You don’t need to hear (yet again) about why you should start your BFCM campaigns early. You already know that if you start too late, you pay the Black Friday Chaos Tax™ – overpaying influencers, missing out on the best-fit creators, working longer hours, and adding more stress to your plate.
But in this article, instead of harping on about why you should start early, we tell you what you should do if you’re ready to kickstart your Black Friday efforts on time (because during BFCM being on time = being early). Let’s get into it.
What are BFCM prep campaigns and why should they be a part of your strategy?
According to our latest survey, most brands start planning for Black Friday promotions in late July and have a finalized plan by mid-August.
This timeline is similar to last year – most brands said they start planning their BFCM promotions between June and August.
But what if, along with planning your promotions, influencers, and discounts in July, you also start running a few brand awareness campaigns in August? We call these BFCM prep campaigns.
You know how you preheat the oven before you bake something sweet and delicious? BFCM prep campaigns are the same way. They allow you to stay on top of mind for customers before the Black Friday craze even begins. Mark Dandy agrees:
The brands that cut through the noise are going to do so in September or October. They’re already ahead of the game. It’s not about discounting early – it’s about making sure you’re already front of mind and your customer already knows where to go.
Most of your consumers don’t start planning their holiday shopping list right at the cusp of Black Friday; they begin much earlier. They’re already eyeing brands and products they want to shop for and are waiting for the BFCM discounts to kick in.
Surveys confirm this: over 48% of shoppers in a Bankrate survey said they plan to begin shopping before Halloween and another Tinuiti survey found over 60% of participants plan to start shopping for holiday gifts before Thanksgiving.
If your consumers are starting early, why shouldn’t you? BFCM prep campaigns around August and September are your chance to get yourself into the shopping list of as many buyers as possible.
But there are benefits beyond brand awareness, too. When you have influencer content this early, it’s also much easier to repurpose it as ads and other marketing assets when those sales gates open. Grant Walker recommends this, too:
To get the most value out of the influencer channel for BFCM, you'll want to start early enough to have content in your library ready for whitelisting and targeted ads starting on October 1st.
If you think getting your hands on repurposed influencer content early on isn’t that big a deal, think again: 73.2% of marketers in our survey said they repurpose influencer content for other channels during BFCM. Out of those, 63.2% of marketers said repurposed influencer content outperforms other kinds of content during BFCM.
Hear it from Lee Drysdale:
Our repurposed influencer content generally outperformed our standard brand content in terms of engagement and click-through, especially during BFCM. Posts and ads featuring authentic creator visuals saw higher reach and stronger CTR compared to purely branded creative, especially on BFCM emails!
Another advantage of Black Friday prep campaigns is skipping the brutal influencer search that begins around September/October. Lee says it best:
BFCM is like the Hunger Games in booking talent for campaigns. This is where long-term partnerships come into play – if you already have that relationship with the talent, then this is the time to leverage!
When you do BFCM prep campaigns, you’re already building relationships with creators and can lock them in early (at reasonable rates!) for Black Friday before a competing brand gets there. This is especially true if you want to test new or unconventional creators – you have more time to ensure you’re making the right call.
Not to mention: when you’ve already laid a strong foundation of creator relationships via prep campaigns, an influencer’s also more likely to accommodate last-minute changes. Mark explains with an example:
If a brand changes their discount and says, ‘Look, I'm sorry. I know you've created a video and said that there’s a 30% discount. We need you to refilm it. It's supposed to go live tomorrow, can you do it now, please?’ A new influencer will probably refuse. An influencer with whom you’ve built a great relationship might say, ‘That's frustrating, but we love you guys.’
And because so many brands don’t already make BFCM prep campaigns a part of their strategy, it’s easier for you to stand out.
How many marketers plan for BFCM prep campaigns?
BFCM prep campaigns are an untapped opportunity. In our survey, less than 40% of marketers said they do prep campaigns as part of their BFCM strategy.
And even then, most brands (41.6%) say they start these campaigns in September. Ideally, you’d begin your BFCM prep campaigns as early as August to stay ahead of the competition and give enough time to your potential buyers to learn about your products.
Valerija Somi says starting early was the most useful thing she did last year to make her BFCM campaigns successful:
We started preparing for BFCM very early, in August. Although with long-term influencers, we booked content even earlier in the year.
Lucy Sergeeva also mentioned that she’d like to start preparing for BFCM in August:
Last year, we didn’t have enough time for preparation, as everything started a bit too late. That’s why I’d like to begin preparing for the Black Friday campaign in August. It would be ideal to communicate with all potential collaborators in advance.
Among the marketers who plan for BFCM prep campaigns, more than 77% aim to increase brand awareness.
Leaning into brand awareness during BFCM prep campaigns is an excellent call – this is the time consumers are contemplating which brands they’re going to shop from. When you’re already present at the top of their feeds, you build trust and become more memorable.
Running performance campaigns for sales is also great to reel in those early shoppers and get some wins in your pocket before the Black Friday peak even begins. It can also ease a marketer’s top worry: pressure for BFCM campaigns to perform well and generate sales.
And look, you don’t have to choose between one goal and the other. You can run a mix of various kinds of campaigns and lean heavily on one aim. For example, you can have a majority of your creators spreading awareness about your products, another set of influencers to collect emails, and an affiliate tribe for sales. Yes, this will require more management and work upfront, but it’ll pay off in better results.
Testing different kinds of collaborations with different creators will also help you pinpoint which influencer belongs in which cohort. Some creators will be excellent at driving awareness but not at bringing sales. Other creators can be A+ in helping build your email list, but can’t reach as many new people. Mark explains how he does this:
We measure influencer performance over two months between June and July. Based on that, we decide which influencers are performing the best in which categories – and what budgets should we align to those influencers within those categories.
With Black Friday prep campaigns, you aren’t learning of a creator’s core strengths and weaknesses in the battlefield – you’re already aware and prepared to make the most of their skills.
How to launch BFCM prep campaigns?
Okay, you’re convinced of the power of BFCM prep campaigns and want to use them to set yourself up for success. Where do you begin? Follow this plan:
1. Finalize creators and types of collaborations
Remember the cohorts we talked about earlier? Use prep campaigns to find, test, and finalize your BFCM creators and the type of collaborations you’ll be running with them. Using Modash, you can not only find and vet new creators quickly, but you can also organize them using different lists and filter by campaigns, products, and labels.
Having this list will help you ensure all of your team’s up to speed and never lose track of the stage of an influencer relationship. With the Shopify integration, you can ship products to creators directly from here and even generate discount codes and UTM links. Set up commission tiers for your creators and adjust them as the calendar inches closer to BFCM.
You can also leave notes for your future-overwhelmed-by-BFCM-self here in Modash under the notes column.
2. Run various types of partnerships
Instead of focusing solely on brand awareness, also use BFCM prep campaigns to:
- Collect emails
- Get more sales
- Grow your social media account
You want to get on your customer’s radar – so don’t be afraid of running scalable gifting campaigns with various creators on different platforms. A potential buyer should ideally have multiple touchpoints with you through frequent exposure to your products when they browse social media. This will make your presence more sticky and ensure customers check out your products before BFCM starts.
Beyond brand awareness, it’s also a great idea to build your email list using influencer marketing via prep campaigns. You can ask customers (via creator content) to sign up for your email marketing by offering exclusive discounts, an early sneak peek at future offers, and freebies. Mark explains why building your email list with customers during BFCM is a power move:
You can send your target audience ten sales emails over a five-day period on Black Friday with different offers and discounts. For the cost of one customer acquisition, you can essentially market to them for free (for life!) – as long as they stay subscribed to your email address.
You can also use giveaways, competitions, and contests with influencers to grow your own social media account. The more people follow you, the more likely they are to encounter your content during Black Friday.
Lastly, you can also use prep campaigns to secure some early sales. This will often encourage buyers who loved your product to return for the big BFCM deals.
3. Test everything and whip the lumps out of your processes
Black Friday is a chaotic time (to put it mildly). Use prep campaigns to ensure:
- your workflows are smooth with no bottlenecks
- your efforts are aligned with other marketing initiatives to ensure consistent brand messaging
- each influencer is aware of your content style, where to find briefs, approval process, etc.
Working during prep campaigns to make your BFCM as smooth as possible will have a huge payoff in the long run – you’ll be less stressed and find fewer tasks that need fixing at the last minute.
You can also test new messaging, different customer flows, and landing pages during prep campaigns. Mark recommends tracking and testing every customer touchpoint:
The lead up process – how you're tracking every touch point that influencers have had with their audience, and then how they engage with you through ecommerce or email – will allow you to optimize everything. When Black Friday sales happen, you'll know the best-performing email templates, imagery, influencer content, and sales content.
If you have the time, you can also start tracking and optimizing the minutiae of your campaigns. This could look like:
- Tracking which products bring in the most customers to your website
- Ensuring your website messaging aligns with how influencers market your products
- Setting up customized email and website flows so each customer coming in via a particular creator experiences influencer recognition
Mark shares an example of what the last pointer looks like in action:
You can track every single person who has entered an email address via any influencer. So, maybe the first email you'd send to that customer features other imagery of the same influencer wearing different clothing. This way, you've not only got brand recognition, but also influencer recognition.
4 pro tips to ace the BFCM prep campaign
Prep campaigns are one of the best things you can do to set yourself up for success during BFCM. Here are a few more pro tips to make them even better:
1. Don’t discount too much too soon
Prep campaigns are fertile ground to grow your BFCM promotions – but you gotta wait for the right time before you start rolling out those heavy discounts. Mark explains why:
Customers aren’t stupid. If they look at heavy sales messaging in September or October, they’ll think, ‘Oh, if you’re offering 30% off in October, what are you going to do in November? I’ll wait.' Therefore, you’re clouding that message.
Leaning too heavily on sales can also make customers tired of the promotional messaging – and this, right when you’re ready to hit the gas as Black Friday arrives.
While you’re at it, also avoid relying too heavily on holiday messaging until November. Customers can react negatively if you go hard on the “winter holidays” campaigns too early – frame promotions during prep campaigns as fall promotions.
2. Experiment with new creators and creative collabs
Ideally, a majority of your BFCM creator partners would be long-term influencer partnerships. Almost half of the marketers in our survey said they collaborate with fewer than 25% new influencers during Black Friday.
And it makes sense: BFCM isn’t the time to bet on new and unconventional creators. You want to partner with familiar creators who have proven their impact.
But prep campaigns are a safer environment to test unconventional creators and experiment with creative collabs that you can’t bet on during the peak holiday season. Right now, you aren’t at a major risk even if a couple of influencer posts don’t perform as expected. Instead, you can learn what worked and what didn’t and use those insights to power your Black Friday campaigns.
3. Focus on involving customers in various parts of your sales funnel
Prep campaigns are an excellent opportunity to pull potential buyers into your sales funnel much before Black Friday. You could:
- do giveaways requiring participants’ phone numbers
- run contests with influencers requiring a customer’s email address
- offer exclusive early bird discounts to your best sellers to increase revenue
All of the above are excellent options to bring more future buyers into your orbit in a more personalized channel – where you have more control over the messaging, too. Having this customer data handy during BFCM will help you push your promotions to a broader audience.
4. Work with influencer partners to create BFCM timelines
All your creators are likely seeing a packed calendar during Black Friday. But if you’ve been collaborating with them early on in your prep campaigns, you can also start locking in dates and timelines for the main event sooner than other brands. Alycia Lynkins explains:
Collaborate closely with influencers to create a detailed content calendar, including deadlines for drafts, approvals, and posting schedules. Early preparation allows for refining your strategy and addressing any potential issues.
Doing the above will not only help you stay prepared, but also help your influencers plan better and give you the top spots in their holiday calendar.
Prep campaigns ease the stress of the future you
Prep campaigns are like a cheat code to a successful (and slightly more sane) Black Friday. The later you start, the more you pay – in money, stress, and coffee.
And if you’ve got a Modash subscription, too? You have a lot of edge against the competitors and none of the Chaos Tax – you can find, vet, and organize your creator lineup in a fraction of the time. Content tracking is smooth and understanding the impact of each influencer & campaign is straightforward.
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