(4) Flash Campaign Method

(4) Flash Campaign Method

1. The 5 Phases of Any Flash Campaign
2. The 5 Phases of the BFCM Flash Campaign

70% up this year, so we’ll most likely pass the $4M.

That’s an example of the importance of Flash Campaigns.

Black Friday is just one more.

FC = Leveraging existing peaks in demand, and creating your own.

Annual flash campaign calendar:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cp5nL5QhhgIIRd_mIyg1Syc9xxlTt1Hmxrh3UkyV_3o/edit?usp=sharing

The simple conclusion is: Try to have 1 Flash Campaign per month.

And make a combination of market flash campaigns and brand flash campaigns.

Example I follow with brands:

January: Winter Sales

February: Brand Anniversary, Valentine’s

March: Spring Summer Collection

April: Spring Sale

May: Memorial Day Sale, Mother’s Day

June: Summer Sale

July: 4th of July

August: Closing Summer Sale, Back to School

September: Labor Day, Back to School

October: Autumn Sale, Warehouse Sale, Archive Sale

November: BFCM

December: XMAS, Boxing Day, New Year Sale

Always following 5 clear phases

Phase 1: HYPE

Phase 2: LAUNCH

Phase 3: URGENCY

Phase 4: EXTENSION

Phase 5: BRANDING

The Black Friday Flash Campaign

Phase 1: HYPE

• October and 1st-15th of November
• Goal: Build audiences, generate a lot of awareness about what’s coming
• Caveat: If you talk about Black Friday too much, people will stop buying. Build audiences for a long time, but only put a website pop up and send warm up emails 1 week before you launch Black Friday ads.
• Key actions:
  Apart from audience building,

• We have “audience activation”
  If you start Black Friday ads on November 21st,
  From November 15th to November 21st, run a Reach Retargeting campaign targeting ALL your retargeting audiences to “activate” them in the topic of Black Friday.
  
  “Black Friday is coming… Get Ready!”
  “Black Friday is coming… Prepare your Shopping Cart!”
  
  Make the product EXTREMELY clear
  
  Just let everybody know that you’re starting Black Friday soon.
  
  180d website visit
  90d IG engage
  Lifetime customers (or all list)
  
  Objectives: Add to cart and Reach
  
  Countdown widget on IG (Tease)

Black Friday 2024 starting in…  

04d:18h:55m

Email Teasing

Phase 2: LAUNCH

• Approx dates: (when you start) - November 27th
• Basically, Early Black Friday and Black Week
• Goal: Testing, Building Campaign Infrastructure

• !! Make sure everyone knows you’ve started Black Friday
  
• 
  
• During this period you validate everything that you will scale during BFCM
• Offer, creatives, landing page, manual bids
• And you PRACTICE wave surfing

Phase 3: URGENCY

• Dates: BFCM (28th nov-1st dec)
• 
• Urgency every fucking where
  Ads, website, email
• Black Friday by default is a “once in a year” opportunity, it really needs to feel like that

If selling luxury,

• Small text, good typography
• No crazy colors
• Wording: BIGGEST DISCOUNT EVER !!
• Wording:
  
  20h:15m:32s
  Black Friday Special

Phase 4: EXTENSION

• If you make it public for everybody: Black Friday Extended
• If you make it for your email list only: Extra 48h for our email list only

Has to be with a discount code

Phase 5: BRANDING

• Especially if you run a brand with followers and lots of emails,

Context for the day after Cyber Monday:

• You’ve sent an overwhelming number of emails
• You’ve overexposed your ads at high frequency
• You couldn’t stop talking about offers and discounts on Instagram, last hours, last chance, buy buy buy

But at the end of the day, you are a brand, and you have a reputation.

Almost NOBODY does a branding phase. Your advantage.

This would be a brand cleanup. Calming the waters.

It helps to close out a flash campaign properly.

• Do this on email and Instagram

• Communicate closeness and familiarity

Show transparency

Express gratitude:

"Our biggest Black Friday to date, we are absolutely grateful for everyone who supported our brand.

We don’t take it for granted and we will deliver the best of our services to you even with this crazy amount of orders."

• Let buyers know that you are already preparing their orders and working extra hours.

• Create FOMO for people who didn’t buy (thinking: “damn, there was a party here, and I missed it”).

Show that so many people have bought from you and that your warehouse is overwhelmed with work, BUT you’re managing it by working overtime and hiring extra staff to ensure your customers are happy. And then, let them know about your Christmas offers and that they cannot miss this one.