What $1M in Black Friday ad spend taught me about scaling ecommerce

One month. $1 million in ad spend. A four-person marketing team.

That was Black Friday for Katherine Schneider, founder of Create and Brand, when she led marketing as Chief Marketing Officer for an ecommerce pet brand. We asked her what actually worked, what broke, and what she’d tell brands spending a fraction of that.

What did BFCM look like at that scale?

I was leading marketing for a pet ecommerce brand, and BFCM was a pretty big operation. We had a marketing team of around four people, with me leading the department, alongside our warehouse and fulfillment teams.

We had a relatively flexible advertising budget. As long as the return on ad spend (ROAS) made sense, we were willing to keep investing. During the BFCM month, we spent around $1 million on advertising, with the majority going toward Meta.

At that level, you have to think about the entire customer journey, not just the ads. You’re driving a huge amount of traffic, but you also need to make sure the website, customer service, and fulfillment can keep up.

When did you start planning, and what would you recommend smaller brands do differently?

One of the biggest things I’d recommend is starting your advertising earlier than you think you need to.

We would start running ads the first week of November with an early Black Friday promotion. This gave us a chance to get ahead of the competition and, more importantly, test what was working.

You don’t want to wait until Black Friday to find out that your offer isn’t converting or your creative isn’t resonating with customers. Starting early gives you time to test different offers, bundles, and messaging and make adjustments before the biggest shopping days arrive.

For example, if you’re testing a bundle with three products and customers are consistently buying just one of those products, you might want to rethink the offer and try a two-product bundle instead.

The earlier you identify those patterns, the more time you have to optimize.

“You don’t want to wait until Black Friday to find out that your offer isn’t converting.”

You mentioned bundles. What made those such an effective strategy?

Bundles were a big part of our BFCM strategy, and they worked really well.

We would create dedicated bundle offers, pairing two or three complementary products together. The advantage is that you can communicate a much bigger perceived saving than you might be able to offer on a single product.

Customers feel like they’re getting more value, and you’re potentially increasing your average order value at the same time.

I’d recommend having a dedicated bundle page on your website rather than just featuring individual products. Make the savings obvious, make the combinations easy to understand, and give customers a reason to buy more than one item.

The important thing is to test those bundles early. Don’t assume that just because two products go well together, customers will automatically want to buy them together.

How did you approach advertising spend throughout Black Friday and Cyber Week?

We were willing to scale pretty aggressively when we saw something working.

Black Friday was consistently our biggest sales day, and we would increase our advertising budgets significantly to take advantage of that demand.

Normally, with Meta advertising, you’ll hear recommendations about gradually increasing budgets by a certain percentage to avoid disrupting campaign performance. But during BFCM, you sometimes have to move faster.

We weren’t necessarily following those usual scaling guidelines. If a campaign was performing well and sales were strong, we wanted to capitalize on that opportunity.

Did we lose a little ROAS as we scaled? Yes. But when we looked at the bigger picture, including email and SMS revenue, Black Friday weekend was still our strongest sales period.

My advice is to know your break-even ROAS before you start scaling. Every brand has different margins and operating costs, so you need to understand the minimum return you need to make your advertising profitable.

Once you know that number, you can make much more confident decisions about increasing spend.

“Know your break-even ROAS before you start scaling.”

What mistakes do smaller brands make when trying to replicate big-brand BFCM strategies?

I think the biggest mistakes are not starting early enough, being too conservative with advertising budgets, and not reacting quickly enough to performance.

You don’t need a million-dollar budget to apply these strategies. Even if you’re spending $5,000 or $50,000, the principles are the same.

First, understand your break-even ROAS. If your campaigns are performing above that number, don’t be afraid to increase your budget.

Second, move quickly. BFCM advertising moves fast, and you need to be comfortable turning off underperforming ads when the data tells you they’re not working.

With platforms like Shopify, you can see sales data relatively quickly. If a particular product or bundle isn’t selling, you need to investigate rather than continue putting money behind it.

And third, when you find a winning ad, create variations of it quickly. Don’t just rely on one successful creative. Take what’s working and produce new versions with different hooks, messaging, and visuals.

Creative velocity is really important during this period.

How should brands structure their actual BFCM promotions?

I’d recommend thinking about it in stages rather than treating Black Friday as one single promotion.

We would typically have an early Black Friday sale, followed by the main Black Friday promotion, then Cyber Monday, and potentially an extension afterward.

The early sale is your opportunity to test. You can try different offers, bundles, and creative approaches and see what customers respond to.

When the main Black Friday sale arrives, you already have winning creatives and offers. You can reuse those creatives and simply update the messaging to reflect the new promotion.

For example, you might change the messaging from “Early Black Friday Access” to “Black Friday Is Here.”

This means you’re not starting from scratch during the busiest shopping period. You’re taking what you’ve already learned and scaling it.

You also want your offers to feel exciting. Customers are exposed to so many promotions during this period, so your offer needs to stand out and communicate real value.

What should brands be watching in real time on Black Friday?

You need to be watching everything.

Before the sale goes live, test the entire website and customer journey. Check your discount codes, pop-ups, landing pages, bundles, checkout process, and mobile experience.

It’s easy to overlook something small, especially if you’ve introduced new promotional elements specifically for BFCM.

One thing we learned was that automatically applying discount codes worked better than requiring customers to manually enter them.

Even if a pop-up displays the discount code, adding another step at checkout creates friction. Automatically applying the code makes the purchasing process easier and removes one more reason for someone to abandon their cart.

Once the sale is live, monitor orders and sales throughout the day. If you suddenly see a slowdown, investigate. If a bundle isn’t selling or a discount code isn’t being used, don’t wait until the end of the day to figure out why.

Black Friday is too important to take a set-it-and-forget-it approach.

💡 Pro tip: Automatically apply discount codes at checkout. Even when a pop-up shows the code, making customers type it in adds friction.

What about the operational side? Did fulfillment or customer service ever become a challenge?

We were prepared for the increase in demand, but when you’re generating that many orders, there are inevitably challenges.

We did experience some shipping delays because of the sheer volume of orders. That also created additional pressure on customer service.

We didn’t have a huge customer support team, so keeping up with the influx of questions and order inquiries was challenging. People were working extra hours over the weekend to make sure customers were being supported.

One thing we did proactively was extend our live chat hours. Normally, live chat would only be available during business hours, but over Black Friday weekend, we kept it open for much longer.

I’d definitely recommend that smaller brands think about this in advance. It’s not just about having enough inventory or getting enough orders. You need enough people available to support customers when something goes wrong or they have questions.

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If you had one week left before BFCM, what would you prioritize?

Honestly, I’d want everything ready well before that point.

Your creative should be prepared, your promotional calendar should be finalized, and you should already know which offers and bundles you’re going to be promoting.

I’d focus on having three clear promotional stages: early Black Friday, the main Black Friday sale, and Cyber Monday, with the option to extend the promotion if it makes sense.

I’d also make sure the website was fully tested, discount codes were working, and all the landing pages and bundles were ready to go.

Most importantly, I’d make sure the team was prepared to move quickly. If something is working, you need to be able to scale it. If something isn’t working, you need to be able to change it.

The biggest opportunity during BFCM isn’t necessarily having the biggest budget. It’s being prepared enough to recognize what’s working and capitalize on it quickly.