November essentials: Build up to Black Friday with best practices & new insights
To November, that is! In e-commerce marketing, all calendars point to November and its pinnacle moment, Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend. Every year, without fail, November becomes a decisive month for business owners and agencies, crunch time for creative teams, and a marathon for media buyers.
Retailers’ work comes to a crescendo in November: It’s time to take all the insights and leads gained, whether in October or May, and convert them into your highest revenue weekend of the year.
Sounds intense, right? The reality is, aspects of BFCM change every year, but much of it is predictable.
It’s been the biggest sale of the year, every year for a couple decades now. And here at Strategy Labs, we’ve turned practice, analysis, and a little patience over the years into a reliable BFCM playbook.
The best BFCM marketers will operate from a playbook AND consider what’s different about this year. Leveraging data-backed learnings while making educated bets on future trends is essential to seizing this moment.
We’re here to help you do both. Let’s begin.
Welcome back
Why follow Strategy Labs’ playbook? Year after year, we’ve increased our clients’ revenue while decreasing their ad spend. If you’re advertising in Meta, Google, or any other social channel, you may want to take a page from our book.
Last year’s results for Strategy Labs e-comm clients
Customers spent more, we spent less.
But don’t just look at our numbers. Look at your Q4 2024 performance. What worked? What didn’t?
You don’t have to face BFCM alone
Strategy Labs can analyze your business’ historic data to help you drive higher profits.
What’s New for BFCM 2025
The thorn in advertisers’ heel last year: the election driving up CPMs. This year? Tariffs and a government shutdown fueling economic uncertainty on top of steadily climbing CPMs.
That sounds foreboding, but BFCM sales are projected to increase YoY, too. Black Friday will bring us the same holiday rush, just with a different economic landscape.
Bain & Company expects sales to increase by 11% YoY between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with 55% of U.S. consumers planning to shop on Black Friday itself.
More shoppers plan to take advantage of the big sale weekend — not despite economic concerns, but because of them. EMarketer notes that 49% of shoppers say getting a great deal is the most important factor in choosing where they’ll shop this Cyber 5.
This means it’s even more important to be prepared for BFCM this year, as the sales window will be more concentrated with deal-seeking shoppers.
Economic projections
CPMs during Cyber 5 2024 were 39% higher than the previous year, and we expect that trend to continue this year.
Even higher CPMs
In September, we noted that CPMs were up 29% YTD across all our digital channels, and that has only increased as we’ve moved toward BFCM.
The fact is it’s a more aggressive marketplace in 2025. So how do you actively battle cost increases during the most important retail weekend of the year?
Generate demand well before the holiday(s) while CPMs are lower.
Use this time to test new sales or site strategies.
2. Expand your reach
Leverage Meta, TikTok, and Google PMAX to effectively reach new customers before the sale.
Cast a wide but meaningful net by optimizing toward qualified actions like email signups, page views, or adds to cart.
3. Put your best ads forward
Highlight your bestselling products in your ads.
Tell your brand story across the user journey, so users remember and connect with your brand during the Cyber 5.
Create assets with a variety of formats and messaging angles to reach wider audiences.
Our recommendations: Leverage a full-funnel strategy for better ROI
1. Start early, like yesterday
A Strategy Labs e-comm client saw a 28% increase in website traffic and conversions after we ran video-driven campaigns on Meta weeks before a big sale. Once it was time to launch the promotion, our media team was able to retarget users who had recently visited the site, added an item to their cart or watched the video.
The client saw a 19% increase in revenue compared to the previous year.
Strategy Labs case study
Imagine your brand backed by a team of performance marketers
Let’s explore how your numbers could look different with Strategy Labs.
Some things never change: Trends carrying over from 2024
Early fall promotions require staying competitive, longer
More big-box retailers put on special deal weeks earlier in October, and have been for several years now. We do this with several clients, too. Early fall promos help us build brands’ audience bases—or “fill the sponge” — so we can squeeze it for the best possible returns at BFCM.
Whether or not your brand jumped on the fall sale bandwagon, just know that nearly half of American consumers started holiday shopping before Halloween, per Bankrate. How can your brand fit into the rest of their budget, between now and Christmas?
Another short holiday season demands clarity and urgency
Black Friday lands on November 28 and Cyber Monday is on December 1 this year, meaning shipping cutoff dates shortly follow these events. There’s less time to shop between Black Friday and Christmas, and less time to convert purchases.
Our recommendation: Don’t be the brand who’s late to Christmas. Communicate clear shipping cutoff dates to customers and realistic delivery times to gain customer trust and appreciation. This urgency will incentivize earlier purchases and help your customers feel prepared.
Another long November: Stay patient and trust the process
With Black Friday arriving in the last days of the month, the buildup will feel even longer than usual. Your audiences may hold out for Black Friday deals all month long — we saw this happen last year and it’s happening again now.
If in previous years November was a huge revenue month, shift your mindset, because the BFCM cash flow will split between November and December with such a late Black Friday. Your balance sheets might tell a different narrative than in previous Novembers, and your month may not be efficient for a while, but just be patient and trust in the funnel-filling process.
Playing the long game: Keep your growth engine running ahead of BFCM
→ Continue bringing users into your top-of-funnel audience throughout November with early access sign ups, email lead generation campaigns, and hype-building sneak peeks.
→ Set special November KPIs, or “microconversions.” While waiting for the big weekend, don’t pull back spend prematurely. Instead, continue marketing and measure KPIs that show signs of audience growth as opposed to sales numbers:
Add to cart rates
Email signups
Free trials
→ After BFCM, look at the Cyber 5 weekend on its own for relevant insights, instead of November and December separately.
Which KPIs should you focus on?
Let’s determine the key metrics that can scale your business.
Every year presents unique challenges, but some strategies are worth revisiting every year. Here are the tried-and-true tactics we’re prioritizing to overcome challenges and drive record-breaking sales.
The Strategy Labs BFCM playbook: Best practices for Cyber 5 success
Expand your reach, increase engagement, and gain credibility — all without breaking the bank. Lo-fi UGC videos from creators feel authentic while driving high performance.
Where to start? Before using cold outreach, look to your customer data for potential partners. Customers that routinely buy from you or tag you in their own social posts may be ready and willing to participate!
If you’re still looking for creator partners, leverage suggestions in Meta Creator Marketplace to find active creators that are a good fit for your brand.
1. Partner with relevant creators via partnership ads
Our DTC auto parts client saw 37% improvement in ROAS during a partnership with a relevant content creator.
Our lifestyle and apparel brand client saw a 21% CPA improvement during their partnership with a beverage company who collaborated on their products.
Case study
The best sales during BFCM should be simple for users and thoughtfully planned by brands. Don’t close your eyes and pick a percentage discount. Instead, make sure your BFCM sale is:
Straightforward and easy to redeem
If it’s difficult to explain your sale in one short sentence, it will be difficult for your customers to understand it. Make it easier for them to convert, not harder, by creating a simple and clear promotion that is easy to redeem.
→ Ensure promo codes are tested and highly visible and auto-apply coupons follow any necessary rules.
Rare and superior
This is not your usual sale, so make it better and more unique than your previous ones and competitors’ promos. If you’re a marketplace e-commerce brand that sells other brands, feature products not easily found on other websites. If you offer 15% off for an everyday email signup, double that for BFCM.
→ Other ideas: Lower your free shipping threshold, run a sitewide discount, or offer a gift with purchase.
Timebound
Plenty of brands start their Black Friday sales earlier and sometimes end them later. This can be a good tactic to give paid campaigns a head start at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, or a way to capture procrastinators with an “extended” sale. However, you’ll still want to give your sale a finite end date to urge customers to purchase sooner rather than later.
→ Test sale date ranges year after year and make choices based on historical data. We’ve learned brand audiences’ shopping preferences this way and optimized accordingly. It takes time, but pays off.
2. Nail the offer
Even the best creative strategies can’t make up for a poor online shopping experience. Ahead of your promotion, set aside time to browse your website as a customer. If you come across any difficulties while “shopping” or especially in the checkout process, note those and implement fixes before the sale.
3. Audit and optimize your site and accounts
5 essentials for website UX and optimization:
Speed: Make sure your pages load quickly to avoid penalization in organic auctions and improve conversions.
Consistency: Ensure messaging and visuals are consistent between your ads and website.
Clarity: Share the most important information above or soon after the fold (I.e., before you need to start scrolling). This should probably be high-level sale and product info.
Shopability: Add or enhance features that reduce the time it takes to add products to the cart, find bestsellers, or unlock discounts.
Trackability: Maintain site tracking and utilize native integrations whenever possible.
Ensure Meta ad accounts align with the platform’s Performance 5 Scorecard:
Account simplification: Reduce the complexity of your ad account structure to improve performance and speed up the campaign "learning phase."
Automation: Use tools like Advantage+ to optimize ad delivery while reducing manual input.
Creative diversification: Create unique ads featuring a variety of messages and visual formats to reach more audiences.
Data quality: Ensure the Conversions API is properly set up to create a direct connection between your marketing data and Meta's systems.
Results validation: Measure the success of campaigns using a combination of methods like Conversion Lift, A/B testing, and marketing mix modeling to get a comprehensive view of performance.
Go beyond BFCM basics
Believe it or not, we’re only covering the basics of best practices. But even just a few tweaks to your current strategy can make a big difference in these coming weeks. Want to dive deeper into which BFCM strategies best fit your brand? Connect with us now to explore how Strategy Labs can help.
Sources:
Bankrate.com, “Bankrate’s 2025 Holiday Spending Report”
Bain & Company, “Black Friday 2025 Sales Forecast”
EMarketer, “The Cyber Five is poised to gain momentum this year”
Interested in seeing what Strategy Labs can do for your Q4?