Black Friday 2024: Amazon PPC Strategies and Tips

Every FBA seller understands the importance of a Black Friday advertising strategy that connects. However, just like the holiday season itself, a well-tuned approach to your Black Friday ad spend can be an integral part of the business you do year-round.

Our most successful clients employ a comprehensive approach to their Black Friday ad campaigns. From ideation to post-season follow-through, the most successful FBA sellers on Amazon always have an eye on the big picture, even when they are working out the fine details. Read on for our top-line tips to help you reap Black Friday rewards that will grow your business long after the holiday wrapping paper is in the recycling bin.

2024 Preparation for Black Friday on Amazon

It's never too early to start preparing for the holiday season, and many FBA sellers likely started refining their strategies for 2024 the day after the sales ended last year. The sooner you get started, the more you can refine and improve your plans.

Finding and Refining Keywords

There will always be some keywords that stay the same, no matter the time of year. However, FBA sellers need to think about what is different about both their customers and their customers' needs around the holidays. People are buying for others on Black Friday, so you aren't just trying to think of the keywords your ideal customer would use, but keywords a relative or friend of your ideal customer would use.

Dig into your existing sales and ad data from past Black Friday or Prime Day sales and look for keywords that performed well. Brainstorm alternative keywords that are likely to be used by someone who isn't familiar with your product category, but who is buying for someone who is. Consider seasonal terms that are relevant to your products, as well as aspects of your products that you want to highlight to gift shoppers.

Optimizing Campaign Structure

A well-organized ad strategy is much easier to manage and adapt. It will also give you more useful information to help you refine your approach next year.

Organize your campaigns by product type. Set them up so you can adjust bids as you gauge and evaluate performance. Create separate campaigns specifically for Black Friday promotions. Not only do separate ads make for better targeting, but Black Friday-specific ads make it easier to track and analyze how your relevant ad spend impacted sales.

Creating Ad Copy That Sells

Your Black Friday ad copy may look quite a bit different from what you use the rest of the year. When thinking of how you will catch the attention of shoppers, keep in mind who those shoppers are.

For instance, if you sell camping gear, your regular ads may use phrasing and highlight features to stand out to someone who loves the outdoors. Of course, you don't want to forget those shoppers around Black Friday. After all, someone who camps with their significant other may be shopping for a gift to make their adventures even better. However, you also need to consider the person whose idea of an outdoor adventure is a walk in the park, but who is shopping for someone who has hiked the Appalachian Trail.

This is also the time of year to appeal more to sentiments and emotions. For instance, a big selling point for a gift-giver is how happy your product will make the gift recipient. Speaking of selling with feeling, don't forget the impact of ads that highlight limited opportunities. Some of the best-performing strategies incorporate limited-time deals or other special offers that give shoppers a sense that they were lucky to find the offer when they did.

Amazon Black Friday Ad Strategies That Click

A well-planned and dynamic Amazon Black Friday ad strategy will help your ads reach the right buyers, ensuring you get the best results for your ad spend in the competitive holiday shopping landscape.

Making Sense of Bids and Budgets

Ad spend always rises around Black Friday and higher bids are inevitable. You can help your budget and your impact by starting early with your increased ad spend. We recommend starting as early as 30 days out with higher bids to start getting more traffic to your product pages. This lets you ease back a bit with your spending once the rush starts, and you can then almost coast to the finish line.

Proactively raising your bids and budgets in the weeks leading up to Black Friday will also help you secure prominent ad placements. And don't be afraid to bid aggressively on high-value keywords. Just make sure they are your high-value keywords. Trust your research and planning. They will help you resist the temptation to splurge on trending keywords that aren't really right for your product.

Optimizing Ad Spend with Dynamic Bidding 

Amazon's Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and Target ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale) features allow you to automate bid adjustments based on your desired performance goals. Simply having one less thing that requires you to get in there and adjust it manually can make a huge difference during the hectic Black Friday shopping period.

If you are unfamiliar with these algorithm-based tools, go ahead and allocate some of your budget to run a test campaign now. The better you understand how dynamic bidding works, the more useful it will be for you when you are dealing with the Black Friday rush.

After Action: Black Friday Analysis and Improvements

Black Friday provides invaluable insights to savvy FBA sellers, but making the best use of that data isn't just in how you analyze it. Set yourself up for success by approaching your Black Friday 2024 ad campaigns with the mindset that every iteration is research for the next iteration.

Build campaigns with clear labeling and organization to make post-mortem dissection easier. Don't just track overall sales. Prepare to collect data on click-through rates, conversion rates, and ad spend efficiency as well. More granular data will help you determine which keywords, ad copy variations, and bidding strategies performed well.

Most importantly, don't be tempted to file all that data away in a folder on your desktop and promise yourself you'll look at it in January. As soon as the sales are over, start looking over the data you've gathered. That also means planning to plan. Don't just expect that you'll find time to do your analysis once the rush has died down. Schedule a day or two after the Black Friday sales are done and dedicate that time to a thorough after-action review.

Beyond Black Friday: Turning Data into Action

Black Friday 2024 can be more than just a sales boost. It can set the tone for your FBA business well into the new year. However, getting the most out of Black Friday requires the right strategies, tools, and planning.

At Mayan, we combine cutting-edge technology with hands-on expertise from former Amazon sellers to deliver PPC campaigns that truly click. From keyword optimization to dynamic bidding strategies, our comprehensive solutions empower you to maximize your ad spend and achieve exceptional results, not just on Black Friday, but year-round.