Disclaimer: This article has been updated with new data from September 2024.

We’re stepping into Q4. Have you started your Black Friday Cyber Monday prep yet? The longer you wait, the more you’ll miss out.

BFCM is one of the most important events of the year for eCommerce.

They’re a fierce introduction to the holiday season and are known to make or break millions of brands.

BFCM 2024 Dates

If you’re wondering when does Black Friday Cyber Monday start this year:

Black Friday – November 29th.

Cyber Monday – December 2nd.

Everyone wants to know how to maximize sales and spotlight their brand during BFCM. This year is no exception.

Let us show you how it’s done.

BFCM 2024: Ecommerce Takes the Gold

Do you remember when Black Friday Cyber Monday was an in-person spectacle? People rioted and trampled to secure their savings.

In more recent years, the convenience of online shopping started to threaten retail stores. The pandemic accelerated that transition: sales boomed online while real-time footage showed empty shopping malls and stores. 

And the data supports what our eyes have confirmed. According to Stacked Marketer, over 67% of US-based consumers planned to do their Black Friday shopping online, while only 27% preferred to get their deals in-store.

Back in 2019, Shopify merchants recorded $2.9 billion in online sales. Last year, that number was $7.5 billion. 

In a world of dying industries, eCommerce is on the rise.

BFCM 2024 Preparation Timeline

Every year, the number of online stores grows, and eCommerce sellers have to work a little harder. 

Taking on BFCM unprepared is like skydiving without a parachute. It won’t end well. 

But, if you diversify your platforms, create captivating ads, and optimize well ahead of the season, you’ll touch down with the highest returns of the year.

Here are a few good places to start, using Google Ads as our primary focus point.

Here’s the preparation timeline for 2024:

• Prior to BFCM 2024 (September – October 2024): This is where you’ll do account structure check up to make scaling easier.
• Setting up for BFCM (November 2024): Create specific campaigns, matching audiences, make use of ad extensions, and more.
• During BFCM (late November 2024): Use Auction Insights tab to compare performance with competitors, scale what’s working, keep an eye on CPCs and CPAs.

To demonstrate this, we’ll show how we do it using Google Ads as our primary focus point. We’ll move on different channels later.

Preparing ads for BFCM: Google Ads Example

Before BFCM

You’ll want to start your preparations early to make scaling easier.

During September and October, take a high-level look at your overall account and focus on optimization.

Make sure you’ve created a scalable account structure. Organize your campaigns by collection and best-performing products on Shopping, PMax, and DSAs. 

Also, consider adding Shopping Feeds to your Discovery ads to boost conversions. Optimize your feeds using Titles and Descriptions with your most relevant and searched keywords. You can add “BFCM” to your titles to make them more competitive in Shopping results.

Having tags in place will also help you accurately track your conversions and revenue. Properly-attributed revenue means you can put your ad spend in the right places to make the biggest impact.

Remember your audiences!

By defining your remarketing and prospecting audiences, where you plan to target them, and tailoring your copy and creatives for each step of the funnel, you’ll increase the impact of your touchpoints and retain more customers at every stage. Here are the basic, must-use audiences for any successful campaign:

• Remarketing: Website Visitors, Product Page Visitors, ATC, Cart Abandoners
• Remarketing Up/Cross-Sell: Past Purchasers, Customer Lists (reactivate existing customers with special offers and upsell/cross-sell)
• Prospecting: Similar Audiences (Past Purchasers, High-Value Customers, Engagers)
• Custom Segments: Based on performing keywords sourced from Search, PMax, Websites, and Competitors

BFCM Setup

With high-level organization out of the way, it’s time to get more granular in the weeks leading up to BFCM.

Ensure you create Campaigns, Ad Groups, Creatives, and Ad Extensions at least 72 hours before your planned launch. During BFCM, ad approvals take longer than usual.

You’ll also want to use Sitelink, Callout, and Promotion ad extensions to launch your offers and discounts for maximum reach. 

Remember to use Google Merchant Center Promotions for Shopping Ads and Free Listing. These will allow you to include product badges to highlight sales and discounts. This type of badge on your ads will attract more clicks and, ultimately, more purchases.

Here are a few organizational tips to help manage all of these changes:

• Add BFCM and branded keywords to your campaigns.
• Add new ad groups with BFCM ads to all your campaigns.
• Create rules to turn your campaigns on and off. 
• Double-check (and then triple-check) that all of your rules are working.

Now is also the perfect time to increase budgets on your best-performing campaigns and turn on seasonal bid adjustments. 

To avoid sending your campaigns back to the learning phase, try not to make any significant changes to your shopping feed at least three weeks before your BFCM promotions begin.

During BFCM

Now that BFCM is underway. The initial setup you did leading up to the main event should mean that there is little work left to do. Here’s a quick checklist to help you keep up during these few hectic days.

• Use your Auction Insights tab to compare your performance with your competitors. This research will help you make more strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting. 
• Keep a close eye on all your running campaigns, and scale aggressively on those that are working.
• Monitor your ATC and Purchase conversion rates, and if you’re underperforming, check in with your email marketing team to create a plan of action.

Tips To Prepare For BFCM

1. Set Up BFCM Goals

Setting up your BFCM goals goes much broader than just setting up Facebook Ads: What’s your goal? Do you want to drive traffic to the website? Increase conversion rates? All these things will impact the campaigns you want to create.

 Here are some of the many different types of goals for brands to focus on during the BFCM seasons:

Determine your most important KPIs and stay on track when the season becomes hectic.

3. Prepare Discounts

Why do people love BFCM and Q4? Because of the discounts.

This magical word will trigger a shopping frenzy like no other.

However, an everyday discount offer is by no means enough for fired-up consumers — Don’t stick a 10%, 15%, 20% tag off a particular product and think you’ve done enough.

You’ll need to up your discount game.

In 2019, Numerator released intriguing research on average BFCM discounts.

The average Black Friday discount was 43.3%, while Cyber Monday had 40.5%. The highest discounts included housewares, apparel, footwear, and jewelry – 50 to 60% on average. 

And yes, you might think that huge discounts aren’t profitable (and of course you’d be right).

But during Black Friday Cyber Monday you don’t focus only on revenue, ROI, and similar metrics.

Instead, you need to focus on customer acquisition.

Remember, this is the time when most people are extremely shopping friendly.

You need to capitalize on this and acquire as many customers as possible. These are users that you’ll retarget and/or upsell with email and remarketing campaigns throughout the year.

And BFCM marketing campaigns are a perfect place to acquire such users.

4. Boost Social Validation

Boosting social validation is one of the most important pieces of the groundwork for a successful BFCM campaign.

If you still haven’t done anything about it, now’s the right time.

Why is social validation important?

If someone recommends you a product, you’re more likely to consider it than if you just see it online.

People trust other people’s judgment. Brands… not so much.

You can sell the best footwear, the best dog accessories, or skincare product. But if you don’t have social validation on your ads it’ll raise eyebrows among your potential customers.

Engagements, user-generated content, reviews, testimonials… It all adds to the customer’s trust.

Remember: It’s not only the quality that sells – it’s the hype around the brand as well. Make sure you use testimonials and reviews in your ads and you’ll most certainly profit.

5.    Make Eye-Catching Ad Creatives

Your Facebook ads aren’t worth much if you don’t decorate them with eye-catching visuals. And during BFCM this is more crucial than ever.

Your prospects are inundated with attractive offers, beautiful visuals, and copy from your competitors during Q4 more than any other time of the year. 

You’ve got to get your creative juices flowing and make your ad creatives stand out from the bunch.

Once you know your goals, your discounts, and you’ve worked on your social validation, you should have enough materials to create engaging ads (or hire someone to do it for you ).

6.  Set Up Your Ads

Now that you’ve laid the foundation, it’s time to focus on the technical part. If you don’t set up your ad properly, you won’t be able to promote your BFCM sale.

Everything from setting up your Facebook Ads Manager, setting pixels, applying segmentation, and preparing audiences to fall into this category.

We won’t spend as much time on this given that you’ve probably got it all set up. But if you haven’t done this before, what are you waiting for?

Head over to Facebook and follow the step-by-step instructions.

7. Start Early

How do you plan for Black Friday or Q4? Don’t fool yourself into thinking there’s still time until Q4 gets in full swing. 

There’s not. 

There are two reasons for this:

1. You got to capture your buyers’ attention early. There’s no use in finding prospects if your expensive ad is just a drop in the ocean; and…. 

2. CPMs spike massively as you move closer to BFCM, making buying traffic expensive.

The takeaway here is that if you’re late to the advertising party, you’re probably up for a major disappointment.

A lot of marketers tone down their spending prior to BFCM and prepare to go all-in for Q4. What do you think happens? You’ll spend a huge chunk of money on your ads only for them to get lost in the dark.

Instead, start with your top-of-the-funnel campaign as soon as the Q4 starts. Build anticipation for what’s going to happen next and pre-cook your customers so you can later switch to the real deal – remarketing.

Here are some tips:

• Sneak peek at BFCM deals: Announce your Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign with ads that build hype for the real thing.
• Sale start notification: Make a landing page with a countdown until the sale starts. Add a sign-up form that will notify your customers when the sale starts. Easy lead generation and guaranteed sales!
• Regular prospecting campaigns to gather data: You can still run prospecting campaigns even if sales are down (as they are before the holiday season). Facebook can gather insight on website visitors, past purchasers, etc which you can use for remarketing during the sale.

8. Leverage New Platforms and Features

It’s an exciting summer ahead for social advertisers.

Instagram Reels (platform’s answer to TikTok) rolled out Reels Ads. Meaning you can utilize this super new and popular platform for your Black Friday campaigns.

Some brands may think it’s bold to put their campaign’s fortunes into such a recent platform. The data is lacking and the results are still mixed.

But as they say – those who dare, win. And usually, those that capitalize on new trends before everybody else jumps in win the most.

The other platform that should bring great results is, of course, TikTok. A relative newcomer to the ad space took over the entire industry by storm.

Think of creative ways to get your Black Friday offers out to the TikTok public and you may see a surge in sales!

Tip: Partnering with influencers may do wonders for your TikTok ads.

9. Set Up a Facebook Store

Facebook Store provides shoppers with a streamlined customer journey and a fast checkout. Two things that are becoming absolutely crucial in the eCommerce landscape.

If you’re running Facebook ads, a Facebook store allows users to complete their purchases without ever leaving the platform.

This helps fend off distractions eliminate cart abandonment, and make the entire shopping experience as close to real life as possible.

Not to mention the importance of a fast checkout in the evolving eCommerce space. Facebook even integrated Facebook Pay just to deal with this issue.

If you still haven’t set up a Facebook store yet, here’s a little guide to get you started.

10. Make Sure Your Ads Provide Clarity

This part is closely related to your ad creative and one thing’s for certain: BFCM and Q4 are not the best time to experiment.

If you have tried and true campaigns that convert, don’t try to go too much outside the box. Make your ad creatives clear, eye-catching, and immersive.

According to Global Web Index, 86% of people worldwide would like to hear from brands that are running a particular promotion. So arm yourself with offers, bundles, and/or discounts, and make sure you display them clearly to your audience.

Remember: our attention lasts for three seconds. If it takes you more than that to transmit your brand’s message, your prospect will swim away.

11.  Rethink Your Brand Voice

Last year caused most brands to restrategize the way they address their audience.

A recent study from Merkle claimed that spending will be focused on needs, not wants as shoppers adapt to the consequences of pandemic (both economical and psychological).

Shoppers don’t want brands to act as if nothing is happening and advertise products or services in a vacuum.

Yes, we’re struggling. Everybody is and that’s okay.

If you can, don’t be afraid to emphasize that in your ads.

Another thing, it’s vital to match the values of the modern consumer.

Ethical manufacturing practices, positive societal or environmental impact, and nurturing long-term relationships will go a long way.

12. Focus On Remarketing

BFCM is when remarketing can see the most success.

You’ve spent so much time capturing leads, nurturing your brand identity, and growing relationships with your customers. Now it’s time to turn all that hard work into results.

With a good remarketing campaign, you’ll appeal to all those users that already had an interest in your product.

So let’s say you start your prospecting early.

You’ll gather a database of engagers, website visitors, leads, past purchasers, etc.

Then when the BFCM is in full swing, you can get your remarketing ads to pick those shoppers up again.

Also, you’ll manage to stick in the back of their mind for whatever product you’re offering.

Tip: The majority of customers are going online but you can still try to replicate their offline behaviors as well.

Use ads such as carousel to showcase as much of your store as you can.

13. Optimize Ads For Mobile

U.S. consumers are now using smartphones more than any other device. Thus, they’re more likely to encounter your awesome ad while scrolling on their mobile.

In fact, Shopify records an increase in conversions via mobile year after year.

For that reason, it’s best to optimize your ads for mobile. The same goes for your landing pages as well – the responsive design may look great, but it’s not always convenient for mobile phone users.

14. Salvage Your Abandoned Carts

The majority of marketers think that driving traffic to the website and capturing leads is half the job done.

However, when you understand the full scope of the consumer journey, you’ll know it’s far less than that.

Statista released new research in March 2020 saying that 88% of carts on average were abandoned worldwide.

This means that you need to set up a few remarketing campaigns that will appeal to all those users that left their carts.

Luckily, most social platforms allow you to target cart abandoners with special ads to try and convert them one last time.

Usually, these ads go with special offers, discount codes, free shipping, etc, which can push the prospect for that one final click.

TIP: Create an abandon cart strategy just for BFCM. Set up an email trigger 15 minutes after website visitor abandons their cart. In a hectic holiday season, shoppers are easily distracted and they may forget they ever visited your website!

15. Leverage SMS

SMS marketing is the next big thing and there’s no better time than BFCM to test that.

According to research, an average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes each day looking at their phone.

And check these two awesome stats from Yotpo:

• SMS open rate is over 90%
• 90% are opened and read within the first 3 minutes

So here’s what you need to do.

First, create engaging content that’s both witty and short. Use it to inform them of your BFCM offer and place a CTA with a link that would take them to your landing page.

But beware. Pushy, aggressive SMS marketing can put customers off as well. So tread lightly when you start setting up your SMS campaign.

16. Get Loyalty Programs Going

As mentioned, cultivating positive relationships is the priority of Gen-Z consumers.

Rewarding loyal customers during BFCM brings a lot of upsides.

Increase customer retention, raise brand awareness, and you might even get some user-generated content.

It’s also natural to communicate your appreciation to your most loyal shoppers.

Here’s some stuff you can implement to prize your most loyal customers:

• Offer special discounts to repeat customers
• Send trial pieces of new products to most loyal buyers in exchange for a feedback
• Offer gifts with purchase

How To Run Successful BFCM Ads By Channel

Here, we’ve gathered some of the best tips and tricks to implement during BFCM and organized them by channel so you can get the most out of your marketing team.

BFCM Meta Ads Tips

Your Meta Ads will reach potential customers on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

For maximum results, diversify and set up ads for Prospecting and Remarketing audiences.

Here are some more Meta marketing tips that we’ll implement in our agency as well:

• Use a wide campaign: The wider your net, the more fish you’ll catch. So, include both prospecting and remarketing in one campaign or ASC+. And test ALL your audiences, even if they aren’t top performers in your evergreen campaigns. 
• Don’t skimp on run-time: Run your ads for at least five days to achieve complete optimization. Plus, include DPA frames for a unified look across your campaign.
• Start early: If you wait too long, you’ll risk getting stuck in the review period when your ads need to be live.
• Optimize your landing page: Use one central landing page with BFCM deals plastered throughout. This one-stop page ensures that your potential customers can’t miss your offers. And while we’re on the topic of optimization, don’t be afraid to reuse your top creatives from BFCM for future holidays.
• Increase your budget: You’ll want to start your promotional campaign at as high a budget as you can. Ideally, 2-3x your current daily budget. Optimize aggressively, and don’t be afraid to turn ads off quickly if they don’t perform. 
• Be a tease: Create a sneak peek at BFCM teasers before they go live to generate buzz. Whitelisting and signup campaigns are also effective ways to excite your customer base during BFCM.
• Be generous: Run a giveaway to collect leads and funnel in emails. Everyone loves a freebie.

BFCM Email Tips

Did you know email subscribers spend 138% more on average than non-subscribers? 🤯

Your email marketing program — not your paid campaigns — will likely be your biggest source of holiday eCommerce revenue.

So, building your email list is the most important thing you can do right now to secure Black Friday and Cyber Monday success.

Here are a few tips to ensure you get the most out of your email marketing.

• Grow your list: Start early and capture as many email addresses as possible by using pop-ups, landing page capture, and lead ads. 
• Don’t be shy: Put your discounts front and center. Last year, our email campaigns with “$xx off” messaging had the highest conversion rate at 14.8%
• Make it personal: Wherever possible, include personalization in your title and email body. 
• Know your enemy: Conduct a brief competitor analysis. Find out what competitors in your industry offer, where they are weak, and what your brand can do better.
• Know your audience: Segmentation is key. Maximize the value of your remarketing audience by creating segments from your lists and talking to each in a way that resonates best with them. That includes giving loyalty and new customers different deals and using separate messaging for past buyers who haven’t made any purchases this year but are still engaging with your emails. 
• Know your holiday: Your audience is in a giving mood. Entice gift-givers with irresistible promotions and use gifting and holiday lingo to help give your emails a contemporary and persuasive feel. Your subject lines and personalization will do a lot of heavy lifting here, so don’t shy away from A/B testing.
• Show the goods: Include dynamic product feeds in your emails specific to your audience’s needs. Try your hand at gift sets, items under $400, sales, tops, and other commonly gifted accessories. 
• Keep It Simple: Wherever possible, simplify. Make your offers easy to understand and your shipping dates obvious for your least-savvy customers. 

BFCM Copy & Creative Tips

Now that you’ve got your footing with the technical side of your ads and strategies, make sure your copy and creatives align with your goals, too.

Here are some tips your creative teams can follow to ensure that your ads can close the deal when they get in front of the right people at the right time. 

• Don’t be too specific: Keep your offers broad for longevity. For example, your copy and creatives might promote a sale as “up to 60% off.” That way, you don’t have to change your ads whenever the sale fluctuates. 
• But also, don’t be too vague: Be clear that you’re offering a discount and that it’s for Black Friday. At this time of year, your creatives should be sale-focused, not benefit- or product-focused. Your customers know what they’re looking for, and they’ll keep scrolling if you don’t make it clear that you have it at a discount.
• Get to the point: Now is not the time for long-form copy. Your customer’s attention span is already short, and that’s without the plethora of other juicy BFCM sales at their fingertips. So, don’t meander. Your goal is to draw their attention and clearly explain your deal in as little time as possible.
• Their poor planning is your advantage: There is no greater panic than last-minute gift shopping. So, put your shipping times front and center with “Order by” dates to receive the items before Christmas. Messaging like this is often the final deciding factor for less coordinated shoppers.  
• Frames are your friends: Create DPA frames for your products to give every shown collection a more cohesive feel for your potential customers. Following the above principles, it’s a good idea to include your sales in these frames prominently.
• Don’t age yourself: These ads may not be evergreen, but you can make them feel that way by avoiding specific dates and times. Instead, use phrases like “limited time only” and “hurry” to create urgency.

Short Case Study: TGM Ads That Crushed BFCM

The proof’s in the pudding. Don’t think we’d let you go without a few examples!

BFCM Meta Ad Example 1 – Pixi Beauty US

Last year, Pixi Beauty US had lofty goals to boost its performance and dominate the over-saturated beauty industry during BFCM.

They tasked us with making a competitive offer while still turning a profit. So, we put the above best practices into action and set to work preparing this eye-catching ad. 

What worked?

We didn’t date the ad.

While creating a clear sense of urgency is crucial for any short-term ad campaign, we were careful not to apply specific dates to the ad copy or code.

We still capitalize on urgency and FOMO by stating that the sale is for a “limited time only” straight away.

The lack of specificity allows us to reuse these ads in future years and gives our social buyer more control over the start date and run-time to further optimize the campaign (and pull it early, if needed).  

We clearly stated the deal…

The copy and creatives for this campaign work together to state the exact deal and its intended purpose clearly.

When the customer can understand what they’re getting (BOGO 50% off sitewide), why they’re getting it (Black Friday Sale), and how to get it (discount code prominently displayed), then they’re much more likely to click through to the offer and make a purchase.

…And then we sweetened it.

BOGO 50% off can be a steep offer for brands with little payoff.

With competitors offering similar deals or better, your brand can get lost in the noise. Plus, even when your customers buy, your profits will be significantly lower than regular pricing.

Adding a solid freebie to the offer helps you stand out against the competition and see higher returns, as your customers will be incentivized to purchase more items and raise the average order value.

The results?

Pixi killed last year’s BFCM season with a whopping ROAS of 8.69.

BFCM 2024 Checklist

If you’re looking for any extra advice for this year’s BFCM bonanza, you’re at the right place.

When consulting our partners, we provide an in-depth checklist of things that have to be absolutely on point ✅ when preparing campaigns.

Let’s lay it out.

BFCM 2024 Checklist ✅Part 1: Strategy

The first thing you should know is that all changes should be implemented by October 1st.

Don’t hesitate, don’t wait. You’re losing ground to your competitors who have already laid the foundations.

Also, target a very wide audience with your initial BFCM offer: holiday shoppers come out of the woodwork during BFCM, and could have major conversion potential despite not engaging with emails in recent months.

Here’s what you should do when it comes to strategy:

• Define your products and discounts, calculate margins, and take time to think it through
• Create a BFCM activity calendar where you’ll promote and track your campaigns
• Define if you should do lead generation or just sales
• Understand your budget and how much you can realistically spend without hampering your business if the results are not satisfactory.
• Be realistic about your stock. If you go out of stock early, you’ll waste money on ad campaigns.

BFCM 2024 Checklist ✅Part 2: Website

Your website’s UX can make or break a purchase decision.

Make sure your website hero image is adjusted to your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer. Create landing pages and confirm that the dates and times on them are accurate.

Add upsell and cross-sell apps to improve conversion rate and double check inventory and if your website is connected to your Product catalog so it alarms if the stock is low.

Finally, implement product discounts, add BFCM-style images and badges, and also implement a BFCM-style banner in checkout.

BFCM 2024 Checklist ✅Part 3: Creative

As mentioned, eye-catching ad creatives are what will turn “scrollers” into your customers.

BFCM 2024 Checklist ✅Part 4: Ads

We’ve already discussed a lot when it comes to Meta ads, but let’s jog your memory once again.

Here’s how our BFCM Meta Ads checklist mostly looks for this year:

• Populate your audience: using first-party data, server-side tracking, lookalikes, etc.
• Organize your BFCM material: Produce creative assets (influencers, your team, UGCs) and BFCM copy.
• Confirm data tracking: Once again, for Meta and other platforms make sure CAPI and pixel are set up and that your reporting tools are tracking correctly.
• Make sure your ad platform credit limit is not capped and it can scale.
• Confirm budgets and goals across all channels and partners – super important.
• For Google, add countdown in the titles.

BFCM 2024 Checklist ✅Part 5: Email

Setting up email workflows for a particular time of the year is nuanced, so this checklist might be a bit longer.

Here’s what you should do:

• Start with readjusting current workflows to BFCM workflows and create a newsletter calendar.
• Create, organize, and produce BFCM ad material.
• Clean up your list, and maintain list hygiene before you blast out the BFCM campaign.
• Define a VIP audience – loyalists, high-ticket shoppers, etc. Create a separate list for where you give them early sales access, an extra 5% discount, a free gift with purchase, etc.
• Add BFCM urgency/sale call out to big flows like Cart Abandonment
• Create exclusion segments to stop marketing to people who already bought.
• Make sure all URLs include dynamic coupon code parameters and check the post-click UX: Does the code apply to their cart directly? Is it easy to understand the discount?
• Plan resends in advance so you avoid last-minute campaign creation when you want to hit a revenue target.
• Optional: Consider updating your website pop-up with BFCM-related messaging (“get on our VIP list for extra special offers etc.) and send them a relevant Welcome email.

Buckle Up – BFCM’s Around the Corner

Remember that these are just some of the possible tested strategies that should help you increase sales and crush Q4. Of course, we can’t share all our precious tips for success. We’ve got a business to run (nothing personal)!

Nevertheless, this should provide a necessary foundation and trigger a creative spark to help you achieve your Q4 targets.

What else do you do during your BFCM preparation and execution? Do you have some BFCM ad strategies that you’d like to share? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

Also, if you want similar articles, tips, and case studies, don’t hesitate to contact us or subscribe below so you can see every post.