Your Essential BFCM Google Ads Checklist

August 13, 2023

With more than 63% of users having clicked on a Google Ads advertisement at least once, and ad click-through rates (CTR) often doubling during the holiday season, it’s clear that ads are never more critical than in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). Effective planning and execution of your Google Ads strategy during this period can make a significant impact on your sales. This checklist covers everything you need to know to optimize your Google Ads before the holiday season or any major campaign.

1. Advance Preparation for Ad Approval

  • Best Practice: Create ad groups, extensions, or ads at least 72 hours in advance if your promotion starts the week or day of BFCM. Google’s automated review process is often overloaded during this period, leading to delays in ad approvals. Ensuring that your ads are ready and approved before the rush can prevent last-minute issues.
  • More Insight: According to WordStream, the average CTR for search ads during the holiday season can exceed 6% in some industries, making timely ad approval even more critical. 

2. Targeted Remarketing Audiences

  • Best Practice: If you have a sales or gifting page on your website, create a new remarketing audience targeting users who have visited these pages within the last 7-90 days. This ensures that you’re reaching an audience that has already shown interest in your products, making them more likely to convert during the BFCM period.
  • More Insight: Remarketing ads can increase conversion rates by 51%, making them an essential tool for your BFCM strategy. 

3. Utilize Promotion Extensions

  • Best Practice: Launch Promotion Extensions with the occasion specified, scheduling them to go live and shut off at appropriate times. This extension helps highlight your special offers directly in the search results, increasing visibility and driving clicks.
  • More Insight: Ads with extensions, including Promotion Extensions, see a 10-15% increase in CTR, which can make a substantial difference during high-competition periods like BFCM. Google 

4. Launch and Schedule Sitelink & Callout Extensions

  • Best Practice: If you plan to have a gifting or sale landing page during your promotion, ensure you launch and schedule Sitelink Extensions accordingly. Similarly, use Callout Extensions to emphasize specific aspects of your promotion. This can enhance the ad’s relevance and attractiveness to users.
  • More Insight: Sitelink Extensions can improve CTR by up to 20% by providing additional links to relevant pages on your site. Google

5. Leverage Google Merchant Center Promotions

  • Best Practice: Google Merchant Center Promotions are vital for shopping campaigns. Ensure that the prices in your ads match those on your site to avoid disapproval from Google. Any discrepancies between your ad and site pricing can lead to ad disapproval, causing delays and lost opportunities.
  • More Insight: Shopping ads accounted for 76.4% of retail search ad spend during the holiday season in 2023. Merkle  

6. Add Seasonality Bid Adjustments

  • Best Practice: Seasonality Bid Adjustments are ideal for short events like BFCM. These adjustments inform Google’s smart bidding algorithms of expected changes in conversion rates, helping your ads remain competitive during peak periods.
  • More Insight: Advertisers using bid adjustments for seasonality during BFCM can see up to a 30% increase in conversion rates compared to those who don’t. Google  

7. Promote Your Sale with Updated Ad Copy

  • Best Practice: Create new ad copy for your BFCM promotions by duplicating existing ad groups and updating at least one headline and description. Label these ad groups clearly as “Black Friday and Cyber Monday” to ensure they are easily distinguishable from your evergreen campaigns.
  • More Insight: Ads with refreshed and relevant content during promotions can increase engagement rates by 25-30%.   

8. Automate Ad Group Scheduling

  • Best Practice: Create rules within Google Ads to automatically toggle between evergreen ad groups and BFCM-specific ad groups. This automation ensures that your ads go live and stop exactly when you intend them to, without manual intervention.
  • More Insight: Automation in ad scheduling can save up to 20% of time, which is crucial during high-demand periods like BFCM.  

9. Increase Budgets for Higher Demand

  • Best Practice: Expect an increase in spending during BFCM as consumer intent rises. Increasing your budget can ensure your ads remain competitive as metrics like search volume and CPC can spike drastically during these dates.
  • More Insight: During BFCM, average CPC can increase by 50% or more, depending on the industry, making budget increases a necessity to maintain ad visibility.   

10. Avoid Major Shopping Feed Changes

  • Best Practice: Do not make any significant changes to your shopping feed within three weeks of BFCM. Keeping your feed consistent prevents Google’s machine learning from re-entering the learning phase, which could disrupt your campaign’s performance during the critical holiday season.
  • More Insight: Shopping campaigns can take up to 15 days to optimize fully after significant changes, making last-minute adjustments risky during BFCM. Google 

By following this comprehensive checklist, you can ensure your Google Ads strategy is fully optimized for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or any other major campaign, setting your brand up for success during the busiest shopping season of the year.