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- CG #067: Black Friday Debrief
Hello 👋🏾
Welcome to edition #067 of the Chase Growth Newsletter!
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Today's edition be a 5 minute read.
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Lessons From BFCM 2024
Last weekend was Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).
It is quickly becoming a tradition for me to post what I have learned from the most eventful weekend in my industry.
This year was very different from last year for me for two reasons.
This year, I ran ads for my brand, spending my OWN money, and that has a huge psychological difference in the way you approach campaigns
The clients I managed were new to ads and decided to try campaigns for BFCM
Nevertheless, I did my best within my control and here are the biggest takeaways:
Scaling by increasing spending on Black Friday might not be a great idea
Scenario - I spent more on Black Friday for my brand than on any other day I had ever spent. I did achieve record earnings, but it was only nominally higher than my previous highest revenue day, and I made almost no profit because of my high ad spend.
Takeaway - Because of the competition on the day, it’s hard to scale spend on Black Friday itself. This is why doing lead gen campaigns before black Friday is so important. Instead of trying to push your offer to completely new audiences and pay a premium to compete for views (high CPMs), use lead gen campaigns to create a list of interested prospects and use email marketing to nurture and push them towards buying.
On Black Friday, go big or go home
Scenario - Even with the relatively high cost of ads, I was able to drive good traffic to my website on Black Friday. What I noticed is that the CVR was lower than what I expected for a sales period like this and it resulted in us not being able to maximize profits.
Takeaway - On Black Friday, people expect crazy offers upwards of 50% off. I offered an evergreen offer (-25%) on BFCM. Your offer needs to match the occasion, or else you are better off not participating.
Never underestimate the power of selling a “good” product
Scenario - Two days later (Sunday) I smashed my revenue target with only 1/3 of the ad spend I used on Black Friday.
Takeaway - This shows that I have an evergreen product, I don’t necessarily need to depend on big sales events for people to buy because my product provides a solution to a perceived problem, it’s not just a convenience buy.
Other Key Takeaways:
• Good BFCM campaigns result from a year’s hard work for a brand. Planning these campaigns should begin 2-3 months ahead of time, and you should always test your Black Friday offer in August as an “end-of-summer sale” to get an idea of CVR and predict budgets for Q4.
• BFCM is NOT the time to test new creatives (ads). This should be done earlier in the year, and the BFCM period should be used to bring back your winning ads from earlier in the year, accompanied by simple, to-the-point Black Friday messaging ads.
• Warm up accounts before BFCM weekend. BFCM is very busy and the last thing you want is an ad account getting disabled. Be sure to warm up your account 2-3 months before BFCM and if possible, keep an extra ad account and some different payment options available in case anything goes down.
All in all, another highly valuable learning experience to build on for the future.
Upload of the week
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Until next time, take care.
CH
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