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Cody Plofker
CMO, Jones Road Beauty
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Black Friday Isn’t Made During Black Friday
You will either succeed or fail based on everything you’ve done leading up to it.
Why? Because Black Friday is the realization of whatever demand and value you’ve created before Black Friday.
Unfortunately, operating within that truth is hard. It’s more than just creating a strategy around how you’ll approach …
- Spend & Channels
- Offers & Timing
It’s emotionally exhausting.
To help, I want to pull back the curtain on exactly how we’re approaching Q4 at Jones Road Beauty.
Spend & Channels: Top to Bottom
The most valuable media dollars you’ll spend all year are in Sept through early Nov. At least, that’s true for us.
When we look at the delayed value effect (delayed multiplier) through Northbeam, that’s when we see the largest increase between 1D-click ROAS versus 30D-click.
The longer your consideration window and the higher your price point, the wider that difference becomes.
During Black Friday & Cyber Monday, it’s the opposite. Delayed value immediately drops off. Your 1D returns are the same as your 30D. There’s no incremental impact after that.
What you really have to think about is …
- When to spike spend?
- Where to fill your funnels?
- How to set and hold targets?
The goal: Get as many people as you can aware of you, interested in your brand — waiting and wanting to buy.
From now until the end of Oct, we’ll be pushing as hard as possible on our upper funnel media mix. More TV, more YouTube, more out-of-home (OOH), more non-conversion objectives — reach, views, and quiz completions.
But this isn’t allocation without accountability.
We’re already conducting a holdout test on YouTube reach until the end of Sept. We’ll do the same on Meta with reach versus video views throughout Oct.
Another advantage is that we run the same core offer during Memorial Day as Black Friday (Mini Miracle Balms). The build-up is very similar, including a lead-gen funnel.
To realize value during the holidays, you have to create value before them:
- New impressions
- New site visits
- New emails
In mid-Nov, we turn our attention to bottom-funnel channels.
We might reduce upper-funnel spend — depending on what we learn — but as our total budget increases, both Meta and Google’s allocations will go up significantly.
Last year, we spent $773k on Black Friday. This year, we’re going for our first $1M-spend day.
What about targets? It takes guts to run so inefficient.
That’s where having historicals and a playbook with daily expectations comes in.
Let’s say your MER goal for Nov is a 4. For every dollar you spend on advertising, you want a 4X return in total revenue blended between new and returning customers.
To spike spend + fill your funnel, you’ll need to lower your target MER of 4 … to 3 or sub-3 in Oct through early Nov.
If your AOV consideration or revenue concentration is higher than ours, then early Nov might be set even lower. HexClad, for example, ran its Oct MER a third lower than year-end MER — 38% lower than Nov.
And the first two weeks of Nov? A full 50% lower than the month’s overall target.
In the moment, it’s scary. It really is.
The only way you can do it — hold and not pull back — is by knowing your monthly, weekly, and daily targets.
Offers & Timing: Step-By-Step
We don’t do discounting at Jones Road. Instead, all of our offers are driven by product launches and collections (kits) — exclusivity, limited-time, or gifts with purchase.
Our Labor Day promotion (above) is a great example.
Starting in Sept, we’ll do at least two launches a month, building up to our anniversary sale.
Technically, our anniversary is Oct 26. This year, we’re moving it right to the beginning of the month with the Bobbi Kit 4.0 — a high-AOV bundle of core SKUs plus a few new releases.
Here’s what last year’s looked like.
We’re also moving our holiday collections an entire month from mid-Nov to mid-Oct.
Two big kits and a few smaller kits.
The big kits will include our twice-a-year Mini Miracle Balms, core SKUs, and a new fragrance rollerball. Smaller kits will be product bundles like our lip and cheek palettes.
All very giftable at different price points.
Last year, we had 25k of each — which sold out in record time.
To keep them in stock for peak gifting, we’ve purchased 85k–100k of each.
Our Black Friday “sale” usually lasts four days. This year, it’s over a week.
That’s when we’ll launch Mini Miracle Balm standalone kits.
In 2023, Harley Finkelstein (Shopify’s president) shouted us out on TV for being one of the top SKUs during Black Friday.
We sold 375k. The goal is to sell double that this year, with the inventory to sell a million units.
For Black Friday, we’ll do some new creative. But mainly we’ll duplicate the Trojan Horse landing page and creative from our Memorial Day promotion.
We space these launch offers a few weeks apart because people are most likely to repurchase within 30 days.
New customers in Oct — acquired through the Bobbi Kit or holiday collections — should become returning customers through Black Friday’s Mini Miracle Balms.
On Cyber Monday, we’ll refocus on the holiday collections. Those should carry us to shipping cutoffs around Dec 15th. Christmas Day is typically soft.
Then, we see strong performance in “Q5” — Dec 26th to New Year’s. Do not forget to include that period in your strategy.
Believe me, I get it. Every year, I set the plan:
- Upper-funnel channels
- Low-expectation efficiency
Then, I get nervous. And every year afterward, I’m like …
“Damn, I wish I spent more.”
This year, I’m holding my foot down on the gas. I’m staying aggressive. The value always comes.
You don’t have to win the race on the first mile. You just have to know what your pacing should be for each and every one.
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Connor MacDonald
CMO, Ridge
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An Executive’s Guide to Creative Analytics
As much as I’d love to spend my days pouring over AIDA metrics in a creative analytics dashboard, the team gets to do that.
My days are split between web, tech, ops, retention, partnerships, brand, merchandising …
And hitting the ceiling this guy (my CEO) keeps raising.
So when I need a debrief on top performers across our growing number of categories and campaigns, Motion is my go-to.
Here’s my favorite report: “Top Spenders”
- Timeframe
- Group by Ad Name
- Set a spend level: >$100k
- Filter by Ad Name for Category
BOOM! I get a quick and meaningful glimpse of top content contributing to recent performance.
Last month?
MKBHD Sweepstakes cruised. NASA continued to succeed. Ridge Lite content earned 3x our average CTR.
Yes, our Cybertruck giveaway generated more than $4M in “extra revenue.” Even more important for my role …
Its top ad spent more than 2X the next biggest spender ($106k vs $49k) at our 1DC target.
Not only do I rely on this report, but these high-level takeaways get shared across the company.
Retention, eComm, and Partnership teams can easily understand what messages resonate to better inform their channel strategy.
These asynchronous, content-rich communication forms have become key for us as a remote organization.
Motion plays a critical role in that, especially as an executive.
That’s why I recommend it.
Plus, tell them Connor Mac sent you to get …