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We’ve been working with a leading European accessories brand for the past 3 years and are very proud to have been a key partner in their amazing growth trajectory over the past few years. Beyond their flagship watch product, the brand has expanded through the launch of new categories (eyewear, apparel) and entering new markets. The client brought us on to help scale their business profitably. One of our first initiatives was to create and execute a killer BFCM campaign on Meta.

The results: a 40% decrease in spend while improving ROAS from 1.3 to 2.1.

Here’s a breakdown of playbook we used with for a successful BFCM campaign:

1. Build and optimize leads before BFCM. With high CPMs during BFCM, we wanted to build our client’s retargeting audience beforehand so we have a larger pool of warm leads that would lead to a higher conversion rate during BFCM.

   • We ran a lead gen campaign with the enticing CTA “sign up for early access to our biggest sale EVER”. The emails we captured had a 2% conversion rate, which more than paid for the cost of the campaign.

   • We spent more on ads in the weeks leading up to BFCM, when costs are lower, to build familiarity and trust ahead of the big sale moment.

2. Select winning creative before BFCM:

   Please, for the love of all things holy, do not test brand new creative during your BFCM campaign. Going into the biggest sale season of the year, you should have your hooks, copy, and video battle tested and 100% dialed in. Winning creative coupled with a strong promotion will put you in a prime position for successful, high converting ad campaigns. For our European accessories client, we started testing creatives in September. We tested a collection of Black Friday-themed images and videos, just without any offers. All of the testing we conducted led us to narrow down to the top 10 performing assets. Going into BFCM, we were confident that our arsenal of creative would be able to drive ad efficiency and sales.

3. Go big with your offers or go home:

   BFCM is not the time to offer a meager promo promo like 10% off. This is the time period when customers are expecting aggressive offers and when all of your competitors are going to be offering their best deals of the year. If you are not prepared to discount your products, I would recommend reconsidering whether you should even launch a BFCM campaign. For our client, their biggest discount outside of BFCM is 25% off. We knew we needed to beat this offer to make any type of significant impact. We employed a 3 stage BFCM sale strategy that increased incrementally week over week:

   • Week 1: up to 30% off sale

   • Week 2: up to 50% off sale, plus a free accessory

   • Week 3: up to 60% off sale, plus a free accessory

4. Reposition your existing products as new Holiday gift sets:

   Innovation does not always mean new products. Innovation can simply be a reposition of your existing product assortment to be relevant for a particular time period. BFCM is a great time to create gift sets out of your different products. If Target can convince people to buy three sticks of deodorant as a ‘gift’ for someone, then you can create a gift set with your products too.

A Few BFCM Quick Wins - don’t leave easy money on the table!

• Simplify, simplify, simplify.

  • Offer straightforward discount offers, like a sitewide discount. Your customers will be inundated with emails, ads, and discounts during BFCM. Don’t overcomplicate things and make people have to think twice about the offer.

  • Streamline the shopping experience by applying automatic discounts on your site, instead of asking people to enter a promo code. Removes one more step before the purchase.

  • Simplify your Meta/Google account structure. In our experience, creating a complicated account structure does not lead to stronger performance. The simpler, the better. Trust us.

• Promote your promos more aggressively than you may feel comfortable with

  • This is the one time of the year when customers are actively seeking discounts and in buying mode, so don’t be afraid to shout it from the rooftops. And think of it this way. Your competitors are going to do it, so if you are not loud with your messaging, you’re going to get drowned out.

  • Plaster your offer everywhere: prominently display your promos across site, email, social.

  • Plan for a week-long BFCM sale. It’s the standard now, plus longer duration allows the algorithms to optimize ad campaign performance.

• Your BFCM campaign is a rising tide that lifts all boats

  Don’t make the mistake of going all in on your BFCM campaigns and turning off everything else. We keep our clients’ Evergreen campaigns on during BFCM because we typically see strong performance during this period of time. Why? Longstanding ads that have been optimized over time + an aggressive holiday promo on your site = strong conversion rates.

1. A method of finding content inspo you may not have tried. Our team is loves reading the CRO Weekly Substack newsletter. A recent post shares a few easy methods to spy on your competitors and find landing page inspiration. Our favorite hack that even the non-techiest Founder can do: add the text ‘/sitemap_pages_1.xml’ after your favorite (or most despised?) competitor’s Shopify store url to find hidden landing pages being used for ad campaigns. It also shows you the date that the page was last modified, so you can zero in on their most recent LPs.

2. X (Twitter) announces new partnership with Google. Bad news for Elon: he needs cash, fast. Good news for advertisers running Google Ads: you can reach more eyeballs on X directly through Google Ads Display campaigns. No need to set up separate campaigns through the X advertising platform. We can’t say much about performance yet, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this opportunity.

3. Images that help apparel brands convert. For a category that is highly dependent on trying the products in person, apparel brands have a tough task when it comes to convincing customers to buy online, particularly if they are unfamiliar with the fit. These are a few must-have images Oddit recommends that you have on the product page to help with conversion:

   1. include the model’s height and size they’re wearing to provide a clear reference point

   2. show images of real customers wearing the item. Including their name gives it an added personal touch.

   3. Load up on images with close up of product features in the product image carousel

   Even if you don’t have an apparel business, there is an important takeaway that applies to all categories: for DTC brands, your online content is your marketing, so provide as many images, videos, and details as possible to help potential customers immerse themselves in your products. Investing in high quality content is bet that is worth making.

We’re testing the TryNow app on Shopify, which allows customers to test a product before purchasing. We think a ‘try before you buy’ service is well suited for apparel brands because it can help address common concerns like fit and color.

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