The $37.7M Black Friday Cyber Monday Mini Course
I’ve made $37,730,000 for my clients on BFCM.
This is the exact 7-step system I use to do it.
Make no mistake about it:
If you plan to run sales this year…
This mini course is for you.
Here’s an overview of what’s to come:
BFCM Timeline
Starting with an overview of the timeline.
It’s important to get this right as an oversight here could seriously impact performance.
Here’s what this looks like with a few additional pointers to keep in mind:
- Weeks 1-2 (November): Can be slower as people are anticipating upcoming sales
- Week 3: Click Frenzy (an extension sale to Sunday the 17th is optional)
- Weeks 4-5: Expect reduced activity between Click Frenzy and BFCM sales
- 24 hours before sale: VIP sale launch to email database (optional)
- Black Friday (29th November 2024)
- Sale weekend
- Saturday being the last day of November
- Sunday being the first day of December
- Cyber Monday
- Extended Sale: 3-7 days (optional)
Timelines will vary from brand to brand, we’ll go through the main considerations during this course.
Here’s what a normal sale activation looks like during this period:
If you were to apply all the optional sale activity, your sale will look like this instead:
Competitor Activity
The normal timeline above is ideally what brands should be considering.
What’s been happening more consistently in the last 2-3 years though:
Brands are activating their BFCM sale earlier to grab market share from their competitors.
If you’ve noticed this trend in your industry, you’d want to consider a new timeline, for example:
- 24 hours before sale: VIP sale launch to email database (optional)
- Weeks 4-5: Black Friday early access sale
- Black Friday
- Rest of sale
In this example, the actual sale would be activated weeks 4-5 (between the 18th and the 21st of November):
Sale Activation Guidelines
With all this in mind, for your particular industry:
The best way to determine sale timeline would be to review key competitor activity last year, to know:
- Their sale phases
- When they activated
- What % discount was set
You don’t want to start your sale too soon or late or be too aggressive with your discounting.
This approach will give you the best visibility as to how to plan your sale (and it’s phases across your categories) for 2024.
You also want to have your creatives ready, whilst also being fluid enough to activate your sale within 24 hours if required.
Competitor Tracking Template
To assist with the sale activation guidelines:
Here’s a competitor tracking template that’ll assist you with your planning.
Simply:
- Make of copy of it
- Review key competitor activity
- Map it out against within the spreadsheet
I’ve included some example sales within the spreadsheet.
However, you can see how having this visibility will elevate your BFCM sale approach.
Budget Pacing Tracking Template
With the sale planning squared away:
It’s now time to plan your budget allocation.
It’s critical you get this right and truly plan your budgets for this sale period.
You want to ensure you’ve planned you spend correctly to maximise returns over BFCM.
I’ve created a budget pacing tracking template to help you with this.
You can access it within the same spreadsheet you made a copy of above.
The example above uses a budget of $230,000.
You simply want to go in and apply your budgets to the same/similar ratios.
Pre-Approved Budget Requirements
If you’re looking to take your strategy to the next level:
Have some pre-approved budgets in place.
This will allow you to be more aggressive if performance is quite strong.
For example, if your current budget is $230,000…
You’d also want to have the following budgets pre-approved:
- $250,000
- $275,000
- $300,000
That way, come the sale, if you’re needing more spend, you prevent wasting time on approvals.
Budget Pacing Over The Course Of The Sale
You can see this illustrated in the above example (budget pacing template image).
The key consideration here is knowing pacing and spend levels can vary, here’s an example:
November ($150K)
- Week 1 (3 days): $5K
- Week 2: $15K
- Week 3 (CF): $30K
- Week 4: $15K
- Week 5 (up until Thursday): $15K
- Black Friday: $40K
- Sale Weekend (Saturday, last day of November): $30K
December 1-8 ($80K)
- Sale Weekend (Sunday, first day of October): $30K
- Cyber Monday: $30K
- Extended Sale (ending Sunday the 8th): $20K
You can see how having additional scaling budgets approved would assist.
In the instance the:
- BFCM sale was activated earlier
- To respond to competitor activity or
- Due to increased performance throughout the month
Need Help Planning Your BFCM Google Ads Campaigns?
With so much going on during BFCM it can be difficult to make sure you’re setup correctly for Google Ads.
If you’re wanting to maximise your returns this year and have everything ready to go…
Reach out, we’d be happy to help.