The Ultimate Black Friday Marketing Strategy for eCommerce Brands
The holiday season comes faster every year which is why, even though it’s still months away, you should be planning your black friday marketing strategy.
In 2024, Black Friday sales set a new record. Globally, consumers spent almost $75 billion dollars worldwide.
That’s a lot of revenue on the table. The brands who get the biggest piece of that are those who start preparing months in advance. Which is exactly what we’re here today to help you do – prepare early so you can maximize sales and drive some serious growth this holiday season.
This article is meant to help you get a head start on Black Friday this year. We’re going to go over:
- Why it’s important you start Black Friday prep early
- What you risk by not planning ahead
- 10 strategies on how to maximize sales
Why Preparing Early Matters
The real black friday rush starts months ahead. Yes, months. It’s a big day. To get the most sales out of the day, it’s going to take a big effort.
Even if you have the best marketing team in the world who can bust out planning, writing, designing, and uploading a campaign in two weeks, Black Friday needs to be different. Because getting your customers to purchase your product over competitors starts with building anticipation, warming up your audience, and making sure every piece of your funnel is ready to convert.
Falling Behind Competition
Ad costs surge in Q4 because every brand is competing for attention. But what if you got ahead of it? What if you invested in awareness during Q3 while costs are still manageable so your audience is already familiar with your brand when the rush hits?
When you build that recognition early, your audience is primed to buy the moment your sale goes live. You’ll spend less to convert, and your campaigns will work harder because you planned smarter.
Missing The Mark On Your Customers Behavior
The foundations of running a successful ecommerce business at any point of the year is to first, have proof that your customers get value out of the product you sell. The second, is to validate you have the right product, with the right offer, and then position it to your audience correctly.
During the holidays, your audience isn’t just your target audience solving their own problems. It’s your target audience solving problems of those that they love and want to get a gift for.
This means your messaging needs to shift a little bit. And what do we do whenever we make changes or launch something new? TEST. TEST. TEST. Always.
Start by running small-scale campaigns ahead of your main sale. That could mean launching a limited-time bundle in September or A/B testing two different product descriptions in your emails or ads. Try different angles, one focused on self-use, the other framed as a gift and watch what gets more clicks, adds to cart, or conversions.
You can also test messaging through email subject lines, homepage banners, and even pop-ups. Which language drives more signups or engagement? Which offer gets the most traction?
The goal here isn’t perfection, it’s direction. Use these early insights to shape your Black Friday campaigns around what’s already resonating, not what you hope will land. When you go into Q4 with data-backed positioning, your offers will convert better, and your ad dollars will go further.
Scrambling To Optimize Your Lists
Every business should have their target personas identified. Once you have your top 2-3 personas, then use heatmaps or clarity to understand how each engages. These insights should drive your segmentation and flows.
Important Note: There’s no magic date to start. You’re not going to hear us say a day like “July 1st” or “August 26th.” At the very least, we suggest starting before the beginning of Q4.
The bottom line is if you’re still “getting things ready” in November, you’re already behind.
How To Use These Strategies Effectively
You don’t need to do all of these things in one day. The sooner you start, the sooner you have enough time to strategically plan, test, adjust, and execute without any last minute chaos. Look over what we suggest, align each with your business needs, objectives and audience, and then start building from there.
10 Black Friday Marketing Strategies
1. Start Early & Set Clear Goals
Of course everybody in Q4 wants to maximize on the sales potential.
But simply stating “you want more sales” isn’t going to work. Set SMART goals to identify where you want to grow and set a specific definition of what success looks like. This could be a specific number of sales, list growth, conversion rates, etc.
We suggest looking back at how you did last Black Friday and building off of those numbers.
Examples Of Good Goals
- Generate $50,000 in revenue from Black Friday email campaigns between Nov 25–29 by sending at least three segmented campaigns to our engaged list of 10,000+ subscribers.
- Increase product page conversion rate from 2.3% to 3.5% by November 20 through updated copy, mobile UX improvements, and A/B testing CTA buttons.
Examples of Bad Goals
- Sell more products than last year.
- Make our website better before the holidays.
- Grow our email list to 100,000 subscribers before Black Friday.
2. Optimize Your Website
If your site isn’t optimized before the holiday rush, you’re not just risking lost traffic, you’re risking lost revenue. Think about it, slow load times, broken buttons, unclear pricing, or clunky navigation can turn a read to buy customer into a bounce in seconds. Your best offers wont matter if buyers hit friction before they check out.
Black Friday traffic is high intent. Your site should be ready to convert from the first click.
What You Should Focus On Optimizing:
- Loading Times: The longer it takes your page to load the higher your bounce rate will be. Long wait times = missed revenue. Run tests on your site to make sure your loading time is less than 3 seconds. Compress images, reduce unnecessary scripts, and use a performance-focused hosting platform.
- Headlines: 61% of users bounce if they don’t find what they need within 5 seconds. Your headlines are your chance to wave a flag to your customers and say “Hey, we have what you’re looking for!” Headlines should communicate what you are selling, why it matters, and what they should do next.
More Optimizations for Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy:
- CTAs: Your CTAs should be direct, action-oriented, and easy to find. Keep button colors and placement consistent across pages to reduce friction.
- Simplified Checkout: A complicated checkout is one of the biggest reasons for abandoned carts. Reduce the number of steps required to complete a purchase, offer guest checkout, and clearly display trust signals like secure payment icons and refund policies. The faster someone can check out, the less likely they are to drop off.
- Mobile Optimize: 52% of BFCM sales came from mobile devices. Your entire funnel from homepage to checkout needs to function flawlessly on mobile. Test for layout issues, load time, form functionality, and make sure CTAs are easy to tap. Don’t just shrink the desktop version design with mobile users in mind.
- Simplified Cartflow: The average time spent on a page is 54 seconds. People like fast and easy. Make the process from your product page to complete checkout easy and seamless. That means no surprise fees, minimal forms, no unnecessary redirects, and minimal distraction.
- Automate Customer Service With A Chatbot: During high-traffic periods, support teams can get overwhelmed. A chatbot can handle common questions like shipping timelines, return policies, or product availability without adding friction to the user experience. This keeps potential customers from bouncing and frees up your team to handle more complex issues.
3. Prepare Your Tracking & Infrastructure
This sort of falls in line with both setting goals and optimizing your website. Preparing tracking means that before you launch any Black Friday campaigns or material, your backend is set up to accurately track performance.
If your Meta Pixel, GA4, or product feeds aren’t firing correctly, you won’t have the data you need to measure success or optimize in real time. Check that every event like “Add to Cart,” “Purchase,” and “Page View” is tracking properly. Then, audit your site for broken links, outdated product listings, and inventory syncing issues.
4. Build Your Early Access Email List
Your email list is one of your most valuable assets. In the weeks (or even months) leading up to Black Friday, you should focus on growing it in a way that builds on the anticipation of your offers.
Use popups, lead magnets, and early access incentives to get people on your list now. Make them feel like the MVP and segment these people who wanted early access into their own flow. Then you can showcase new products you’ll launch right before, give VIP perks or discounts, or announce to them first that there will be limited-quantity drops.
The goal of an early access email list is to create a sense of anticipation and urgency while also building loyalty.
5. Optimize Your Email Flows
Optimizing your email flows means making sure every automated message is working strategically to convert, recover, or re-engage your audience.
Whatever software you use (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Klayvio, etc.) you want to dive in to review and refine your core flows for this time.
Email Flows To Focus On:
- Abandoned Cart: Target users who added products to their cart but didn’t check out. Build a sense of urgency by using low stock notices or limited time discounts to encourage them to buy. Also add elements like free shipping or added discounts to entice them to finish their purchase.
- Browse Abandonment: These are the people who came to your site but didn’t add anything to their cart. Create a flow that reminds them of why your company or products caught their attention in the first place. Use high-quality images, list product benefits, and include reviews and guarantees.
- Product Interest Sequences: Send targeted messages based on specific product categories or collections a user has browsed multiple times. Tailor your emails for this flow to address that product’s unique benefits or giftability.
- Post-Purchase Upsells: Capitalize on buying momentum by recommending complementary products after a purchase. Use automation to trigger these emails based on the item bought, timing, and order value.
6. Use SMS
SMS gives you direct, high-visibility access to your audience, and it’s one of the best-performing channels for time-sensitive messages like early access, last-chance reminders, or flash sales.
Unlike email, which might sit in someone’s inbox for hours, SMS messages are typically opened within minutes. Use it to drive urgency, reward VIPs, and reinforce your most important campaign moments. Just make sure every message is intentional and clearly adds value.
7. Launch Targeted Product Campaigns
Launching new products or limited-time bundles in October is a great way to keep your catalog feeling fresh while building momentum before Black Friday. It also gives you a chance to test messaging, positioning, and price points ahead of your main sale.
8. Create a Dedicated Black Friday/Cyber Monday Landing Page
Your customers shouldn’t have to dig through your entire website to find your best deals. Build a dedicated Black Friday or Cyber Monday landing page that highlights your top offers, builds urgency, and keeps everything easy to navigate.
Make sure the page is mobile-first. Remember, over half of Black Friday sales come from mobile devices. Keep it fast, clear, and SEO-friendly so it works as well in an ad campaign as it does on your homepage. This page should feel like the hub of your holiday campaign.
9. Promote Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)
Buy Now, Pay Later options continue to be a hit with consumers, who used providers like Klarna, Afterpay, and others 14% more during the 2023 holiday season. 22% say they’ll shop elsewhere if BNPL isn’t offered.
This option of payment is becoming more and more popular. Not everybody likes to pay upfront and that’s something that you need to prepare for.
When customers know they have flexible payment choices before they even add to cart, it reduces friction and increases the likelihood they’ll follow through with a purchase.
10. Leverage Social Media and UGC
Social media as a whole is becoming more and more popular for people to use to find the credibility and validity of products. In fact, 74% of consumers rely on social media to inform their purchasing decisions. If you’re an ecommerce store, you need to capitalize on this.
79% of people say UGC (User generated content) highly impacts their purchasing decisions.
People want to see other people enjoying your products and get reassurance that it truly delivers what you promise it will.
Use Instagram Stories, countdowns, influencer collabs and other forms of content on there to build excitement and awareness of your brand during the holidays.
Bonus Content that Builds Trust
Gift Guides
One of the best things ever are those websites that create curated sections based on who you’re getting the gift for. Etsy rocks this and has gift guides for every type of person or relationship.
Options like “Under $50” or “Gifts For Mom” are just a few examples. You can advertise that you have these sections to further show the customer that choosing you will save them time and stress.
Teaser Campaigns
Teasing your audience means quite literally that, teasing them of what’s coming. Through emails, SMS messaging, social media, and perhaps even somewhere on your site, you’re going to want to build the anticipation of what your offer is on Black Friday. You can hint at what your discounts will be or, better yet, ask your customers what sort of sales they’d like to see from you this year.
Move Early or Miss Out
Black Friday doesn’t reward the busiest brands, it rewards the most prepared.
If you’re waiting until November, you’re already behind. Last minute execution leads to missed sales, wasted ad spend, and unnecessary stress. And you didn’t work all year just to wing Q4. When you start now, you gain control. Over your messaging, your spend, your conversions, and your outcomes.
Early prep means your site runs smoothly, your campaigns are dialed in, and your customers are already primed to buy. The brands that win Black Friday don’t guess. They test, plan and execute early.
If you’re ready to lock in your strategy and drive real growth this holiday season, let’s talk. No pitch. Just smart, tactical advice from a team that knows how to scale brands.