What you need to know:
- Start planning now! Time flies by much faster than you think and there’s quite a bit that needs to be worked on and prepared. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just a few months away and you’ll need every second to make sure you have developed a solid, well-researched strategy, creative assets are finalized and tested, and prepare your site and landing pages. Ideally, your team should start prepping six months in advance.
- Expect higher costs when it comes to ads: We can expect to see CPMs increase by 50-80% (or more) across social platforms. It’s no surprise since the paid social competition is extremely high. Increased costs should be expected and you’ll need to budget accordingly if you want to truly compete with other brands offering similar products.
What you can be doing now:
- Increase spend for video placements (TikTok and Reels). We’re living in a video-first world. TikTok is obviously primarily video and, in order to compete and please users, Facebook is prioritizing video content as well. So if you want to make the most of your marketing spend, video is the way to go.
- Investing in top-notch video creative. Increasing spend for video placements isn’t going to do the trick if the creatives you’re running aren’t compelling. There is going to be a whole lotta noise that your ads could be drowned in. UGC-style videos are crushing it and outperforming highly branded studio-produced videos.
Do your creatives grab attention immediately? Do they show and tell how your brand and products are different than any other brand? Do you have various faces within the videos to establish social proof and cater to your different buyer personas?
Here are some quick tips for creating BFCM video ad creatives: - At least 3-5 creatives per offer or angle
- Create in 9:16 ratio for TikTok and Reels
- Keep messaging clear and simple. You don’t have to fit every benefit and point into one single video.
- Keep the audience in mind for each creative and who they are to the brand. If they’re cold, your goal is to introduce them to the brand, what it is, and the value of the product. If they’re warm, you might want to give them a deal for purchasing again if they’re already a customer. Or you’re trying to crush the objections in the way of their conversion.
- Prepare promotions. Big and simple, sitewide discounts are a great idea. If you can’t discount, then develop bundles, digital add-ons, and/or free shipping.
- Build your audience and focus on collecting emails to use for retargeting, custom audiences, and launching early access BFCM deals to avoid getting lost in all of the other promo emails on the actual event days
- Revamp your website, landing pages, and pop-ups to reflect the current deals as well as do regular maintenance and clean-up—check load times, all pages work, plug-in updates, checkout process, and make sure the site doesn’t have any issues on other devices.
Our take:
You have a lot on your plate in general day-to-day life. And the holidays are extremely hectic, so it’s important to be realistic with your team’s capacity and plan accordingly. In order to get everything completed in a way that will get you the most ROI for your spend, something has to give.
To get top-quality creatives that convert, you’ll need concepts, briefs, inspiration, creators, editing, and project management from start to finish. That’s where we come in and that’s our zone of genius.
It’s a full-time and tedious job just to source and manage creators—let alone all of the other things we named to get creative assets that are ready to launch. Let us be an extension of your team and do the heavy lifting for you. Get started here.
