Maikel Purvis is responsible for all digital channels at Matt Sleeps, an Amsterdam-based mattress scale-up. Part of a small team of full-time staff, Purvis knows how to be time, resource, and cost-efficient in his Black Friday efforts.
As all retailers can attest, Black Friday is the key moment on our calendars. In fact, in 2023 40% of Dutch consumers purchased something on Black Friday.
Times are changing though, and as marketers and retailers we have to adapt. Black Friday isn’t just a single day; it is now a season. Consumers no longer wait for the day itself to spend their money — the days, weeks, and months leading up to Black Friday are more important than ever.
Our challenge at Matt Sleeps was to connect with people before this new peak season began. To increase our reach, build genuine consideration for our mattresses and related products, and — ultimately — convert potential customers into buyers. So, we worked with Google and our agency — Roots Network — to develop a phased approach that enabled us to start earlier in the season.
Top of the funnel: Waking up awareness
We had never invested in online top-of-funnel activities before, but we knew that building brand awareness via digital platforms was essential. That’s because, as the days to cyber week shorten, we see a shift from generic searches, e.g. “best mattress”, to branded searches, e.g. “Matt Sleeps mattress”:
We needed to reach a wider audience and introduce Matt Sleeps to people who might not have heard of us before.
Together with our Google team, we analysed Matt Sleeps' 2023 marketing activity. It showed there was untapped potential if we added YouTube top funnel media, to connect online and offline marketing, making our media mix more effective and efficient in 2024. We created a mix of content, showcasing our strong brand identity and the quality of our products. In the weeks before peak season we used messaging including “Met 120 dagen gratis thuis testen” (“With 120 days free at home testing”):
We used Video View campaigns to appear in front of the most engaged audiences and capture genuine intent. As the AI-driven tool automatically looks for people who are most likely to view our ad, it allowed us to maximise the impact of our video campaigns and ensure our message was reaching the right people.
Middle of the funnel: Dreaming up consideration
For a product like a mattress, the customer journey is rarely impulsive. People research, compare, and consider their options carefully. In fact people only buy new mattresses once every six to eight years.
As we approached peak shopping season, we knew consumers would be spending more time in this consideration phase. And we needed to be top-of-mind when they were ready to make a decision.
For our strategy in the mid-funnel, we leveraged a combination of dynamic video content, images, and shopping integrations to increase purchase intent and engagement. The campaigns were designed to engage high-intent shoppers and drive deeper product interest.
Our ads featured user-generated content (UGC) of real people talking about their positive experiences with Matt Sleeps. As we got closer to peak season we used stronger calls to action, like “Profiteer tijdens Black Friday van de grootste deals ooit” (“Take advantage of our biggest Black Friday deals ever”):
These tactics helped nurture leads and move potential buyers further down the funnel.
Lower funnel: Snagging the sleep-seekers
Our analysis of previous Black Friday data showed that we could optimize our strategy to better respond to changing customer behavior. This allowed us to dominate the lower funnel and capture customers actively searching for a mattress and related products during peak season.
We needed to optimise our campaign for conversions. This meant leaning into both Search and Performance Max — designed to help advertisers find more converting customers by optimising performance in real time.
During those last few weeks leading up to cyber week we kept a close eye on our return on ad spend (ROAS). We decided that as long as we met our ROAS targets, we could dynamically adjust our Search and Performance Max strategy. We checked in with our Google team often to see if there was any room to improve our efforts.
To make sure that we did better than last year we also improved our seasonality adjustments. These are crucial to inform the smart bidding algorithm: "Hey, there are a few days coming up where we're expecting more people to convert".
This made sure that our lower funnel campaigns were fully optimised for the best results.
The impact: Results that woke us up
The results of our full-funnel approach were remarkable. Compared to November 2023 our purchases in Google Ads were 3X higher in November 2024.
We weren't just seeing more sales; we were seeing smarter, more efficient spending. We were able to scale our budget thanks to our efficiencies.
This Black Friday campaign was a team effort between our agency, Google, and the dedication of the entire Matt Sleeps team. We proved that with the right strategy and the right tools, you can achieve remarkable results, even with a small (but dream) team.
Moving forward, we'll definitely be applying this strategy to other key marketing moments throughout 2025 — and beyond. We'll also be starting our Black Friday preparations even earlier to ensure we have the best possible content and ads in place.
