Top 22 Black Friday Promotion Ideas To Boost Your Sales

Thanksgiving weekend is fast approaching, and that means that Black Friday is near. Because of that, customers are getting their pockets and phones ready to score the best deals this holiday season.

As a business, you should be your target customers’ first choice when it comes to their shopping needs. However, competition is fierce. And that’s why you need to have your Black Friday promotion ideas ready as early as now.

But there’s one problem though, your competitors are getting ready as well; and you will be fighting over the same target audience. Therefore, you must be fierce when it comes to your marketing. You can’t just wing it.

So to help you win more customers this upcoming holiday, we prepared a list Black Friday marketing ideas and tips that will be extremely useful to you.

Let’s begin.

Why Is A Black Friday Marketing Strategy Important?

If you don’t know yet, Thanksgiving weekend is America’s second favorite holiday (Christmas is their most favorite).

For businesses, especially in ecommerce, this weekend is composed of three consecutive high-demand holidays:

• Thanksgiving day (Thursday)
• Black Friday (Friday)
• Cyber Monday (Monday)

There are also other trending new holidays within the Thanksgiving weekend:

• Small Business Saturday
• Green Monday

As such, if you’re targeting high sales volumes, this is the best time to flex those marketing muscles. On the other hand, if you’re a relatively new business, the Small Business Saturday is for you.

Additionally, Green Monday (as an alternative to Cyber Monday) is for brands with a sustainability mindset.

Let’s take a look at the numbers from last year’s (2023) Thanksgiving weekend. These data were sourced from the National Retail Federation.

Source: National Retail Federation

For three consecutive years since 2021, the number of shoppers during the Thanksgiving weekend was rising. Last year, the number of shoppers reached an all-time high since 2017 – reaching a total of 200.4 million shoppers over the course of Thanksgiving.

Source: National Retail Federation

And despite being called the Thanksgiving holiday, the number of shoppers was at its highest on Black Friday 2023. With online shoppers reaching 90.6 million.

This goes to show that Black Friday is a highly anticipated day.

Moreover, this 2024, the National Retail Federation anticipated an even higher record-setting spend from shoppers amounting to more than $900 million.

Source: National Retail Federation

As an ecommerce brand, you will be at the forefront of this holiday spending frenzy as online will be the top holiday Shopping destination this 2024.

The numbers are very compelling, aren’t they?

So if you’re convinced that this will be a great opportunity for your brand to reach record-high sales, it’s time for you to lean these Black Friday marketing ideas in the next section.

Top 6 Expert-Vetted Black Friday Promotion Ideas

Preparing for the expected influx of sales this holiday shopping season does not begin and end in promoting Black Friday deals.

Developing a holistic Black Friday marketing strategy involves preparing your ecommerce website, building hype in your social media, and implementing some clever strategies to attract your potential customers.

To help you prepare, we have listed down 6 expert-vetted Black Friday marketing promotion ideas to help you achieve record-high sales this coming holiday.

Let’s begin.

Optimize Your Website For Black Friday

Source: Hobbii

The first one in our list of Black Friday promotion ideas is optimizing your website.

Since your Shopify store will be the one making all the sales in your ecommerce business, make sure that it is optimized so that customers can easily navigate through your products and collections. You must also anticipate a huge influx of online visitors.

Thus, it will be worth your time if you did a complete SEO ecommerce audit to pinpoint the potential problems of your online store. By doing this, you can fix areas that need to be improved as well as prevent downtimes when you experience an influx of online shoppers.

Website Redesign

If you are noticing that your website is becoming a bit sluggish and harder to navigate, it might be due for optimization. Optimization and website redesign might be a good idea as this won’t just give your website a fresh new look but it will also improve the shopping experience.

Improve website speed

The average conversion rate for US ecommerce websites is only 2.57% (source: Adobe). Which means that out of 100 page visits, only less than three of them make a purchase.

The number becomes lower if your website performs poorly.

Studies have consistently shown that fast page speed will result in a better conversion rate. In other words, the quicker a webpage loads, the more likely a user is to perform the targeted action on that webpage (Cloudflare).

To increase your ecommerce store’s speed, you should consider:

• Limiting third-party apps
• Using a Shopify 2.0 theme
• Disabling unused features of your theme
• Compressing images in your store
• Removing videos
• Contacting your theme developer to help optimize your store

Put top sellers on the front page

Source: Hobbii

Putting your bestsellers right on your homepage gives you the chance to capitalize on the profitability and popularity of your products. Since these are the items most people buy from your online store, chances are a huge portion of new visitors will also find your bestsellers interesting and useful.

Hobbii did the right thing here by putting their popular products right on their homepage.

According to OptiMonk:

“Your homepage is the most important place for product recommendations. The items you display will set your visitors’ expectations about what your store sells.

Since your homepage gets the most sets of eyes on it, it just makes sense to promote your best sellers or most profitable products.”

Revamp Website Navigation

The ease of use of your ecommerce website plays a significant role in convincing your visitors to purchase from your store. As such, it is important that whenever a potential customer lands on your website, they can easily find what they are looking for.

According to a study, 38% of users (source: HubSpot) will stop engaging with your website if the content or layout is unattractive. With an already low average ecommerce conversion rate in the US (2.57%), having a disorienting website will hurt your conversion rates even more.

Prevent this from happening by organizing your products and collections page. You can do this by using a Mega Menu to make all your collections one click away from your homepage.

Source: Hobbii

A mega menu is a feature of Shopify themes that makes website navigation easier. As you can see from the sample above, hovering over menu items drops down a list of different collections further divided into more specific categories.

By adding this feature in your website, customers are only a click away from finding what they are looking for. This becomes very useful if you have a large product collection.

Here’s a tip: Leverage in-menu promotions (if available in your Shopify theme) to promote your Black Friday collections. So that when your customers hover over your mega menu, they can immediately see what kind of deals you’re offering.

Build A Landing Page

Source: Hobbii

One indispensable Black Friday marketing strategy is creating a landing page. A Black Friday landing page is a dedicated page within your site that you can publish specifically during the Thanksgiving weekend.

An effective landing page can successfully divert your customers to specific pages on your website depending on the goal of your landing page.

The landing page above is, yet again from Hobbii. They sure are ready for BFCM 2024 as early as now (as of this writing, November 1, 2024).

Aside from their well-decorated website to give clear signals that they’re on sale, they went the extra mile by creating a dedicated BF 2024 landing page that features a collection of marked-down products.

If you plan to include landing pages in your list of Black Friday marketing strategies, make sure to:

• Write a catchy but clear headline
• Include relevant content designed to capture and convert leads
• Use designs connected to your brand
• Place clear calls to action (CTA) in appropriate places
• Include a countdown timer to give a sense of urgency

Tip: If you want to create a dedicate landing page, PageFly has ready-made Black Friday templates for you. All you have to do is choose which template to use, customize it to your brand, and hit Publish.

To learn more about landing page templates, watch this video:

Plan Your Black Friday Email Campaigns

If you have been building your emailing list since you started your ecommerce store, now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity to announce your Black Friday deals.

Send Pre-Holiday Emails

Since your customers are financially preparing themselves for the upcoming long holiday, it just makes sense to let them know that you are offering some great deals too. As such, you should consider starting your Black Friday email campaigns a few weeks or a month before the big event.

This early Black Friday marketing strategy allows you to be in their shortlist of stores.

Source: Moda In Pelle

Moda In Pelle, a bags and footwear brand, sure knows how to ignite their Black Friday 2024 by sending this email newsletter right at the very first day of November.

With a simple CTA, “Be the first in line and shop our exclusive collections with up to 50% off!”, they were able to communicate that their Black Friday sale came early!

This gives their target customers an instant rush of excitement knowing that they can shop discounted products as early as November one.

Right Before The Big Day

Your Black Friday email campaigns throughout the month of November lead to this day. So be sure that your newsletter before Black Friday is something that will truly stick to your target customers.

Source: Isalis

Isalis, a fashion brand, official started their Black Friday sale in 2023 with a bold email announcement saying “30% to 50% off starts now”. This gives enough hints to their customers that they can start shopping on their site to avail those steep discounts.

When launching a Black Friday campaign, make sure to prepare a series of emails not just for the main event but also for the day leading to that event so you can get as much attention as you can get.

Seize The Final Moment

To some ecommerce stores who are feeling generous and want to seize every last moment of their customers’ shopping spree, their Black Friday email campaigns extends even further – sending a final discount offer after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Source: Oofos

Pitaka, a smartphone case brand, had this in when they launched their Black Friday sale last year. Their sale lasted until December 1 – prompting a final call (via email) that their sale hasn’t ended yet and that their customers still got a few hours left to avail huge discounts.

Undercut The Competition

Another gold nugget in our list of  Black Friday marketing ideas is undercutting the competition.

Do you know the saying, “The early bird catches the worm”? This proverb highlights the importance of being early in order to maximize your potential gains.

Such is the mantra behind this Black Friday marketing strategy. By launching an early Black Friday sale, you get the opportunity to attract customers who are financially ready to make the purchase.

Source: Moda In Pelle

Moda In Pelle knows this so well. That’s why alongside their email campaign which started in the first day of November, their website also got a new look for the year’s biggest sale even.

Build Hype On Social Media

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok are no longer just means to socialize. They now play a substantial role for businesses to reach their target customers.

Source: We Are Social

“Finding inspiration for things to do and buy” is the top sixth reason why people use social media. Therefore, social media platforms are instrumental in driving traffic to your site during holiday seasons.

Because of that, your Black Friday promotion ideas should include strategies that can attract potential customers who have social media accounts.

Source: @lskd (Instagram)

Speaking of Black Friday marketing ideas for social media, this post posted by LSKD almost 1 month before BFCM of 2023 is a great example of building anticipation through social media.

In fact, they even undercut the competition by launching a Black Friday Sale 2 weeks before the actual event. This way, their target customers no longer had to wait for the actual day to come. And that means they can get their purchases even earlier.

LSKD is a fitness apparel brand that sells different gears for men and women. They also have hoodies, jackets, and pants, among other stuff.

Skip Black Friday Sales

Before you get up from your seat and leave this article, let us explain…

You see, this holiday season is good for business.

But there’s one thing that we can’t deny.

Black Friday sales promote excessive consumerism – which is bad for the planet.

That is why some businesses, including large brands, make an effort to lessen their carbon footprint from the planet. In fact, some pro-sustainability businesses are battling Black Friday with Green Friday – which is also celebrated every fourth week of November.

And that is not a coincidence. This is also dubbed as the Anti-Black Friday.

Source: Brothers We Stand

In 2021, Brothers We Stand, took a stand (no pun intended) against Black Friday by launching a press release announcing that they will be shutting down their ecommerce store on Black Friday. Those who visited their website during that day were redirected to three different links that educate people about overconsumption.

Being a brand whose mission revolves around preserving the environment, Brothers We Stand’s Black Friday marketing strategy was a very authentic and meaningful one.

Our list of Black Friday marketing promotion ideas don’t end here, continue to the next section for more tips.

More Black Friday Marketing Tips

Here are 12 more Black Friday marketing tips that you should try:

Offer Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) Options

First one in our Black Friday Marketing Tips is the Buy Now Pay Later or BNPL checkout option.

Consumers love flexibility, especially during holiday shopping. Incorporate BNPL services like Afterpay, Klarna, or Affirm to increase your conversion rate. It encourages customers to make larger purchases without the financial burden upfront.

Align Online And In-store Campaigns

If you have both online and physical stores, sync your promotions across all channels. Create a unified shopping experience by offering the same deals in-store and online, giving customers flexibility in how they shop. This strategy ensures you reach a broader audience.

Utilize Text Message Campaigns With Landing Page Links

Text messages have high open rates, making them an excellent tool for quick promotions. Send exclusive deals via SMS with direct links to your landing pages to drive traffic and increase sales. Integrate countdown timers on those pages to create urgency.

Leverage Chatbots For Assistance And Upsells

Integrate chatbots to handle customer queries and recommend products in real-time. This tool can enhance customer experience while also driving upsells by suggesting relevant products during checkout.

Curate A Holiday Gift Guide Using Your Products

Help your customers by curating gift guides showcasing your products. Organize the guide by budget, product category, or recipient type. Promote this guide through email campaigns and social media ads to encourage early shopping.

Partner With Complementary Brands

Next one in our Black Friday marketing tips is partnering with complementary brands. Collaborate with other brands that share a similar audience to create co-branded campaigns or giveaways. This is one of the top Black Friday promotion ideas for expanding your reach and acquiring new customers.

Strengthen Abandoned Cart Recovery Campaigns

Enhance your cart recovery emails and SMS with discounts or free shipping offers. Increase conversion rates by reminding customers of their carts, especially during Black Friday when deals are limited-time only.

Offer Flash Sales At Specific Times

Create excitement by running flash sales throughout the day. Promote these time-sensitive deals through email, SMS, and social media to encourage customers to check in frequently.

Run Targeted Social Media Ads

Use paid social media campaigns to attract new customers. Tailor ads to highlight bestsellers, limited-time offers, or exclusive discounts for your audience. A/B test ad creatives to optimize for conversions.

Reward Long-time Customers With Special Deals

Show appreciation to loyal customers by offering exclusive discounts, early access to Black Friday deals, or personalized gifts. This approach fosters customer loyalty and can encourage repeat purchases.

Bundle Products For Higher Perceived Value

Bundle complementary products and offer them at a discounted price. This not only increases the average order value but also makes your offers feel more compelling to customers.

Follow Up With Post-Holiday Promotions

Continue the momentum with follow-up campaigns after Black Friday. Send emails with extended discounts or promotions for Cyber Monday to keep customers engaged.

Optimize Your Website For Mobile Shoppers

A significant portion of Black Friday shoppers will browse on mobile. Make sure your site loads quickly, offers easy navigation, and provides seamless checkout for mobile users.

Create Limited-Time Free Shipping Offers

Free shipping is a powerful incentive during Black Friday. Offer it for a limited time or set a minimum order value to encourage higher spending.

Incentivize Email Sign-Ups Before Black Friday

Build excitement early by encouraging visitors to sign up for exclusive access to your Black Friday offers. Offer a small discount or entry into a giveaway as an incentive.

Use Influencer Marketing To Promote Deals

Collaborate with influencers relevant to your niche to promote your Black Friday deals. Their audience trust and reach can significantly boost traffic and sales.

Conclusion

With the number of ecommerce stores growing everyday, the competition keeps getting more difficult.

Holiday marketing campaigns like this one present an opportunity for you to showcase your business skills. However, it is worth noting that these things require preparation – sometimes, months ahead.

Financial rewards in your business won’t come naturally if you are only aggressive in marketing when holiday seasons come. Thus, you should develop a marketing strategy for the entire year so you can increase brand awareness. This, in turn, will help you increase sales when important holidays come.

By incorporating these Black Friday marketing tips, you’ll not only attract more customers but also increase your chances of maximizing revenue during the shopping season. Remember to analyze what worked and what didn’t to refine your strategy for the next big sale. Implementing effective Black Friday promotion ideas will help you stay competitive and drive lasting results.