Prepping for Black Friday & Q4 Ad Buying Early

If you haven’t started a daily countdown to Black Friday and Q4 holiday sales… if you’re reading this blog, you likely will soon! We’re planning early and giving you the tools you need to be prepared this holiday season for all things advertising and marketing.

Tired of feeling alone in your ad buying and wish you had a community? That’s where we come in. The Foxwell Founders ad buying membership is a community of more than 450 ad buyers of all levels - from beginner to expert - who collaborate daily on best practices, what’s working, bugs, creatives, things to test, and so much more. We even have a Q4 & BFCM channel where we’re already talking about all the ins and outs of our biggest weekend of the year. Interested? Learn more here.

What you need to do to be prepared in advance for Black Friday/Cyber Monday ad buying in 2023

1. Pull a report of what worked during BFCM and Q4 last year.

   • Look at account structure, creatives, spend, scaling methods, etc.

   • Our favorite way to analyze creative is with Motion. (All Foxwell Founders members receive a discount to Motion!)

2. Pull a report for what has worked well in the account so far YTD

   • Look at what sales have worked - sale amount and communication/marketing of it, creatives that did or didn’t work

   • Look at what account structure has been working in the account - has ASC been successful? Have you tested ASC enough? How has retargeting been performing? What audiences have been working and not working? Have you tested lookalikes or interests lately? Are they successful?

   • Look at business-as-usual and evergreen content of what has been working in the account recently

   • Look at products that are and aren’t working and what messaging has or hasn’t been working for communicating why someone needs the product

3. Research the customer conversion journey — how long does it take from the time someone first hears about the brand until they purchase?

   • Use this information to help determine your strategy ahead of BFCM & Q4. If it takes 3 months to purchase, then what are you doing 3 months before BFCM to start to plant that seed in your customer’s head to start thinking about the product, then have them ready to convert come your BFCM sale

4. Is the product/brand giftable? Will messaging need to change to focus on gift giving as opposed to buying for yourself?

5. Create a timeline for media buying and creative needs. Start at BFCM weekend and work backwards. The length of the timeline will depend on how long certain tasks will take and any roadblocks you might hit. Keep in mind work time for if you are requesting something from the brand, a creator, editor, designer, etc., and what their turnaround time is from putting in the request to delivery, then approval times, etc. Your timeline will likely want to include:

   • Time for researching past data and what has worked in the account for previous year BFCMs and YTD

   • Planning what creative is needed (and how much) for all of BFCM & post-BFCM holiday gifting creative

   • Plan time with the brand/client for what the sale will be and what their plans and expectations are. Understand how much you are planning to scale budget (if at all), what your scale thresholds are, etc. Also work with the brand/client to crunch numbers and know what your floor MER and other numbers are ahead of time. Keep in mind, these numbers will change when you are discounting the product, so make sure you know what your scaling MER threshold is during high sales times

   • Putting in all creative requests for said content - to creators, editors, etc. Understand what each creator’s and editor’s turnaround time is

   • Approval time for client and time for iterations or edits if needed

   • Time for account structure planning and building

   • Time for ad approvals in Meta - during high seasons like BFCM, the time for an ad to get through approval can be much longer than normal - sometimes as much as a few days longer. We usually suggest to have all creative launched and turned off or scheduled by no later than Monday or Tuesday of BFCM week.

6. For ads between now and BFCM, talk to the brand to see if you are able to sacrifice some MER/profitability to gather more data and build audiences who will likely purchase in November?

   • Understanding your floor MER & ROAS will be immensely helpful as you’re trying to scale. Remember that as you scale budget, ROAS will decrease/MER will increase, which is NORMAL. The brand is making more overall profit even if the margins are a bit lower.

   • Take a play from the big TV brands this Q3/early Q4: When sales start slowing down between August - October, begin testing the offers the client is considering for Q4 (micro sales). These can be a big help for brands to dial Q4 in a bit and helps to get a bump in sales to keep the account steady when things slow down

   • Bonus points if you use video in the tests to retarget those who viewed the videos to hopefully get them to convert in Q4

7. Help the brand understand the effects of scaling on other aspects of their business

   • Especially if this is their first BFCM, or their first holiday season scaling big, OR if they’re just a smaller brand with less experience. Remind them that scaling ad budget may require increased staffing needs, more customer service, more product or supplies to be ordered ahead of time, etc.

   • Planning how much you intend to scale will be helpful for them also to know about what volume of orders and product to be expecting

8. Set up all tracking and reporting you plan to use during Q4

   • Understand what metrics are important to you and the client, and create a report or dashboard that takes care of that. Is it manual? Automatic? Do you prefer one over the other? Think about these things now so that come Q4, you’re ready to roll with SO. MUCH. DATA!

9. Have a plan of how much you and the brand would like to scale

   • Have a low, medium, high, and stretch goal for spend and profit numbers. Plan for each and know what it would take to get to each level.

   • The more you plan and think about if/then statements and different scenarios, the more prepared you’ll be when BFCM ads are chaos, and you’ll already know your plan of action no matter which variables change.