Unique challenges, tremendous opportunities:

5 e-comm marketing tips for Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2024

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Newsflash: Black Friday is no longer just the day after Thanksgiving. It’s now the whole holiday week, sometimes the whole month of November, and often kicking off early in October. 

As e-commerce brands and performance marketers, it’s critical to structure our Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) campaigns to compete with the Amazons and Walmarts of the holiday shopping season. And we can do that by starting promotions earlier and running them longer. 

BIG BRands’ black friday campaign timelines over the years

But more promos spread out over more time shouldn’t mean less earnings. Rather, this changing holiday marketing ecosystem can be an opportunity to rake in profits, clear out costly inventory, and fill your funnel for upcoming holiday promotions.

Case in point: Our e-comm clients’ 2023 BFCM campaigns drove significant revenue over a mere five days.   

Last year’s results for strategy labs e-comm clients

revenue nearly doubled yoy

Up next: this year's Q4 challenges ↓

Want to drive higher profits at the right moments?

You’re in luck — we just happen to be strategic performance marketing experts.

This year’s q4 challenges

 3 unique challenges & a silver lining

You can’t create marketing solutions if you don’t identify roadblocks. At Strategy Labs, we keep our finger on the pulse to detect potential problems and provide our partners with thoughtful solutions. 

Q4 is ripe with profitable opportunities, but this year’s quarter also comes with challenges — ranging from competition to current events — that mid-size e-tailers may find tough to navigate.

Challenge #1

You’re up against the big guys

As we mentioned, the big-box Black Friday players put on special deal weeks earlier in October. Their size enables them to slash prices further and their established loyalty programs hook in more-captive audiences. 

Retailers that don't offer early promotions risk losing a share of the market before November even begins, since today’s shoppers prefer to spread out their spending to budget effectively. 

And the early birds are no longer the small but mighty horde of deal-chasers storming Targets at 6 a.m., clobbering each other over big-screen TVs. Convenient mobile shopping and longer sales windows invite everyday purchasers to join in on the early deals events. 

According to an ESW survey, 37% of consumers started their holiday shopping before Halloween. Could they have spent all their holiday budget in October, causing a dip in sales after early promotions? Maybe some of them.

Here at Strategy Labs, post-Prime Day numbers were relatively stable, with rebounding sales spikes a couple weeks after the event. However, other agencies have reported large drops in sales during this time. Our advice: Assess risk on a client-by-client basis, evaluating any Amazon or other big-box competitor brands.

Strategy Labs E-Comm Clients’ Sales October 2024

There’s an extra big guy this year: the U.S. election

Challenge #2

This year, EMarketer estimates that total U.S. political ad spending will surpass $12 billion, up 29% from the 2020 election. While TV and traditional media account for much of that spend, digital advertising budgets will soar 156% above 2020 levels.

With political ads infiltrating media channels, it will be more difficult and more costly for retailers to own a share of the platforms. From October 1 to October 22, 2020 — the last election season — there was a 30% increase in Meta CPMs compared to the usual 11% lift in other years, according to Common Thread Collective. We predicted and saw a similar increase in costs this October, specifically in battleground states.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. We anticipate a drop in sales during election week followed by a quick return to normal levels. Simply being aware of the challenge the election poses to digital media buying can put you ahead of the curve, motivate you to closely monitor performance in key accounts, and empower you to make adjustments at the right moments. 

Or, you know, we could just do that for you.

Challenge #3

Shorter holiday season

2024 has brought us a showstopping nationwide eclipse, an economy driven by vibes and Taylor Swift, and, to our great surprise and delight, Moo Deng. Truly a year for the books.

It has also been a Leap Year — and that extra day in February pushed Cyber Monday into December, shortening the holiday shopping window.

Black Friday lands on November 29 and Cyber Monday is on December 2 this year, meaning shipping cutoff dates shortly follow these events. And that means there’s less time than usual to convince last-minute shoppers to hit purchase.

cyber monday dates over the years

A silver lining

What’s surprisingly not a hurdle? The vibecession! Turns out, the state of the economy really is a lot of vibes and steady but nondestructive inflation. While consumer confidence hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, unemployment has remained low, people continue to spend the money they’re making, and inflation is cooling off. 

87% of shoppers plan to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to EIN Presswire, and they’ll spend 13% more than last year, or $567 on average, according to a Deloitte survey. 

BFCM projected consumer online spending

The money is out there, it’s just being spent earlier and more strategically. So how will your brand cash in?

up next: the sl holiday playbook ↓

 Let’s find your brand’s niche markets

We’ll create the ads, analyze their performance, and follow the data toward success.

The SL Holiday playbook

5 core recommendations

We know what we’re up against. Now, let’s take a look at how brands and marketers can overcome these obstacles and increase sales.

1.📅 Fill the funnel earlier & diversify campaigns and creative 

Start generating demand well before the holidays. October is the time to build retargeting pools for your holiday sales while CPMs are lower. Cast a wide but meaningful net with platforms like Meta and TikTok, optimizing for audience growth through actions like email signups or adds to cart.

When it comes to creative, set the stage for holiday success by putting your best ads forward.

  • Highlight your best sellers.

  • Create diverse assets to reach new audiences.

  • Introduce audiences to your brand story.

So what do we mean by diverse assets? Different ad formats (E.g., images vs. reels vs. catalog ads), varied messaging angles, and a range of visual styles can improve campaign reach and efficiency.

Case study

A Strategy Labs e-comm client saw a 28% increase in website traffic and conversions after we ran video-driven campaigns on Meta weeks before a big sale. Once it was time to launch the promotion, our media team was able to retarget users who had recently visited the site, added an item to their cart or watched the video. 

The client saw a 19% increase in revenue compared to the previous year.

2. 🔍 Use Google’s Power Pair: PMAX + search

Power Pair blends Google’s Performance Max and Search campaigns to deliver the perfect mix of reach and precision, helping sellers drive up to 27% more conversions than using either type of campaign alone.

  • 🎯 PMax reaches users even when they aren't actively looking. It’s perfect for getting in front of new audiences across Google’s different platforms. Plus, it’s highly scalable, giving you access to a wide range of placements.

  • 🔍 Search focuses on users who know what they want. It shows your ads to people who are googling with intent, and are therefore more likely to convert. Search also gives you more granular control and the ability to personalize ads.

Together, they make your strategy more effective, ensuring you connect with new audiences as well as users who are ready to convert, covering every stage of the customer journey.

Case study

Our client needed to preserve margins while driving growth. We consolidated several campaigns and scaled them using Power Pair, increasing the brand’s platform revenue by 72% from the previous year.

3. 🤝 Partner with creators to drive engagement

Want to reach new audiences without breaking the bank? Creators are the key. Collaborating with the right influencers gives you credibility and extends your reach. If you haven’t found the perfect match yet, Meta’s Creator Marketplace can help you get started.

Meta’s partnership ads provide a streamlined means of promoting your product on both branded pages and partner or influencer pages. Formerly “branded content ads,” partnership ads benefit both brands and creators by reaching both of their audiences together, and enabling each partner to lend their credibility to the other.

Case study

Our DTC auto parts client saw 37% improvement in ROAS during a partnership with a relevant content creator.

Our lifestyle and apparel brand client saw a 21% CPA during their partnership with a beverage company who collaborated on their products.

4. 🎯 Leverage Shopify cohort data to create custom audiences 

If your brand’s site is hosted on Shopify, the platform’s cohort data is a goldmine for creating laser-focused custom audiences. Start building them now to take full advantage when November sales hit. To pull it off, ensure your data integrations are receiving accurate info throughout Q4. For example, we recommend updating product information to improve ad accuracy at least once per day. 

Building out audiences early allows you to retarget interested shoppers with compelling reasons to purchase, like free shipping, easy returns, and warranties or financing offers.

5. 🎁 Launch exclusive, 1:1 promotions for existing customers

The most expensive customer is a new customer. This approach increases a once-new customer’s LTV by enticing them to make additional purchases, even if they are made at lower costs. In essence, give returning customers a deal to drive long-term sales.

Target specific customers based on their behaviors and give only this high-intent audience the deal, as opposed to offering that same deal sitewide. Promo codes come in handy for this type of sale, so only the designated audience segment can buy your product at a lower price. 

Make it work for the holidays by targeting recent customers from early October deals, or offer exclusive early access deals to customers from the previous holiday season.

Case study

Our fitness apparel client wanted to sell a specific collection that was taking up inventory space. We identified a segment of users who had purchased from this collection already and offered them a steep discount on that same collection’s products.

With these strategies in hand, overcome 2024’s marketing challenges and cut through the digital clutter to grow e-commerce sales this holiday season.

WANT TO TEAM UP?

We’ve covered the basics, but there’s a lot to this whole performance-marketing-during -the-holidays thing. If you’re overwhelmed by all the opportunities out there, we can help. Connect with us to discover tactics suited to your specific business.