Black Friday Marketing Strategy – Top Tips For 2024 Campaign

Black Friday is commonly associated with a shopping frenzy, with mobs besieging shops and fighting for goods. Yet, from the seller's perspective, it can be a great event to build or expand the customer base.

Black Friday is a global tradition originating from the United States. It is the first Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. Every year, this day marks the starting period for Christmas shopping. The sales during the Black Friday-only reached $9.8 billion. The event itself is super-popular, with 68% of shoppers claiming that they planned to participate in Black Friday sales in 2023.

The event was initially offline, but now it has been widely adopted by e-commerce, and the timespan has been extended to Cyber Monday, and sometimes Black Week.

What is Black Friday Marketing?

Black Friday marketing is essentially the idea of maximizing profits from the event by delivering tailored, highly contextual communication to users. Depending on the type of company, marketers can employ a multitude of tools, approaches, and tricks to boost sales, ranging from mass mailing to super-targeted offers, account-based marketing, or anything relevant.

How To Prepare Black Friday Marketing Strategy? Best Tips

As mentioned above, the strategy you choose highly depends on the type of business and the items or services sold. Obviously, there is a great difference between a barbershop, grocery store, or factory that sells in a B2B-only model. Yet, no matter the business model and approach, there are some universal best practices to follow:

Define clear goals and objectives (and a way to measure them) – First and foremost, when launching the campaign, you need to have clarity regarding the goal and purpose of the ads. When it comes to Black Friday marketing, the common goal is increased sales. This, for example, may impact ROI, which could be higher with increased prices (and margins), yet the context is what makes the campaign special.

Conduct market research – One of the best ways to succeed in marketing is to be different. And the key to being different is to know what the competition is doing, "borrowing" good ideas while avoiding bad ones. This gives a perfect foundation for building your own strategy.

Optimize performance – Being different is only the first step in building a Black Friday marketing strategy. The next one is checking if that's enough. Observing and optimizing the campaign is a must if you want to achieve the expected results.

Encourage loyalty – Last but not least, a customer once acquired is likely to return. That's why building brand loyalty is a long-term, profitable strategy to follow.

5 Black Friday Marketing Strategies For Your Business

The tips above are general, so without context, their value drops significantly. The five more specific pieces of advice shown below aim to bridge this gap between the theory and practice of modern e-commerce.

General tips - pre-campaign

A good campaign should start with a careful preparation phase. Black Friday is not a surprise; every year its date is known in advance, so the team may start preparations early. These include:

Analyze past performance – First and foremost, what was done well last year and what should be avoided? What worked? Is there something to experiment with? Answers to these questions can be found in the report from the previous year.

Set clear goals – When it comes to Black Friday, the most common approach is to maximize sales, prioritizing quantity over profit margin. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and certain types of goods are unsuitable for this tactic. For example, luxury goods should not be sold below a particular pricing threshold. If that's the case, a clear goal for the campaign needs to be defined, such as raising brand awareness or building the newsletter list.

Clean and segment existing lists – Last but not least, keeping the contact list fresh and clean is one of the best ways to minimize the risk of running a bad campaign. For example, a list full of "dead souls" may misguide the marketer toward wrong assumptions.

Social media strategy

Social media is a powerful promotion channel and can be a perfect tool during Black Friday. The following tips can be applied to maximize ROI and boost overall efficiency:

Start early – As mentioned above, there is time to prepare for the campaign. Not only should you have all the images and copy in place, but the promotion itself should be communicated clearly long before it starts so users can bookmark the shop or set a reminder. Having some Product Ad Templates prepared earlier is also a great idea.

Use curated hashtags – Hashtags are powerful tools in online marketing, and selecting the best and most relevant ones can be key to success. In this context, "relevant" means fitting the industry's needs and trends. An online toy shop has a vastly different target group than an office appliance store. Hashtags can carry a message about a need to be fulfilled, so a marketer needs to conduct research and find ones that hit the sweet spot between popularity and profitability.

Use flash deals – Black Friday is all about speed. Flash deals complement this narrative and add the adrenaline rush of hitting a narrow deadline to buy something interesting at a decent price.

Partner with influencers – Influencers, with their tremendous reach, can be rocket fuel for a social media campaign. However, the company must be mindful when selecting them. For example, the influencer with the biggest reach may not be the best fit for the target audience, while one with significantly smaller reach may be a perfect match.

Leverage User-Generated Content – Encouraging users to share the offer is a great way to generate significant reach. On the other hand, designing a campaign that goes viral is a major challenge. Yet, encouraging people to submit images of themselves using the product is one of the most popular and usually profitable tactics.

Offer early bird specials – Last but not least, why not give prizes to those who are engaged enough to be the first to participate? Depending on the type of service or product being sold, early birds may access different prizes. Product Feed Management Tool that supports preparing the automated early-bird targeted offer can be a great support in this particular step.

Email strategy

Unlike most digital marketing channels, email is one where the marketer actually knows who they are speaking to—or at least, they should. Data about demographics, preferences, and the reason why someone’s email address is in the mailing base can form the foundation of a great campaign.

Personalize content – Since this information is already available, it should be used. Addressing the user by name and adding contextual images is the bare minimum. Depending on the data the company has, the possibilities for personalization are nearly endless.

Create urgency – Flash deals, countdowns, and a sense of urgency can also be created in email—including animations of a ticking timer.

Put effort into details – The email inbox is a personal space. Getting into someone's inbox is like being invited, so you need to be seen as a welcome guest. Considering that, the visuals need to be polished, the message well-written, and there should be no typos.

PPC strategy

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an expensive channel but can bring super-fast profits. On the other hand, when used without proper care, it can also be a powerful cash-burner. With this in mind, the company should follow the steps below:

Conduct keyword research – Approaching a pay-per-click campaign without a keyword list is like throwing money into the sky, hoping that some of it will hit a duck for dinner. Careful research significantly reduces the chance of money being lost with no ROI.

Polish the landing pages – Clicking is only the first step of the journey. It's the marketer's duty to guide the user through the journey and make every step as easy as possible. Polished and (if possible) personalized landing pages are key.

Segment users and campaigns – Again, the narrower the targeting, the greater the chance that tailored communication will result in conversion. A good example is a shop with music-themed clothing. Both a metalhead and a hip-hop enthusiast fit into the "music fan" category, but showing the former a 2-Pac t-shirt and the latter a Behemoth hoodie would be a terrible mismatch.

Optimize in real time – One great advantage of PPC campaigns is the ability to gather data quickly. Using that data wisely can save a lot of money and greatly boost profits. Ads Design Software can be extremely helpful in staying ahead in this super-competitive environment.

General tips - post-campaign

As the campaign ends, the marketing strategy needs to find conclusion. No matter if it was a success or not, the closing of the process should include:

Monitor the performance - every campaign should have Key Performance Indicators and metrics used to determine its efficiency. Without these, deciding further about the campaign would be challenging.

Observe, learn, react - the data gathered during the campaign needs to be processed and used to gather knowledge. Considering that, collecting the data to be processed is a must and should be an official part of every campaign.

Use remarketing - every tool mentioned above aims to drive users toward the website. if they don't convert, remarketing is a wonderful tool to finish the deal for a relatively low price.

Run retro and save the results - last but not least, the data gathered, and information harvested during the campaign need to be delivered as a single document, that will be easy to use in the future, before the next Black Friday.  

When To Start a Black Friday Marketing Campaign?

As mentioned above, the black Friday campaign should be launched earlier than the black Friday itself. Also, the preparations should be done even earlier.

The exact date of launching the campaign should be set after a careful research of past events and competition. Generally, it is advised to start messaging at least a week before, having all images and messages prepared upfront.

How To Prepare Ads For Black Friday Campaign?

All the strategies above put a strong emphasize on delivering a carefully prepared and researched, data-driven campaign. Black Friday brings a high potential for great sales, yet it is a surprisingly tricky. Combining a high discount (31% on average) with increased sales volumes and campaign costs can lead to crawling loss, when done without caution.

With dropping margins, every tool that brings cost-savings can significantly boost the profitability of Black Friday Marketing. Cropink, that enables the company tosave on mass-producing the Black Friday-themed images, is a perfect example of tool used in a smart way.

Considering that, theads need to be carefully and skillfully designed and combined with a perfect timing.