7 Lessons from BFCM 2025

BFCM is over—so what actually worked?

In this episode of Google Ads Unleashed, host Jeremy breaks down seven key learnings from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, from extending sales periods and preparing your algorithm to testing strong offers and monitoring performance in real time. 

You’ll discover why brand trust and evergreen marketing outperformed, how to pivot when offers underperform, and why Demand Gen delivered exceptional ROI.

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Get your free 30 minute strategy session with Jeremy here: https://www.younganddigital.marketing/

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Transcript

 welcome to Google Ads unleashed, the podcast that helps you harness the power of Google ads and now your host, Jeremy young, hello and welcome back to Google Ads unleashed, guys, another Black Friday, Cyber Monday, done. And today I want to share with you some of the core learnings that we've made this year, and of course, of the past years, some of which have sort of had the writing on the walls already, but some of which may have been surprising as well. But just before I start a quick a couple of things I want to note. So if you're are listening and thinking maybe
I could have improved my Google Ads performance this Black Friday, Cyber Monday didn't really maximize it. Please head to the website and book a call with us. We have hired two new specialists the New Year, increasing our capacity for the agency. So we would love to chat to you if you need one to one support or obviously need an agency service. Alternatively, you can always actually ask us to be added to the new Google ads and leash Slack community. There's very few members on there at the moment, and we're trying to grow it. Do come online and say hello if you want, and you can ask any Google Ads question on there, and, of course, submit questions the pod. But let's dive right in. So seven points have got for you in all on a bit of a random order, but something that we have noticed is all of our clients, which have done extremely well. I've had a longer sales period. So I think, to be honest, in the last years, there's been sort of a development as follows, Black Friday, Cyber Monday always used to be, of course, just that period. Then advertisers noticed that CPMs and CPCs are really, really expensive in that time. So maybe we should extend the time period. Because,
yeah, of course, I can take advantage of lower CPMs. Think of the famous fake Friday, which the 21st
or which was the 21st of this year, where people saw a spike in sales because, because people out there thought there was already Black Friday and were purchasing So, yeah, there's been that shift to longer sales period, to do black week, black month, or cyber week and all that sort of stuff. And that's there's a good point for doing that. Most clients, which have done that, almost all of them, have actually seen much better results overall for their month of November. Also, it has helped to really prepare the algorithm fully, instead of doing silly seasonality bid adjustments or other things, so in terms of pushing the budgets to acceptable levels and in terms of setting the right bid strategies, longer sales periods have been the absolute winner this Black Friday. Okay, then, in the same vein, it has been harder to spend the money. So we've seen this from our friends who've been running meta ads, advertising that it's been really difficult to actually spend money. There's a reason, multiple reasons for that. Supposedly, I'm not a big meta ads guy, so I can't say for sure, but supposedly, one of the bigger reasons has been that matters daily budget logic has changed, that it's not similar to Google, that it's not a daily budget that's set for the day and that's what it's going to spend, but rather that it is more of a flexible budget, a daily spend that would have been spent over the next seven days based on demand and performance. And we've really been struggling to spend the money in some accounts, resulting in Friday being sometimes even a worse day than Sunday. This is also also partially driven by the fact that we have had, obviously the longer sales period in many accounts, and people are thinking then
and already trained to the fact that Friday is not just the only day where the sale is on, but that people can also have the sales still on Sunday, maybe even a better offer, and that is also The last day of the offer, where scarcity and urgency kicks in. And so we've seen Sunday to be actually the better driver of sales in many accounts, with easier spend, as the algorithm is already trimmed for many more days to spend the budget. So that was something that we've seen, that Sunday's actually been the better day. It wasn't like that in many accounts last year. Then the third thing we've seen is that all brands which are focused on the Evergreen marketing and their brand and in strengthening their brand, have again outperformed the field. We have quite a few shops that are.
Not really a brand that are just a shop, right? They've still done okay, and that's all well and good, but we also have a portfolio of really big brands, and they have taken advantage of this, this Black Friday. People who trust brands, people who trust the story, people who like the product and like what the product stands for, have been quicker to actually purchase those as well, and we've seen this on steroids over the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. So the note here is that invest in your marketing outside of Black Friday Cyber Monday. Prepare for the for the sales and prepare for those periods outside of your normal sales periods. Okay,
then the fourth thing that we've learned is that the offer needs to be tested and validated and good. I've set this multiple, multiple, multiple times in all of the pods that I've done, but you need to test your offer. You need to make sure that it's actually a good offer, and you need to make sure that people will want to buy it. We've had this with one partner where basically the offer wasn't really as strong, and people nowadays, consumers out there, can smell a shit deal from miles away against the wind. Okay, we've had one partner. We actually warned him from this. He basically has an evergreen offer, and just slapped a different badge on there and said, Now this is the Black Friday offer, and it was exactly the same price. And we saw that this did not work whatsoever. We had to go to the War Room on Friday and change the offer on the spot and really quickly, redo everything, which was an ideal and over the weekend, it's recovered nicely. We almost did 200k in November in the end, but it just really shows that the offer needs to be fucking good for this to work. Okay, so super, super important that you look into this next year, if you haven't, then learning number five is you need to be prepared for everything. You need to be prepared for that the offer doesn't work. You ideally have to have a plan B. You need to
sort of pivot in the last moment, as always those resources you have to plan in and that you have to plan for in order to execute this.
I also want to
note in this, in this instance, that I think be prepped for everything in preparation is pretty much the same point here number five, and that includes every part of your marketing funnel, including your product page. For instance, we saw some partners which didn't really communicate their sale on the product page. They just chucked a homepage banner on there and a banner at the top. That's not fucking good enough, right? You have to in order to be successful on Google, specifically, you have to prepare everything on the product page and communicate your sale wisely on there as well. Be prepared, be prepared to pivot and have a plan, be in hand in order to be successful over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, then number six, learning that we've made in the past years, but again confirmed over this weekend is you have to just regularly monitor your performance and also forecast performance. So from Friday onwards, we were in meetings for all of our partners in pretty much every hour of the day, looking at the numbers, looking at where we are, how much more can we push, etc, etc. But also then looking in the evenings, after performance has gone off. For instance, for some clients, we've seen that historically, from 8pm there were no purchases anymore, consumption went down from back with others, it was after 10pm that you then proactively downscale as well. So the proactivity in pushing, in downscaling and in regular performance checks has been absolutely crucial to success this Black Friday, Cyber Monday. All right, as always, that is how you maximize every dollar, pound Euro that you spend. And again, this is something that I recommend to everyone in the near future as well. Then lastly,
my point number seven is demand gen worked a charm. We have spent quite a significant amount on demand gen over the Black Friday Cyber Monday period. I'm actually very, very happy with that as well. We have alone spent just in the last three days, 44,000 on demand. Gen may not sound like crazy much, especially since a lot of the clients that we work with probably have meta ad spends, which are.
Lot higher. But not all of our clients actually are even on demand gen or spend in there. Want to spend there. So there's multiple reasons for that, and that's just our MCC. If I actually look at another MCC for an agency where we manage the ads, fabulous, we actually spend hard to filter out, but it looks like another 20,000 so probably about 10k a day on this platform, right? And it's done sensationally well. I think we've massively, actually even under spent on this, on this placement. So yeah, it's been super, super successful, and definitely something that you need to take into your next sales, and if you want to have more advice, and if you want to sort of maximize your next sales and your Google Ads performance in the into the new year, just give me a shout. You can always find me on LinkedIn Jeremy and Google ads, or send me an email at Jeremy, at young digital dot marketing. You can also book a one to one with me via the website at young and digital dot marketing. Give the podcast a like and subscribe, that would mean a lot, and I'll see you in the next episode.
Thank you for listening to Google Ads unleashed to connect with Jeremy. Check him out online at www dot young and digital dot marketing, we'll see you next time you.