Anura PR Team
TL;DR:
- A strong Black Friday marketing strategy has to protect your ad budget from bots and human fraud farms.
- Start holiday marketing campaigns early. The best Black Friday strategies begin months in advance to secure ad placements, test campaigns, and lock in lower costs.
- Use the right mix of channels. Email, social media, search, and SMS all work when your traffic real. Protect every channel from bot-driven fraud and human fraud farms.
- Avoid common mistakes. Don’t wait too long, over-discount, ignore mobile users, or rely on IP blocking to stop fraud.
- Measure real success. Recalculate ROAS, CPA, and LTV after filtering out invalid traffic. Analyze multi-touch attribution to see which channels convert.
- Protect your ROI. Real results come from real traffic. Detect, block, and prevent ad fraud before it drains your holiday campaigns.
The High-Stakes Season for Marketers
The holidays are a wonderful time of year. Extra time with friends and family, sparkling decorations, and the thrill of gift-giving make the season feel magical. But while you’re hunting for the perfect gift, fraudsters are hunting for your company’s ad budget.
If you’re a marketer, you already know that starting early on your Black Friday marketing strategy is essential. What you may not realize is how critical it is to make sure you’re reaching real people instead of bots and fraudsters. During the 2024 holiday season, 31% of website traffic came from bots looking to steal ad dollars rather than people looking to purchase gifts. Fake traffic, bot clicks, and invalid leads can drain your budget and skew your results, leaving you paying for engagement that never converts.
A successful Black Friday e-commerce campaign doesn’t just rely on creative offers or clever copy; it’s built on real traffic, clean data, and smart optimization.
In this blog, we’ll break down actionable tips to help you plan, launch, and optimize your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns for maximum ROI, while also protecting your investment from ad fraud.
Before you dive in, try Anura’s ad fraud calculator to see how much you’re losing to fraud.
How to Prepare a Marketing Strategy for Black Friday
Preparation is everything. Waiting until November is a recipe for stress, wasted spend, and missed opportunities. The brands that dominate the holiday season are the ones that start early, understand their audience, and build campaigns around real data, not assumptions.
Start early. Like, now.
The best Black Friday campaigns begin months in advance. Some companies start in October; others start as early as August. Early preparation helps secure ad placements, design creative assets, test your website under high traffic, and lock in lower ad rates before costs increase for the holidays.
Audit last year’s results.
Look at past Black Friday marketing strategies and evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Which channels delivered the highest ROI? Where did the engagement drop off? And, most importantly, how much of your budget went to invalid clicks or fake leads? Identify those gaps so you can invest smarter this year.
Segment your audience.
Not all shoppers are the same. Some are deal hunters looking for the lowest price; others are loyal customers waiting for a reason to buy again. Build separate campaigns tailored to each segment’s intent. Personalized offers and messaging can significantly boost conversions.
Set clear goals and KPIs.
Decide what success looks like before you launch. Whether it’s boosting ROAS, increasing average order value, or growing your customer base, clear metrics help you measure progress and adjust quickly if something isn’t working.
Ensure your tracking is airtight.
Before launching any ads, double-check that your analytics, pixels, and conversion tracking are set up correctly. Any data gap gives bots an opening to skew your numbers. Clean tracking with clean traffic means clean results.
When Should You Start Planning for Black Friday Campaigns?
Black Friday isn’t a one-day event anymore; it’s a whole season.
Also known as “Christmas Creep,” holiday creep is the time of year when retailers start selling holiday-themed items before the traditional start of the season. The most effective Black Friday marketing strategies start months before November.
Here’s how to time everything so your campaign runs smoothly and performs strongly.
- Build the full holiday timeline. Chart out the phases: teaser campaigns, early access, main sale, flash deals, and post-sale follow-ups. Reverse engineer deadlines for asset creation, approvals, testing, and launch to avoid any last-minute work or panic.
- Launch pre-sale promotions. Many consumers begin researching deals well before Black Friday. Over 57% of consumers expect brands to start communicating their Black Friday plans at least a month prior. Use teaser emails, VIP early access offers, and countdown campaigns to build momentum.
- Test early, not during peak time. Run A/B tests on subject lines, landing pages, creative variations, and funnel paths in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. When the holiday period arrives, deploy your winners. Don’t experiment in real-time when costs are high and traffic is volatile.
- Reserve media placements in advance. Secure prime ad slots early to avoid holiday-inflated costs.
- Finalize systems and checks. In your final stretch, remember to audit everything: segmentation logic, creative inventory, email and SMS workflows, landing pages, analytics instrumentation, and fraud detection layers. Make sure all systems are good to go before the surge hits.
What Channels Work Best for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Promotions?
Your Black Friday shopping strategy should balance awareness and retargeting. Different channels play different roles in your Black Friday marketing strategy. The key is to use the right mix and filter out invalid traffic to ensure your data is trustworthy.
Email marketing
Email remains central to all Black Friday email marketing strategies; it still shows as a top performer. According to Sinch’s consumer report on holiday shopping, 61% of those interviewed preferred email over any other method of holiday promotions, which was higher than any other method of communication.
Paid Social and Retargeting
Platforms like Meta and TikTok help you reach a wide range of audience members and help reconnect with those who may have abandoned their cart. Just be cautious: bot-driven engagement can inflate your metrics. Use fraud detection to protect your spending and focus on quality reach over vanity clicks.
Google Ads
High-intent shoppers look for deals via search engines. Monitor invalid clicks and optimize keyword segments for better results.
SMS, Push, and App Notifications
Short, time-sensitive reminders work wonders during the holidays. Use SMS and app notifications for flash deals and cart recovery, but avoid overloading customers with too many messages.
Overall, you have to maintain cross-channel consistency. A shopper might see your email, then a social ad, and then end up in a search. Keep your offer, design, and messaging consistent through all touchpoints so your brand sticks.
Common Mistakes Brands Make During Holiday Sales
Companies see the dollar signs that could come from holiday campaigns, but they often miss vital actions while planning those campaigns. Some of the most common mistakes brands tend to make during their holiday campaign marketing are:
- Waiting too long to plan or not planning at all.
- Neglecting mobile optimization.
- Over-discounting or eroding margins.
- Misallocating budget or ignoring performance signals.
- Overlooking ad fraud risks or relying solely on IP blocking.
- Failing to segment or personalize your audience.
- Measuring only revenue, not real performance.
How to Measure Success After Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Once the holidays wind down, that's when the real work begins, understanding what drove your success.
Start by analyzing your key performance metrics: ROAS, CPA, AOV, and LTV. But you have to make sure the data you’re using is clean. Bot clicks, fake leads, and invalid conversions can distort results and hide what really worked. When you filter out fraudulent traffic, your performance insights become clearer.
You can take it a step further:
- Recalculate performance metrics using verified data.
- Compare year-over-year benchmarks to identify sustainable growth.
- Analyze multi-touch attribution to see which channels genuinely drove revenue. Did your emails initiate the customer journey? Di social media spark awareness? Did a search seal the deal? Knowing which touch points truly convert helps you invest smarter next time.
And don’t stop at the scale. Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday customers can become loyal advocates if you continue engaging with them. Use post-purchase flows, cross-sell offers, and loyalty rewards to build lasting relationships even after the holiday rush.
Maximize Your ROI and Protect Your Campaigns This Holiday Season
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are your biggest opportunities to connect with customers and drive record-breaking sales, but only if your marketing reaches real people.
The truth is, ad fraud doesn’t just waste budget; it skews your data, disrupts your optimizations, and quietly erodes your ROI. Every fake click and bot-driven impression is a missed chance to convert a real customer.
This season, don’t just aim for higher sales, aim for honest success. Start planning early. Choose your channels strategically. Safeguard your campaigns with ad fraud protection that goes beyond IP blocking. And measure your results with confidence, knowing every impression and conversion counts. A successful Black Friday strategy protects your data, budget, and ROI.
Your hard work deserves accurate data and real results. Before peak season hits, see exactly how much of your ad spend is already slipping away, and what you can do to stop it.
Experience Anura's ad fraud solution in action with a free trial.
