9 Black Friday Marketing Strategies You Want To Try

Black Friday and its irresistible deals and marketing campaigns are upon us, which should mean two things:

1. As a customer, you’ve got your wishlist at the ready.
2. As a marketer, you’ve got your marketing strategy at the ready.

You’ve got to be prepared if you want to snap up those deals and those customers. But we’re here to talk less about your personal wishlist, and more about your Black Friday marketing strategy to get you the results you’re looking for.

Why you need a Black Friday marketing strategy

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are marketing opportunities that are not to be missed. Why? Because you can’t afford not to.

Here are just a few benefits to running a Black Friday campaign for your business, including:

1) Boost your conversions

Everyone loves a good discount, especially in the run up to the holidays, so the first obvious benefit to running a Black Friday campaign for your business is making sales.

Great deals that run for a limited amount of time push people down the funnel quicker, and should lead to more (sometimes impulsive) conversions. In fact, 1 in 10 searches lead to a successful sale on Black Friday.

2) Engage new customers

How you market your brand and its upcoming BFCM offers is what will make the difference in your pipeline, but specifically the number of new customers you acquire. You know, the ones that don’t know you are… yet.

Done well, your Black Friday marketing campaign could draw in some good attention and boost your brand awareness, so if they’re not buying now, they could in the future.

3) Encourage retention

You’ve got to show your current customers some love too – customer retention is just as important as customer acquisition when it comes to business growth. Not to mention that retention campaigns are far cheaper too.

Let them know you – of course – haven’t forgotten about them by creating bespoke Black Friday marketing content for them. This could look something like:

• Personalized email marketing
• Early access
• Bigger and better discounts

Use this as an opportunity to re-engage your customer base, increase loyalty and maximize spend.

4) Strengthen your brand awareness

Joining the BFCM hype with other big brands is also a great way to build your brand awareness. By participating in the marketing trend, you have the potential of reaching a wider audience.

Some of your loyal users might head directly to your website to see what deals you’ve got for them, and others might find your brand and its deals through organic and paid search. Either way, you want to show you’re a brand that offers quality products and user experience, and ride the wave of ‘black friday deals 2023’ search volume.

Traffic distribution (and big increase) for the search term ‘black friday deals 2023’.

But remember, this user acquisition needs to go further than just Black Friday, so maintain your value as a brand for your customers – old and new. Be the brand they keep coming back to, and the brand they shout about.

9 Black Friday marketing strategies for you to try

When it comes to planning your BFCM strategy, there are a number of Black Friday marketing ideas and techniques to choose from. Here are some examples that have proven to be successful:

1) Start early

While you may work well under pressure, gaining momentum for one of the biggest shopping days of the year last minute usually doesn’t. In an ideal world, you don’t want to wait too late.

The thing is, the success of your Black Friday marketing strategy shouldn’t come down to how much money you make at the end of it. Think about the longer term benefits too – this includes brand awareness, with impressions, engagement and traffic playing an important part in this.

So start promoting that you’re getting involved with Black Friday, start doing your research into what people are looking for, start building that email or target list, and start segmenting to make your content super relevant to everyone that sees it.

Being organized and starting your Black Friday planning early could be what sets you apart from the rest – or at least, it gives you the time to find your niche in the ultra-competitive world we live in.

Plus, people start searching for Black Friday from September onwards, as shown by the Yearly Trends in our Keyword Generator…

2)  Optimize your website

You might be gaining traffic, but is your website keeping that traffic and making the most of it?

To do both those things, make sure your website is optimized – not only for SEO but for user experience too.

Bounce rate is a good indicator of how optimized your website is, and you can see this using platforms like Google Analytics and Similarweb. The one-up of Similarweb though, is that you can actually see your competitors’ bounce rates too and compare general engagement versus your own website.

To avoid a high bounce rate and high abandoned cart rates, make sure:

1. Your content reflects what it’s advertising in the SERPs
2. Your website is easy-to-use with a good user flow

And with point #2: It’s important to ensure your website is localized – that means considering languages of all your target markets and currencies.

3) Create a Black Friday landing page

Single the above down to see how your Black Friday campaign is performing specifically, by creating its own landing page. This makes tracking easy, and ideally you’ll see it as one of your most popular pages in the peak time for Black Friday searches.

Here’s the trending popular pages for argos.co.uk, for example. A casual 453.85% increase in traffic to its Black Friday landing page from September to October:

☝️ The other trending popular pages gives brands like Argos a good idea of what users have on their wishlists too, helping come up with offers people actually care about – hello, easy conversion.

4) Offer VIP access

Boost customer retention rates, increase your email marketing sign-ups, and make people feel *super* special by offering a VIP experience.

This could look something like offering returning buyers a heftier discount for when Black Friday and Cyber Monday roll around, or giving anyone who has signed up to hear from you an early-access code for your offers.

We’ve seen Black Friday transform from one day, to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then to Cyber Weekend. With no real logic or rules to stop brands from using the entire two weeks, there’s been no stopping them – will it stop you?

5) Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency in your Black Friday marketing campaigns is an effective way to drive conversions and boost sales. Urgency triggers a person’s fear of missing out (FOMO) and motivates them to click ‘BUY NOW’ before the deal runs out.

Here are a few ways create a sense of urgency with your marketing:

• Employ countdowns or other gamification
• Use the right kinda language
• Highlight exclusive deals and time limits
• Diminishing deals that get smaller as time goes on
• Send out reminder emails

6) Spy on your competitors

Competitor research is what will take your marketing strategy – Black Friday or not – to the next level.

Use competitive analysis tools to discover what they’re up to with their Black Friday strategy, including:

• Keywords they’re targeting
• Marketing channels they’re using
• Demographics they’re aiming at
• Paid ads they’re promoting

The deeper you can dive into the data (try saying that fast), the more you can piece together their marketing entire strategy and see just how impactful it is. We’re not kidding.

Similarweb is one example of a competitor analysis tool, that provides all those bullet points (and more) in an easy-to-digest, easy-to-compare, visual way. Our data doesn’t stop at your competitors’ digital performance and engagement numbers – it points you toward content too.

We’ve already mentioned popular pages which is a great way to spot powerful content pages that are getting attention, as well as trending pages that are seeing a big increase in traffic. But what about the pages they want to push quick, and for a limited amount of time?

In other words: your competitors’ Black Friday paid ads.

With Similarweb’s paid search analytics, you have full insight into your competitors’ paid ads that are appearing in the search results, how they’re performing, and how much they are costing them.

You can see the products your competitors are pushing in their paid advertising, including the images they use in our Product Ads module, and even see what landing pages the paid ads are sending users. So go on, have a little spy on why it might be working for them, and maybe get some inspiration (and ‘adspiration’) for your own Black Friday promotion ideas.

7) Run a social media competition

Social media competitions are a great way to generate excitement around your Black Friday campaign, and boost engagement.

Tune into Black Friday hashtags to help reach a wider audience, and introduce your brand to potential customers who may not have previously been aware of you. If you’ve got a good prize, these people are likely to share it with their friends and family too, helping you expand your reach even further.

To do this well and see results, here are some quick tips:

• Choose the right platform: What’s the most popular channel with your target audience?
• Keep it simple: Is this competition easy to enter and to understand?
• Promote your competition: How are you getting the word out?
• Pick good prizes: Well… d’uh.

8) Make a gift guide

If you’re an ecommerce brand or a publisher, putting together a gift guide should be on your to-do list as part of your Black Friday marketing strategy.

Gift guides can help increase sales – or at the very least, interest and engagement – by making it easier for shoppers to find gifts for their loved ones (or just to treat themselves). Feed into your content strategy, and optimize it well for search so it can be found on Google.

To create a successful Black Friday gift guide, you need to make sure it makes sense for your target audience – it should be tailored to their interests, needs, and budgets, but don’t be shy to throw in some of your lesser known products for good promotion.

9) Follow-up after Black Friday

Don’t let all your efforts go to waste just before Black Friday and the rest of the Cyber Weekend are over.

Businesses should follow up with users after Black Friday to ensure customer satisfaction, resolve any issues that may have happened during the sale, gather valuable feedback, and basically be like “Hi, remember me?”.

This shows that you care about your customers and the experience they have with your brand, which could increase the likelihood of them becoming repeat buyers. Follow-ups also provide you with the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell, on top of forming a connection with your audience.

3 Black Friday marketing trends to not miss out on

If you’re looking for Black Friday marketing trends, you’re in the right place.

1) Ultra-personalization

These days, personalized and relatable content is what makes sales. More and more businesses are using data and insights to create tailored shopping experiences, including personalized product recommendations, targeted offers, and customized email marketing.

It’s a marketing trend that goes beyond Black Friday, but one you should definitely make the most of to maximize the impact of your BFCM campaign in today’s competitive market.

Amazon is one of the best Black Friday marketing examples for this, personalizing deals based on purchase history and pairing together items to entice you to buy more. Ecommerce brands, take note.

2) Buy now, pay later

A definite trend for Black Friday 2023 is buy now, pay later. If you don’t offer this, you could be missing out on a huge amount of revenue (that your competitors are taking…).

Buy now, pay later is a powerful conversion tactic, allowing customers the flexibility to ‘try before they buy’ and pay off purchases either at a later date or bit by bit. Giving this kind of flexibility can help customer loyalty too.

3) Sustainability

This Black Friday marketing trend is more about brand image. Sustainability ticks a box for consumers in an increasingly eco-conscious world, and quite possibly sets you apart from some of your competitors.

You might not necessarily have this trend within your specific product or service, but incorporating it into your buying processes counts too. Shout about any eco-friendly initiatives, commitments and practices via your social media, website content, or advertising – it can differentiate you as a brand, and engage customers on a deeper level.

Do Black Friday right with Similarweb

Get the data and competitive insights you need to fuel your Black Friday marketing campaign with Similarweb.

With Similarweb, you can:

• Monitor your performance: Understand what works for your website (and what doesn’t) and target audience
• Spy on your competitors: Reveal the strategies behind your top competitors so you can do the same, but 10x better
• Boost your visibility on search: Get seen by the people you want to be seen by, with the search terms you want to own
• Engage your target audience: Know what they’re searching for, and when to win their attention and get them purchasing
• Optimize your BFCM campaign: Use this data to maximize the impact of all your campaigns and strategies

Try it yourself with a Similarweb free trial or speak with one of our experts today.

FAQs

What are some effective Black Friday marketing techniques?

Successful Black Friday marketing involves creating a sense of urgency through limited-time offers, exclusive deals, and strategic pricing. Utilize email marketing, social media campaigns, and SEO to reach your audience and make your deals stand out.

What are some current Black Friday marketing trends?

Emerging trends include influencer marketing partnerships, personalized recommendations, and eco-conscious campaigns. Collaborating with influencers and tailoring your offers to individual preferences can boost engagement, while sustainability initiatives resonate with eco-conscious consumers.

Why should businesses participate in Black Friday marketing?

Participating in Black Friday can yield substantial revenue and clear excess inventory. It’s also an opportunity to attract new customers, enhance brand visibility, and solidify customer loyalty. Being part of this retail frenzy can set the stage for a successful holiday season.