, Cyber Monday, and we

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were prepping to go right.

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we need to scale, we need to spend and

get really aggressive moving into that

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Black Friday, Cyber Monday, period.

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But we have a certain, weekly spend

and we have a certain monthly spend.

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that, with a combination of a few

other, strategies and using this

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bidding, this T ROAS recommendation

in the campaigns, we slowly scaled

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up, down, up, down, up, down.

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So we're using the stair step

method of what I would do

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is you'll see a target roas.

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I'd go into the app, it'd say

Change your target ROAS to 200.

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So I might change it to 200.

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I'd go in one or two days later,

I'll say, change your ROAS to two 20.

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I changed it to 20.

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And then after two more days, it might

say, no, change your target ROAS back

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to 130 because performance was bad.

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So I'd drop it back to 130, but

then I'd increase the budget by 20%.

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And then what would happen most of the

time, is performance would take off,

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spend would take off, and then I'd repeat.

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it'd be like the stair step,

up, down, up, down, up, down.

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So every time I saw a recommendation to

reduce the ROAS, I increased the budget.

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And that is a strategy

that we've been using.

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there is a bit of, what's

the word I'm looking for?

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Discretion in what you use,

but the iOS app and the Android

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app will always show you a

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Yeah, let's talk about Black Friday,

to a completely different strategy.

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it's one of the strategies we've

been using leading up in the

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Black Friday side of Monday.

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we've been using it pretty aggressively

Glenn said, it does come down to

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discretion and if it even makes sense

to make the change and honestly,

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the time period you're in as well.

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for starters, if you're set

to 250 and it's increase it

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to 900 or 1000, don't do that.

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And then at the same time, if you're

set at 200 percent and you're going

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into a heavy sales period, like by

Friday, Cyber Monday, that's like

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our original conflict, you want to

spend more money at that time, right?

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You want to bring in more customers.

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So at that point, instead of increasing or

holding that TOS, you want to pull back,

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which is what I did for one of my clients,

like we were set at like a hundred

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percent, I pulled back to 50 because.

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We wanted to push those campaigns

very aggressively and we don't want

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any limitations on them So a lot of

it is changing it continuously and a

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lot of it is judgment calls as well.

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that's the caveat Don't blame us.

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Make sure you think seriously take

it through as well The strategy that

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I was dealing with this client moving

into the black friday cyber monday.

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So these are the seven days.

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we were doing snapshots using this same

strategy, we would also break out standard

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shopping and with Google ads, we were

at 20, 000 a week spend there, rev here

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about 63, 000, and this was their global.

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Now moving this same strategy, moving

up, down, up, down, up, down, were

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able to move it from 19, 000, rev, spend

63, 000 up to the last Black Friday, so

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this is the last week, up to 37, 152.

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Now that's obviously Black Friday, but

we've been able scale that up We've been

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able to, what should happen now as the

performance start dropping off, we will

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move back down to say maybe this level,

not this level, down to 19 or 10, 000.

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We should be able to maintain around 30

to 40, 000, 30 to, around 30, 000 a month.

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We might not see 100, 000.

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50, 000, 100, 000 performance, but

we've been able to push the performance

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up, train Google to get there.

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And now we're going to see a slight

drop off, but what we'll do moving into

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next year is we'll do the same process.

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We'll keep stair stepping and

moving up using the recommendations.

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We'll probably do a little bit more of an

in depth about that, in the coming weeks.

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we might deep dive into an account.

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do a screen share of the app and

show the recommendations, but that's

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just a strategy that we've been

working on over the last six weeks.

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that's just one of them

using the in app ROAS.

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We've got other strategies as

well, where we're using three

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tier, four tier, five tier builds.

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Colby's mentioned the FlowBoost Labelizer,

which we've actually fallen in love with.

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What we're hoping is we'll

get Flores, who's the inventor

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of it on a call with us.

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Once we get a bit more data, we're going

to drill Flores, and do a deep dive and

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get some recommendations from the creator

of the script itself, and we'll show him

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the performance that we've been getting.

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I keep my black Friday

promotions on Google.

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Pretty simple.

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Honestly, the only things I run

are merchant center promotions.

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I don't run any YouTube promotions,

I don't run any display, and I launch

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a brand campaign with the promotion

pinned to position 2, where position

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1 is essentially the brand name, some

form of brand message, and position 2

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is whatever the promo is, 30, 40, 50

percent off, and I actually had 2 major

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clients I worked with through this, I

pulled where I doubled my budgets on

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my brand campaigns because I was trying

to grab as much brand traffic as well

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And I saw people were bidding on me.

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So I did that so I spent a lot of

money on brand But that's fair because

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black friday sabra monday and the

way I did that was I increased spend

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and I Basically decreased the target.

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It was supposed to hit so if I had a

revised target of: 1200

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down to 500 So there's nothing holding it

back and then they did the same thing with

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my cold campaign where it was like 160,

170 CPA for this brand, So what I did

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to that campaign was I pulled the last

targets back from a hundred to literally

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15 because I wanted that new customer

introduction Into the brand while they

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might buy in a different scenario, right?

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So what's interesting about I got the

most amount of new customers from my

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top up funnel campaign Into this account

during that time period I didn't get

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the most amount of revenue But the most

amount of new sessions were generated from

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that campaign, now overall this account

did 188 better than last year This

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is a mix of Google, Facebook, YouTube,

Instagram, whatever you want to call it.

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Everything combines.

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but we did 188 percent uplift.

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We hit all our profitability

goals and stuff like that.

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So that's good.

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The other account, they did really

well too, but what's interesting

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here is that they only got a 3

percent boost in convert, revenue.

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But here's the interesting part

about this is that last year we were

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spending an insane amount of money on

Advertising, Facebook, Google, to the

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point where we were spending almost a

million dollars a month on Google ads.

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And this time we only spent around I think

it was like 250, 000 a month right now.

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It's because they were focused on

profitability and we just different

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changes instructors internally.

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So what you see here is we actually had

a 32 percent less online sessions, right?

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But we maintained the amount of orders.

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So Realistically the

profitability for these days.

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It's Pretty high because we didn't

spend as much as we were and we

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got all the traffic we wanted

and the same amount of revenue.

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although this looks

bad, it actually isn't.

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We held tight, we spent

less money, made more money.

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That's all I got.

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remind me of a point that I probably

should have made for my account too

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but I didn't show it in Shopify was

just with some of the methods that

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we're talking about I also had a

situation where facebook had spent

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significantly less And despite that

happening, we still saw five percent

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increase from a revenue perspective And

right now I want to give that credit

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to a mixture of standard shopping,

and of course, managing your T ROASes.

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the script, of course, I think

that's really been Maybe YouTube.

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A little bit of discovery.

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can't say I've been pressed with

discovery or demand gen as of

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late, but I'm hoping someone comes

up with a use case to release.

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yeah.

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I think moving forward in the next

couple of weeks and with more performance

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data that we'll have under our belt,

we should able come up with some pretty

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unique strategies for using the scripts,

but also the tiers with the standard

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shopping that we've been setting up.

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I'm doing a combination of P Max and send

shopping, and I'm trying to make P max be.

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the cold top of funnel type of

situation and let PMAX scoop up more non

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branded keywords and branded keywords.

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So we don't want PMAX chasing brand.

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If we're going to use PMAX, we want

PMAX to be more of a prospector.

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and it's got the, it's obviously

got the black box in there, but

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I don't think we've got enough.

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Data yet to make a definitive

decision and we are coming

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on the back of a sale period.

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But I think moving forward, I know I will

have some interesting case studies to talk

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about using a combination of performance

max and standard shopping together.

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I think overall, I know my

clients were pretty happy with

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the performance that we've had.

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I think I read that

globally sales were up 22%.

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Wow.

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maybe we'll get a fact

checker to see if that's real.

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So I have another client.

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It's more like an international

brand that I haven't shared.

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There's more like soap and

organic soap and stuff like that.

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So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

dead, Like people were saving money from

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that and immediately the day after, I

think it was Saturday, all of a sudden

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I'm spending money again, all of a sudden

like my stuff is converting again, so

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it's great now, but those four days were

painful for this guy, for this client.

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keeping an eye on things for the

holidays and what you're doing, I

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think for e comm, some companies

are still running promotions.

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You have rose your budgets like

big time for a few days and

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you, yeah, you should pull back.

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One of the things also be

careful with market conditions

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when you're making change.

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Like we've had.

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Don't get impulsive and go around.

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I need to do something.

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I need to do something.

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I need to do something kind of

situation just because it's a market

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condition, it'll recover on its own.

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So just leave it alone

in scenarios like that.

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Let things turn around.

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Like we did with Black Friday, we

knew it was a market condition where

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people were just holding money to

spend on Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

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And as soon as things were past

that point or beyond that point,

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it just recovered on its own.

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I don't have to go in there.

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Make negative keywords, launch

three new campaigns or whatnot.

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A lot of the time it's just being

patient and knowing when to make changes.

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That's half of your ads.

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The hard part should be done right now.

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is doing Legion B2B.

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Things should be slowing down.

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Those are just fast, right?

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Do some research for your clients, show

them some value, say, Hey, this is what we

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saw in this quarter, et cetera, et cetera.

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I find that's a good time to do

that because he might not be.

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Doing rigorous optimization.

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thank you for coming to our Ted talk.

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Give us a comment on whatever the

heck you want us to talk about.

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do us a comment.

300

: 00:16:01

Do a like, Hit that

subscribe button up here.

301

: 00:16:04

Smash that like button.

302

: 00:16:05

Thank you gentlemen.