Black Friday Marketing Strategies To Drive Sales

According to Emarketer, holiday spending is set to grow 4.8% in 2024 compared to 2023, reaching $1.3 trillion by years end. Ecommerce is set to play a huge role in this growth, with online sales growing at nearly twice this rate.

In 2023, nearly 43% of Black Friday sales took place through mobile phones last year, and millennials were the biggest spenders. Email and SMS marketing in particular contributed to this growth, with 1.83 billion Black Friday promotional emails reaching consumers, a 13% increase from the previous year. While it’s one thing to send an email, 2023’s Black Friday promotional emails received significant engagement, with 386.9 million opens and almost 13 million clicks. This direct marketing resonates with audiences who might be inundated with sales content. 

Although Black Friday originated in the US, businesses around the world now use the term and take part in offering discounts to consumers worldwide. Thus, marketers need to roll up their sleeves and think outside the box for this year's Black Friday marketing strategies at a time when competition has never been fiercer.

Why Is Having a Black Friday Marketing Strategy Important?

As we approach the holiday season, consumers worldwide are marking Back Friday on their calendars and holding off on big purchases in anticipation of steep discounts. In fact, Future Publishing recently reported that 76% of US consumers will be engaged with Black Friday this year. While they are planning their shopping earlier each year, brands are provided with an opportunity to get their attention sooner and be part of their purchase decisions. 

However, it has become increasingly difficult for marketers to stand out from their competitors who are vying for the same market share. For this reason, marketers are encouraged to plan ahead for marketing for Black Friday so that they can be present across several channels and grab the attention of consumers creatively. Today, eCommerce sales account for 21% of global retail sales, an increase of 50% from pre-pandemic levels. While consumers are often visiting stores for research or to make purchases, one thing is clear: online sales should still be a priority. With that in mind, below are 8 marketing ideas for how to run a successful Black Friday sale this year.

Despite Black Friday marketing sales projected to increase this year, this also means marketers need an ironclad, streamlined campaign to ensure they’re reaching their audiences and driving conversions while standing apart from competitors. Here are our tips to ensure you make the most of all stages of your Black Friday marketing campaigns. 

Start Early

Take action now. It is essential to add a degree of flexibility to your marketing campaign to meet your audience's needs. Nevertheless, planning ahead is equally important, so finding a balance between agility and preparation will be the key to success. Brands can tease their campaigns in the weeks leading up to Black Friday at a significant advantage over their competitors by building hype as consumers begin to plan their shopping lists and giving them a taste of what they can expect. 

By starting early, you can also plan and test campaign visuals and ultimately use what resonates with your audiences. Dash Hudson’s predictive AI tools help identify which photo or video will generate the highest engagement, allowing you to choose the best. It analyzes visual cues, such as tone, features, and elements of existing posts, and provides insights into which content to use and when to publish across social media channels to maximize ROI.

Once you have selected the best visuals for your Black Friday campaign, you can curate your feed and schedule content using Dash Hudson's Scheduler. With the multi-channel content calendar, you have a holistic visual overview of all posts that have been published or are scheduled to go live across all social channels, making it easier to plan ahead without getting overwhelmed by administrative tasks. It can also be used to pre-populate campaign reports to reduce the amount of time required to create reports manually later. Black Friday can be hectic and jam-packed for several days, so proactively scheduling in advance is a good way of relieving some of the work. 

In addition, keep in mind that an enormous number of brands compete for audiences' attention on Black Friday, which results in them becoming fatigued after being bombarded with repetitive marketing messages. Consider using Scheduler to also adjust your timing so your messages don't get lost.

Lastly, many brands use Black Friday email marketing campaigns to raise awareness of upcoming offers and pique subscribers' interest. Consider ways to build your subscriber list more rapidly ahead of Black Friday, such as offering a small discount or free shipping to entice consumers to sign up. The best way to do this is by using pop-ups which you can test between now and November, as putting extra effort into capture now will pay off come Black Friday.

Entertain With Short-Form Video

Since the beginning of social media, brands have primarily focused on creating active social communities, measuring success by vanity metrics such as likes and followers. Nonetheless, brands’ priorities are changing as consumers' dynamic use of social becomes increasingly clear. Social media is no longer used to connect with others but to provide entertainment. As the average person spends 100 minutes watching videos every day, short-form video is at the forefront of this shift, largely driven by TikTok, which has 535 billion hashtag views in its entertainment category alone.

What does this mean for your Black Friday marketing plans? According to Nielsen Catalina, 56% of brands' sales lift from digital advertising can be attributed to the creative quality. In an incredibly competitive market, marketers can stand out by mastering their creative, which they have complete control over. It is no longer the number of brand followers that determines how many people see your content. Content is delivered based on consumer interests, so reach is unrestricted, and the best content wins. Keep social entertainment at the heart of your Black Friday marketing strategy this year, and get creative - especially with short-form video.

Build Creator Partnerships

As we have established by now, planning ahead is essential to a successful Black Friday marketing campaign, as is partnering with creators who align with your brand’s values and can also resonate with your target audience. Instagram and TikTok offer Creator Marketplaces, which can be used to find and reach out to creators for partnerships. In addition to helping promote your offers on Black Friday, creators are a great way to build the hype prior to the day, encourage interest from new audiences and increase your online sales.

As soon as you select the creators you will work with for your Black Friday marketing campaign, Dash Hudson’s Relationships feature will allow you to track their activity, pulling in analytics to compare and contrast the ROI of different influencers who mention your brand in their content. You might also want to consider testing new creator partnerships ahead of Black Friday and use this comprehensive feature to see if they live up to your expectations.

Make Your Social Content Shoppable

You don't want to lose potential customers because you didn't make your products easy to shop on social media. Consumers can make quick and impulsive purchase decisions based on what they see on social media, but they can change their minds just as quickly if the process isn't fast and efficient.

Meta recently reported that 92% of Instagram users who see a post immediately take action, such as clicking through to a website or making a purchase. With Dash Hudson’s Product Tags feature, content becomes shoppable immediately, maximizing your post's conversion potential. Furthermore, our link-in-bio solution, LikeShop, allows you to leverage your Instagram and TikTok content and drive traffic to your website for a more effortless shopping experience. To measure attribution post-campaign, you can also use this feature to tailor your LikeShop with custom UTM codes and align your entire digital strategy.

Don’t Forget To Reward Loyalty

Remember your existing customers if you're offering a subscription-based product or service. In many cases, Black Friday is an excellent opportunity for businesses to attract new customers and build relationships with audiences who are making purchases from them for the first time. Thus, most deals and offers are aimed at prospects.

However, this can come at a price. If you forget about existing customers and do not offer them equally appetizing offers, you will likely experience frustration and disappointment, and eventually lose their loyalty. Take the time to think about ways to reward loyalty and retain customers. You could offer more generous referral schemes, provide early access to Black Friday offers, or give something for free with every additional purchase/upgrade.

Engage With Your Community

The management of social communities is an integral part of social media marketing, but it is especially important when running big campaigns like Black Friday. Marketers often monitor their social platforms to answer questions, monitor segments, and understand what customers are responding to. As a result of these insights, it is possible to pivot and change strategies in case the original plan is not successful.

Dash Hudson's Community Manager lets you interact with your followers in real-time, reply to direct messages, mentions, and post comments in one convenient inbox. The process may seem time-consuming, especially around Black Friday, but it's a great way to connect with your customers and form more meaningful relationships that will ultimately lead to brand loyalty and conversions. After all, PWC reported that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, so make sure you deliver.

Don’t Forget Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is a recent addition to the Black Friday weekend, occurring on the Monday after Thanksgiving. According to Deloitte, 49% of Cyber Monday shoppers want to see better deals and more ads from brands ahead of the sales—demonstrating the importance of preparing and integrating your Cyber Monday marketing strategy with your Black Friday plans. 

This is often a great time to re-engage consumers who missed out on your Black Friday deals. In fact, Societal reported that 80% of businesses run cart abandonment campaigns during this period to encourage people to return to the site and complete their purchases. It found that cart abandonment notifications have an average conversion rate of 21.68%. Prepare ahead of time by thinking about how you can intelligently maximize conversations on Cyber Monday and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Report Results Instantly

Congratulations, your Black Friday marketing strategy has now been successfully planned and executed. Having invested a lot of time, effort, and thought into this, it's now important to assess whether or not the results met your expectations. Keep in mind that these insights will be useful for future campaigns as well, so don't just view them as a way to measure success.

Dash Hudson’s Campaign Reporting solution is intended to help you analyze the ROI of your cross-channel initiatives and optimize your future campaigns accordingly. Discover the full picture of your campaign performance across owned, earned, and creator media to effectively share across your organization and team. While this gives you a good idea of how your Black Friday campaign performed this year, it also provides you with insights into future campaigns that will be more profitable, and even shows you where you could be overinvesting.

Want to jumpcharge your social strategy with inspiration? Here are examples from popular brands to spark creativity. 

Best Buy 

Best Buy promotes its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales with a clever series of TikToks that highlight different products that appeal to different audiences. In the lead up to Black Friday, they tap into influencer marketing with a variety of influencers sharing their holiday gift ideas. This is the perfect method for reaching different audiences — both fans of the influencers, and people seeking gift ideas and inspiration. 

Therabody 

Therabody, like many other brands, promotes their Black Friday sale on Instagram — they cleverly use video to share quick snippets of different products, highlighting different products in one, quick Reel rather than sharing a variety of posts. This is a great way to make sure products are seen and consumers are aware of their purchasing options. 

The Ordinary 

The Ordinary approaches Black Friday in an entirely different way that rings true to its brand identity. Rather than pushing for sales during the week of Black Friday or the day itself, they encourage their followers to make slow, considered purchases, providing a 23% discount all month long. This aligns with their brand ethos of integrity and accessibility. 

Glossier

Glossier doesn’t typically run sales, but they approach Black Friday but reminding their followers that it’s their biggest sale of the year. In addition to this, they share behind the scenes product recommendations from salespeople and other shots from their stores to encourage brick-and-mortar sales and online shopping.

What is Black Friday marketing?

Black Friday marketing is a process in which brands attract consumers during the Black Friday weekend, enticing them to purchase their goods and services with big deals and offers. In many cases, these manifest themselves in the form of advertising, email marketing, and social media promotions.

How do you advertise Black Friday deals?

Brands usually advertise their Black Friday deals through multi-media advertising, email marketing, and social media campaigns. Planning ahead is crucial so you can understand your audience enough to find out where they are and to provide content that resonates with them, eventually driving them to make purchases during Black Friday.

How do you attract customers on Black Friday?

Understanding what resonates with consumers is key to attracting them on Black Friday. Using these insights, you can build up hype and ultimately attract more through various channels. Engaging customers through social entertainment, particularly through short-form video, is proving to be the most effective tactic these days, so do your best to authentically entertain your social media audiences and turn them into customers.