Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now well-established sale days. Most offline & online business owners, especially those businesses that have B2C or B2B e-shop, make great offers to their customers. How can we properly prepare our digital marketing strategy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Read in the following article, all the possible promotional activities, placed in a proper order to gather ideas, that you can immediately implement for your own business.

Before the Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales - your marketing strategy 

Before getting started, you need to decide on the discounts you will be running on those days and the categories of your products or services, in which they will be applied. Obviously running small discounts is no good, as is deceiving your consumers with virtual/fake discounts (i.e. raising prices and lowering them again on the 2 days of the sale). For example, on Black Friday day very large discounts are typical. Big implies a real 40% or more, wherever your cost and profit margin in your own market allows it, of course. Those of your customers who really care about price, already have your products in mind and expect to find them at a lower price at that time. They usually keep an eye on them either on your website or on price comparison sites all the time and are aware of the price trend. Therefore, it is essential that you decide on your discount in time. The day of Cyber Monday following Black Friday usually has either the same or slightly smaller discounts for those who didn't catch the Black Friday discounts. Other people choose to apply discounts for the whole month. The decision is up to you.

Before the Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales - your digital marketing strategy 

Ahead of getting started, you need to contemplate the strategy you're going to implement. A 2-point strategy is suggested. 1) In the beginning and for 1-2 months you start with general awareness of your products while doing actions that will bring traffic to your website. The messages at this stage talk about your differences compared to your competitors and not yet about discounts. 2) However, when the sale days arrive, you will switch tactics and messages. You'll retarget all the visitors you previously collected, who didn't purchase, and start communicating your discounts for the purpose of immediate conversions.  

For this 2-point strategy, you will need a core creative idea, a detailed timeline, and a clear estimation of the total budget, for all the actions you will take in step 1 and step 2 (i.e. how much you will invest in ads, fees, productions, etc.).  

Indicatively, you can start step 1 on 1 October (i.e. 2 months before the sales) and peak step 2 on the days of the sales. If you wish, you can start only 1 month before (i.e. 1 November).  

What matters though, is that your strategy has two steps: 1) Initially generate visitors to your website to build an audience and 2) Then, on the days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retarget all those visitors for the purpose of sales.  

It is advisable for all of this, to combine the following digital marketing tactics depending on your allocated budget:  

• Social media marketing (an organic tactic that pays off gradually, but will work perfectly if you already have social networks set up with good engagement),  
• Influencer marketing (paid tactics that pay off immediately and even involve the endorsement of influencers towards your brand),  
• Advertising campaigns (paid tactics that deliver immediate results, allowing targeting and remarketing actions),  
• Email & mobile marketing (direct tactics that pay off immediately as long as you have collected legitimate user, visitor, and customer data from time to time).  

If you are interested in learning how to choose and value all these tactics for every possible strategy for your brand, check out the Masterclass in Digital Marketing Strategy & Budget.

Preparation - Landing pages optimization 

Therefore, if you know in advance which products or services you are going to offer discounts on, it is imperative to have properly prepared pages describing these discounts. These are the pages that people will end up on, to make a purchase (conversion). The rule of landing page optimization says that these pages should have a) a clear title that mentions the discount and relevant keywords such as "Black Friday 50% off for all TVs", b) proper explanatory text, features, descriptions, before and after prices, c) the right and complete photos or videos, d) the benefits of your offer, e) the necessary testimonials & customer reviews as well as any other social proof such as your customer logos or awards you have received. Remember you are one step away from selling, you need everything to be flawless. 

Obviously, in addition to landing pages your entire website should play great on mobile phones (friendly & responsive) download quickly (ideally at 4") and your hosting should be elastic, (meaning power, bandwidth, and concurrent users) as visitors increase. If you're interested in learning how to do these things check out the Masterclass in Websites & Landing Pages.

Preparation - Checkout optimization

If a customer places a product in their cart, the long and challenging road of checkout begins and this is a very important funnel as you will be losing people at every step. Τhis is to be anticipated. For dozens of reasons, people leave at the stage of cart or registration or billing or checkout. Research shows that on average 8-9 out of 10 people leave at each step! Your task is to have made these pages excellent, simple, usable, and mobile optimized so that if they leave it is through no fault of your own. Once you've made the necessary improvements, do some testing of your website yourself and try to buy something to see what the potential problems are. Leave nothing to chance!

Preparation - E-shop XML feeds of products 

Whatever your e-shop is about, you should create an XML feed and link it to the ad managers you will run ads on so that you can a) run ads dynamically for all or some of your products and b) you can dynamically and automatically retarget visitors to your products with remarketing ads (each visitor sees an ad that is dynamically generated specifically for the product(s) they had visited after leaving your website). Make sure these feeds send correct descriptions, photos, and prices to the ad managers. All major ad managers allow commerce catalog feeds (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, TikTok, etc.). If you are interested in learning how to do this for each ad manager, check out the Masterclass in Meta Advertising, Masterclass in TikTok Advertising, Masterclass in Google Advertising, Masterclass in X (Twitter) Advertising, and Masterclass in Pinterest Advertising courses.

Preparation - Tags & events on your website 

You obviously want ad managers as well as Google Analytics to track and record, which visitors have reached, exactly where on your website or in your funnel. Therefore, you should have placed several different conversion tags & events on each relevant page. It is recommended that you do this through Google Tag Manager. These tags & events will collect visitors of each step of your website funnel and aggregate them into many different audiences (e.g. 100,000 visited you, 10,000 put something in their cart, 500 reached checkout and 5 eventually became customers).

Preparation - Advertising creatives (ads) 

You are aware that for all the steps in all the advertising channels, you will have to run many advertising campaigns and each channel has many different creatives. 

You are going to need creatives for step 1 and for step 2 which is where sensibly all the messages will be different. So write them all down from the beginning.  

You need photos, graphics, videos, and texts (copy) for all campaigns and for all channels. Indicatively, you want rectangular graphics & videos (e.g. for LinkedIn and YouTube), square graphics & videos (e.g. for Facebook and Instagram), and vertical graphics & videos (e.g. for Pinterest, Instagram stories & reels, and TikTok).  

Give your agency or partner graphic designers, copywriters, and video producers, well in advance, a detailed brief of what needs to be created and ready. If you are interested in learning how to do this check out the Masterclass in Content Production course.

Preparation - Email & mobile messages (templates & campaigns) 

You will definitely send several promotional emails with your offers. Either you directly or your publishing partners that you hire to send emails for you. Prepare all these messages in advance, i.e. SMS, Viber messages, and of course emails.  

In addition, you should automatically send out many transactional messages to visitors, users, and customers. Therefore, set up scripts for emails or Viber messages or SMS which will automatically go out every time someone "abandons" your products in their cart. For instance, an abandoned cart potential email or SMS reminding someone that they left X product in their cart. So, make sure you have all these scripts and messages prepared and your emails or mobile platforms linked to your website to send out all the automatic dynamic transactional messages. If you are interested in learning how to do this check out the Masterclass in Email Marketing Strategy and the Masterclass in Mobile Marketing Strategy courses.

Step 1 - Start actions for awareness & visitors 

Social media marketing 

Along with any other educational, entertaining, informative or product-related posts you make on a daily basis for your online community, it's a good idea to put up teasing posts & stories about upcoming sales. This will put in the minds of your fans that something is coming and those who are affected by the price will expect them. If you are interested in learning how to do this properly, check out the Masterclass in Social Media Marketing Strategy course.

Advertising campaigns 

Along with any other campaign, you should run ads for awareness or reach and also traffic (visitors) to your website, especially to the landing pages of the products or services you later intend to offer at a discount. This is needed, to create awareness for your products/services but at the same time generate visitors. All these visitors will become your future audiences (captured by the tags & events you have already set up) which you will need to retarget (remarket) with your discounts later on. In other words, anyone who showed interest but didn't buy at this time should see your discounts.  

It is recommended to run these campaigns on a) Facebook & Instagram with ad objective awareness and traffic, b) Google Display Network and YouTube c) TikTok, d) Pinterest, etc. Obviously, you are targeting your buyer personas. Depending on your budget, choose as many of these channels have your audience. Ideally, if you want your strategy to work better, place twice the budget than you usually invest at this time. If you are interested in learning how to do this properly check out the Masterclass in Meta Advertising, Masterclass in TikTok Advertising, Masterclass in Google Advertising, Masterclass in X (Twitter) Advertising, and Masterclass in Pinterest Advertising courses.

Reviews from selected influencers 

You should have chosen several micro or mega influencers who will only rate and review your products or services. Always pick the ones that have our audience and choose the affordable ones according to your budget. The goal is awareness and visits to your website. If you are interested in learning how to do this properly check out the Masterclass in Influencer Marketing & Strategy course. 

Preparation before starting actions for conversions.

Ad managers 

The day before our discount ads begin, we make sure that all ad managers have collected a sufficient number of visitors and have singled out our customers. Therefore, you have two main things in common: a) visitors and b) customers. These audiences will need to be accounted for in the campaigns that will be launched the next day. Specifically, from the next day you will target all your visitors excluding those who have already become your customers.  

Email & mobile marketing platforms 

The day before launching our discount emails, we make sure that we have collected or renewed our customers, on all our tools. Specifically, from the next day, you will send messages to all your subscribers excluding those who have already become your customers. If you are interested in learning how to do this properly check out our   Masterclass in Email Marketing Strategy and the Masterclass in Mobile Marketing Strategy courses.

Step 2 - Start conversions (Black Friday & Cyber Monday) 

These days then (or the whole week following if you want), you should strongly communicate your discounts for the products you've been promoting for so long. People have seen your products and some may have already bought them, but most have not. Let's go over the tactics.  

Website pop-ups or tickers 

Logically, your website has changed and your landing pages already mention your discounts. There should be a specific header image or pop-up somewhere on the home page or categories that mentions your discounts and leads to the specific landing page(s).  

Abandoned cart emails/messages 

Set up scripts for emails or Viber messages or SMS that will automatically go out whenever someone abandons your products in their cart. This way your messages will "chase" the interested parties. Whether or not to offer an additional discount on these messages is up to you to decide.  

Email & mobile promos 

Send emails or Viber messages or SMS to all your subscribers (excluding those who already are customers) with information about your discounts.  

In addition, send paid emails that you have established with major publishers, who have your audience and feature their own email newsletter and will send a purely promotional email for you.  

Ads specifically in Google Search & Performance Max 

Run campaigns that target searches for your topic/product in conjunction with Black Friday keywords. This way you will only show your ads to those who search for something related to you in conjunction with discounts (e.g. TVs blackfriday discounts).  

Dynamic remarketing ads across all channels  

Run campaigns that target website visitors from all previous days and of course, exclude everyone who has already become your customer. This way, you will only display your ads to those who had visited you.  

You run these ads with dynamic remarketing so that visitors only see the product they had visited. The channels you will run them on are again a) Facebook & Instagram with ad objective awareness and traffic, b) Google Display Network and YouTube c) TikTok, d) Pinterest, etc.  

Expect to invest for these remarketing ads a 20% of the budget you had invested for the first step (awareness & traffic).

Posts & stories on your social media accounts

Obviously, you will make at least one post or story each day about your discounts with a link to your specific landing page.   

Posts in relevant social media groups

If your executives participate in groups where your target audience exists and IF REQUIRED by the terms of the group, then you can make a post in which you mention your discounts to the members with a link to your specific landing page.  

Promotional posts & stories from selected influencers 

You will have chosen several micro or mega influencers who will do purely promotional posts, stories, reels or whatever else you have agreed on for your discounts. Always pick the ones that have your audience and choose the ones that your budget can afford. The goal is direct sales.

Press releases to selected publishers 

You should have prepared and sent to major publishers who have your audience, press releases announcing your discounts. These should be published with an embargo on the exact day of the sale and no earlier.  

Monitoring - What to monitor during and after the promotions  

"You can't manage what you can't measure" said Peter Drucker. Therefore, you need to have a proper dashboard or report set up beforehand which you monitor before, during, and after to see if and how much all your above actions worked.  

Obviously, what you are primarily interested in, is the sales and turnover on those days and you will know that immediately at your checkout! But there are several more elements that will help you improve your strategy from here on out.  

You may be interested in looking at the following:  

• For social media marketing actions: the total REACH & ENGAGEMENT of all organic posts/stories,  
• For influencer marketing actions: the total REACH & ENGAGEMENT of all paid posts/stories, 
• For paid advertising campaigns: the total CLICKS and CLICK THROUGH RATE of your ads and of course the CONVERSIONS and CONVERSION RATE of all your campaigns, 
• For email & mobile marketing campaigns: the total OPENS & CLICKS of your messages.

In addition, for those who are more ambitious, a very important result is the RETURN ON AD SPEND or ROAS of all actions (not just ads). Meaning, what you invested/gave in total and what you got back in total.  

E.g. I gave 1000 euros I got 4000. ROAS = 4. You realize that, the higher the ROAS the better your overall strategy was. If you are interested in learning how to do this properly check out the Masterclass in Google Analytics 4 and the Masterclass in Digital Marketing Reporting course.  

Summary - How to get the best results on Black Friday & Cyber Monday  

The Black Friday and Cyber Monday period is an opportunity to achieve more sales. If you provide products or services that have real value and offer great deals, then you will get great results. In this article, you saw how to prepare a complete digital marketing strategy with all possible promotions for your business. Us applying this strategy, we have delivered incredible results which have been awarded many times with a total ROAS of 20-60. Obviously, no strategy guarantees the same results across different businesses, products, or services. However, the steps and tactics can be the same. Good luck! 

Author : Apostolis Aivalis