Are you looking for creative Black Friday marketing ideas to grow your business?
Black Friday is arguably the most important day of the year for many businesses. There’s a lot of competition, but also a lot of shoppers ready to buy.
In this article, I’ll share proven Black Friday ideas for marketing to help you make the most of this important opportunity.
Note: Don’t forget to check out the ultimate holiday gift guide designed specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners:
26 Black Friday Marketing Ideas to Try in 2024
Feel free to jump to the section that most interests you, or read through them all to see what inspires you. Let’s get started!
- Hourly or Daily Deals
- Bump Sale
- Mystery Savings Discount Wheel
- Gift Card Promotions
- Free Shipping Based on Order Value
- Conditional Discounts
- Build Your Own Sale
- Surprise Checkout Discount
- Upsell and Cross-sell Deals
- Gift Guides
- Sneak Peeks
- Product Launches
- Referrals
- Countdown Timers
- Affiliate Programs
- Exclusive Email Offers
- Evergreen Black Friday Landing Page
- Contest
- Double Loyalty or Rewards Points
- Personal Shopping & Gifting Services
- Special Experiences
- Audience Preparation
- Smart Targeting
- Memorable Content
- Diverse Ad Formats
- Strategic Spending
1. Hourly or Daily Deals
There’s no better way to build a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) than to limit availability.
Hourly or daily deals are only applicable for a certain period, so customers are motivated to decide quickly.
When you offer a variety of time-sensitive deals throughout the day or weekend, you also encourage shoppers to keep coming back to check your website for the latest bargain.
Consider offering free shipping on combined order value above a certain threshold to keep shipping costs from being an objection. You can use OptinMonster to add a countdown timer to any page to drive urgency.
Bonus content: Unlock the Power of FOMO: 17 Clever FOMO Marketing Examples
2. Bump Sale
A bump sale is when you start the price of a product or service low and increase the price after every purchase.
Most often, the starting price is quite below the suggested retail price. This can encourage more people to buy the product than would otherwise. Depending on the starting price and bump increments, you can earn significantly more based on the additional sales volume alone.
For example, you may have a product that usually retails for $100, and you typically expect to sell 20 of them, earning $2,000 in revenue. But imagine you run a bump sale and start the price at $5 with a bump of $1 for every purchase. Suddenly, you have 60 customers rushing to buy the product for a total revenue of $2,070. You’d earn more money and have three times as many customers who can bring in additional lifetime value. Plus, they’d all feel like they got a great bargain!
Bump sales are an excellent Black Friday marketing idea for testing market demand for new products or offers or as a once-a-year sales promotion for existing customers.
3. Mystery Savings Discount Wheel
A coupon spin wheel can add an element of chance to your Black Friday sale.
Customers spin the wheel to see what kind of discount code or a free gift with a purchase they can get.
They’ll also be motivated to use their discount immediately, just in case they don’t land on it again the next time they spin.
Bonus content: How to Create a Discount Wheel Popup (the Easy Way)
4. Gift Card Promotions
As the traditional start of the holiday season, Black Friday is a great way to highlight your products or services as gifts.
Gift cards are the perfect Black Friday marketing idea for shoppers to give experiences like a massage or let their loved ones choose the products they want the most.
You can also use gift cards to even out seasonal fluctuations in sales like Nashville Pedal Tavern did.
For Black Friday, you could discount a $100 gift card to just $75 while maintaining the usable value. You get the revenue immediately and can deliver the service or products later.
5. Free Shipping Based on Order Value
Unexpected shipping costs are one of the most common reasons for abandoned carts.
However, offering free shipping on every order may not be financially possible.
The solution is conditional free shipping. This means that orders above a certain value can ship for free, ultimately protecting your profit margins and helping prevent cart abandonment.
Use an OptinMonster floating bar to advertise this deal prominently to put shoppers at ease.
Bonus content: Abandoned Cart Recovery: 13 Ways To Maximize Revenue
6. Conditional Discounts
Like free shipping based on order value, conditional or tiered discounts add up based on how much is in the order. This rewards customers for spending more and can increase average order value.
For example, you could offer 10% off orders below $50, 25% off orders from $50-$100, and 40% off orders above $100.
Many shoppers perceive a higher discount amount as more valuable than spending less money, so they’ll add more to their order to get the higher discount tier.
7. Build Your Own Sale
Most buy-one-get-one (BOGO) sales involve buying multiples of the same product or same product category.
Some customers may not want that many of one item, but Black Friday is a chance to let shoppers build their own sale.
You can do this by offering a sitewide discount or a BOGO deal across many products and categories. You can also combine this Black Friday marketing strategy with conditional discounts and free shipping.
Bonus content: How to Add Buy One Get One Deals to WordPress (Step by Step)
8. Surprise Checkout Discount
Even determined shoppers can fall prey to sticker shock at the last minute when they reach the checkout page and realize they’re about to spend more than they intended.
A surprise discount can help them push through that final hesitation. With OptinMonster, you can easily set a discount popup or discount spin wheel to appear on the checkout page only.
If you’re using Shopify or WooCommerce, you can even set it to appear only when carts are above a certain value or contain specific items.
9. Upsell and Cross-sell Deals
You can increase your average order value by offering special deals on upsells or cross-sells.
Upselling is encouraging customers to buy a higher-priced version of what they’re already planning to purchase. Cross-selling is recommending products related to the original item.
An effective Black Friday marketing idea is offering free or discounted upgrades as an upsell or a special bundle Black Friday promo on related cross-sell items.
Bonus content: How To Upsell: 15 Upselling Tips & Examples To Boost Revenue
10. Gift Guides
Gift guides are curated collections of giftable products or services.
You can create guides for specific identities, like spouses, parents, or friends, or make recommendations for specific events like work parties and family reunions.
These are a great way to show off your products and provide a helpful resource for customers. You can publish these gift guides on your website, as a downloadable lead magnet, or in email newsletters throughout the season.
11. Sneak Peeks
If you want to build excitement, sometimes less can be more.
Put together a tantalizing teaser of what will be on sale and how it will benefit the customer.
This gives you at least two opportunities to reach out: first, you share the preview, and then the full unveiling.
You can share sneak peeks through email, social media marketing, website popups, and more.
12. Product Launches
Launching a new product or collection is another excellent Black Friday marketing idea.
You can launch a special holiday collection that’s only available for a limited time, with or without an early bird discount.
If you have a SaaS business, consider launching a new feature or upgrade on Black Friday with a discount for early adopters.
13. Referrals
Don’t forget to take care of your best existing customers during Black Friday.
You can use Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) as an opportunity to get more referral customers, who tend to cost less to acquire and spend more than non-referral shoppers.
Put together a special Black Friday referral program that offers your loyal customers extra incentives for telling their friends about your brand.
Bonus content: Ultimate Guide to Referral Marketing for Beginners
14. Countdown Timers
Countdown timers are a simple way to keep your promotion in the minds of your customers.
You can set the timer to count down until your sale starts or ends, or both!
Some email service providers offer built-in countdown timers, or you can use a separate tool to generate the timer and insert the code into your emails.
On your website, it’s easy to use OptinMonster to add countdown timers to popups, floating bars, and slide-ins.
Bonus content: How to Create Scarcity With Countdown Timers in 5 EASY Steps
15. Affiliate Programs
If you have an affiliate program already running, use Black Friday as an opportunity to generate extra traffic and strengthen the relationship with your affiliates.
You can offer special bonus incentives for affiliate sales made between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or longer.
Bonus content: What Is Affiliate Marketing? How To Get Started
16. Exclusive Email Offers
Building your email list will pay off long after Black Friday is over. You can tempt potential customers to join your list with exclusive offers sent only through email. Such Black Friday emails might include:
- Early access to sales
- Subscriber-only discounts
- Exclusive or early access to limited edition products
- Loyalty and rewards programs
Many email marketing campaigns will fill your customers’ inboxes, so make sure to pick email subject lines that stand out and include a clear call to action.
17. Evergreen Black Friday Landing Page
Just like you’re planning Black Friday marketing ahead of time, many customers start thinking about their Black Friday shopping strategies weeks or even months in advance.
Set up a Black Friday landing page that is available year-round. You can use it to build your email list and tease your upcoming Black Friday deals during the off-season. Then, you can collect all your live Black Friday promotion ideas on one page for easier browsing.
18. Contest
As always, you can and should set conditions for the giveaway. For example, you can give one contest entry for every $10 spent. That gives everyone a chance to win, but customers placing larger orders increase their odds.
19. Double Loyalty or Rewards Points
Repeat customers are the lifeblood of small businesses. So take good care of them during Black Friday Cyber Monday!
Customers who are part of a loyalty or rewards program may be less motivated by discounts than new customers because they’ve already experienced your product or service and love it enough to join a loyalty program.
But they would probably love extra reward points on holiday purchases they were planning to make anyway. That way, they can treat themselves after the holiday rush is over.
20. Personal Shopping & Gifting Services
Adding an extra touch of customer care can go a long way toward delivering value without discounting your products or service packages.
A top Black Friday marketing idea for small businesses is to offer personal shopper services, complimentary gift wraps, or local delivery services to help busy customers get their gifting done.
21. Special Experiences
Rather than, or in addition to, running holiday sales, you can offer unique experiences to bring customers in-store or onto your website.
Bookstores can offer signed books exclusively for the holidays. Wellness and beauty businesses can host a special event with mini makeovers or other services. Clothing or jewelry retailers can run a live flash sale on TikTok or other social media platforms.
22. Audience Preparation
If you wait until BFCM week to start running paid ads, reaching your customers will be too late and very expensive.
Start building your re-engagement and retargeting audiences well before BFCM.
Re-engagement audiences are those who have interacted with a video or ad but haven’t visited your website yet. Retargeting audiences are people who have already visited your website at least once after interacting with an ad, social media post, or search result for your business.
23. Smart Targeting
Ads cost more during the Black Friday shopping period because there’s more competition for all those clicks.
You want to avoid throwing money away advertising to cold audiences. So target your ads toward those on your email list, users who have added items to their carts, and people who have engaged with your posts, videos, and other content.
24. Memorable Content
There will be tons of ads competing for attention during BFCM. So save your money and users’ time on excess copy or bland visuals.
Get to the point quickly and make your ads crystal clear on what you’re selling, how customers will benefit, and what deals you’re offering.
25. Diverse Ad Formats
Black Friday is generally a time to stick with tried-and-true messaging, but there’s room to experiment with the format of your ads.
Try creating and testing a video ad, carousel ad on Facebook, or dynamic ads showing the items viewed or left in cart by a particular user.
26. Strategic Spending
With so much competition, the cost per click goes up during the holiday shopping season.
Set budgets ahead of time for different segments of your audience. You can ramp up your ad spending immediately before BFCM, then scale it back once that initial wave of shoppers passes.
You’ll need to save some of your marketing budget for holiday promotions later in the month, so don’t use it all at once.
Black Friday Marketing Strategy: How to Run a Successful Black Friday Sale
Regardless of the specific Black Friday marketing ideas you use, here are some general best practices for maximizing your Black Friday promotion:
1. Create Unique Black Friday Deals
Customers have to expect big deals on Black Friday, so make sure yours are buzzworthy.
But you’re not limited to offering discounts. They can be experiences, upgrades, or or even just limited quantities or availability. To be most effective, make these deals truly unique to Black Friday.
If you claim that these are the best prices of the year but turn around and run a clearance in a few weeks after the holidays, customers will feel tricked and have a harder time trusting your brand.
2. Start Marketing for Black Friday Early
Black Friday may be one day a year, but you have to build up to that day all year long. Building your visibility, audience, and brand awareness are constant processes in your business, not something you do once and forget about.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a long, ongoing process. The same goes for building a social media presence and email list. There’s no time like the present to get started!
You’ll also want to build anticipation leading up to BFCM with countdowns and previews across all your marketing channels.
3. Optimize Your Online Shopping Experience
All of the best Black Friday marketing ideas and strategies in the world will fall flat if your website crashes on the big day.
Just like you start building your audience and anticipation well before Black Friday, you also need to make sure your website is ready to go.
Work on optimizing factors such as:
- Website speed
- Checkout or booking page
- Produce and service pages
- Frequently asked questions
- Special holiday shipping and return policies
4. Prepare to Deliver Your Black Friday Promotions
Make sure your business can handle the extra sales volume from Black Friday. If you’re ordering extra inventory, make sure those quantities are accurately reflected on your eCommerce platform.
Think through your fulfillment plan and customer service availability to ensure that you can deliver what you promise.
Boost Black Friday Marketing with OptinMonster
In conclusion, Black Friday represents more than just a shopping day; it’s a golden opportunity to genuinely connect with your audience and elevate your sales.
The right Black Friday marketing ideas can distinguish your brand in a bustling marketplace, ensuring you attract, engage, and retain customers. This is where OptinMonster shines.
As a leading lead generation tool, OptinMonster can be pivotal in implementing your Black Friday marketing strategy.
Whether it’s
- creating attention-grabbing pop-ups for early bird specials
- segmenting your audience for personalized offers
- retargeting visitors with exclusive deals
OptinMonster provides the tools you need to make your Black Friday campaigns more effective and efficient.
By leveraging its robust features, you can ensure a seamless customer experience from the first click to the final purchase. So, as you gear up for the holiday season, consider integrating OptinMonster into your Black Friday marketing strategy.
It’s not just about driving traffic; it’s about converting that traffic into loyal customers. Partner with OptinMonster this season and watch your Black Friday marketing ideas come to life, driving unparalleled results.
Get started with OptinMonster today!
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