Black Friday isn't discovery. It's execution day.
Consumers research and decide in early November, buy during Cyber Week, gift through mid-December, then reset in January. If your budget curve doesn't mirror that, you're paying peak CPMs to reach people who already chose.
Thirteen sections. September to January.
The season is not one campaign held for three months. It is four steps, each with a different job, a different buyer and a different budget posture. The steps are obvious. The boundaries between them are where the season is won or lost.
- The four stepsBuild, Consideration, Execution, Bridge. What each one is for, and why nothing gets created once the season has started.
- Four demand curvesGift-driven, stock-up, counter-seasonal, evergreen. Your curve decides where your finish line actually sits, and it is often not December.
- The eight-question diagnosisCurve, buyer, margin band, pool depth, return risk, January profile. Ten minutes, and every later section reads differently.
- Your profile, and its blind spotHarvest, Bridge, Presell or Defend. Each one comes with the signature mistake that brands in that position keep making.
- Offer economicsWhat your margin allows against what your objective demands, with the real cost of each mechanism.
- Five expensive mistakesIncluding the one that ends the season on December 31 for brands whose season does not end there.
The dated calendar. The operating plan runs on seven stints with hard start and end dates, and those boundaries move with your demand curve, your margin band and the size of the list you arrive with.
A calendar borrowed from a brand on a different curve is worse than no calendar at all. Everything else is here in full.
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The season is already moving.
Thirteen sections, September through January, every figure sourced. Free. One email a week after that about ecommerce growth and ads — unsubscribe in one click.