How to Get Your Sh*t Together  Before Black Friday

Overview

Michael Aram is an award-winning American Armenian artist who has dedicated his career to craft-based design. Trained as a painter, sculptor, and art historian, Michael has neatly applied his diverse background to the decorative arts. He creates high-end home decor, jewelry, and entertainment pieces sold at Michael Aram stores as well as national and independent retail stores around the world. 

Michael Aram came to Adventure Media Group with a mission: to turbocharge their e-commerce business. They felt that most of the company's advertising budget was being funneled into branding efforts, rather than actually driving sales or new customer acquisition.

Platforms Leveraged

• Facebook ads
• YouTube ads
• Google ads
• Instagram ads
• Bing
• Waze
• StackAdapt
• Pinterest

Challenges

• While people may be familiar with the Michael Aram brand name, the majority of product sales were coming through 3rd party retailers. Michael Aram was on a mission to increase direct-to-consumer business, increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and taking more ownership over brand growth.    

• While the company had a solid customer base, it was struggling to grow beyond its current base with pay-per-click advertising.

• Michael Aram wanted to increase 50% YoY in November, specifically focusing on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. 

Strategies 

Beginning in October 2022, we aggressively began examining ways to gain traction and attract new potential customers to the company’s website. 

100 Interests

After taking a deep dive into Michael Aram's brand values, products, and ideal clients, we uncovered 100 key interest segments we could target. We then took our findings to the next level by testing them against our data-driven framework, ultimately determining which interests had the highest conversion rate.

2022 Ad Budget

We took an in-depth look at the 2021 Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) marketing strategies and assessed their effectiveness in maximizing profits. Thanks to this analysis, we identified areas of improvement and strategically set a budget and campaign launch timeline for 2022 that would generate the most bang-for-their-buck. 

Attention to Customers

After analyzing previous customer experiences, we pinpointed potential pain points—like shipping—and took action to address them. We also recognized that super fans are integral to building a strong customer community, which is why we created a loyalty strategy specifically for Michael Aram’s most passionate supporters in order to ensure their satisfaction prior to Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Sweepstakes

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are prime opportunities for businesses to acquire new customers and grow their email lists, and we had a plan to make the most of them. We launched a series of sweepstakes to attract new leads and drive conversions. Past experience told us that sweepstakes are a tried-and-true method for quickly achieving desired results, and we made sure to get the word out by promoting the sweepstakes through organic and paid media channels that cater to audiences who love freebies and giveaways. It was a win-win situation: Michael Aram got the chance to reach new customers, and participants had the chance to score some great prizes.

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Better Graphic Representation

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words—but in the world of paid advertising, it’s worth a lot more than that. We knew we had moments to capture potential buyer’s attention. After a determination that better photographs of the highlighted products were necessary, we were able to create dynamic gif ads to grab attention fast. This resulted in higher click-through rates and cheaper cost-per-clicks. 

Strike-Through Pricing

Michael Aram is known for offering luxurious, one-of-a-kind designs. They only offer sales two to three times a year. So, for their customers to see strike-through pricing indicating a discount is a big deal! We noticed that actually crossing out the original price and showing the discounted price worked well on the website last year. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it! We were right—this strategy proved to be an effective means of attracting visitors and creating new customers.

Performance Max

Performance Max, one of Google’s newest advertising tools, allows us to leverage the power of Google Ads inventory from one centralized campaign. In other words, it gives us the ability to test audiences faster through various platforms and ad delivery types—including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Our team has worked extensively with Google’s in-house team on the best ways to leverage this new technology, and the verdict was clear as we saw a dramatic uptick in Google campaign performance. 

Results 

• 35.15% YoY increase in users (comparing November 2021 to November 2022)
• 28.12% YoY increase in revenue (comparing November 2021 to November 2022)
• 29.60% YoY increase in transactions (comparing November 2021 to November 2022)

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