If your brand took part in Black Friday / Cyber Monday, we hope it was a great success! Let's dig in to what we learned...

Insights from Black Friday / Cyber Monday (and everything around it!):

💡Many brands started their deals early

We know that Amazon are notorious for running their deals events beyond traditional sales dates, and many brands took part.

For instance, this year's deal dates were from 18th to 28th, not just 25th to 28th.

However many brands also ran sales on their own stores for similar dates. We agree it is wise to align your store deals with your Amazon deals.

💡These wider dates offer higher sales for longer, but the narrower dates push daily sales higher, for a shorter time

Some saw a sustained increase in sales during a full 10-day (Amazon-style) sale - but when it came to Black Friday itself, the numbers didn't change too much...

Adversely, those that ran a sale for just the Friday-Monday, saw a much bigger spike for just those days.

🤔What does this mean? Should I have done a short, 1-5 day deal, or the longer, 10-day deal?

This will depend on your brand and offer, but at the very least you need to look back and compare whatever you did for BFCM against previous ones or even other events you ran before.

Consider the desire for your product. Is it longed for? A big-consideration purchase? Is it an impulse purchase, or something that people didn't know they needed?

These factors will shape what type and duration of sale you run in future events.

Look at the analytics, and let us know what you find out! It will be great to hear from this community and we'd love to hear your successes!

Regardless of what type of sale you run, one thing is important: PUT IN THE EFFORT

Many brands DID NOT.

We were really disappointed at some of the efforts (or lack of) that some brands put in to their Black Friday Sale.

Yes, if you're a valued brand on Amazon, you will get good organic coverage. Or if you're a desirable brand in general, you'll get organic traffic to your store looking for deals.

But we saw so many brands who clearly threw together a late, small discount in a tactical email or social post.

We felt that a lot of the digital marketing community did not value the time and effort to pull together a strong message and story around their BFCM sales.

⚠️ The most successful BFCM campaigns have been those with unique design and branding, and a full multi-channel campaign using ads, social, email and on-site messaging.

This is also the time of year to grow your brand - discount as much as you can in BFCM and Xmas Sales, and get that additional brand exposure.

On that note... should you discount for Christmas? BFCM has only just finished after all...!

If you sell on Amazon you may have already been asked to take part in the 'Last Minute Deals' campaign, starting 5th December(!)

We're actually massive fans of the last-minute sale before Christmas, it's a perfect time for those impulse purchases that take less consideration as shoppers are in a mode of urgency.

Although our advice is don't run this too early. We feel 5th December is too soon.

👍 As long as you can deliver before Xmas, run a sale from around the 15th December, with pressing messages pushing for customers to order before the last postal slot.

The beauty of the last-minute xmas sale is that it does not have to be deep discount. Just a small percentage off, or even just free delivery could be enough to trigger a purchase from a frantic late gift buyer!

It's never to early to plan your next campaign. Start now! And make sure you:

✅ Wrap a compelling message or story around the Sale

✅ Use new and custom imagery for the Sale, not just your same old stuff

✅ Put out multi-channel content - make sure you're taking advantage of social ads, posts, and emails - as well as search advertising

✅ Build up to the Sale if you can, even if it's just a few days beforehand, tease your audience that something is coming