Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping events of the year, and if you’re aiming to scale your brand, nailing your ad strategy is key. At ShipBob’s latest “Peak Prep Unpacked” event, I had the chance to share some of my top tips for optimizing meta ad campaigns to boost your reach and sales during BFCM.
Here’s my advice on making sure your campaigns deliver during this crucial weekend.
1. Keep Your Evergreen Campaigns Running
Many brands stop their evergreen ad campaigns during Black Friday, but I always recommend keeping them running alongside your Black Friday campaigns. This makes it easier to smoothly switch back once Black Friday is over and will cause less ad disruption post sale. Your evergreen campaigns will likely end up performing higher than you anticipated.
Pro tip: If you don’t feel like you can do this due to budget restraints, lower the budget on your evergreen campaigns, but don’t stop them completely.
2. Use Highest Volume or Highest Value Bid Strategies
Scaling during Black Friday requires more flexibility. While target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) or bid cap strategies work for efficiency on your regular campaigns, they can limit your reach during BFCM. To scale effectively, I suggest switching to highest volume or highest value bid strategies. This way, you can boost your spend when performance justifies it, without limitations from your bid strategy, helping you get the most out of your BFCM campaign.
3. Have Plenty of Creatives Ready
One of the toughest parts of BFCM is keeping your ads fresh. I recommend having at least twelve different creatives ready for each brand. This should be a mix of high-performing ads with your sales verbiage added to them and new content made just for Black Friday. Make sure your ads pass the five-second test—users should instantly know what you’re promoting. Don’t forget to prepare your Cyber Monday ads in advance too. Use your Black Friday winners to save time and make quick adjustments.
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4. Leverage Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) and Instant Experiences
For stores with multiple products, Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) and Instant Experiences are essential. These formats let you create dynamic ads that pull directly from your product catalog, making them perfect for beauty and fashion brands. Enhance your results by transforming image creatives into Instant Experience ads. This enables Meta to dynamically customize ad experiences for users, showing them products they’re most likely to buy using your catalog data. These catalog-based ad formats perform especially well during holiday shopping events, especially for multi-SKU stores.
5. Publish Campaigns Ahead of Black Friday
One of my main points during the talk was to prepare everything well before Black Friday. The review process for ads can take longer during BFCM because of the rush of submissions. If you want to focus on scaling and optimizing during the weekend, don’t wait until the last minute to launch your campaigns. Getting your ads live early helps you avoid delays, giving you more time to optimize and scale your campaigns effectively.
Insights from Past BFCM Data
If you’ve run BFCM campaigns before, use last year’s data to shape your strategy this year. Review previous performance trends to estimate your budgets and revenue targets. If this is your first BFCM, here are some key trends from last year to keep in mind:
- Avoid overspending between midnight and 7 AM on the morning of Black Friday, as it’s usually a slow period.
- Be ready for higher CPMs and adjust your traffic forecasts accordingly.
- Performance typically drops by 50% on Saturday and 25% on Sunday, so scale back your budget to avoid wasting money.
- The final hours of Cyber Monday often see the best results, so be prepared to boost successful campaigns.
- Some brands saw stronger sales in early December than on Black Friday, so consider running post-BFCM sales leading up to the holidays.
Setting Your Brand Up for BFCM Success
By following these tips and planning ahead, you can set yourself up for success. Keep your evergreen campaigns running and use a variety of creatives to help your brand stand out during the busy holiday season.Need help with your BFCM strategy? Let’s connect and we’ll help elevate your campaigns.
