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Your Black Friday social media strategy should compel shoppers to add your products to their shopping list.
And convincing them goes beyond just throwing in a discount.
What do you need to do?
This guide will show you how to execute your Black Friday social media strategy to sell more products.
Black Friday social media campaign ideas
1. Collaborate with influencers
Influencers toil for years to attract and engage audiences in their niche.
Whether because of expertise or helpful content, audiences have a good reason to trust these influencers.
And your business can take advantage of this trust to reach your ideal Black Friday buyers.
But first, you have to find the right influencers who create helpful content in your industry and have audiences similar to your ideal buyers.
If you don’t know any, influencer marketing tools can help uncover influencers according to your criteria.
Once you have a list of influencers, reach out to them to discuss your Black Friday campaign and payment options.
After agreeing with influencers, watch them work their magic to send you buyers.
At the end of your campaign, track performance to ensure influencers have helped hit your sales or marketing targets.
Here’s an Instagram post by Peya Bipasha:
This post promotes Bella Barnett’s Black Friday deals, helping the brand reach more shoppers.
Collaborating with influencers will help you reach thousands of interested shoppers among their followers.
2. Run giveaways and contests
Giveaways and contests work for a simple reason: people love to compete for and win prizes.
Especially, if the prizes are products they need.
By running social media giveaways, your prize can be the bait to achieve goals like an increase in followers, better product awareness, and generating leads.
To create a contest, you have to pick the prize. This can be a set of products available in your Black Friday deals.
Then, set giveaway goals and draft entry requirements that align with the goal.
After these steps, launch your giveaway. At the end date, pick and announce the winners.
To manage every stage of your giveaway campaign effectively, use a social media contest tool.
Here’s a Black Friday giveaway by Domno Vintage on TikTok:
With giveaways and contests, you create awareness for products you want to sell during Black Friday.
3. Encourage user-generated content (UGC)
Customers who use and love your products are your most convincing marketers.
Because potential buyers trust what they say about your product than what you say.
And to take advantage of this, encourage customers to show off your products on social media.
Then, collect UGC to market Black Friday offers.
One option is to specify a branded hashtag customers can use in their posts. This hashtag will also ensure you find the posts.
Then, share the UGC on your social media account.
But with a twist.
When sharing the UGC, mention your Black Friday deals for the products in the post.
Doing this will compel shoppers to take advantage of your offers.
4. Run social media ads
While social media ads are a pay-to-play method, they let you reach your ideal audience as soon as you want.
Another benefit is that you can target the demographics of your ideal audience.
Before creating social media ads, you have to determine the social network your ideal buyer visits most.
For example, if you have a B2B audience, you can target LinkedIn and Twitter (X). However, Instagram and TikTok may be the best option if you sell fashion products to young people.
Once you determine the best social media platforms, set up your ads. Doing this includes setting up details such as ad copy, image, video, duration, and targeting.
Social media ads are a great option to target specific audiences with your Black Friday offer.
5. Take followers behind the scenes
Your engaged followers want to know what goes on behind the scenes.
A peek into your workplace is privileged information that will engage your audience more.
But beyond that, behind the scenes will create awareness about the coming Black Friday shopping weekend.
So, show how your employees are preparing for Black Friday. This can be employees in the warehouse preparing stock for the shopping weekend.
It can even be behind the scenes of your Black Friday video shoot:
Here’s a behind the scenes video by These Three:
This video created anticipation since it was a month before Black Friday.
6. Create Black Friday gift guides
Some of your social media followers already love your products.
But it’s never crossed their mind that your products will make great gifts for their loved ones.
Well, it’s your job to bring it to their memory.
Gift guides will educate your audience about how your product works for various people.
For example, if you sell sports shoes, you can include women’s shoes in gifts for women and men’s shoes in gifts for men.
If possible, include complementary products in your gift guides. This gives the buyer more reason to buy.
7. Ask for Black Friday shopping list
Most shoppers maintain a shopping list for Black Friday.
One way to introduce fun into your Black Friday campaign is to ask them which of your products got on their shopping list.
First, this will engage your followers as they have to drop comments.
Second, you’ll get feedback about the most popular products for shoppers.
Here’s an example by ghd on Instagram:
So, share a social media post to ask followers which of your products they plan to buy during Black Friday.
Black Friday social media campaign tips
Create awareness early
Black Friday shopping happens in one weekend.
But most shoppers plan for weeks. They have a budget and a list of products to buy.
To get on that list, you have to promote your Black Friday discounts early.
According to a Sinch survey, 56.9% of respondents want to hear about Black Friday deals a month before or earlier.
Do you have Black Friday deals?
Go on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter and shout it on the rooftops.
Here’s a tweet by Rocket Health promoting their Black Friday offer a month before the shopping weekend:
Then, exploit other marketing channels like email and blog.
Creating early awareness ensures you reach every potential buyer before they exhaust their budget.
Promote deals on multiple platforms
While you don’t have to be active on all social media platforms, be active where your ideal buyers spend time.
This should also translate to your Black Friday deals.
You don’t want to reach shoppers on Instagram and then miss out on TikTok users.
So, promote your Black Friday deals on your audience’s favorite social media platforms.
Use Black Friday hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to organize and find posts on Twitter (X), Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
And social media users often search popular hashtags to find the best deals.
So, using these hashtags lets you reach users looking for deals.
But beyond using general Black Friday hashtags, include your branded hashtags, especially if you’re promoting multiple products.
With the branded hashtag, shoppers can find deals for specific products or categories.
Exploit the fear of missing out
Fear can push people to do a lot of things. Things like impulsive purchase of products they “may” need in the future.
I’ve experienced it. You’ve probably experienced it too.
Buy this beautiful shoe in 3 months at $100 or in the next 24 hours for $60?
Well, who doesn’t want to save $40 on a shoe they love?
Mixing a discount with urgency can force even frugal people to reach for their credit cards.
When promoting your deals, activate the fear of missing out through:
- Urgency
- Limited stock
See this Black Friday post by Yoeleo Sports:
The image and caption fuel the fear of missing out.
The fear of missing out is an emotional tool to sell more during the Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping weekend.
Plan Black Friday content across multiple platforms
Promoting your Black Friday deals effectively requires consistency.
But on a busy day, it’s easy to forget a promotional post you want to share on Instagram.
This is where a content plan can come to the rescue.
The content plan provides an overview of the content pieces you want to publish before and on Black Friday.
And if you use a social media management tool to plan content, you also get scheduling features to share your posts automatically on multiple social platforms.
Overall, a content plan helps you engage your audience consistently.
To create a content plan, you have to set up important details about your posts.
Check out how to create content calendars for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter (X).
Engage with customers during campaign
Shoppers can hit walls during the buying process. This can even become more frequent on Black Friday due to the high number of shoppers.
When this happens, shoppers will likely reach out to your brand to iron out the issues.
Replying promptly can be the difference between hundreds of dollars in sales and a dissatisfied shopper. After all, they’ll miss out on the discount if they fail to purchase in time.
Whether it’s comments or direct messages (DM), quick replies will enable shoppers to take your deal.
So, do this to ensure a smooth shopping experience.
Conclusion
Black Friday campaigns on social media go beyond throwing in a discount and calling it a day.
You have to engage your audience and convince them that missing your deals is equal to losing money.
Use these ideas and tips to prepare for the next Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping weekend.
Happy selling.
Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.