Imagine checking your sales numbers the day after your Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions.
You’re seeing the biggest jump in revenue your business has had all year…
What will you do with all that extra money? That’s up to you! But it’s up to us to give you tips on how to get there.
Black Friday can bring in huge revenue for your business, but only if you have a successful marketing campaign that stands out from the massive number of other Black Friday campaigns out there. Our take: Influencer collabs are the way to stand out.
Keep reading to get inspired by fun ideas for Black Friday influencer marketing content.
How Black Friday and Cyber Monday have evolved over the years
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been around a long time, especially Black Friday, which became known as a shopping discount day in the late 1980s. But a lot has changed since then…
Online shopping
“I love shopping in crowded stores with pushy customers,” said no one ever. More people these days are doing their Black Friday shopping online. It’s a little strange that “Cyber Monday” is still a thing since the entire Black Friday weekend has become “cyber.”
Cyber Monday got its name in 2005 when the National Retail Federation noticed that people liked to do online shopping the Monday after Black Friday because they had stronger internet connections at work than at home. Consumers shopped at brick-and-mortar stores on Friday and online on Monday. But those days are in the past.
A Mastercard analysis found that Black Friday sales in brick-and-mortar stores rose 1% from 2022 to 2023, but online sales rose over 8% at the same time. Online Black Friday shopping is a growing trend, and the good news is that your potential customer base has expanded beyond your local area. The bad news is that your competition has also expanded beyond your local area. The solution? Creating high-quality content that actually gets the attention of your ideal customers.
Buy now pay later
Today’s consumers are taking advantage of “buy now pay later” options like Affirm and Klarna. They give people more time to pay without charging interest, which makes pricey items easier to afford. If you aren’t currently offering a buy now pay later payment method, Black Friday is the perfect time to start. When you have good marketing strategies and easy ways to pay, don’t be surprised when your sales skyrocket.
Pre-Black Friday sales
The Black Friday season is getting longer. There are lots of businesses all trying to get ahead of each other, so Black Friday sales are starting earlier and earlier. No need to wait ‘til late November. You can start in early November or even October. And you can keep the deals going a few days after Cyber Monday.
Having such a long Black Friday period can be good and bad. On one hand, having that longer period of time gives you more time to put out Black Friday content and attract customers. On the other hand, customers may not feel much urgency to buy because they know your Black Friday sales will last a long time. Having different sales on different days can solve this problem – more on that later.
Ethical brands
These days, a growing number of consumers are looking at companies’ values and ethics. People want to know which companies care about more than just making a buck. Black Friday and Cyber Monday come between American Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday, so these two feel-good holidays make people’s minds even more focused on generosity and kindness.
Think of ways to incorporate your brand values into Black Friday promotions. For example, maybe you have products that are made from recycled materials or come in eco-friendly packaging. Or maybe you’re willing to donate a percentage of Black Friday sales to charity. Showing your brand ethics makes a positive impact in the world and deepens the bond between your brand and your customers.
The role of Cyber Monday and Black Friday influencer marketing
We can’t talk about how Black Friday and Cyber Monday have evolved without talking about the crazy-fast growth of influencer marketing. The reason the $34 billion industry has grown so much is that businesses want to go beyond traditional advertising techniques. If influencer marketing is on your mind for Black Friday, you have the right idea.
The best reason to use influencer marketing for Black Friday is that it helps you stand out from the online competition. Tons of other businesses are blasting Black Friday promotions in your audience’s faces, so if you’re doing the typical “50% off!! Buy now!!” ads, you’ll probably get lost in the crowd. But collaborating with influencers can help you get noticed because influencers create content that’s fun and relatable.
If you put out attention-grabbing content that appeals to your ideal customers, your brand will stick in their minds among all the other Black Friday noise. The advantage influencers have is that they already have a built-in audience interested in their content. So if you find influencers who fit your brand and those influencers promote your products, you’ll get in front of people who are already interested in seeing that content.
Another benefit of influencer marketing is that it creates trust. You can’t attract new customers if they don’t trust your brand. People are surrounded by brands posting ads during the Black Friday season, and some of those brands are… not the best quality. (You know when you’ve gotten a “good deal” on a cheap product that falls apart in five seconds? We know too.)
With so many brands putting out Black Friday ads, it can be hard for consumers to figure out which ones to trust. Influencers already have audiences that trust them, and that means influencers can become a bridge that builds trust between their audience and you.
Top 6 trends for Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2024
Outside-the-box creativity
Black Friday is the best time to get creative with your content. What can you do that’s different and unexpected compared to normal ads? It could be an eye-catching picture, a funny video, a surprising twist on a popular topic, or anything else that gets your audience to stop the scroll.
Alo Yoga used an unusual photo to get people’s attention for its Black Friday sale. That pose is certainly not something you see every day. Amazon’s Lonely Yeti commercial is another example of unusual Black Friday advertising. Think of ways your brand can take your content creativity up a level. Hint: Influencers are good at this.
Curated gift guides
The nice thing about Black Friday is that people want to buy things for themselves and for others, so those are two different angles you can market from. When it comes to shopping for others, curated gift guides are a lifesaver. Everyone has that one person in their life who’s near impossible to buy a gift for. (Or maybe it’s everyone in their life. The gift-giving struggle is real.)
Use pictures and videos to show off curated collections of products that are perfect for certain people such as kids, outdoorsy people, gamers, etc. Collaborate with influencers to promote these gift guides. Best Buy uses influencer marketing all the time. For Black Friday, the company made curated gift guides and worked with influencers to promote the gifts.
Different sales on different days
If you want a long Black Friday sales period, you don’t want to have the exact same sale going on the whole time. It’s better to have different types of sales on different days. Each sale can last one day, two days, or another length of time, as long it’s not overly long like two weeks. Having different short sales gets your audience to pay attention because they won’t want to miss anything.
Take a look at how Sephora did this. Sephora created a video with an influencer who not only explains the different brands going on sale on different days, but also recommends specific products so people won’t feel stuck on what to buy. Another example is Macy’s, which created an influencer video specifically for Small Business Saturday that highlighted products from small business.
Standing up for your brand values
In this era of consumers looking for ethical brands, using Black Friday to do good in the world is a great thing to do. Consumers are more likely to be loyal to brands whose values resonate with them. Collaborate with influencers who share your brand’s values.
Nautica collaborated with marine anthropologist Dr. Shireen Rahimi and the nonprofit organization Oceana to raise money to protect and restore oceans worldwide. Customers were given the option to donate to Oceana at checkout, and Nautica matched donations to double the impact. This shows that the ocean isn’t just something Nautica uses as a fashion aesthetic; it’s something they genuinely care about. What does your brand care about?
Using the power of entertainment
If you really want to get people’s attention, creating parodies of entertainment will never fail to do so. Making your audience think of their favorite books, songs, movies, or TV shows will cheer them up and cause them to like your brand a whole lot more. One of the best examples of this is Walmart creating a Mean Girls themed commercial for its Black Friday deals – pretty cool if you ask us.
A clever way to use entertainment in your marketing is to create a parody of an entire genre, like horror movies or soap operas. Think about how you can do something your audience isn’t expecting, while still making it clear exactly what your deals are. With funny, playful marketing like this, you won’t have to worry about your Black Friday campaigns not being noticed.
Live online events with audience participation
Nothing builds excitement like a live event. Getting people’s attention is easy when you’re doing something they can watch in real time, wondering what will happen next. You can have a Black Friday livestream on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or whatever platform you prefer. If you want extra excitement, do more than one livestream.
There are lots of ways to do Black Friday livestreams. One idea is to have a stream before Black Friday and have a live reveal of your upcoming deals with a surprise early bird sale. Another idea is to collab with an influencer who will do a live demo of your products, and can respond to questions and comments from the audience. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can do a livestream of an influencer shopping at your store.
Dyson hosts livestreams for Black Friday and other special occasions. Viewers can tune in live to catch exclusive deals, creating a sense of urgency and FOMO. There are live product demos so viewers can see exactly how Dyson’s products work and imagine using them for themselves. Dyson’s past livestreams are still up to watch now, so check them out if you want some inspo.
Key takeaway: Don’t let your Black Friday marketing campaigns blend in with the crowd.
Black Friday/Cyber Monday is the most important shopping season of the year. People are happy to spend big… but they’ll only drop money on the brands that get their attention and build connection.
Consumers are tired of the typical ads that have been done a million times. What can your brand do that’s different? Collaborating with influencers can bring your brand attention in a fresh way, just in time for Black Friday. Try some the techniques above or make up your own. But whatever you do, be sure to have fun with it!
Are you ready to stake your claim in the creator economy? Discover more helpful tips and resources from the experts at GRIN: Creator Management Learning Center
