As we head into the second half of the year, one date is already looming large for marketers: Black Friday. It is now one of the year’s biggest sales events, and brands that plan early and plan well will reap the rewards.
Once seen as a retail event imported from overseas, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) – have now firmly cemented themselves as a critical commercial window. For many brands, this is no longer just a sales event; it’s the start of the Christmas trading period and a critical cashflow lever for the year ahead.
Consumer behaviour has shifted as this sales period becomes more important. Shoppers are increasingly saving their big-ticket purchases for Black Friday week, waiting to see what offers brands put forward before committing. That means expectations are high – and the stakes even higher.
If you haven’t started planning, now’s the time. I’ve seen first-hand how the most successful Black Friday campaigns are months in the making – with brand strategy, creative, performance media and commercial objectives working in concert.
So how do you set your business up to win? Here’s what the data tells us.
Start even earlier than you think you should
Demand needs to be built before it can be harvested. There’s a lot of chatter about when to launch deals and how to outpace the competition but all that misses a fundamental truth: you can’t convert demand that hasn’t been built yet.
WARC’s recent whitepaper ‘The Multiplier Effect’ (which we contributed to) found campaigns that prioritise creating demand before conversion consistently outperform. That principle holds just as true in Black Friday week as it does across the rest of the year.
Of course, this comes back to using a combination of brand and performance tactics. Every business needs to balance their strategy between both and they need to maintain it right up until Black Friday. A combined approach can even lift the sales of BFCM events by up to 40%.
Brands should be using broad-reach campaigns to keep themselves top of mind – not through abstract ‘brand building’, but through a campaign that speaks to the entirety of the business.”
The reality is, only 3-7% of your audience is in-market at any given time. So in the lead-up to sales week, a narrow focus on performance media will struggle to drive returns.
Instead, brands should be using broad-reach campaigns to keep themselves top of mind – not through abstract ‘brand building’, but through a campaign that speaks to the entirety of the business, is mapped to a broader commercial agenda, and links to upcoming performance media.
Don’t neglect the smaller screen
Every year, more and more BFCM traffic moves to mobile. And with mobile comes a new set of expectations.
A study by Google, ‘The Need for Mobile Speed’, identified that 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes more than three seconds to load. That’s not just lost traffic – that’s lost revenue, share and potentially lifetime customers as well.
It’s crucial to ensure your website can manage both the higher traffic of the BFCM sales season and any lead-up interest as well – particularly for those customers who prefer to think and research a purchase – well in advance of making the final decision.
But it’s not just your site you need to optimise – your creative needs to work for mobile too. That means tight framing, high contrast, fast-paced movement and punchy messaging that works in a vertical, sound-off environment.
The same report from Google found that creative designed with mobile in mind can deliver up to 300% higher ROI than repurposed brand assets.
Landscape beauty shots might look great in a cinema spot but they don’t stop thumbs. On mobile, speed and clarity win.
Be commercial – and understand the role Black Friday plays in your year
BFCM is not necessarily the moment to chase a high profit margin. I would argue this sales period is really about cashflow, not just profitability. For many businesses, the revenue generated in this short window can actually fund stock purchases, marketing and operations for the all-important Christmas period.
This isn’t the time to focus only on efficiency. You’ve got one window and one shot to break through.
That’s why the most successful brands go in with a commercial strategy, and why marketers should collaborate transparently with the rest of the business to ensure success in this crucial period. Every marketer should know which products to promote as loss leaders, which SKUs bring in volume and how to use complementary categories to drive basket size.
From a media perspective, the same logic applies. This isn’t the time to focus only on efficiency. You’ve got one window and one shot to break through. That means choosing channels and placements that drive response, even if the short-term ROI appears lower.
Your BFCM campaign doesn’t need to be your most efficient but it does need to be your most effective.
Stay nimble and move investment when needed
One of the most common pitfalls we see is brands locking in their BFCM media mix too early – or worse, sticking too rigidly to business-as-usual rules around budget allocation.
While there are periods where brands over-invest in search and performance, BFCM isn’t one of them. Here, being responsive is key. Watch your CPCs, CPMs and conversion rates in real time and be prepared to shift investment across tactics and channels based on what’s driving impact.
But remember, if your performance costs spike, that can be a signal to reinvest back into demand building to maintain momentum into December. It’s a short window but not a one-and-done moment. BFCM should be a launchpad, not an endpoint.
The bottom line
BFCM is no longer a retail novelty. It’s a critical commercial opportunity and brands that treat it as such are the ones that win.
Success in this period isn’t about squeezing the most out of a single ad or channel. It’s about starting early, planning across the funnel, investing in mobile-ready creative and thinking like a commercial leader – not just a marketer.
Because when BFCM is done right, it doesn’t just deliver a good sales week. It lays the foundation for sustained growth well beyond December.
Jo-Ann is Senior Director at Analytic Partners.
Featured image via Hc Digital.
