[Holiday Series] Rock Your BFCM–How to Prepare for Black Friday/Cyber Monday in 2022

It might only be the beginning of the fall shopping season, but let’s be honest—consumers and retailers alike are already prepping for a busy holiday season. And if you happen to be working with a brand that isn’t proactively thinking about one of the hottest selling seasons of the year, it’s time to focus.

Every year, there are plenty of expert voices telling you what to do, which trends to follow, and what buzzwords to use in your Black Friday or Cyber Monday marketing messages. While these trends ebb and flow based on the current market, we want to make sure Rockerbox clients can find enduring success with practical tips that help you grow and scale.

In this series, we’ll cover some of the most-researched topics in this year’s Black Friday digital marketing world. You’ll get expert insight into trends, predictions, and optimization strategies that allow you to fully optimize with Rockerbox and create the biggest impact with your spend.

Discover BCFM Success This Year

Black Friday, which originated as an in-store retail experience, has transformed into an eCommerce juggernaut that many shoppers anticipate year after year. Shopify points out that 2021 was the strongest year on record for retail growth, as it brought in over $1.2 trillion dollars in consumer spending. As part of this massive surge in retail purchases, Cyber Monday raked in billions of dollars in online consumer spending.

It goes without saying that there’s a lot of buzz around such a highly anticipated spending event. But eventually, digital marketers and DTC brands have to take that excitement and translate it into a realistic strategy. 

What’s going to work for your brand to entice your audience to invest their holiday shopping dollars in your offer? The secret sauce boils down to:

• Having an actionable BFCM plan for the current market
• Knowing precisely what your data illustrates
• Testing and budgeting with efficiency (without wasting precious cash)
• Digging into optimization strategies in your ad spend
• Measuring impact and analyzing performance more efficiently

Who Needs to Have a Workable BFCM Strategy?

Whether you’re a marketer or decision-maker in eCommerce, consumer packaged goods (CPG), or retail products, you can’t afford to let BFCM catch you by surprise. 

Rockerbox provides DTC and digital brands with the marketing attribution data that they need to make data-driven decisions all the time. 

Yes, this means during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it also means before and after. The ability to access centralized data about your marketing performance (both online and offline) will always allow you to feel more confident going into busy seasons or times when exponential brand growth is possible.

Understanding Holiday Shopping Trends

Even though it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how shoppers will react to upcoming Black Friday deals, events like Amazon Prime Day are good indicators for market trends, predictions, and consumer preferences. Not only does this apply to how and what shoppers are looking for, but it also relates to the way that marketers advertise new deals.

For example, trends such as mobile ads and video-based ad content are continually on the rise. As DTC brands look to implement specific strategies ahead of major shopping holidays, optimizing tactics according to what consumers prefer to interact with is vital to success. 

Stay tuned—In the next post in the series, our team of Rockerbox experts will weigh in on even more specific trends that marketing pros should be aware of this year. 

How to Get Ahead and Prepare for Black Friday

Getting ahead and planning for Black Friday/Cyber Monday growth means carefully considering things like digital ad spend, cash flow cycling, inventory concerns, and the experience you’re providing to customers. 

The following principles can also create a solid foundation for your Q4 marketing tactics.

Be the First Out of the Gate

When it comes to massive sales and promotions like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, competition is fierce. A majority of digital retailers plan to offer special discounts and incentives, which means that customers are inundated with more marketing messages as the calendar dates draw closer. Eventually, this huge surge in promos can lead to marketing decision fatigue, with customers tuning out messages that arrive later.

The solution here is simple—be the first one out of the gate. Know ahead of time what you want to offer, why you’re doing it, and which customers will benefit the most. Tailor your messaging and ad copy accordingly so that customers can easily distinguish your brand from similar, competing offers.

Give Special Access to VIPs

Do you have an exclusive list of high-spenders or VIPs? Perhaps a specific segment of your audience that’s highly engaged and signed up for communications like SMS?

Scoring major wins in Q4 means capitalizing on the exclusivity of your VIP offerings. When customers feel that they’re getting exclusive access to deals that other buyers won’t get to see before the actual holiday, the effect is a sense of urgency and increased desire to spend.

Marketing guru Nik Sharma suggests boosting an early VIP sale to customers as early as Thursday night before Black Friday begins. 

Make Your Big Offer Loud (and Known)

Customers often wait for several months to take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. It’s a no-brainer that these incentives should be big, bold, and highly visible.

If you’re thinking of advertising a 10% off sitewide deal, think again. Online customers are holding out for irreplaceable sales (up to 50% and 60% off) on specific items. If you want to achieve affordable discounts, Shopify recommends increasing the average order value (AOV) with tactics like bundles and packages, so that steeper sales become easier and more affordable for your brand to manage. 

Additionally, customers should never have to hunt around to find what incentive you’re offering. Make it extra visible and searchable in your emails, social media posts, and front and center on the website.

Extend Tiered Promotions to Valuable Customers

A tiered promo involves increasing the average discount based on how much a customer spends in total. For example, you could offer:

• 15% off orders $60+
• 25% off orders $120+ 
• 40% off orders 250+

This tactic often increases the AOV, which means individual customers are laying down more cash per order. Layering this tactic during Cyber Monday (after your initial Black Friday deal) boosts additional revenue for online brands that want to encourage more purchases over a longer period of time—and really, who doesn’t want that?

5 Practical Tips to Optimize Holiday Sale Marketing

Now that we’ve covered a few of the big picture strategies around this year’s BFCM digital marketing, we’re going to break down a few ways that digital marketers can operate even more efficiently this year. 

Tip 1: Always Be Mindful of the Data

At Rockerbox, we believe that you can never afford to lose valuable insights into performance. But this rule is even more true when it comes to the biggest sales season of the year.

Your brand’s channel data needs to clearly illustrate:

• Which channels are top earners, performers, or conversion sources
• How new channels or tests are performing in comparison to more established ones
• Where you should accelerate or decrease ad spend
• How to handle heavy ups and pacing during a busy season

Tip 2: Go Mobile for Ordering and Post-Purchase

Mobile experiences are irreplaceable for this year’s BFCM shopping deals. Not only should promos be designed for seamless mobile delivery, the ordering and purchasing processes need to be optimized for any and all mobile devices.

Additionally, some brand and eCommerce experts point out how powerful mobile experiences are to post-purchase nurturing. Whether you’re connecting with new customers, offering additional incentives, or encouraging future purchases, user-friendly mobile compatibility can take your results to the next level.  

Tip 3: Beat Your Competitors’ Offers

Being early to the BFCM table also includes doing your research. Be diligent about what your competitors are advertising and communicating about their best deals. Many brands are already teasing and previewing the savings that consumers can expect, and it’s time to get the inside scoop on where your competitors will land.

When it’s possible and feasible to do so, create an even more enticing offer. You may not have to run the winning promo for the full holiday weekend. Granting special, early access to a killer deal that outpaces competing brands is a strategy worth testing this year.

Tip 4: Take Advantage of Increased Site Traffic

New customers might be coming from different channels, but many of them are ending up at the same destination—your website. Is it truly optimized to convert?

Consider tweaking your on-site messaging for the duration of your sale events during BFCM. That could mean creating specialized landing pages, using countdown timers to drive urgency, or optimizing your site copy so that it’s friendly to new (potentially converting) customers.  

Tip 5: Strategize Beyond a Single Day

Enduring, scalable brands recognize the importance of BFCM as one part of a larger growth strategy. This is because converting customers are primed and ready to return for future purchases. 

The experience that your brand provides during a massive sales season offers clues about what customers can expect at a later time. As a result, that experience needs to be top-notch. 

Which marketing efforts, channels, and direct consumer actions are moving the needle forward this year? How can you replicate those efforts in the months and years to come? 

Are You Set Up to Leverage Rockerbox this Holiday Season?

If you’re a current Rockerbox client, you’re already well on your way to knowing how your digital marketing efforts are paying off. 

Our Holiday Guide 2022 gives you the right tools, tips, and tutorials you need to optimize effectively. From launching new channels to encouraging growth even into the new year, we’ve got you covered. 

Not a customer yet? No problem. Get a demo today.