How Freelance Marketers Help You Beat the Sales Dip this BFCM

by Brooke Barrett

I recently had a phone catch-up with a performance agency owner, and we got chatting about the campaigns his team are lining up for Black Friday. Honestly, it’s my favourite kind of conversation.

What stuck with me afterwards was how much of a balancing act BFCM really is. It’s not just the sale itself. It’s everything around it: the lead-up, the timing, and keeping people engaged once the discount codes have gone quiet.

It also got me thinking about something I see a lot from the recruitment side. The brands that handle BFCM best usually aren’t the ones with the biggest teams. They’re the ones who plan their people as carefully as their promotions.

What are the four phases of Black Friday Cyber Monday?

BFCM has four phases: lead generation, the lead-up, the sale period and the post-sale drop-off. It’s easy to think of Black Friday as a single weekend, but each phase asks something different of your marketing team.

The stakes are high. Australians were forecast to spend a record $6.8 billion over the 2025 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, up 4% on 2024, with around 6 million people expected to take part (ARA and Roy Morgan). Businesses also told Deloitte they expected 35% of their November to December sales to land on Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone (CHOICE).

• Lead generation: Long before any sale is announced, the smartest brands are building their audience. Growing your email list and target lists now means you have as many people as possible to market to when the sale goes live. Think competitions, early access sign-ups and lead magnets that give people a reason to hand over their details. It’s also far cheaper to reach someone you already own than to buy their attention at peak BFCM CPA’s.
• The lead-up: How early do you tease the sale? Go too soon and you risk people holding off and revenue dropping in the weeks leading up to the sale. Leave it too late and you miss the chance to build audiences and warm them up. This is where warming up those lists, retargeting pools and creative testing quietly do the heavy lifting.
• The sale period: Budgets scale, CPMs climb and everyone is competing for the same attention. The goal isn’t just conversions. It’s keeping audiences engaged across the whole window, and ideally getting them back for a second or third purchase.
• The drop off: Then comes the dip. Revenue before and after the sale can fall away sharply, and that’s often when clients and senior leadership start to panic. It’s normal, but it still stings, and it needs a plan rather than a reaction.

How do you avoid the revenue drop after Black Friday?

The best way to soften the post-sale dip is to give shoppers a new reason to buy that isn’t just another discount. I’ve seen some really clever approaches through December. A few that stand out:

• Limited edition releases that give people a fresh reason to come back, without leaning on another discount.
• Exclusive gift with purchase offers that add value and feel special, rather than training customers to wait for markdowns.
• Free express shipping to win over the last-minute shoppers who just need it to arrive before the Australia Post Christmas cut-off dates.

It’s also worth considering whether you’ll have a Boxing Day sale and how that will tie together with your early December strategy.

The data shows how real the December dip is. In December 2023, Australian retail turnover fell 2.7% after a 1.6% rise in November, as shoppers brought their Christmas spending forward to Black Friday. Retailers told the ABS that trading was slow in early December and only picked up again in the lead-up to Christmas and Boxing Day (ABS).

The common thread? Every one of these needs its own creative, its own audience strategy and its own campaign build. That’s a lot of extra work landing on a team that’s already flat out.

Why do marketing teams struggle during BFCM?

Marketing teams struggle during BFCM because most are sized for business as usual, not peak season. Before moving into recruitment, I worked in-house and agency side across performance, email, social, copywriting and SEO. So I know first-hand what Q4 can feel like from the inside.

Come September/October, the same few people are locking in to plan the lead-up, run the sale, manage spiking ad spend, report daily to leadership and build the December campaigns. All at once. Ask anyone on these teams how they’re doing through this period and you’ll understand just how real the struggle is.

That’s usually when things slip. Campaigns go live without enough testing. Reporting gets rushed. And the post-sale strategy, the bit that actually protects December revenue, gets pushed to “we’ll sort it next week”.

Should you hire freelancers for Black Friday?

For a lot of brands and agencies, yes. Freelancers and contractors are the simplest way to add capacity for peak season. You don’t need another permanent headcount for twelve months of the year. You need extra hands, and the right expertise, for the eight to ten weeks that matter most.

Performance marketing is the clearest example. During BFCM, your paid channels are working harder than at any other point in the year. Budgets are bigger, competition is fiercer and small optimisations can make a real dent in ROAS. A great performance freelancer can step in and add value almost immediately.

A few reasons it works so well:

• They hit the ground running. Experienced contractors have usually run multiple BFCM periods across different brands, so they bring proven playbooks with them.
• Fresh eyes on your account. Someone outside the day-to-day can spot wasted spend or missed audiences that the core team is too close to see.
• Your team stays focused. With extra support on execution, your in-house people can stay on strategy, stakeholders and the bigger picture.
• It scales with the season. You bring them in for the peak and wind back once January settles, without the long-term commitment.

Which BFCM roles should you outsource?

Paid media and design are usually the first roles worth outsourcing, followed by EDM, social and content. These are the gaps I see most often across BFCM briefs:

• Performance specialists/strategists to build, launch and optimise sale campaigns, especially when spend scales quickly.
• Performance Designers & Creative Strategists that know what moves the needle and can develop a proper creative testing cadence and help bring the assets to life.
• EDM and CRM support to manage the extra sends, segmentation and post-sale nurture flows.
• Fractional CMO’s/Marketing Strategists to analyse and develop a strong plan from the outset. Don’t just throw a few ideas out and pick the ones that stick, choose the right direction for your business goals.
• Copywriters and content creators to turn around fresh creative for limited releases, gift with purchase offers and shipping cut-off messaging.

You don’t need all of these. Often one or two well-placed freelancers are enough to take the pressure off.

When should you book a BFCM freelancer?

Aim to have freelance support booked by mid to late October, around a month before Black Friday on 27 November. Just like your campaigns, it works best when it’s planned well in advance. The best contractors get booked up early for Q4, so leaving it too late really limits your options.

A few things that make a big difference:

1. Book early. Give them time to get across your accounts before things heat up.
2. Brief properly. Share last year’s results, what worked, what didn’t and where the post-sale dip hit hardest.
3. Be clear on ownership. Agree upfront who’s making optimisation calls, who’s reporting and who’s signing off on creative.
4. Think past the sale period. Can their scope cover that December dip period? Not just the sale itself. That’s where revenue can be protected and audiences kept engaged past BFCM.

Plan your people like you plan your promotions

With the right strategy and the right support in place, your team can run a strong sale and keep momentum going right through December. Your freelancers can work as little as 1 or 2 days a week or stretch out to the 5-day mark if needed, don’t get stuck in the “full time hire” mindset.

If you’re thinking about bringing in a performance marketing freelancer or contractor this BFCM, I’d love to help. I can usually share strong freelance options within 24 to 48 hours, and I’m always happy to chat through what kind of support would make the biggest difference for your team.

Frequently asked questions