12 Black Friday Marketing Strategy Ideas & Planning Tips

Sales, limited-time deals, and lines starting at midnight are all part of the Black Friday shopping experience. For businesses, Black Friday is the time to make a last-quarter marketing push to boost end-of-year performance.

What is Black Friday? Black Friday is the busiest, and at times, the most chaotic, shopping day of the year. It falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving and typically marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, but your Black Friday Marketing strategies should be in place well before that.

Having a well-thought-out Black Friday marketing strategy is necessary if you want to tap into the increased spending behaviors of consumers during this time. The correct marketing tactics and campaign plans boost sales volume, putting you ahead of the competition. 

Black Friday also serves as a magnet for new customers and boosts brand visibility during a key shopping event. Your campaign can reveal consumer data that allows you to template future business strategies.

Understanding Black Friday Consumer Habits

Over the last decade, consumers have gone digital and are looking for convenience when they shop. They can compare prices and deals of different ecommerce stores with minimal effort thanks to apps and Google shopping. 

The digital age of shopping has benefits for merchants too. Your audience is no longer limited to those who can walk in-store. Your customer base can now be from anywhere in the United States or even the world. With 90.6 million American consumers (opens in a new window) shopping online on Black Friday, you need to be prepared with a Black Friday sales strategy that extends beyond brick-and-mortar retail.

Is Black Friday a good marketing strategy? Because of the influx in shoppers, creating a Black Friday marketing strategy is a great idea. Online stores see increased consumer traffic and purchase intent. You can use the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend to test incentives for new products and clear existing inventory with Black Friday deals.

Quick Tips for a Successful Black Friday Marketing Campaign

Proactively preparing for a successful Black Friday starts months before the campaign is launched. Ideas and outlines begin as early as August or September for many businesses. The better you lay out your plan, the smoother your campaign will run on Black Friday weekend.

What can I do to prepare for Black Friday? Prepare for Black Friday by drafting your ideas and plans, with regular follow-up meetings and check-ins to address the development and execution of the campaign. Make sure your website and business operations lend to an easy and pleasant customer experience before you launch the holiday sale. 

Here are a few additional suggestions:

• Make Sure Your Website is Easy to Navigate - Users need to be able to get to the categories and products they want to browse with ease. Have an intuitive and hierarchical organization and make sure all your links are working properly. 
• Check Your Load Times - If your page loads too slowly, potential shoppers will leave for a more convenient experience. You can check your Core Web Vitals easily with Google’s free Search Console tool. Keep in mind that more and more people are using mobile devices, making your site performance even more important. 
• Start Building Your Email List Early - Use teasers and urgency combined with a compelling landing page to build your email lists ahead of time. You’ll already have an idea of who to target and have warmed up your audience to shopping opportunities. 
• Tailor Your Email Marketing with Segmented Lists - Analyze your customer base and create segmented lists based on product preference, demographics, buying habits, and past conversions. You’ll drive more sales if your offer matches their interests. 
• Remove Friction From the Checkout Flow - Don't choke in the home stretch. Make sure your checkout flow has a minimal amount of steps so you don't end up with abandoned carts.
• Use automated retargeting - Recapture customers who have visited but haven’t made a purchase with email marketing campaigns and SMS follow-ups. Email flows for cart abandonment and automatic cart rehydration upon revisit are more likely to capture prospects who have wandered off. 
• Optimize for Mobile E-commerce Shopping - It's a mobile-first world now. You need to make sure your site performs well on mobile devices. Responsive design that is visually appealing on smaller screens is a must. 
• Audit Your Website for Technical Issues - E-commerce businesses need a website to have the best user experience at all times. Don't lose Black Friday sales because page functionality isn’t working or links aren't properly configured. Perform a technical SEO audit of your site to find potential issues that can slow your site or make it difficult for potential customers to find.  

12 Black Friday Marketing Ideas to Optimize Your Sales

The best Black Friday marketing campaigns target the correct audience and set you apart from your competition. You need to provide incentives and a sense of urgency if you want to be THE retailer of choice at the official start of the holiday shopping season. Our marketing team has put their 20 years of experience into these 15 Black Friday Marketing Ideas to help you boost online sales and maximize conversion rates this year. 

1. Sneak Peek Promotions for Social Media

Social media is a great way to tease your sales and build engagement on your platforms leading into the shopping event. Your posts can stay on social to feed into building an email list. Use first looks to entice your followers and encourage new followers to give their attention to your brand.

Tailor your messaging on each social media platform. Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube posts can announce Black Friday deals. Intrigue followers with the promise to share coupon codes as the day gets closer. 

Social media marketing offers the advantage of having conversations with your target audience to help identify and address any questions the public may have about your discounts and offers.

2. Early Access Sale for Your Email List Subscribers

Email marketing lets you send communications directly to people who are interested in your products. It is one of the most effective marketing channels, even outpacing affiliate marketing and social media marketing (opens in a new window). Reward the subscribers of your email list during Black Friday with early access to sales. 

Your subject lines should be clear and concise. Consider using FOMO, the fear of missing out, to create a sense of urgency around the presale or the Black Friday weekend sale.  

It’s important to show appreciation to your VIPs and most loyal customers. Early bird discounts before Black Friday arrives or personal coupon codes can strengthen the relationship with this segment. 

3. Flash Sales or a Deal of the Hour

Merchants have started to announce Black Friday offers weeks ahead of time, but using tactics like flash deals on limited premium products may be a better influence on consumer behavior. The Journal of Retailing found statistically significant evidence (opens in a new window) that scarcity makes a product or service seem more desirable to consumers and strongly increases purchase intent. 

Your online store can offer discounts on an hourly basis to tap into a buyer’s sense of urgency too. 

4. Free Promo Products, and Company Swag

When you’re offering deep discounts on your products, you can encourage a repeat customer by including a small free gift with orders or bundling items together to increase the average order value. Something as simple as a custom logo sticker can keep your brand in your customer’s mind. 

You can choose to add small promo giveaway items like keychains or koozies to keep your brand front and center after purchase. Make sure the swag that you give is related to the product being purchased for more likelihood that it will be used.

Another marketing tactic is to use rewards to encourage more purchases or to push an upsell.  If you plan on doing a rewards or incentives sale, be sure to include it in your Black Friday emails. 

Need branded swag for your customer incentives? Choose from our catalog of promotional products to find the best giveaways for your audience. Make custom t-shirts, travel tumblers, or hats for your promo items. Shop our specials to get the best deals on promotional items you can use to build brand recall and relationships with your customers. 

5. Launch New Products 

Create a buzz leading into the holiday season with the launch of a new product for Black Friday. When you hype up the new product, you can use the momentum to cross-sell and drive sales. 

New item introductions also make great social media content and can tie into your Black Friday marketing on those channels too.

Have a temporary feature on your homepage or pop-up that pushes traffic to add the new product to their shopping carts.

6. Spin the Wheel for Prizes and Discounts

Speaking of pop-ups, a popular promotion idea for encouraging purchases and email subscribers is an interactive spin-the-wheel game. It's a fun way for customers to get a discount, and for you to get an email list sign-up for the future. Potential prizes can include gift cards, company swag, order discounts, free shipping, and more. 

7. Black Friday Sales Landing Pages

Make it easy to find your deals with a Black Friday sale page. A landing page makes it easier to track analytics and see if your marketing efforts are working. Include your discounts, visuals, new product launches, products for sale, and more.

Link to the pages on your store that you want to drive sales. 

A landing page can be used to strategically capture organic traffic from search engines or to create a direct route to conversion from ads.  

8. Hire Social Media Influencers 

Social media influencers are perfect for highlighting a specific product or launching a new item. Influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube use your product on their pages to introduce it to their audiences. Unboxing videos or how-to videos that demonstrate the product’s use and value are particularly effective.

When choosing an influence to work with, be sure their audience is a good fit for your brand. You’ll also want to vet the number of engaged followers they have to be sure they aren’t just vanity metrics. Offer to send them items for free that they can review to build excitement and curiosity among their followers leading into Black Friday. 

9. Create Urgency

We’ve mentioned it previously, when there is a sense of urgency, people have a higher likelihood of buying a product. According to Neuroscience Marketing (opens in a new window) something as simple as a countdown timer can increase revenue by 9%. 

Knowing there is a limited time to shop discourages your positive customers from browsing other websites. It forces them to act fast and not second guess their purchase. They’ll also get an endorphin boost when they beat the clock and get a great deal.

10. Create a Gift Guide For Customers

A gift guide can be a great resource for your customers. Deloitte’s holiday retail survey (opens in a new window) states that two-thirds of respondents planned on doing holiday shopping during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend. Gift guides let you direct shoppers to what they need and what you want to sell. 

Gift guides don’t just need to be for holiday shopping either. You can separate products into categories such as "For Teachers" or “Best Gifts For Nurses” to make it convenient to shop for gifts.

11. Exclusive Offers for Loyal Customers

A loyalty program that extends exclusive offers to your best customers will ensure that they keep coming back. Provide a discount code or VIP shopping page they can use to access savings on their Black Friday shopping sprees. Sending out gift cards, exclusive offers, and free gifts will grab their attention and have them rushing to your site to snag special offers that aren't available to the general public. 

12. Referral Codes to Promote Sharing

Black Friday is the perfect opportunity to attract new customers because everyone is shopping.  Referral codes encourage customers to share links to your site and special promotions. This brings more eyes to your products and at the same time, your customer gets a reward. The new customers these programs net can also get a referral code, creating a wave of brand awareness and program participation. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday FAQs

Are Black Friday Promotions Better Than Cyber Monday?

The "better" event between Black Friday and Cyber Monday depends on the strategic fit for your business and customer base. Traditionally, retailers saw more benefits from Black Friday due to in-store sales, while online shopping platforms had the advantage on Cyber Monday, but these lines are blurring.

Retailers tend to make more money on Cyber Monday than on Black Friday. In 2022, Black Friday saw $9.12 billion (opens in a new window) in sales, but Cyber Monday pulled in $11.3 billion (opens in a new window). This trend likely began when people wanted to avoid crowds to shop online. Nowadays, Cyber Monday is typically the last day to take advantage of the sales, resulting in more sales.

What is BFCM?

BFCM stands for Black Friday & Cyber Monday. As sales extend from Black Friday through the weekend to Cyber Monday, this acronym is slowly being adopted online.

What's the difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales?

The deals on Black Friday tend to be broad and span most categories, while Cyber Monday deals are more targeted and historically leaned towards tech deals. Black Friday is a day that shoppers tend to plan far in advance for a big item like a TV.

Cyber Monday consumer behavior is more opportunistic and spur-of-the-moment. Urgency makes shoppers a little more impulsive about buying. 

Prepare For Sales with Black Friday Marketing Strategies

Black Friday is all about the potential to boost your sales and customer engagement. Tailoring your marketing approach to your target audience, and ensuring that your business stands out from the competition is a must. Start planning your Black Friday marketing early for maximum results. Decide if your business will have different sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Remember, if you’re a local business, you can also rev up sales for Small Business Saturday!

Make sure to order your custom promotional swag and giveaway items to include in your Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday campaigns. You can use our promo gear to foster brand loyalty or get your logo in front of more eyes. Get your promotional products today!

Sources

1. Queue-It. (2023, October 5). 115 Black Friday statistics every retailer needs to know in 2023. Queue-it. https://queue-it.com/blog/black-friday-statistics/#:~:text=18.,%2C%20a%209.8%25%20increase%20YoY (opens in a new window).
2. Moyers, S. (2023, August 22). Why Email marketing is best marketing channel in 2023. SPINX Digital -. https://www.spinxdigital.com/blog/next-gen-email-marketing/#:~:text=Email%20marketing%20ranks%20as%20a,is%20simple%20%E2%80%94%20emails%20are%20personal (opens in a new window).
3. Barton, B., Zlatevska, N., & Oppewal, H. (2022). Scarcity tactics in marketing: A meta-analysis of product scarcity effects on consumer purchase intentions. Journal of Retailing, 98(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2022.06.003 (opens in a new window)
4. Deloitte. (2023). 2023 Deloitte holiday retail survey. Deloitte. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/articles/us176694_cic_holiday-retail-survey/DI_2023-Deloitte-holiday-retail-survey.pdf (opens in a new window)
5. 2022 Holiday Shopping Trends & Insights Report | Adobe for Business. (n.d.). https://business.adobe.com/resources/holiday-shopping-report.html (opens in a new window)
6. Schwartz, A. (2023, August 24). The Big Sale Days: An E-Commerce guide to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Total Retail. https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/the-big-sale-days-an-e-commerce-guide-to-black-friday-and-cyber-monday/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20in%20the%20U.S.,both%20breaking%20all%20previous%20records (opens in a new window).