Top tips for nailing your Black Friday marketing campaign

Black Friday is one of the most important dates in the retail calendar. With shoppers prepped and primed, ready to spend their money and get ahead of their Christmas shopping, it’s a great opportunity to make the most of the occasion and offer a discount or special offer to your customers.

The downside is that absolutely everyone else has had the same idea, so how do you make sure you don’t get lost in the crowd? Here are our top tips for getting noticed and nailing your marketing campaign this Black Friday.

Plan your strategy ahead

Don’t leave it until Thanksgiving to think about Black Friday. You should build it into your marketing budget for the year and plan your campaign well ahead of time.

Whether you offer a shop-wide discount on the big day, or you launch offers for specific products over the course of the week – decide on your Black Friday strategy early on and build your campaign around it.

And how are you going to promote it? Are you going to use email marketing? Social media ads? Influencer partnerships? What about a TV advert or a sponsorship deal? There are hundreds of ways to make the most of your Black Friday campaign, but in order to execute any of them successfully, you need to plan ahead.

Reward loyal customers

Black Friday is a great time to reward your loyal customers for their dedication to your brand, so make the most of your email lists by offering special discounts or early sale access to your subscribers.

Targeted advertising is another good way of enticing previous customers back to your brand. Lots of people get FOMO around Black Friday, seeing everyone else snag an amazing deal and feeling left out if they didn’t. Getting a discount on their old faithful products is an easy win for the more tentative shoppers.

Whether you offer them a deal on their favourites, or a discount when they try something new – just remember that everyone gets bombarded with emails and ads around this time of year, so you’ll need a good offer or an eye catching advert to really grab their attention.

Capture bargain shoppers

Rewarding your loyal customers is important, but don’t let it stop you capturing new ones as well. Black Friday is the perfect time to gain brand new customers, while people are in the “shopping mood” and ready to spend some of their hard-earned money.

Some shoppers will have a list of specific products in mind for their Black Friday shopping, but lots of people just want to bag a really good bargain. Planning your marketing campaign around this particular audience will help your Black Friday sale succeed.

Leverage your social media

Online shoppers take to social media around Black Friday to make sure they’re not missing out on the best deals, so your social content needs to be thorough and clear. You don’t want to miss out by making your offer too complicated or, even worse, not bothering to post about it at all.

Working with influencers and utilising paid ads in the lead up to the event is a great way to get your content noticed and your products talked about. You might start with a few sneak peeks, then ramp up your posts closer to the time. Either way, you want to make sure your Black Friday is taking up valuable space on social media and getting seen by the right people.

Another way to leverage your social media is to make sure your brand’s Instagram is fully shoppable. To do this, you need to do a little bit of Facebook admin and set up a shop on your business account. It’s not too complicated but does take time, so make sure this is done well in advance of the big day.

Once your Instagram is shoppable, you can add links to your products straight to your posts so your customers don’t even have to leave the app to make their purchase.

Create a sense of urgency

Using sneak peeks on social media, influencer partnerships, and other content marketing methods, you can start to build anticipation for your Black Friday sale early. This means that customers will be waiting outside the door or hovering their mouse on your website long before the sale officially launches.

However, while creating a sense of urgency for your sale can be a great marketing tactic, it’s a good idea not to launch your campaign too soon either. If you start talking about Black Friday in October, you’ll probably be met with eye rolls.

Even worse, if your audience hears you hammering on about your amazing discounts too often and for too long, they might start to switch off and forget about you by the time the big day comes around.

It’s all about good timing.

Get creative

Seems obvious, but if you’re going to stand out from the crowd (and your competition) this Black Friday, then you’ll need to get creative with your marketing.

Whether you provide a fun gift with every purchase, run a competition on social media, create a “countdown” with additional deals, or even offer mystery savings hidden behind a wheel of fortune – the more creative you can be with your ideas, the more likely customers are to pay attention to your brand this Black Friday.

Need a hand planning your Black Friday campaigns for next year? Give us a bell and let’s chat about how we can work together.