Black Friday Marketing Madness: Structures of $2.5M and $3.3M BFCM Campaigns

The State of the Marketing Union

Welcome to episode two of the state of the marketing union. I'm Jason Parker. And today we're talking about black Friday strategies that have made millions for our clients over the past few years. And we're going to break down how we pulled off 3. 3 million for launch medical 2. 5 million for Dr. Berg and a record breaking customer acquisition campaign for a CAC ID.

Trader  in Italy. Yes. Black Friday is catching  on worldwide, even in places like Italy. So you need to be ready to cash in during this rare time of the year, filled with rabid buyers who are scouring the internet, just looking to buy things. And with me today is my business partner at Parker and Kirkland.

Mr. Charles Kirkland. Charles, let's first talk about the campaigns that made millions during black Friday and cyber Monday. And what made them tick? 

I think that's a great question to start with, and the reality of it is, when you're trying to plan a Black Friday campaign, most people have the assumption of, well, dude, it's Wednesday, before, it's Black Friday, just put something together. And that is a recipe for disaster.   Now, the way that we did this is we actually  worked mathematically backwards.

We started with a goal. So I'm not going to mention the particular client, but our goal was 2. 4 million. Now the previous year, they didn't do anywhere that close. So they're like, you know, Charles and Jason, y'all have been, um, you know, hitting the shrooms or  something because Lord knows those numbers seem impossible. 

And For the average person, yes, they do seem impossible, but this is what we did. We've realized that all this is just basically a giant math equation. Now, for those of you who weren't good at math, including myself, um, you're not doing math on this call, but  when you understand what we're going to talk about, it's going to make  all the sense in the world.

So, and I'm going to use the example of 2. 5b. The first thing you have to look at is what is the window that you have for Black Friday? Most people go, Thursday. Well, no, actually that's wrong because we launched ours on Wednesday.   And by the way, we did better Wednesday than we did Thursday.   And granted they're carved in the turkey, but for we're really in a time if you go to Walmart, Target, There's Christmas decorations, Halloween decorations, and somewhere in the middle of this you'll see a few Thanksgiving quote unquote pumpkins.

The reality of it is you  now have to look at it as it's really a week.   So from that standpoint, we're gonna start, let's just say Monday, and we're gonna go to Cyber Monday or Cyber, you know, close it on that Tuesday. The easiest way to look at that is A, What assets do I have? Because this is a big one. 

Most people think of Black Friday only as  customer, my existing customer database may engage with me, or they may look at it as, hey, it's the opportunity to get new customers. And I certainly understand that, and that is a way to look at it, but that's the wrong way to look at it. We want to look at it as a multi   tier model.

Jason and I believe in what's called two  tracks, and Jason can explain that in a few moments. But what we look at is we have leads. First time buyers, and then we have repeat buyers. The problem people have is on Black Friday I'm buying from people I've and Jason you may  be the same way There are people I've never seen never  heard of but the price is right, you know It's like boom hit that order button.

I want it now. It's a big discount What you have to look at is these are two radically different tracks for existing buyers You know, I don't need to, I don't really need to convince you about anything. You  know the product, you believe in the product. My  only question is how do I sell you more of the product or if it's a quote unquote one off product, how can I sell you something that quote unquote is ancillary to this product that you'd say yes to?

That's the first thing. The next thing we look at is. I  want to get a new customer, like, and most people   can't tell me the AOV, Average Order Value, the LTV, Lifetime Value, COGS, Cost of Goods. There are these metrics that we have to put in, but I, if I know for a fact I could acquire a Black Friday customer today, And in 30 days, let's pretend  126.

My question is  how low can I go and still make money or how low can I go and break even personally, I want to make money on every offer, but we have to look at those as two different things. And once you put those in, let's say our 2. 5 million, one and a half will come from existing customers. 1   million comes from new customers.

Now the  next question, and Jason, you're going to love this one for the existing customers. I'm going to do email hands down. I'm going to do email, but I'm also going to run remarketing campaigns now now Jason crafted a campaign I'm going to get to in a second that I  think about Six to seven  million dollars was made off this single ad campaign that has never been modified never touched There was not a change to the headline the copy And it worked for new customer acquisition.

That's where you want to make sure you have proven material  like that. If you do, because once you have your  existing customers, you can do email. You could do remarketing campaigns, Facebook, Google, our favorite ad role. You could do that now, but for new customers. What happens? Well, how do I get new customers?

It really becomes a  function of two things. You've got own  traffic and I've got traffic that I'm, I'm buying. So in this example, we're buying Facebook ads, Google ads, but Jason, like I want to get passes back to you. Do you want to talk about the ad that you did that just, it beat my ad. I mean, it crushed everything that we had. 

that's fine. I just, there's so much to black Friday. It's radically different strategy than any time of the rest of the year. So I just, I want to first say this, that it works in all these different markets. Like we've done it in supplements. We've done it in financial 

Yes. 

We've done it in, uh, like biz ops, you know, we've done it in, uh, sexual health. So it doesn't matter what. What a industry you're in. It doesn't matter what vertical you're in. It can work because it's, people are just, they're looking for something to buy at this time of the year. Literally they'll, they'll buy from people they've never bought from before. Um, they are rabid. They're almost like locked into this buying mode because they, they just bought like five things and they're like, well, you know, I already. Blew my budget on that. I'm just going to keep going. I mean, that's how I am anyway, around this  time of the

Yes.

there's  so much to this. So first of all, the biggest mistake you can make is not doing a brat black Friday campaign. That's the, that's the first biggest mistake. The second one is not knowing how to milk a BFCM campaign for all it's worth. And there are different ways to do this. Like  you were,

Yes.

ton of  those. But let's just say the overall structure or the timeline of the campaign. Um, this is where the first mistake people make is they have a short for the campaign, but you should start with early black Friday for about three days or so go into black Friday, go into cyber Monday. And then even you could extend  the cyber Monday, a couple of days, if you want to, with a good reason why, which  extends it, you know, seven, nine, 10 days, but you don't want to come in and do like four days. That's the dumbest thing you could do around this time of the year, because it could potentially be your most profitable time of the year.

It usually is for the campaigns we work on. Sometimes there's exceptions. Like you remember, Charles, with the tax day campaign was like an anomaly. But other  than

Yes. Yes.

most  profitable, uh, seven to nine days or 10 days out of the year. That's what you got to know. And you have to extend it. Like you have to start right now. If you haven't started, get your freaking documents open, at least map this out for early black Friday, black Friday, cyber

Yes. 

But the second thing is that you can do is, uh, you can give slightly different deals to different people. To mix it up a little bit throughout these time periods.

So your early black Friday deal is slightly different than your black Friday deal, which is slightly different from your cyber Monday deal. So, and this can be just added bonuses and stuff to create excitement. So we've noticed that works really well to squeeze as much profit as you can out of these, Out of these campaigns and the other thing, like you talked about Charles, it's right running on two  tracks, because this is a perfect time to cash in on  who you have on your list right now. And also for customer acquisition in two track campaigns have a lot to do with that. So the first track is always going to be, you know, just think about, we have this timeline of campaigns, but it's running at two different campaigns at the same time along the same timeline. So it's creating two tracks. That makes sense. So the first track is typically, it typically goes to your past customers and you want to let them know that they're, they're getting a slightly better deal than everybody else is  going to get. Um, it could be like 10 off more. It could be a  hundred dollars off more. It could be a bonus, but they should know that they're getting a slightly better deal Then your average prospect.

Now that's the key to the two track from your internal perspective and list. And also sending, uh, and also retargeting. So like, like Charles said, you know, email, but there's also SMS and there's also retargeting. So that's the trifecta of reaching your own people and then giving them a, an exclusive deal.

Really, really hit on that exclusivity trigger, the VIP, you're getting something a little bit different than  everybody else. Once you do that, make them feel special. That's when,  you know, profits can explode from that standpoint. But also the second track is where your customer exhibition takes place and where you also turn prospects into buyers.

And that is your standard deal that you're making, which is also a strong deal. I mean, you're, you're still running traffic everywhere. Uh, you're running it from, from Facebook or, you know, all these types of sources. But anyway, I just wanted to touch on that, Charles, uh, we can go into whatever you want, but people need to know how to squeeze as much profit as they can out of this time, time of the year.  

Exactly, exactly. And the way that we do that is we set up a spreadsheet with, we've got new customers, we've got, you know, existing customers, and then we look at what are the avenues because one of the things we have to ask is, I've never heard of the product, I don't know you. The thing that has to carry this is the deal.

Look, and Jason touched on this multiple times, if you have a 5 percent deal or a 10 percent deal, you might as well just, you obviously hate money. Right. I mean, it comes down to that. You obviously  hate money. You need to really give them a deal  and go, but Charles and Jason, I don't have a profit margin.

Well, um, you know what? The reality of it is you need to have a back end. That's not our mathematical problem. That's your mathematical problem. And think about this. Is it really about the price or the deal? I could have 97 for one widget or I could have widget A, B, and I'll throw in something else, C, for that 97.

It's a better value. Now, I'm sure some of you say, Charles, I do coaching, I do consulting,  I do info products, I, I do, I don't do econ.   Well, this still works for you. We've done it in that case as well. Because A, if it's info products, It literally costs you nothing to bundle these deals together. You're selling bits and bytes on the internet.

Make it a crazy deal If you're selling coaching consulting, maybe it's not about lowering your price maybe it's about packaging more things with it to become more attractive, but Jason just hit on something. I want to step back on i've talked to somebody friday We're like going over the numbers.  I go.

Do you have an sms list? Yeah, we have it But you know,  we just don't do anything with it Guys, your SMS will be more eventful than probably, and I'm just saying probably, you know, dollar per dollar, click per click than your email list. So get a spreadsheet, look at it from a standpoint of paid acquisition, and then what has to happen?

Jason can attest to this. Whenever we run these projects, traffic is going to the site. You have to have like a header, like the header on the site needs to say, Hey,   You know get rid of your hero image and you know like black  friday discount pre black friday discount cyber monday Extended sale you need to really have those graphics because when I land on that page if you make me think It's a done deal.

I'm not I like I don't want to think about your cyber discount. Just give me the discount Let me know where i'm at have it marked out have it crossed out And you say, but Charles, we don't use countdown timers. Okay. That's your choice. Not mine, but actually have urgency in here because   a deal, everyone's got him getting deals on Black  Friday.

But when you land on the page, there's a countdown, there's urgency. You see the header that says Black Friday. You know over the product it says black friday special deal or whatever You're it's it's congruent because I see people who literally take their regular ads run them on black friday And we didn't get like our click through rate didn't go up Well, think about this.

Everybody and their brother is running ads on Black Friday. You have to basically have a larger budget. I  remember calling the rep, you know, right before Black Friday, I don't know,  probably two weeks before, I'm like, hey, we need to, we need to get an additional 50, 000 raise on our budget, our daily budget, because we're gonna really hit it hard.

They're like, man, this is great. I can get it approved in a few days. Most people call on that Tuesday or that Wednesday, they can't go through compliance, underwriting, and everything required to raise your ad budget, so start ahead. And also, this is something Jason did really, really well. When we knew that Black Friday was coming, we had sales and we had  discounts.

We actually ramped up  our lead generation ahead of time. So we, cause we knew, let, let's, I'm gonna use simple math here. 30 percent click rate, 1, 30 percent open rate, 1 percent click rate. Out of that, let's pretend, X percent bought. We knew that we had to invest in that lead gen early to get these people engaged.

Now granted, we were selling them the whole time. This is not a campaign where we're, we're sitting out, hey, I feel good and this is my breakfast. We were priming them for this and they had opportunity to buy it. 

Yeah. 

Jason, would you talk about that? Cause I think most people mess up Black Friday emails.

were talking,  now we're talking about pre selling it, which is, you know, contributing to squeezing the most profit out of it and you're absolutely right starting November 1st or even right before that, uh, because, you know, you have October campaigns going on, you're obviously working on those, but when, as soon as November hits, I mean, that's time to, you, you start.  Putting money into ads and building anticipation for your  upcoming campaign and just doing all the things to create touches and build goodwill. And, uh, that sort of thing, you know, like, uh, get people to know like you and trust you because you know, at the end of the month, you're about to maybe have a record breaking month.

So that's something to think about, but there's so much to this trial. So much you're talking about  and just preparing right now is key. Uh, cause otherwise you're going  to run into problems at the last minute. that you can't take care of. And it's important, I think, to put yourself in the mindset of a buyer on black Friday right now, because just really imagine literally do this, imagine that you're, it's early black Friday, you're starting to look for these sales, you're sitting around the Thanksgiving  table or whatever it is, you know, you're, you're  looking for these deals, you're, you're just sitting around the house with your family.

And. The smell of pies, wafting in your face and that sort of thing. the telling stories of all, just really try to put yourself into this, this mindset because it is absolutely rabid. Like the buying, uh, it's the rabid buyers around  this time. And you are too. So think about how you are around this time, people  watching right now. Um, try to do that because. That's the mindset they're about to be in and about a month from now. Um, if you can do that, then you can think about this in steps because we have early black Friday. You really want to play on that early black Friday when you're, when you're hitting that and then black Friday, you really want  to play on black Friday and the cyber Monday really want to play on that.

So  like Charles was saying, you have all these different heterographics for these various, you know, That's what you want. You want to look at it almost like three different campaigns in one. So they're really sub campaigns on black Friday, which is a pain in your butt. And it's on two tracks. If you want to do it the way we're talking about, but totally worth it.

And that's why you've got to do it. Now you can't do it  last minute because you want to run a two tracks, which is extra work.   You want to really just pay. You really want to pay. You know, get down to the nitty gritty detail through each of these sub campaigns within the campaign. And then also there's a lot of psychology trials going throughout each of the sub campaigns like the first email of the the early black friday is really like an announcement  email, you know, it's live go buy it The second email  Or the second message might be something that's more, uh, more about the benefits of what you're selling, but then the third email is going to be high scarcity, high urgency for that early black Friday specific sale.

So you really crush that third email right there. And the same thing goes with, with black Friday. You're 

Hello, everyone.

you can  extend that if you want to. A lot of people do that. I mean, you're going to make more, make more money if you extend it. Now here's the thing. So this is all related. thing is that you need to know this, um, Charles, I know, yeah, I know you the answer. I know, you know, the answer is this because we saw a revenue go like this based on this testing and it was not our fault. It was someone else who wanted to do this, but I think about this trial. So what is more, what is more, uh, attractive to a blackfire black Friday buyer? Is it. A discount or is it a bonus? 

Dude, okay, let me, let me, let me, I'm like a cat salivating over a turkey that I'm about to steal. This is...