Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are often the biggest revenue-producing periods for hotels. With increasing competition and more companies fighting for your guests’ wallets in 2024, planning your Black Friday strategy early is key to having a successful weekend (or week) once November rolls around.
Here, our marketing and search teams will share some of the best tips and tricks for making the most of Black Friday.
- Kick off Black Friday early this year
Every year, Black Friday seems to come earlier and earlier. What was once a 4 day rush from Friday to Monday has become a multi-week long sale period spanning from early to late November.
There’s more to this than just beating your competitors to the punch this year though: in our increasingly algorithm-driven marketing environment, your ads need more than just 4 days to optimize and deliver the best results. Getting data early on what ads are performing the best, allowing algorithms to optimize who is seeing your ads, and making key adjustments are all possible only when your sale period is longer than 4 days.
The short:
- Extend your Cyber Sale to at least 7 days, ending on Cyber Monday.
- Extending your sale past Cyber Monday usually doesn’t drive additional conversions.
- Although we recommend a minimum of 7 days, some of our most successful campaigns have been for Cyber sales longer than 14 days.
- Avoid high CPMs by leveraging first-party data and cyber sale teasers
With Black Friday advertising spend increasing 55% from 2022 to 2023, the competition for ad space on our platforms is increasing every year. In 2023, we saw CPMs increase for some hotel properties by 5 times their average non-sale period. These high CPMs make it harder to reach potential guests at a time they’re already being bombarded with more ads than usual.
These CPMs are especially high just before and on Cyber Weekend. By running Cyber Sale teasers and email collection campaigns in early November before CPMs rise, you can engage new customers interested in your sale and collect their emails to re-engage them during your sale period, avoiding spending most of your budget at the most expensive time to advertise.
The short:
- Find ways to engage your customers outside of paid media, like email.
- Leverage low CPMs before Cyber Weekend to build anticipation and collect new email signups for Early Access to your cyber sale.
- Expect CPMs to rise during Cyber Weekend: plan for fewer impressions with the same spend and consider increasing spend accordingly.
- Offer a percent discount and avoid narrow hotel stay dates
As we’ve covered, your prospective guests are seeing new offers from their favorite brands for almost all of November. Contrived offers with different savings for different stay durations, narrow stay dates, and many exclusions confuse customers and make them skip to the next company. Across our sales, we consistently see that campaigns with the clearest offer and fewest exclusions far outperform other offers.
The short:
- Keep it simple. A 20% off offer is easier for your customers to understand than a Third Night Free offer, even if savings are better with the latter.
- Multiple stay date exclusions just confuse customers, especially if they aren’t outlined clearly. If a customer can’t find your offered rate easily for the stay dates they prefer, they’re likely to just leave your website – not keep searching.
- Use your platform’s features
If your Cyber Sale strategy is to just launch a couple ads on one platform, you’re missing out on a variety of features available on both Search and social. On social, test out adding reminders to your posts for your sale to deliver a notification to your guests when your sale goes live. Although countdowns aren’t available natively on Meta’s ad platforms, consider scheduling ads to update for the last few days of your sale emphasizing that your offer is about to end.
On search, consider doing a full ad takeover instead of just launching sitelink extensions. In addition to ad takeovers, add countdowns to your search ads within copy and headlines to drive a sense of urgency, especially as your sale comes to a close. Using images to mirror your social and display campaigns can also drive visual interest while posts on Yext, Google My Business, and Bing Places can help the people who care the most about your hotel find your sale easily.
Consider setting up a Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar event that users can add to their calendar from your email sends. This is a great way to get out of the inbox and reach your customers in a unique way once your sale begins. Here’s a guide on how to do that in Google Calendar.
The short:
- Use new features your competitors aren’t using to bring attention to your sale.
- Countdowns, reminders, and events are all great ways to create a sense of urgency while reminders and events can be a great way to get into your guests’ notifications when your sale begins.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment!
It may not seem like it now, but the end of year cyber sales are just around the corner. Now’s the time to start making a plan for your Cyber Sale. Reach out to GCommerce to help reach more guests and supercharge your marketing this Black Friday.
