Black Friday Sales? That's So 2019

If the rest of the year hasn't tipped you off yet, last year's holiday sales strategies probably aren't suitable for a "rinse and repeat" application this year. Black Friday sales are so 2019.

With the whole world turned upside down - from the dizzying drop in brick and mortar spending to the economic hardships faced by so many people - it's time to look at holiday sales with a fresh eye. I've run holiday campaigns through three recessions and a pandemic, and the one thing that never changes is this: whoever clings hardest to "the way we did it last year" loses the most ad spend.

Here's what we recommend for the Q4 holiday push:

A quick caveat: we know OUR business, and we know marketing, but we don't know YOUR business. You do. Take these suggestions as just that: suggestions. Use your gut (and your data) to make the right decision for your business. Okay, disclaimer over, let's do this!

Ditch the Flash Sales

Skip the One-Day Flash Sales (Black Friday, Small-Business Saturday, Cyber Monday… skip ALL of them)

Flash sales require advertising run-up time to get good traction on the actual single day of sale. That means dumping a significant amount of your ad spend budget into the learning phase to optimize ad performance in time for your sale. And don't get us started on delayed ad approvals. Pick the platform, pour a stiff drink, fluff your pillows, and hope your approvals come back in less than a day…or three.

And if 2020 wasn't already challenging enough…you're going to be fighting against campaign spending (which will take about 2 weeks after elections close to ramp down) and EVERY OTHER MARKETER who's realized that digital campaigns are their only hope for a profitable Q4. Long story short: ad inventory will be low and competition (and therefore costs) will be high.

If people aren't shopping the traditional way this year, why should you have to push to a sales tactic that's rapidly becoming obsolete?

Don't assume they'll come back day-after-day to see what your newest special is… they're getting blasted with a ton of noise from other marketers right now and fatigue sets in fast these days.

Run a Week-Long Sale Instead

Set up a holiday sale that lasts for a week or more with all of the specials available at the same time. Focus on bringing customers into your store and giving them access to everything at once.

Selling for the season lets you really maximize the efficiency of your ad campaign. That's why we recommend running 3-6 ads throughout the campaign. Running a single ad will lead to ad fatigue, which diminishes your results. And if that single ad is riding on a headline nobody bothers to read past, you're sunk before the sale even starts -- we've written more about why your headline is doing most of the heavy lifting and shouldn't be an afterthought.

Here's what our recommended strategy looks like:

Your 3-Part Ad Strategy

• 2 Awareness Ads: Let people know about your holiday sales. Use a shop now call-to-action, but focus more on the high-level offerings and offer the chance to shop. Great images and/or videos are important here, especially if you're offering physical products the audience won't have a chance to experience in person before purchasing.
• 2 Direct Sales or Call-To-Action Ads: Simple and focused on the offer and a reason to act now.
• 2 Retargeting Ads: These are great for staying in front of people who engaged in your previous ads, but didn't add-to-cart and people who added-to-cart but didn't purchase.

One last thing: none of this works if you're the kind of shop that panics mid-campaign and starts second-guessing every ad because a client (or your own gut) wants to "just tweak it a little." Lock the strategy, run the full week, let the data talk. If you're struggling to get buy-in internally on that discipline, that's usually less of a creative problem and more of a trust problem with whoever's signing off on the work.