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.
NB: This is an article from gcommerce
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Here, our team of hotel digital marketing experts 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.
