5 ms·

A data-driven Black Friday/Cyber Monday Facebook ads strategy

62 points by sharemywin 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stiglitz 8y ago
My friends often complain about how early the holiday season starts. The advice in this article sort of explains that phenomenon: competition drives up advertising prices near the holiday, which makes earlier days more valuable for advertisers. Edit- plenty of cynical fodder there to equate “holiday season” with “days with holiday-themed advertising”
- THCTC 8y ago
  Bingo.
trentnix 8y ago
These guys may be able to provide a plan to get you more clicks and purchases, but they definitely aren’t the ones to tell you how the business of selling stuff works. For example (from the article): We have that there to remind ourselves that everything in ecommerce (in all business, really) comes down to only three factors: - How many visitors you get - How many of them purchase (conversion rate), and - How much money they spend when they do (average order value) Multiply the three together and, voila, you’ve got a formula for how much money you’re making. That’s it. That’s the whole game. No. That's the formula for revenue. Not for income. And to show you how shallow their thinking is, later in the article: At least 20% off (anything less than this tends to be ineffective unless your discount is at least $100 in raw dollar amount). Don’t bother with coupon codes. Just mark down your site (or a particular collection, if that’s your style). This makes it easier for your customers, especially on mobile. If you don’t discount much, you can keep that sale discount down at 20%. If you give people 20% often, you probably need to go higher to get people to take advantage of the offer. Indeed, giving away your profits does tend to motivate a customer. Unless, of course, your competitor is paying people to buy stuff. So give these guys consulting money, give Google and Facebook ad money, and give your customers your profits. Everyone gets to declare a big victory, except the person making the sale.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  They're also (anecdotally) wrong about coupon codes. As a consumer, I am most easily "converted" by a tasteful, non-spammy email campaign (maybe 1 or 2 emails a week) that offers short-term, deep discounts on products that I already want to buy. And I don't mean stuff like a LABORDAY25 discount. I mean "You're a valued customer! Enjoy 30% off for the next week, use code NERDPONX30 to save!" I know the economics of every industry is different, but if you're just interested in moving a lot of product (whether it's digital or physical), it seems like the good old "randomly mail people sweet coupons" works great. Lyft, for example, does a great job of this. Lucky Jeans and West Elm have great sales but they send me too many damn emails, so I never bother.
  - THCTC 8y ago
    We are speaking about how to manage a BFCM sale and the data definitely says that coupon codes are a significantly worse alternative to a site-wide markdown. It is all about friction reduction. Asking users to type in a coupon code adds a step that doesn't need to be there. This doesn't mean that coupon codes are never useful, but in this particular case we would recommend making the experience as seamless as possible.
- soared 8y ago
  Your critique makes sense knowing you're on HN, but this site is built for marketers and not startups/one-man shops, etc. Most readers go in knowing they want to drive sales, and that profit isn't something they're directly concerned with. (I work in marketing, we drive sales, and someone else tells me what product to sell more of because it drives more /profit/. I can never see profit numbers, only revenue). This is a marketing company, writing a post about marketing. All marketing does is drive revenue. Profit is not a function of marketing, but of another group (operations?). They're telling you how to drive sales, not profit, and don't claim otherwise. There are similar articles that talk about increasing profit margin that never discuses marketing.. would you fault those for claiming to increase profit but not talk about revenue?
  - THCTC 8y ago
kartikkumar 8y ago
What I don't get with any of this stuff is that it actually works. Maybe I'm weird, but every time I see that ads actually work and people actually buy stuff as a result, it's a shock to the system. Perhaps that's from enjoying a predominantly ad-free existence online, but I can't for the life of me think of a case where I've actually clicked on an ad, let alone completed a purchase. I'm much more used to clicking on links that are organically ranked high in DDG or Google, when I am specifically looking to buy something. I have to admit, I barely make a handful of purchases per year, so perhaps I'm just totally disconnected from this whole topic.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I'm the same. I block ads aggressively, and never intentionally click ads. I also don't really engage in the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday circus in any other way.
  - AFCTC 8y ago
    It's always weird when the data contradicts our experiences (I wrote that article, and I myself bought my first ever products from Facebook ads just a few weeks ago), but I suppose that's precisely the reason we check the data.
- walrus01 8y ago
  People with HN accounts are in like the 99th percentile of internet users. There are a lot of non technically oriented "ordinary users" out there who do blithely click on things and buy.

62 points by sharemywin 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

My friends often complain about how early the holiday season starts. The advice in this article sort of explains that phenomenon: competition drives up advertising prices near the holiday, which makes earlier days more valuable for advertisers. Edit- plenty of cynical fodder there to equate “holiday season” with “days with holiday-themed advertising”

THCTC 8y ago
Bingo.

trentnix 8y ago

These guys may be able to provide a plan to get you more clicks and purchases, but they definitely aren’t the ones to tell you how the business of selling stuff works. For example (from the article): We have that there to remind ourselves that everything in ecommerce (in all business, really) comes down to only three factors: - How many visitors you get - How many of them purchase (conversion rate), and - How much money they spend when they do (average order value) Multiply the three together and, voila, you’ve got a formula for how much money you’re making. That’s it. That’s the whole game. No. That's the formula for revenue. Not for income. And to show you how shallow their thinking is, later in the article: At least 20% off (anything less than this tends to be ineffective unless your discount is at least $100 in raw dollar amount). Don’t bother with coupon codes. Just mark down your site (or a particular collection, if that’s your style). This makes it easier for your customers, especially on mobile. If you don’t discount much, you can keep that sale discount down at 20%. If you give people 20% often, you probably need to go higher to get people to take advantage of the offer. Indeed, giving away your profits does tend to motivate a customer. Unless, of course, your competitor is paying people to buy stuff. So give these guys consulting money, give Google and Facebook ad money, and give your customers your profits. Everyone gets to declare a big victory, except the person making the sale.

nerdponx 8y ago
They're also (anecdotally) wrong about coupon codes. As a consumer, I am most easily "converted" by a tasteful, non-spammy email campaign (maybe 1 or 2 emails a week) that offers short-term, deep discounts on products that I already want to buy. And I don't mean stuff like a LABORDAY25 discount. I mean "You're a valued customer! Enjoy 30% off for the next week, use code NERDPONX30 to save!" I know the economics of every industry is different, but if you're just interested in moving a lot of product (whether it's digital or physical), it seems like the good old "randomly mail people sweet coupons" works great. Lyft, for example, does a great job of this. Lucky Jeans and West Elm have great sales but they send me too many damn emails, so I never bother.
- THCTC 8y ago
  We are speaking about how to manage a BFCM sale and the data definitely says that coupon codes are a significantly worse alternative to a site-wide markdown. It is all about friction reduction. Asking users to type in a coupon code adds a step that doesn't need to be there. This doesn't mean that coupon codes are never useful, but in this particular case we would recommend making the experience as seamless as possible.
soared 8y ago
Your critique makes sense knowing you're on HN, but this site is built for marketers and not startups/one-man shops, etc. Most readers go in knowing they want to drive sales, and that profit isn't something they're directly concerned with. (I work in marketing, we drive sales, and someone else tells me what product to sell more of because it drives more /profit/. I can never see profit numbers, only revenue). This is a marketing company, writing a post about marketing. All marketing does is drive revenue. Profit is not a function of marketing, but of another group (operations?). They're telling you how to drive sales, not profit, and don't claim otherwise. There are similar articles that talk about increasing profit margin that never discuses marketing.. would you fault those for claiming to increase profit but not talk about revenue?
- THCTC 8y ago

kartikkumar 8y ago

What I don't get with any of this stuff is that it actually works. Maybe I'm weird, but every time I see that ads actually work and people actually buy stuff as a result, it's a shock to the system. Perhaps that's from enjoying a predominantly ad-free existence online, but I can't for the life of me think of a case where I've actually clicked on an ad, let alone completed a purchase. I'm much more used to clicking on links that are organically ranked high in DDG or Google, when I am specifically looking to buy something. I have to admit, I barely make a handful of purchases per year, so perhaps I'm just totally disconnected from this whole topic.

ams6110 8y ago
I'm the same. I block ads aggressively, and never intentionally click ads. I also don't really engage in the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday circus in any other way.
- AFCTC 8y ago
  It's always weird when the data contradicts our experiences (I wrote that article, and I myself bought my first ever products from Facebook ads just a few weeks ago), but I suppose that's precisely the reason we check the data.
walrus01 8y ago
People with HN accounts are in like the 99th percentile of internet users. There are a lot of non technically oriented "ordinary users" out there who do blithely click on things and buy.