As we approach to Black Friday, it’s essential to shift into high gear to maximise your brand’s success during this pivotal shopping season. Below is a checklist to ensure you’re covering all key areas – from profit-driven strategies to finalising creative assets and optimising your site.
1. Prioritise Contribution Margin
Instead of solely focusing on revenue or ROAS, prioritise contribution margin, which gives a true measure of profitability after marketing spend. This will align teams to focus on profits rather than just sales.
2. Monitor Profitability Curve
Closely track your ad spend to ensure it aligns with contribution margin goals. Analysing this metric helps identify the balance point for maximum profit, giving you a clear signal when it’s time to increase or decrease spending.
3. Set a Clear North Star Metric
Define your primary objective for Black Friday – whether that’s revenue growth, profit maximisation, or customer acquisition. This North Star helps align budget, customer strategy, and overall success metrics.
4. Choose a Profit Path
Identify the profitability path that suits your business:
- New and Repeat Customer Profitability: Generate profit on both new and repeat sales.
- Break-even First Order: Target break-even on the first order and achieve profitability on repeat orders.
- Loss on First Order, Profit on Repeat: Accept a small initial loss with the goal of achieving profitability on future orders.
If you have high repeat-purchase rates, you may want to increase new customer acquisition efforts, even if the first order isn’t profitable, because long-term customer value will balance the equation.
5. Start creative testing early
Ensure you’ve been testing your creative concepts to identify winning assets. Run Black Friday campaigns separately from regular ads for targeted optimization without risking interference with non-promotional content.
6. Use SMS for Instant Communication
SMS is a powerful, immediate channel for reaching customers during Black Friday. Use it strategically to send timely updates, especially in high-shopping windows for added engagement.
7. Focus on Contribution Margin Without Discounts
Instead of planning around discounts, set profitability targets that reflect the full value of your product.
8. Reassess CPA and Margin Goals
Adjust your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and margin expectations in preparation for increased advertising costs (CPMs) common during the Black Friday season. This approach will help you maintain profitability even without discounting, as it keeps customer acquisition costs balanced with your expected margins.
9.Consistency Across Touchpoints
Your Black Friday campaigns should have a unified brand message across paid social, email, and SMS channels. Ensure cohesive design and messaging for a seamless customer experience.
10.Balance Revenue and Profit Goals
Use data from last year to set revenue and customer acquisition targets, considering trends like AMR (Adjusted Marketing Revenue). Engage your repeat customers with special offers to boost high-margin sales.
11.Freeze Changes by Early November
By the first or second week of November, halt any significant changes to the website. This allows time to stabilise and troubleshoot any potential issues before the high-traffic period.
12.Focus on Product Pages
Black Friday visitors are ready to convert, so ensure your product pages are fully optimised with trust signals like detailed descriptions, reviews, and user-generated content (UGC).
13. Leverage Social Proof and UGC
If you have UGC from social media, embed these assets directly on your product pages to enhance credibility and keep customers engaged with relatable content.
14. Avoid the “Leaky Bucket”
Identify and fix any conversion leaks, such as high-exit pages or cart abandonment issues. Direct ad traffic to optimised landing pages that match the content of your ads to minimise drop-offs.
15. Consider On-Site Quizzes
Integrate quizzes on your site for personalised user experiences. Quizzes can achieve conversion rates as high as 20-25%, while also gathering data that informs future marketing efforts.
16. Targeted Email and Retention Strategies
Use segmentation to target customer groups with tailored offers. Personalise emails based on customer preferences to boost repeat purchase rates and increase engagement.
17. Focus on Re-engagement and Loyalty
Engage past customers by offering exclusive Black Friday deals. Personalised offers encourage repeat purchases, which can significantly boost revenue during the holiday season.
Review this checklist and get ready to make the most of Black Friday. Align tactics with a focus on profitability, clear customer acquisition tactics, and ensure your site is optimized for a seamless user experience.
If you still have questions or want deeper insights, be sure to watch on demand our “Last-Minute Black Friday Q&A Roundtable” webinar. In this session, Jon Blair (CFO and Founder of Free to Grow CFO), Jack Smith (Founder of Prospa), and Eddie Cheng (Co-owner of VIBAe) dove into top questions from eCommerce brands and agencies, tackling everything from maximizing ROI and managing inventory to post-BFCM momentum and effective demand forecasting
Last Minute
Q&A
Industry experts tackled top e-commerce questions, sharing actionable BFCM tactics to boost ROI, maximize LTV, and balance revenue with profitability.
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