That title is tongue-in-cheek in case it wasn't obvious lol.

A few weeks ago, Ben McCaughtry and I held a BFCM intensive where we spent 2 hours going step-by-step through what brands need to do to have their best BFCM ever, plus live Q&A at the end. All built from BFCM last year where we had one client do $327k on Black Friday itself, and $1.5 million during their sale week.

We had some great feedback from those that attended.

Some even said it was the best 2 hours of their lives (ok I might be taking a bit of poetic license there).

Regardless, it was a great time. And I wanna share some takeaways with you as we REALLY gear up for BFCM 2021.

So here you go:

- Scaling spend + efficiency - we spent $50k in Black Friday itself for one brand in 2019 with $204k in revenue. We spent $26k on Black Friday for the same brand in 2020, but with $327k in revenue. That’s a tripling in the ROAS. Let’s just say we learned a little bit about scaling TOFU vs. MOFU/BOFU traffic. Quick tip from this? Make sure you are converting as much of your warm and hot audiences as possible. Do NOT leave an opportunity to convert warm/hot people. If you can’t convert them now… then when?

- Dynamic creative - last year this was one of the biggest winners out of accounts. Run this alongside your standard conversion campaigns.

- Are you looking for profit or customer acquisition? Neither is right or wrong, but you need to be super clear on what the primary goal is. Because they require VERY different strategies. The situation I described above is a perfect example of this. In 2019, the brand was in acquisition mode. In 2020, it was profit mode. Note: this is not binary. It’s a sliding scale. You don’t have to be FULL acquisition, or FULL profit. I like to think of acquisition mode as “delayed profit” - but that’s only if…

- You have a plan to retain these customers - if you acquire a bunch of customers that buy one time and then never again… you’re missing out on nearly all of your profit potential. December and January are JUST AS crucial as BFCM. Retention is the name of the game. ENSURE that you have this planned out. Are you going to have a welcome series specifically for them? Customer service reps give them a call 2 weeks after?

- Your AOV and CVR is more important than your ads technique - coming from an ads guy, I know, sounds weird. But if your offer is unclear or your funnel economics suck, what’s the point. A quick question we ask ourselves that can prompt easy 20% increases to these: “What is of negligible cost to us, but massive value to our customers that we can offer to them?” Example of this could be a handwritten gift note, stickers, high margin item, etc.

- Be ok operating in a chaotic environment, everyone else is too - ads manager is not going to provide you actionable data… at all. Do you know what signals to look for in your ad account that signify to scale? Focus on MER and whatever attribution solution you are using to be your true north.

- Make sure that you are making a clear, obvious offer - DO NOT have an offer that’s “15% off and free shipping if you spend more than $75, but it’s calculated after the 15% off and it doesn’t apply to bundles”. Attention is unbelievably SCARCE during BFCM. No one is going to take 5 minutes to figure out your offer. They’ll just buy something else.

- Take care of your VIP customers!! However you define this is up to you (3 or more purchases, AOV of 1.5x your average, etc.) but give them early access or a special discount. Send them an email 2 weeks before your sale starts to sign up for early access. Don’t deny your customers the opportunity to spend more money with you.

Those are some quick takeaways that we are building out with our clients this year.

Time is running out to start prep, but if you need a last minute crash course, we gotcha.

We’re holding a BFCM Pre-Game + Q&A next Monday the 15th at 12pm EST. Ask us anything you want. We see about $35 million run through our business manager a year and have 12 combined Black Fridays under our belts.

If you wanna join us, it’s $49 with a full refund policy AND includes free bonus access to our Scaling Academy. Should be the biggest no brainer of Q4 (except for pumpkin pie). Drop a comment and we’ll get you registered!