Black Friday social media campaigns: Examples, tools, and tips for success

It’s time to get to work on every marketer’s championship game: Black Friday. While the holiday sales window seems to get longer each year, Black Friday itself is still a major event — shoppers spent more than $10 billion USD online last year alone. 

An impressive social media campaign might be your ticket to getting noticed this year. 

In this article, we’re spilling all the secrets to social media success this Black Friday. You’ll get inspiring examples from brands that knocked it out of the park last year, the must-have tools to make your life easier, and insider tips to take your campaign to the next level.

As you plan your campaign for this year, look to these strategies for inspiration:

Cultivate pre-Black Friday VIP experiences

This holiday season, consider rewarding top customers with exclusive early access to upcoming deals and limited-edition products. It’s a Black Friday marketing strategy that builds excitement, increases brand loyalty, and creates a sense of exclusivity. 

Take Scrub Daddy’s approach, for instance — they teased early availability of Black Friday deals for email subscribers.

There’s a lot to learn from this tactic. Here are five ways to create a VIP experience for Black Friday shoppers just like Scrub Daddy:

1. Offer early deals: Grant early access to Black Friday deals to a select group of customers, like email subscribers or top spenders. Then, broadcast that exclusivity through your social media channels.
2. Sell limited-edition products: Use your profile to introduce exclusive, limited-edition products or bundles only available during the pre-Black Friday period. 
3. Create personalized online shopping experiences: Offer personalized shopping consultations to VIP customers over social media. Help shoppers create wish lists, provide recommendations based on their preferences, or even offer styling advice via a live stream or DM.
4. Provide behind-the-scenes sneak peeks: Give VIP customers a glimpse behind the curtain with sneak peeks of upcoming Black Friday promo deals or new product releases. Share some of those teasers with all of your social media followers and promise more for the VIP list.
5. Offer tiered rewards: Create a tiered rewards system where customers who spend more or engage more with your brand receive higher levels of VIP access and share the program with your followers. Your VIPs could get access to deals, get bigger discounts, or get invited to special events during the Black Friday sale.

A VIP approach builds stronger relationships with your best customers, which can help your business all year, not just during the holiday season. And promoting VIP opportunities over social media encourages your followers to become part of your exclusive club.

Create bundles with other brands

Partnering with complementary brands to create exclusive product bundles expands your reach to new audiences and offers customers enticing deals they might not find elsewhere. 

Let’s consider a tech company partnering with a popular streaming service. They could offer a bundled Black Friday deal on a new smart TV that includes a free year of streaming. This creates a more compelling offer than either brand could provide alone, increasing the average order value.

On top of complementary product pairings, one of these collaboration bundles could also feature:

• Lifestyle-based bundles: The tech company could expand its offer to include a “Home Entertainment Package” with sound bars or gaming consoles, catering to different entertainment preferences.
• Cross-industry collaborations: The tech company might partner with a furniture retailer to offer a complete home theater setup bundle, including a TV stand or comfortable seating.
• Service add-ons: The bundle could include professional installation or extended warranty services, providing additional value and peace of mind for customers taking advantage of the Black Friday sale.

These bundles have the power to expand your social media reach by allowing each brand involved to build upon the others’ existing audience. Great business partners will tag each other, share each other’s posts, and even get involved in the comments. Strategic partnerships for bundled product offerings have the power to be a major win for everyone involved.

Make it interactive

Incorporate interactive elements into your Black Friday campaigns to create a more engaging and memorable experience for your customers.

For example, you could take your campaign to the streets. Ask passers-by trivia or give them a challenge in exchange for a prize, then upload a video of the best moments to your social media or document it as it happens in your Instagram Stories.

You can also develop these kinds of games for your social media followers. Your Black Friday marketing campaign could involve trivia quizzes about your products or scavenger hunts across your social media channels.

Live video is another great interactive tool for Black Friday social media. Host a live Q&A session where customers can ask about products and get instant answers. Or offer a live product demo showcasing the features of your hottest Black Friday deals.

Whether you opt for a digital spin-the-wheel or a complex augmented reality opportunity, design an experience that aligns with your brand values and enhances the customer’s shopping journey. Take cues from your previous interactive campaigns to understand what kinds of things your customers prefer.

Build influencer collaborations

Use your influencer marketing connections or build new ones to add a face to your Black Friday social media campaign. Consider:

• Creating a takeover series: Have an influencer take over one of your social media channels for the day to share information about your deals or products.
• Mixing up your collaborations: Try a new partnership with an influencer who has a following different from your usual audience.
• Sharing product demos: Ask your influencer partners to showcase your products in a unique and realistic way — like taking your hiking backpack on an actual trek. 
• Creating influencer-specific discount codes: Use discount codes to track how each partnership is doing and incentivize followers to use their favorite influencer’s code.
• Extending collaborations into Giving Tuesday: Donate a percentage of Black Friday sales to a charity associated with the influencer.

Forge cause marketing connections

Connect your brand with a good cause during your Black Friday campaigns. Select one that resonates with your brand values and target audience or find a new way to team up with an organization you have a history with.

You could pledge a percentage of your Black Friday sales to your chosen cause or create a campaign-specific product or collection. It could be a limited-edition item or a carefully curated selection, with a portion or all of the proceeds going to support charity.

Like product bundles, cause marketing campaigns are another way to combine reach and followers with another organization. Partner with your chosen nonprofit, promote the cause alongside your Black Friday deals, and engage customers with co-branded content or events.

Let customers know exactly how their purchases will make a difference and, most importantly, keep your customers in the loop about the impact of their purchases. Post regular updates about their support to build trust and strengthen the emotional connection between your brand and the cause.

Make it a weeklong event

Marketers used to be able to plan for one huge 24 hour event. But if you haven’t yet adjusted, it’s time to extend your Black Friday promotions and deals throughout an entire week (at least). To do this, however, you’ll need a lot more content to post for your Black Friday social media campaigns.

Nutribullet ran deals from Thursday to Tuesday for one of its recent Black Friday campaigns:

Here’s are some ideas to help extend Black Friday into a weeklong event for your brand:

• Offer themed daily deals: Each day of the week, offer different deals or discounts on specific product categories to encourage customers to come back daily. Create posts announcing each day’s sale and drop hints in the comments about tomorrow’s theme.
• Run flash sales: Surprise customers with limited-time flash sales throughout the week. Announce those sales during the time of day that most of your followers are active to leverage your social media audience.
• Highlight countdown promotions: Build anticipation for Black Friday by unveiling new deals as the week progresses. This tactic encourages early engagement and creates a sense of excitement leading up to the main event.

By extending your Black Friday social media campaigns over a week, you give yourself more opportunities to engage with potential customers and increase your sales during this crucial period of the holiday shopping season.

Deliver personalized product recommendations

Create a tailored online shopping experience for each customer with personalized product recommendations as part of your Black Friday social media campaigns. Use data and AI to suggest products that align perfectly with your customers’ tastes and needs on your social accounts and online store.

Use social media ads to retarget visitors who’ve previously interacted with your brand or visited your website. Tailor your ad messaging to match their specific interests and browsing behavior, increasing the relevance and effectiveness of your ads.

Then, you can follow up on that social media strategy on your ecommerce store by offering personalized recommendations based on factors like browsing history. WooCommerce has plenty of extensions for this kind of upselling and cross-selling, including Product Recommendations for WooCommerce.

Bring it all together by personalizing your messaging across your other channels. Use data from a CRM such as Jetpack CRM to segment your customers, then automate personalized messages to each segment with a tool like AutomateWoo.

Gamify and reward engagement

You can also integrate gamification and loyalty rewards into your Black Friday social media campaigns to boost engagement, foster loyalty, and drive repeat purchases.

This type of gamified loyalty program can span your social media pages and other marketing channels to encourage interactions throughout your marketing content. Give customers reward points for every dollar spent, social post shared, and product review written.

WooCommerce Points and Rewards is a great extension to implement this kind of Black Friday marketing strategy for your store. It automatically adds reward points to a customer’s account based on their purchases, and you can manually add points for actions outside of your website.

Your program could offer things like: 

• Exclusive perks: Offer unique benefits to members, such as early access to sales, free shipping, personalized recommendations, or invitations to special events.
• Tiered memberships: Create different membership levels with escalating rewards based on spending or engagement.
• Birthday rewards: Surprise members with special offers or a free gift on their birthdays.
• Referral bonuses: Encourage members to refer friends by offering bonuses for successful referrals to your social media page or store.
• Challenges and quests: Create fun challenges or quests that encourage customers to interact with your brand and explore your products.
• Leaderboards: Display leaderboards showcasing top-performing customers on your website and in social media posts.
• Badges and achievements: Award virtual badges or achievements for completing specific actions or reaching milestones.
• Spin-to-win discounts: Offer interactive spin-to-win wheels or scratch cards that reveal discounts or prizes.

As you get ready for this year’s campaigns, right now is a great time to evaluate what tools you need to execute your strategy. Here are some categories to consider adding to your checklist: 

Advanced analytics platforms

Ensure that your store has an analytics platform that you can reliably reference as you execute your Black Friday campaign. 

Jetpack Stats can help you track and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns at a glance so you can monitor the effects your social media campaigns have on your store traffic and purchases.

When you’re ready to look back on the campaign’s performance as a whole, consider advanced analytics platforms like Enhanced Ecommerce for Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Pro for WooCommerce extension simplifies the connection process and adds advanced tracking features that help you better spot trends and apply them to future campaigns.

These platforms help you understand raw data to spot trends and opportunities you might otherwise miss. You’ll be able to, at a glance, which marketing channels, and even specific ad copy, are driving the most sales during your Black Friday events.

Marketing automation 

When your social media campaigns start driving traffic to your store, use automation to convert that momentum into sales. With Klaviyo, you can track how visitors from social platforms interact with your site, capture their activity, and trigger personalized follow-ups that keep them engaged.

If someone lands on your store from a Black Friday post and abandons their cart, Klaviyo sends a reminder email or text. It uses browsing and purchase data to deliver real-time product recommendations and builds audience segments for retargeting on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

This type of cross-channel automation keeps your brand top of mind long after the first click. It helps you capture more value from every campaign while freeing you to focus on strategy instead of manual outreach during the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

AI-powered chatbots

Consider adding an AI-powered chatbot to your stack to offer round-the-clock support during your Black Friday social media campaigns. If you don’t use one already, you can implement one to cut down on the volume of DMs that come with a surge in interested customers.

Take the Facebook Messenger Chatbot, for example. You can set responses based on specific conditions. Features like search boxes also make the bot particularly handy and, of course, you can integrate it with your Facebook Business account. 

There are other extensions available as well, such as Woo Bot and WhatsApp Chat.

Influencer marketing platforms

Influencer marketing platforms create a central hub where you can discover, vet, and connect with influencers who perfectly align with your brand for Black Friday social media campaigns.

These platforms use advanced algorithms to match you with creators based on your specific needs, target audience, and campaign goals. Some platforms provide end-to-end campaign management where you can brief influencers, track content creation, and approve social media posts all within the platform. Many of them also offer real-time analytics on engagement rates, reach, and even sales attributed to each influencer.

Two of the most popular choices are AspireIQ and Heepsy, but you may find a different choice that’s better for your business depending on your industry and the type of influencer your brand works with. 

Social media ecommerce extensions

You likely already use a social media management platform like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer to schedule posts, perform social listening, and monitor your social media performance. But you can save time by performing some of these tasks right in from your WordPress dashboard.

Jetpack Social automatically schedules new posts when you add content to your store’s blog. You can also pair it with Jetpack Stats to see key growth metrics from within the dashboard as well.

Finally, don’t forget to take advantage of WooCommerce extensions for Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms. These tools allow you to sync all of your product information, like inventory levels, prices, and images, and create ads in record time. 

Beyond strategies and tools, here are some tips to enhance brand visibility, increase your engagement, and grow your customer base around Black Friday.

Start early

Offer early-bird discounts, exclusive deals, or limited-time promotions in the weeks leading up to Black Friday.

Many consumers start their holiday shopping frenzy well before Black Friday. By launching your campaign ahead of time, you can capture these early bird shoppers when they’re actively buying.

Starting your Black Friday marketing early also allows you to begin testing and optimizing your campaigns before the peak shopping period begins.

Create a sense of urgency with sales countdowns

Leverage urgency in your marketing with countdowns on your website and social media. 

A sense of urgency is a powerful motivator and a great way to harness the fear of missing out (FOMO). Countdown timers, for example, visually represent time running out, so shoppers know exactly how long they have to take advantage of a deal.

Place countdown timers in visible areas of your website, product pages, and email campaigns to maximize their visibility. Then, focus on specific deadlines in your social media copy — e.g. “sale ends in 48 hours!” rather than just “limited time offer.” Accompany your website countdowns with regular reminders on your social media that customers only have so much time left to get that deal.

Optimize for mobile

While you review your marketing strategy for the start of the holiday season, it’s also a good time to check your website’s mobile responsiveness. Your followers will need a reliable page to land on when they click through from your social media Black Friday ads.

Ask your site team to test your website on a variety of device sizes using a tool like Screenfly. Check for cut-off images, hard-to-read text, and difficult-to-use buttons. Follow this process on every page, including your cart, checkout, contact forms, and customer service channels.

Then, benchmark your site loading speeds on all devices with tools like GTMetrix and PageSpeed Insights. Our article on actionable ways to improve the speed of your store offers solutions to common issues.

Provide excellent customer service

Your Black Friday preparation period also offers a great chance to evaluate your social media customer support strategy. Determine who you’ll have available to answer questions in your DMs during the Black Friday rush and what answers you’ll provide. Calculate and request the appropriate budget and negotiate extended schedules with staff well in advance.

Go out of your way to solve as many problems as possible ahead of time. Include special sale terms at the bottom of your social media copy to address questions in advance. Work with your website team to create FAQ pages, build out your product descriptions, include photos from a variety of angles, and categorize your items appropriately to make answers immediately visible to shoppers.

Plan for next year’s Black Friday campaign

With these strategies and Black Friday marketing tips, you can create social media campaigns that drive sales and boost customer loyalty. You’re not just trying to increase your average order value during Black Friday — you also want to turn those orders into lasting relationships.

And, of course, you need a solid platform to handle the influx of traffic and sales. Don’t settle for platforms that limit your visitors, hold back your creativity, and greedily take a percentage of every sale. Instead, choose WooCommerce — a powerful, flexible ecommerce tool built to scale.

Ready to build a store? Get started with WooCommerce.

Already a WooCommerce user? See available social media extensions to boost your Black Friday success.