14 October, 2024
by Liam Cogan
Explore the intricacies of Black Friday and Christmas marketing campaigns with experts from across three teams of All Response Media. They delve into valuable insights on consumer behaviour, strategic planning, and creative execution to help brands maximise their impact during the festive season. The discussion covers the evolution of Black Friday and its current relevance, consumer behaviour trends and how brands can adapt, effective planning and execution for holiday campaigns, creative strategies to capture consumer attention, media channel testing and optimisation, navigating external factors like economic conditions and political events, and post-Christmas opportunities for boosting sales.
Watch the full episode or read the blog below.
From Black Friday to Boxing Day: Strategic Insights for Marketing Leaders
As we approach the critical period of Black Friday and Christmas, it’s essential for marketing leaders to understand the evolving consumer behaviours and strategic approaches that can maximise campaign effectiveness.
The Evolution of Black Friday
Black Friday has significantly evolved since its inception in the UK a decade ago. Though it started in the US and has always been more popular there, it found it’s way to the UK and the rest of the world respectively. Initially characterised by a frenzy of one-day deals, the event has now stretched into a prolonged period of sales. This shift is largely driven by the cost-of-living crisis and consumer fatigue with the intense pressure of a single-day event. Brands are increasingly opting for extended sales periods, offering flash sales throughout the season to provide consumers with more time to make purchasing decisions, which in turn, has made consumers happier overall.
Consumer Behaviour and Brand Strategies
Recent research indicates a decline in the search for Black Friday deals, suggesting a shift in consumer behaviour. While the appetite for savings remains, the urgency has diminished. Brands are responding by avoiding the hard sell and instead focusing on creating a more relaxed shopping experience. For instance, some brands are choosing not to participate in Black Friday discounts but are leveraging the increased online traffic to retarget potential customers with relevant offers. An example of this is one of our clients, a cybersecurity software seller who take advantage of the increased demand of laptop and phone sales around Black Friday and retarget people that are buying those particular laptops using things like the Amazon DSP.
Planning and Execution
Effective planning is crucial for a successful Black Friday and Christmas campaign. Marketing leaders should ensure that plans are in place at least eight weeks in advance. This includes developing a sales calendar, aligning creative strategies, and determining the optimal mix of media channels. Digital campaigns, in particular, benefit from early planning to allow for algorithm learning and optimisation. The advantage of Digital channels is you can be quite nimble, as you can switch them on and off throughout different periods. You can be amending your audiences throughout as well as amending your budgets. However, you don’t want to be too flexible by bringing in too many new channels at any one point, especially over the three- or four-day period of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, because the algorithm needs time to learn.
Tv on the other hand, has a much longer lead time than digital. However, established advertisers that may have TV creative already made, could be getting on TV in as little as four or five days, (assuming that they had availability and that they can advocate for spots). That’s why planning ahead is so key, to avoid the risk of losing out on key slots that you want if you leave it too late. Another thing is that reach and frequency builds early in November for some of the consumer audience out there. Some people need that long consideration period to look at a product, think about it, go through that thought process in their head before they go on to make a purchase. So rather than necessarily funnelling all our spend into Black Friday week and early December, we think about how we can build some reach in early November and then capitalise on that closer to the period when the consumer is more in the decision making process.
Creative Strategies
Creativity plays a pivotal role in capturing consumer attention during this busy period. Incorporating countdown messaging in digital ads and adding Black Friday-specific flashes to existing TV creatives can enhance relevance and urgency. However, it’s important to maintain consistency in messaging to build trust with consumers. Abrupt changes in deals can erode consumer confidence. Another thing that’s often useful is A/B testing your creative. For example, if you find that one product or one message is driving more web response than another, you should change that messaging to capitalise on that.
Media Channel Testing
While consistency is key, there is also room for testing new channels and approaches as long as it’s done strategically and carefully. Allocating a portion of the budget to experiment with different media can provide valuable insights and drive future growth. For brands with seasonal peaks, this period offers an opportunity to trial broader approaches and innovative creative strategies. Keeping things relatively consistent is quite important because your paid search campaigns and social in general, is what’s going to have the learning. When it comes to that Black Friday period, those are the ones that you should be looking to push slightly more. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t test. If a brand/company has more budget available, (and doesn’t test), you won’t learn, and won’t grow. Putting aside 10-15% of your budget is an important tool towards growing your brand for the future.
Navigating External Factors
External factors such as economic conditions, postal strikes, and political events can impact campaign performance. Marketing leaders must remain vigilant and adaptable, ready to pivot strategies as needed. Automation tools can help manage campaigns efficiently, but human oversight is essential to respond to unexpected changes. An example of this is the current situation. With it being a US election year, we’re coming up to what is probably the most turbulent period across social media in recent times. You can see so many different brands. You’re going to see so many different QA systems within your different social media channels. Meta have enhanced their QA and their fake news reporting over this particular period so any brands that are increasing their budget over this period, might get flagged by Meta for something that is not their fault. Whilst that is easily appealable, it can still result in your ads being turned off.
Post-Christmas Opportunities
The period following Christmas presents a unique opportunity for brands. With reduced competition and lower media costs, it’s an ideal time to boost visibility and drive sales for the new year. Brands should consider extending their campaigns into January to capitalise on this quieter yet lucrative period. Traditionally, the post-Xmas period always started on the 26th of December, but it’s now been brought earlier, beginning around the 18th/19th of December. If you’re a travel brand for example, that’s a fantastic opportunity because January is a key travel period where people plan holidays. It’s also a great opportunity to reach a more affluent audience because they’re also at home during the day, and you can reach them with reduced CPTs.
Conclusion
As we navigate the complexities of Black Friday and Christmas campaigns, the key to success lies in strategic planning, creative execution, and adaptability. By understanding consumer behaviour, leveraging media effectively, and staying responsive to external factors, marketing leaders can maximise their impact during this critical season. For the majority of advertisers during the holiday period, the focus is going to be ROI. But when we look at the start of the period, when you’re warming people up, you want to be doing more awareness campaigns. The more people that are coming through to your website, the more people that are looking at your different products, the larger that audience pool is going to be, and the more tailored you could be to target those in that Black Friday and Christmas sales period.
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