Key Metrics to Track During Black Friday

Introduction

Black Friday is a much-anticipated time of year for many companies, both e-commerces, physical stores and even those focused on generating leads. It's also a highly anticipated moment for shoppers hoping to find the products or services they want at special prices and advantages!

But if you own a website and are going to run paid media campaigns on this date, do you know exactly which metrics to monitor during the Black Friday period?

In this article, we'll help you define the key metrics to track during Black Friday.

Metrics to Track

Below, we describe some metrics that are very important for this Black Friday period, especially for Friday (many companies hold Black Week and Black Month).

In this other article, we explain 20 Digital Marketing Indicators you need to know. Some of the ones mentioned below are also there, with a detailed explanation.

With these KPIs, we hope to help you monitor your paid media campaigns.

Sales (or Leads), Revenue and ROAS

Of course, if you have an e-commerce business, the main objective of Black Friday is to boost the number of sales on your site and the amount of revenue you make. Always focusing on an ideal ROAS.

An interesting monitor is the Hour by Hour view, compared to the previous year's Black Friday. You can follow this data hourly on Pareto Ads!

For example, how many sales were made by 11am on Black Friday this year compared to last year? Or, are we breaking the record for revenue on Black Friday compared to the same time last year?

If you have Woocommerce, Shopify and an integrated store, you can follow the hourly cost of your campaigns on the Pareto Ads graph cost of campaigns with the revenueand then see the hourly ROAS.

To keep track of this data on the day of Black Fridaywe recommend viewing the data from Google Analytics or integrated with your CRM, as mentioned above. Since accounting through paid media platforms (Google and Facebook) will not be instantaneous. This is due to the attribution model of the platforms and also the data update time itself.

If your business focuses on generating Leads, it's worth monitoring this volume of contacts on an hourly basis. If you use PipeDrive, the tip is to monitor the performance of Leads per hour on the Pareto Ads Dashboard.

Cost per Click

As many companies will be running promotions on this date, there will be a lot of competition for campaigns. Even more so when it comes to the most competitive sectors with aggressive discounts.

So keep an eye on the CPC of your campaigns. It's expected to rise over the course of Friday as competition increases.

If you use strategies based on manual CPC (Google Ads), check whether you need to increase the bid offered for keywords or ad groups, so as not to lose opportunities in the auction by reducing the impression share.

Your most "critical" keywords are those that represent a large part of your conversion volume, so keep an eye on them during Black Friday!

Campaign Budget (Google Ads)

Undoubtedly, monitoring the budget spent on your campaigns throughout the day of Black Friday is a fundamental activity if you don't want to miss out on opportunities.

If your campaign is limited by budget, i.e. has reached the daily maximum, it will stop printing from that time onwards. In this case, your ads will not be shown and good sales opportunities may be lost.

So keep track of the amount spent for each campaign, and segment it by time of day. This way, you can identify if it has stopped printing and if you need to increase your daily budget.

A tipdon't wait for the "Campaign Limited by Budget" warning to appear on the Google platform, as this warning is not instantaneous. That's why it's best to segment by time of day and keep track of how much has already been spent and how much is left.

You can track the cost of your campaign directly in Pareto Ads. In the Segments area, analyze performance by type of campaign and create your own performance vision for Black Friday.

Below is an example of the hour-by-hour view of the Cost by campaign segment (Search, Shopping, Display and Video):

If your campaign reaches the cost ceiling, you can edit the budget directly from Pareto Ads, in the table view of the Dashboard.

NOTE: Your Google campaigns are subject to overprovisioning. Oversupply occurs when Google Ads displays your ad in a way that exceeds what the budget would normally allow. This helps compensate for days when the display frequency is low. When there is oversupply, your total daily cost can be up to twice the average daily budget.

Volume of Impressions (Facebook Ads)

On traditional days, Facebook's algorithm distributes your established daily budget in the best way. To do this, it uses data collected from your own account. So that your campaign doesn't stop showing at certain times.

But beware! With this "standard distribution", you could be missing out on impressions at important moments when your potential customers would be ready to buy.

On Black Friday, competition will be higher. As a result, the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) will also rise!

Therefore, monitor the volume of impressions of your campaigns up to that time of day, and compare it with the average value of previous days. If your campaigns are printing less than usual, this means that competition is fierce and impressions are more expensive. So, consider increasing your daily budget to take advantage of the opportunities of this date.

In the Pareto Ads Dashboard you can analyze real-time impressions from Facebook and Instagram.

Average Ticket

Compare your Average Ticket, i.e. the average value of your orders, with that of your competitors. If your competitors are charging much less, for example, you may not get the results you expect.

It might be worth increasing the discount percentage, or offering your customer some additional advantage. But, of course, with an ideal minimum ROAS for your e-commerce.

Do you use Integrated Store, Woocomerce or Shopify? You can track your Average Ticket hourly with Pareto Ads. Get real-time insight at BF and don't let your products lose out to the competition.

Research the prices charged by other competitors in the industry in advance, including analyzing what was charged the previous year. This can help you prepare the best Black Friday strategy.

Site Stability and Loading Time

One metric that influences user experience is your site's loading time. With a greater flow of people accessing it, due to promotions, it may slow down.

It's important to note that your website doesn't necessarily have to load in less than 3 seconds, or faster than your competitors'. The most important thing is to have a site that allows for greater audience engagement and ease of conversion.

For those of you who are already planning Black Month, monitor the speed of your site in order to offer your potential customers a good shopping/registration experience. Make sure that your site is available, stable and without crashes due to the greater number of users. After all, we don't want them to give up buying because of technical problems, do we?

We recommend using Test My SiteGoogle's tool for developers that allows you to analyze your site's loading performance in detail. This way, you'll already know the average speed of your site before the Black Friday period and can take steps to maintain the same performance during this period.

An interesting tip is that the site's main banners are often very heavy to load. Improvements of just 0.1 seconds can make the difference in revenue for the day! But don't forget, the most important thing is to bring a site with high engagement potential.

Conclusion

So be prepared for Black Friday and select the metrics that are actually relevant to track on the day of the promotion.

In this article, we focus on the metrics for monitoring during the day of Black Fridayday, presenting you with the main KPIs for this analysis.

Of course, after Black Friday is over, other consolidated metrics will provide an overview of the results of the action. These are ROAS (Return on Investment in Ads) for e-commerces or CPA (Cost per Acquisition) for Leads, Total Revenue, Impression Share in the Google auction (to understand the competition), Conversion Rate and Sales or Leads.

Don't forget to write down your strategies in HotSpot and on the Pareto Ads Marketing Board. That way, you'll be able to remember what worked (or didn't) for next year's Black Friday.