Case Study: Anatomy of a High-Performing Black Friday/Cyber Monday Campaign

YRV Dynamics was charged with a mandate from a premiere fashion client. The goal: run a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign with key creative pieces, proven audiences, and jarring, high-profile placements that scale transactions.

Our first action was to incorporate best practices, especially with high-profile sales events like Black Friday/ Cyber Monday:

• Go live early with deals and promo codes: We were live with Black Friday/ Cyber Monday deals roughly two months before those events. This is a great time for small businesses to stand out and get on their customers’ radar.

• The strategy was to take advantage of low advertiser SOV instead of 2+ weeks before Black Friday when larger advertisers ramp up their spending. YRV Dynamics’ reached over 12+ ROAS several times in the second half of September. On Sept 30th, we scaled as high as 20 ROAS for a daily high — again over two months before Black Friday. Please note: there are special ways to do this in Google outside of Search, etc.…. Please contact the YRV Dynamics team for more specifics on this strategy. Our methodology factors in AOV/ CPA, creative, and budget. Our team uses precise experiments for scaling at this level across Google’s other placements. ROAS is declining year over year. The fact we reached these thresholds highlights the level of detail we have for our clients.

• Conversion Analysis: Are your Submit Lead Form (email), ATC, IC, Payment Method, and other conversion events set up correctly? These should be included within your secondary mix and one — maybe two primary objectives. QA and confirm your optimization events are correct and do not include miscellaneous events such as Page View.

• The chart below highlights 10 ROAS two months out before Black Friday, cumulatively.

Closer to Black Friday/ Cyber Monday, we included the following within our digital mix:

• Continue to Optimize Google: Fine-tune the top-performing placement mix through YRV Dynamics buying methodologies. Conversion objective but identifying spend by Search, PMAX, or Standard Shopping is key. This is based on long-term analysis; we started these campaigns two months before Black Friday.

• Highlight Google creative: Fuel growth with key creative for PMAX images, YouTube, and Search—use search extensions that balance headlines and descriptions. Again, these were done well ahead of time.

• Two weeks before is also a great time to re-analyze your path to conversion GA4. What is the drop-off rate between ATC, IC, and Payment Method? Our team has the benchmarks needed to maintain success and what those should be — -feel free to develop your own or use previous sales’ flights. This should have been checked two months prior as well.

• Stay the conversion rate thresholds: Use benchmarks to your advantage as an indicator to accelerate or slow down spending. Again, our team has prioritized benchmarks to act on conversion rate signals.

• Optimize your Google Merchant Center and confirm reviews and best practices are correctly implemented. If you need help connecting Google Merchant Center with Google Reviews or another review platform such as Judge.Me, please reach out to our team. Please note Google Business reviews cannot be used for Google Shopping/ Google Merchant Center reviews.

• Below is our Google Ads performance two weeks before Black Friday.

Shifting to Meta’s results, our team again reached a crescendo at 12+ ROAS for Cyber Monday:

• Note: We were close to 10 ROAS for Black Friday. Our team expected this insight, as we’ve noticed this occurring in back-to-back sale events. One interesting observation was reaching close to 8 ROAS the Monday prior — please see the chart below.

• Define your path of conversion for the user journey. Are the Meta pixels affixed correctly? Unfortunately, these need to be connected via GTM, the pixel, or Shopify server-Meta connection (CAPI), meaning GA4 cannot affix Meta event tags.

• Set up the correct ratio of RET and ACQ audiences: You must set up the right retargeting pool and how you build your ACQ audiences. YRV Dynamics can help here with our PPC audit process.

• Has CAPI been installed correctly? Shopify has seamless integration with Meta’s CAPI integration.

• Working closely with your Meta Pro team and listening to their recommendations- where several recommendations in our approach originated

• Use 3–5 creatives per ad set and AB test: Identify key themes, static vs. video creative & callouts that resonate with purchases and lean into those.

• Including Meta Blueprint certified buyers who understand Meta’s buying approach to maximize your ROI.

• Use dedicated vertical vs. feed creative. Many businesses shortcut this part of the creative process for Meta’s autoformat. Advertisers should use dedicated placements such as below. By using 1x1 in vertical format, advertisers are not matching the right creative to the right placement.

Lastly, another tactical advantage was utilizing a premier data platform such as Power My Analytics or Supermetrics. Your agency or a business, requires a more advanced level of analysis than what is offered by Excel reports and a brief one-hour review in order to achieve the over 17+ Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) highlighted in this POV.

YRV Dynamics provides FREE data dashboards when you agree to use our services. With your free dashboard link, clients can see daily, monthly, and yearly performance by platform. Each dashboard has roughly fifteen slides of conversion data. Again, this is added value at no charge to clients, regardless of spend. Lastly, these dashboards can include non-paid platforms, such as GA4, Shopify, LinkedIn, SEO, Hubspot, and organic. Since our team is identified as a Premiere Partner with Power My Analytics, we set these up within their platform at no cost to you.

Example on YRV Dynamic's Dashboard (public use)

Our team has optimized the right mix of buying strategy, benchmarketing, placement optimization, and data analytics to generate a high ROAS for any occasion. Let us know how we can help you scale your revenue and ROAS.

Yousaf is the CEO and Founder of YRV Dynamics. Let us know how we can help your company stay ahead and give your brand a compelling roadmap. Discover other industry tips by visiting our agency’s site, YRV Dynamics. Unlock your potential today by having us shape your brand’s digital story.

Yousaf Yunes is the CEO/ Lead Founder / Principal at YRV Dynamics, with more than 15 years of expertise in the advertising industry. He’s garnered a Top Rated Plus status on Upwork, earning a perfect job satisfaction score of 100% with twenty-one 5-star reviews from his Upwork clients. Yousaf earned certifications in Google Search and YouTube/Video and holds dual Blueprint certifications in Meta’s planning and buying. Yousaf has also won the Monty McKinney Award for the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies (IAAS).

During his downtime, Yousaf is the lead moderator for the largest Meta group focused on Blueprint, known as “Facebook Blueprint Certification Prep,” which boasts a membership of over 30,000 individuals.