The Black Friday and Cyber Monday season — collectively abbreviated as BFCM in marketing circles — is, for many businesses, the most crucial time of the year as far as their bottom line is concerned. About 200 million Americans reported shopping during this time last year, spending on average over $300 on holiday items alone — that means we’re looking at, conservatively, well over $6 billion spent.

In other words: This time is a big deal for retailers and ecommerce alike. If that’s you, that means the time to plan your approach to BFCM is right now!

Here’s some tips and things to keep in mind: 

The Black Friday-Cyber Monday season starts earlier than you think 

If the increasing digitization of shopping has done one thing to the holiday season, it’s expanded the timeline so that people are buying Christmas presents and other seasonal gifts earlier and earlier.

According to Gallup research polling from 2023, almost a quarter of people asked were planning on beginning their holiday shopping as early as September. (This is particularly true of women, for whom 29% of respondents indicated plans to begin in September, compared to 18% of men.)

Even for those who aren’t actively planning on shopping for their holidays as early as September, many still do begin this by early November, well before Thanksgiving and Black Friday. According to the National Retail Federation, while 55% of consumers polled said they made a purchase due to a sale or Black Friday offer, 35% said they bought something in the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

Ergo, implicit here is the importance of an extended promotional period and outreach campaign, and a concerted, thoughtful strategy surrounding it.

For that reason, we highly recommend not waiting until the actual Black Friday to kick off your promotional offers and associated campaigns. For example, while Amazon’s resources, scale, and capital obviously give them inimitable capabilities you can’t replicate, their Black Friday Deals is a good example of how to strategically spread out deals and promotions to increase your sales.

Some practical steps here revolve around launching scalable incentives — these could include early-bird pre-Black Friday discounts, special gift-with-purchase promotions, or other events that give people an incentive to commit to a purchase earlier that they might otherwise sit on and forget down the line. By this, you’re helping capture earlier shoppers and building up momentum throughout the month and holiday season.

While opening a sale early to all customers may seem daunting, targeting a list of top or returning customers allows you to start sales earlier without making it public. Another option is to let users who see your ads sign up for early sale access, which can provide insights into your audience’s interest. Both approaches create a sense of exclusivity, aiming to boost loyalty from dedicated customers while competing with other brands launching early sales.

Advertising costs increasin’ with the season

Of course, the byproduct of the increase in brand advertising during this time period — and the expansion of “this time period” to starting well before the actual Black Friday weekend — is that advertising costs naturally increase too with the greater competition.

This is especially true of mobile advertising, where brands spent $362 billion in 2023 — and are expected to see that increase by up to 11% this year. Whether on mobile or browser, those price increases could be further exacerbated early in the month as political ads make their last election season push, competing for your available ad space and driving prices up.

So, when budgeting out your Black Friday-Cyber Monday campaigns, you should absolutely be accounting for these increased costs, and budgeting to increase spend during the month of November. Earmarking budget in the months leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday will allow you to remain competitive within the limited ad space for the best possible outcome.

At the same time, consider ways to be less reliant on the more oversaturated advertising channels while instead utilizing less-crowded channels.

Extra-targeted campaigns are your friend here, too. For example, retargeting ads can help you concentrate more of your resources on people who have already indicated recent interest in your products.

As costs per click and impression (CPM and CPC) are on the rise, focus on high-impact, high-return ad placements — at the same time, let programmatic advertising tools take some of the load off to optimize ad spend, allowing you to focus your energy and resources on creative solutions, problem solving, and your overall strategy. 

Standing out with creative, compelling offers

Now of course comes arguably the hardest and most crucial part: standing out in an environment where seemingly every competitor also has some kind of discount or promotion on.

Obviously, the best foundation for this — and we’d hope your business was motivated for this to be true from the beginning — is to have a truly outstanding product (or service) from go. Great offers and promotional campaigns can only do so much if what you’re selling can’t hold up to what you’re promising.

Of course, if that’s a problem, well… we can’t solve that in a blog post — so we’ll assume anyone reading this really believes in what they’re offering. From there, the foundation for standing out involves understanding your consumer base and learning from other brands — but not just following their moves blindly and instead being willing to come up with new, different, and more compelling offers.

This is especially true as some companies start relying on generative AI to cut corners, which by its aggregatory nature can’t come up with new, creative ideas to catch an audience’s attention.

In other words: If your product or service stands out, and your offers stand out, and your promotional approach stands out, you’re in a good place.

As for those promotions and offers, here are a couple good starting places:

1. There are a wide range of approaches for Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions. Buy one, get one deals encourage users to purchase more than they initially intended, as they want to take advantage of the savings. Creating countdown timers for the start or end of the sale can help build excitement and urgency. Given the variety of promotional opportunities, it’s important to present the strongest offer and support it with engaging content.
2. Discounts are good, but provide offers that go beyond just that. What can add value for your customers? Exclusive products, bundle deals, and personalized experiences that resonate with your target audience can be good additions. Think outside the box to come up with more ideas, including unique, creative offers that stand out.
3. There are automated personalization tools out there that can help you tailor offers to individual customer preferences. These can be really handy to help you narrow your targeting and messaging tactics to resonate more with certain people.

Take, as an example, a “buy more, save more” tiered discount structure giving exponentially greater discounts to customers as their purchases increase. This stands out beyond just “here’s 15% off” by not only grabbing users’ attention but giving them incentive to look further through your inventory to see just how much they can benefit. The end result: more piqued interest, more quality traffic from people who are actively interested in your product(s), and more conversions.

While updating your digital ad creative is essential during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s equally important to ensure your ad copy reflects the same message. While switching all creative to Black Friday sale-inspired imagery can be intriguing, it’s important to maintain enough variety within your creative assets. You can continue running other evergreen content by changing the headlines and ad copy to highlight the current sales. Using phrases like “for a limited time” or “last chance” can increase the sense of pressure. Adding a sense of urgency is crucial in motivating your audience to make a purchase upon seeing your ads.

Real-time analytics are your friend

Just as we always emphasize the importance of not just being a “set it and forget it” operation but instead adapting to new insights, that’s extra true during a Black Friday campaign’s concentrated timeline.

Advanced analytics and real-time data can help you monitor your campaign’s performance as it happens, make critical reads, and tweak accordingly. Predictive analytics can also help you get a read on future customer behavior, allowing you to adjust inventory, messaging, and offers in response.

Bottom line

The main ways to come out on top on your Black Friday campaigns all come back to thinking critically, creatively, and proactively. Not that this isn’t true of all digital marketing, but it’s especially true in the concentrated, hyper-competitive Black Friday season environment where budgets and ideas are stretched.

This means A) start planning early, B) be a forward-thinking, creative problem solver, and C) keep an active eye and critical brain on performance as it happens.

And, once 2024’s season is over, don’t wait to look back on and learn from your campaign and see what you improve upon for next year.