Cyber Monday is the last of the big three big sales holidays following Thanksgiving, and it’s a major driver of online revenue. That makes it one of the most critical (and stressful) days of the year for small business owners, marketing teams, and agencies alike.
With $12 billion spent by Cyber Monday shoppers in 2022 and 2023 apiece you can bet your second helping of pumpkin pie that every single brand on the internet will be vying for their attention with outrageous offers this year.
It doesn't matter if you're a CPG brand, a B2B agency, or a SaaS product — if you sell stuff online, Cyber Monday is a no-brainer holiday to strategize around.
In this post, we’ll get you up to speed on Cyber Monday marketing in 2024, including:
- What is Cyber Monday?
- Cyber Monday vs Black Friday vs Small Business Saturday (and which holiday you should choose)
- What kind of results Cyber Monday marketing can drive for your business
- The key types of Cyber Monday marketing campaigns
- Best practices for Cyber Monday marketing in 2024
Let's get started.
What is Cyber Monday?
Cyber Monday is a consumer-driven holiday when brands offer steep discounts, deals, and promotions via their online storefronts. It's essentially the digital extension of Black Friday.
Since Black Friday is traditionally an in-person shopping experience, Cyber Monday was created to help ecommerce brands get in on the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy. Now that almost every brand sells their wares online, it has started to overshadow Black Friday is sales.
Since it's an online event, it allows consumers more time to make decisions about deals, products, and promotions and then begin shopping after the long weekend.
Cyber Monday is on Monday, December 2 this year — a bit later than usual. More time to plan!
Cyber Monday is on December 2 this year
Why Cyber Monday: What about Black Friday and Small Business Saturday?
There are three big sales-focused “holidays” immediately following Thanksgiving: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, in that order. Unsurprisingly, these are also big social media holidays when shoppers are online and hunting for deals.
Cyber Monday comes last in the series, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the least important. Actually, the opposite is true. Cyber Monday has been the biggest sales days of the holiday season recently, with $12 million in spending in 2022 and 2023 .
Is there really a difference between the three? In general, these three shopping days fall so close together that they can be lumped into one big consumer holiday. But there are a few distinctions between to consider.
Black Friday
Black Friday is the oldest of the three holidays, and it’s typically focused on businesses selling physical goods in competitive markets.
There’s one word that exemplifies this holiday: doorbuster. While the tradition of camping in line outside of Best Buy after Thanksgiving dinner is becoming less popular, consumers who participate in this holiday still expect the biggest deals of the year — both online and in person – from their favorite stores.
Though it is eclipsed by Cyber Monday in terms of sales, Black Friday is still a key consumer event that kicks off the holiday shopping season. Learn more about Black Friday marketing strategies for your brand.
Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday is the most unique of the three, representing a day when shoppers are encouraged to visit Main Street and patronize the local small businesses in their towns. The focus is explicitly on small businesses, so larger brands can’t easily participate in this holiday (though there's definitely some value in small business partnerships).
However, small ecommerce brands and brick-and-mortar businesses can successfully drives sales on this holiday. Even small service-oriented businesses, like home services or health, wellness, and beauty services can run Small Business Saturday promotions. Learn more about Small Business Saturday marketing strategies that work for both brick-and-mortar and ecommerce brands.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday was created as the ecommerce counterpart to Black Friday, and as online shopping has grown to be the shopping method of choice, it has become the most successful of the three holidays.
It’s a major day for brands who make most or all of their sales from online purchases because consumers have a high intent to purchase. It’s a great sales opportunity for virtually all businesses that conduct online sales, regardless of size or industry. The online nature of Cyber Monday also makes it a great opportunity for SaaS companies to run promotions.
What kind of results can I get from Cyber Monday?
Cyber Monday, like Black Friday, is a sales-focused holiday. This isn’t the day when customers will be looking to book free initial consultations or SaaS demos. The time to get the deal is now, so if they’re acting on a Cyber Monday campaign, it’s to save money today.
You want to focus on the following:
- Encouraging immediate sales
- Generating free trials
- Opting-in to loyalty programs
- Enrolling in memberships or subscriptions
Key types of Cyber Monday marketing campaigns to run
Cyber Monday has a ton of sales potential, so you want to have intensive campaigns across multiple platforms. While every business is unique, this is a good starting place for marketing campaigns and platforms to consider for Cyber Monday:
- Website: Feature deals prominently on your site, and consider having a “Cyber Monday Sale” landing page that highlights discounts or on-sale products. Use the same Cyber Monday page every year — update the content, but don't change the URL. This will help you build SEO juice.
- Email: Send promotion emails in the lead up to your sales event, then send a big launch day email. You can follow that up with one or two reminder emails that the sale is ending soon to drive home the urgency messaging. Email is the main vehicle for Cyber Monday marketing, so you'll want to brush up on your email marketing strategy.
- Paid social media: Run social media ads to generate interest in the weeks leading up to Cyber Monday, educating users about your product and building brand awareness. Facebook ads are a great place to start, but you can also reach a more targeted audiences via Reddit ads or LinkedIn ads (especially if you're B2B).
- Influencer marketing: Partner with influencers to promote or review the products that you’ll be featuring in your Cyber Monday sale.
- PPC: Run Search Ads with “Cyber Monday” keywords to capture high-intent and actively-researching customers immediately before and the day of the event.
- Retargeting: Run retargeting campaigns on all platforms with personalized messaging to appeal to existing customers and alert them about relevant promotional deals.
- Digital PR: See if you can get your deals featured on an industry site or in a gift guide, potentially including a “Best Cyber Monday Deals” list that your target audience would read.
8 best practices for Cyber Monday marketing in 2024
Ready to get the word out about your Cyber Monday deals to drive sales, sign-ups, and more? Here are eight of the best Cyber Monday marketing ideas and strategies to implement this year.
1. Plan your posts and ads early
Getting an early start is essential when it comes to the Big Three sales holidays.
Many brands map out their holiday promotions in the summer, leaving time to put together partnerships, manage product and service offerings, and produce marketing collateral. This early stage of planning includes:
- Determining which products and deals you’ll offer
- Considering additional incentives like free shipping or free returns
- Choosing specific start and end times to your sale (many brands extend their sales an extra day)
- Connecting with influencers, negotiating contracts, and sending them instructions for content creation
By early October at the latest, you want to have most of your social media posts and ad campaigns created and ready to go. Some consumers start researching deals by October, so you want landing pages, email campaigns, and early social media posts up and running by late October.
As soon as you’ve got your promotions and messaging approved, start building your Cyber Monday social media posts and ads. Create your ads in each relevant platform, scheduling them to run at the appropriate times so they can get approved and prevent delays down the road.
Use a social media scheduling tool like Loomly so you can batch schedule your Cyber Monday content to auto-publish through the month.
Save time by using tools like Loomly to create social media calendars for all of your brands or client accounts. You can easily visualize which campaigns you have running for each platform to ensure that you’re promoting your content at the right time. And, since the content is scheduled in advance, there’s no risk of forgetting and missing prime posting opportunities.
2. Leverage urgency
Cyber Monday is the last big sales event of the season, so if you want to talk about “last chance to save,” this is really that opportunity.
Remind users that your Cyber Monday deals are their last chance to save before the holiday season. Let them know exactly how much longer they have, using language like “final day” and “final hours” to stress that the clock is ticking.
Newsletter platform beehiiv uses urgency language like "Don't let this ship sail," and "only through tonight at midnight." Source: beehiiv
3. Share discount codes and promos
Want customers to act fast on your deal? Use your social media posts to tell them exactly what the promotions are for and how to take advantage of them.
Source: STEAMboat Studio
Some businesses offer automatic sitewide discounts, while others require coupon codes. If you require any kind of action to get those discounts (including a promo code or an email sign-up), share that in your posts and make it clear on your website using a banner or pop-up. It will clear up potential confusion and show users how easy it is to get a great bargain.
4. Consider starting Cyber Monday early
At first glance, this may seem redundant— people have two opportunities and often multiple days to cash in on deals through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Despite this, some businesses still offer “early access” to Cyber Monday… and it works.
Marketer Ana Gotter shared that one of her clients offered “VIP access” for Cyber Monday deals to long-term clients, and the six-hour advance on deals had the highest volume of sales for the entire holiday. “Those six hours generated 60% of the company’s Cyber Monday sale, and this was after Black Friday deals.”
Some brands choose to run combined Cyber Monday and Black Friday deals in advance of either sales day. For example, BAGGU ran a cyber weekend sale rather than a one day event, likely capturing Black Friday shoppers in the mix to maximize sales.
Source: BAGGU
If you’re starting Cyber Monday early for all customers, promote it on social media and send out an email blast. If you’re only offering early access for existing or select customers, send segmented email campaigns.
And even if you aren’t starting the sale early… start promoting early. Let people know what’s coming and when!
5. Create personalized campaigns
Personalized campaigns are always going to be the most effective, so take advantage of that when using email and pay-per-click campaigns.
Email allows you to send campaigns featuring relevant products to segmented email lists based on past purchase history, site viewing activity, and more.
Most ad platforms, meanwhile, allow you to do something similar. You can use retargeting campaigns to reach users who have added an item to their cart but didn’t purchase, viewed a specific product page, or purchased select items in the past. Show them relevant campaigns with copy stressing your Cyber Monday deals.
If a customer recently purchased a new bed from a furniture store, for example, you may want to show them the matching nightstands or dresser that they haven’t purchased yet. Offer a bundle deal or a flat discount on each item to increase the odds of a follow-up sale.
6. Promote gift guides — with or without influencers
Most consumers are in the gift-giving mindset come Cyber Monday. They’re looking for great deals for their own needs, but they’re also looking for great gift ideas for friends and families.
Gift guides, therefore, are essential. You can create gift guides based on the following:
- Budget: Showcase different products or services based on different price points to show people what their options are.
- Persona: A big-box store like Home Depot might have “gifts for the handyman” and “gifts for the first-time owner” or “gifts for the gardener.”
- Use case: Makeup companies may have gift guides specifically featuring sensitive skin products or vegan cosmetics, for example.
You can create your own guide guides and publish them on social media. These often do well as posts, but make sure you’re getting as much visibility as possibly by repurposing them into both Stories and Reels or TikTok videos.
There’s also the option to ask influencers to create gift guides featuring your products. This can expand your reach significantly.
Plan ahead to send your products to different online publication editorial teams and bloggers for the chance to be featured in their holiday gift guides.
Finally, you can work on getting your products featured in editorial gift guides from online publishers or bloggers. This usually involves sending samples to people on the editorial team in order to illicit independent reviews.
7. Get creative with your promotions
There are plenty of different options to consider when you’re deciding which promotions to offer for Cyber Monday. You can offer different types of promotions to see what works best, or stick to a single approach.
Take apron designers Hadley and Bennett: For their holiday promo, they didn't offer the typical discount — they offered free embroidery on all of their products. This type of creative promo stands out to customers for its added value, but production costs are likely equal to the cost of running a typical discount.
Source: Hedley and Bennett
Common types of promotions include:
- Selling items in bundles for package deals
- Offering free product giveaways with minimum purchase value or new subscription
- Flat discount on all items in the store
- Manually-created discounts for individual products
- Percentage discounts off of each product, potentially excluding clearance items, with a coupon code
- First appointment, week, or month of a service or subscription either discounted or free
8. Save your deals for Cyber Monday
Many brands choose to offer deals for Black Friday all the way through to Cyber Monday, with the goal of capturing as many sales as possible whenever customers are willing to shop.
Some businesses, however, save their best deals (or their only deals) for Cyber Monday. B2B and SaaS brands may be more likely to do this, as customers are more likely to be in-office that Monday.
Some brands use this as part of their marketing strategy. REI, for example, famously created their #optoutside campaign in response to Black Friday. Despite that, they still run and promote “Cyber Week” deals.
Source: REI
If you want to save your best or only deals for Cyber Monday, make sure you market that in advance so customers know to wait for you if they’re considering multiple purchasing options.
Final Thoughts
Cyber Monday has serious sales potential for businesses, giving you opportunities to attract new clients, boost purchases from existing customers, and potentially re-engage those who haven’t purchased in awhile.
Choosing the right marketing strategies and platforms is highly personalized, and will depend on your business, the promotions you’re running, and the audience you’re targeting. That said, starting early with campaign creation and publication is critical to standing out and earning those sales.
Don’t wait until the last minute! Start creating your social media calendar today with Loomly's free 15-day trial.
