Stop Underspending During BFCM Lead In

Stop Underspending During BFCM Lead In Speaker 1: Hello there and welcome into Better Advertising with BTR Media. My name is Justin and I am an account director here at BTR Media and have been here for several years now, hands-on in our accounts around the Black Friday, Cyber Monday time period and wanted to come on today to talk to you guys about common mistakes that brands have around the Cyber Monday, Black Friday time period or the T12, Turkey 12 that we hear Amazon often brand it as. So as we head into this week, which starts on Thursday for the deals of the Turkey 12, wanted to talk about some common mistakes, things to watch out for this deal season. Now, this is good advice, even outside of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So if you come across this episode, mid summertime, just before Prime Day, this advice is still sound. As we're in this period of time, we're definitely in the back period of lead-in. As I said, those deals are starting on Thursday, with today being Tuesday. So we're nearly at the tail end of lead-in period, where shoppers are browsing the platform, looking for items on their wish list, building their carts. What we see often is impressions and clicks up and shopping down, i.e. conversion rate down, orders down. And so what oftentimes a lot of sellers will do is pull back their budgets thinking, I'm gonna save this for when conversion rate picks up and shoppers are actually purchasing on the platform. Now that makes sense if you are very, very limited in budget and have very limited to advertise with. But for the majority of sellers, this is probably the worst thing you could do. This is a very cheap, so to speak, time period to be visible. This is often when, again, shoppers are building their carts, building their baskets, and you want to be visible. Well, it is cheap to do so through the means of cost per click. Instead of trying to be visible at the top of search on the day of Black Friday when your cost per clicks and bids may have to be 2x what it is on an average day. So this lead-in time period, though we often don't see the sales come through until deals start, is a really good time to get in front of shoppers and make sure your brand is top of mind as people are coming back to Amazon on the day of Black Friday or on the day of Cyber Monday and looking to purchase some items for loved ones, family, friends, and may consider your brand having clicked on your ad a week ago. So I would say that's number one as a mistake for many brands is leaning out of the lead-in period or pulling back budgets during this lead-in period. And that often leads to underspending when we don't build up that demand on the front end, we don't see budget utilization on the back end where people aren't searching for your brand, they're not aware of the products or deals you have. Again, when you can get into that cart or get added to a customer's cart, Before the deals start, they're going through, as I often do as a shopper, and looking at their cart and saying, what's on deal? What do I want to take out? What do I want to leave in? So putting some focus and strategy to this lead-in period is also sound advice where you don't want to just push all your products top of search while conversion rate is very weak during this week and last week, but instead maybe pushing the products you know you're going to be running deals on. The products you know convert really well during deal periods like Prime Day or Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And really emphasizing visibility on those products rather than just your entire catalog. So as with all advice we give, there should be some strategy and some logic behind that thinking and what you're pushing on that lead in period. But I would heavily lean into that to make sure you're fully utilizing budgets and getting the volume that you want to out of the T12 period by having driven that demand early on. Now, the flip side of that is how do brands overspend? How do brands end up chasing sales that causes your budget to get inflated and doesn't result in the impact you want? And that is exactly what I just said, which is oftentimes chasing sales. We see a bit of daily attribution delay sometimes where morning clicks can happen and the sales come in later in the evening. We oftentimes see this with expensive products. Again, people are shopping in the morning, maybe when deals start before they go to work, maybe on their lunch break at work and purchasing later in the evening once they're on their way home or at home having dinner or laying in bed before they go to sleep. So that said, we oftentimes see brands I want to chase those sales and saying push budgets. We need to get to X amount of sales now doing so can result in lower ROAS and more sales. But be responsive to the data. Oftentimes what we see is really strong performance day of and we'll increase those budgets. That's how I like to handle my brands is I'm looking at which products, which campaigns, which strategies have above average ROAS and how can we keep inflating those budgets? How can we continue funneling money to those strategies and perhaps pull budget back from areas that aren't performing as well day of or are running out of budget at a lower than expected ROAS. So again, with a T12 period, you have a lot of time to maybe make some decisions based on day one, day two data, before we even hit Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So look at your first two days of data, make informed decisions and move budgets accordingly, but don't chase sales and just push budgets without reason, without data, of course. So that's both sides of the question. How do brands oftentimes underspend and how do they overspend is by Again, not leaning into this lead-in period and not being fluid with their budgets, which is exactly where I want to go next. And that's another big brand mistake. I want to go through some brand mistakes that are just outside of budget pacing. And this being the last one around budget is fluidity. Oftentimes we see, or a couple years back rather, we saw the T12 period become established and it wasn't just deals starting on Black Friday where many years ago, many of us remember that deals would start on Black Friday and now it has moved all the way up to the 20th of November. So with that said, Not having your budgets be fluid, many brands would save a lot of budget for Black Friday, reasonably, because we expect to see conversion rate increase the most on that day. Now, given the data we've seen in years past, that conversion rate will pick up as soon as this T12 period starts. As I said earlier on Thursday, in less than 48 hours from this recording, So that said, conversion rate will increase. Conversion rate will look like a Prime Day event. It will look like a Black Friday day. We will see deals all over the page with branding that looks like it is a live Prime Day or it is actually Black Friday almost seven days early. So that said, be fluid with your budgets. If you need to move budget up because you're seeing sales If you are so above expectations that you need to pull budgets forward, I would recommend doing so. Of course, that's with a caveat, leave budget for Black Friday. I've seen many brands, pretty much every brand, still have the most amount of volume on Black Friday. But that's not to say don't shy, that's to say don't shy away from the volume you are seeing on Thursday onward towards Black Friday. Be shoppers that have been waiting for these deals. Like I said during this lead-in period, if you did this correctly, those shoppers are waiting to see what's going to be on deal, what in their cart will be discounted and promoted. So if you are doing so and you are leaning into this lead-in strategy as we have been saying and we have been If you're new to Black Friday, which I've been talking about for years now, then be fluid with your budgets and move as needed. You may see a big wave of sales in the first couple of days and then it dropped down until Black Friday hits. So be fluid, just watch your budgets closely day of and watch performance in real time on day of. Not doing promotions, I think, is a huge issue that many brands think they can get away with. Many brands think that there's going to be so much foot traffic in the aisle that I'm just going to pick up the extra volume. And you certainly will. You certainly will get a couple extra sales. That volume certainly may be slightly above average. But that's not to say that you should not be running deals. We've seen data from ourself here at BTR and other agencies in the space that show brands that run promotions, whether that is coupons, lightning deals, discounts, any form of a price discount. Perform much better through way of conversion rate, through way of ROAS. So not only are you more efficient, but you're also more profitable in a way because you're converting so high that it offsets any CPC increase that you may have. So that said, I would certainly lean into promotions as that is the number one thing we see shoppers looking for at this time period. Again, during this lead-in period, that's exactly why shoppers are delaying their purchases. If they weren't looking for promotions, they would be buying last week and this week, but they are certainly waiting to see those deals and discounts. Push the products like I said earlier that you will be able to run promotions on. I know everyone has tight margins with the tariff issues this year. And so whatever's within means promote as you can and as aggressive as you can. Understanding for most products, most brands, this is a long-term play. If you can acquire a customer at the Black Friday season, it's a great way to then remarket to them come new year with other products or even the same product if it's a consumable CPG style product. So think of it as a customer acquisition period and not just a sales period. This is where you can really win over a brand loyal customer. This sticks around for 2026. So think bigger than just Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And additionally, like I said, it's making use of this lead-in period. It's where I started the conversation. That's where I want to end this conversation, where it really be pushing through this week and through any deal period. Again, thinking ahead to next year with Prime Day, which will be the next probably big deal event that we really all prepare for. Make use of that lead in period, especially this year having a later Thanksgiving with Cyber Monday even falling in December. That gives us a condensed period from when Black Friday, Cyber Monday is and when that shipping window cutoff is right before the Christmas season. From Amazon and as we know volume falls off tremendously after that shipping window cutoff and it shows that packages and products arrive after Christmas. We know the volume falls off a cliff. So making use and leveraging that time period is very condensed this year with Thanksgiving falling so late in November. This furthers the argument for pushing on your lead-in period, making use, getting as visible as possible in front of shoppers while they're browsing rather than as they're already making purchases and maybe less impulsive in their purchasing. Discovery is happening now. Get into people's carts while cost per clicks are cheaper. Make the use of this deal season. I'm excited to see how everyone does. I'm excited to see what's working, what's not working. We're in it together. So good luck to everybody and excited to see how everyone does. If anyone has questions, please reach out to us on LinkedIn. Follow us on LinkedIn for all news and education. And if you have any questions, please reach out. Thank you so much for following and listening today. Cheers.