Digital Marketing Best Practices for a Successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday

The most important days of the year for digital marketers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are just around the corner. It’s when your marketing strategies come to fruition and your ideas help your businesses capitalize on the influx of shoppers. 

According to the National Retail Association, 196.7 million Americans shopped in stores and online during the five-day holiday shopping period in 2022, and just as shoppers prepare for this year’s holiday shopping, marketers need to properly strategize to ensure their campaigns run just as smoothly to reach shoppers. 

Here are our best practices to help you get the most out of your BFCM strategy:

Get ahead of approvals by publishing content in advance‍

Sometimes launches can be delayed due to creative approvals on each platform, leading to a negative impact on revenue and costs, and reducing your time in market. A way to prevent this is by publishing content 2-3 days in advance to get ahead of those pesky 24-hour wait time approvals. We recommend utilizing Smartly.io’s Triggers feature to activate and pause time-sensitive creatives at set times so that your team can use their time efficiently.

‍Strategically pre-set holiday flights

Marketers tend to set monthly budgets every quarter to evenly pace their campaigns throughout the year. However, November is the golden child of the bunch that should get more attention than the others. Plan your budgets by week for November to take advantage of the peak shopping days. Many of our customers use our “Smart Budget Scheduling” tool in Smartly.io to pre-set their budgets based on their media plans.

Plan to spend heavily the week leading up to BFCM

Another best practice is to plan to spend a considerable amount of ad dollars the week leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday. We know, spend more money? Hear us out. It’s because consumers are shopping earlier than ever before and you’ll need a strong budget plan to reach them during that week. Adobe Analytics reported that consumers spent $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday alone in 2022, a 6% increase from 2021, which means consumers are willing to break the bank when it comes to holiday deals and you’ll need to keep up with the demand to ensure that your brand stays on the top of their minds.

‍Utilize automation for messaging and changes in performance

The best thing a digital marketer can manage is their time, especially throughout all the chaos that can happen during Q4. Unexpected changes and issues can be costly and the faster you know about them the better. Using automation to notify you of performance changes will keep you on your toes and will save you and your team a lot of time if issues do arise. Our trigger tool is a great way to build out notifications to alert you of any changes in real time.

Effectively planning out your Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a difficult task. One of our customers, DR SMILE, also struggled to set their goals in motion for the holiday season. But with Smartly.io, they were able to have a groundbreaking Black Friday by leveraging our creative tools to generate 5000 engaging ad creatives in multiple languages across different channels, saving them ample amount of time while achieving their campaign goals all in one platform.

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By leveraging our best practices above, you can help alleviate some pain points and prepare your brand for a successful holiday season. It’s time to make a difference with your BFCM marketing strategy. Request a demo and see how Smartly.io can help your business this season.