The Ultimate Black Friday Marketing Guide for 7-8 Figure eCommerce Brands

I wrote this guide to share everything I’ve learned helping eCommerce brands plan their biggest Black Friday Sales ever.

Make sure you read this guide to to bottom to learn how to crush your BFCM sales goals AND to avoid some of the most common mistakes brands make this time of year.

Step 1: Black Friday Planning & Strategy

First up is planning your Black Friday Sale. What type of offer should you run? How long should you run it? We’re going to dive into that and more in this section of the guide.

What’s your goal?

First, you need to consider—what’s the goal of your Black Friday Sale?

Here’s the answer: The goal of your Black Friday Sale is to put as much money into your pocket as possible while converting as much overstocked inventory into cash as possible.

The question you need to ask is this—how can you make as much profit as possible from your sale while converting as much of your inventory into cash as possible?

A few things to consider:

1. How much inventory are you looking to sell between now and February?
2. Do you have any specific products you need to clear out?
3. Do you need to discount heavily to move as much inventory as possible?
4. Do you need to sell less so you have enough inventory for full-priced Holiday sales?

Answers to these questions will help inform the decisions you make below.

What type of OFFER should you run?

In order to decide what type of offer to run, you need to start by considering your past sales to evaluate performance. Consider the following:

1. What offer did you run last Black Friday? How did it perform?
2. What sales have you run so far this year or the past year? How did those perform?
3. Review ad performance, AOV, conversion rate, ROAS, etc. to evaluate how much money you made from these sales.

After you’ve studied your past sales and learned from the data, take a look at what types of offers are available to consider what you want to run for this year. Options include:

#1: Percentage Discounts

Sitewide Discounts: Offer a flat percentage off all products, like 20% or 30% off everything. This is best for brands that have consistent margins and are looking for a simple sale that is easy to plan for.

Tiered Discounts: Increase the discount based on the amount spent, e.g., 10% off $50+, 20% off $100+, etc. This sale is best for brands who have a large number of skus and are looking for ways to increase AOV.

Category-Specific Discounts: Apply discounts to specific categories, such as 30% off all electronics or 25% off clothing. This is best when you have multiple product categories with different margins for each.

#2: BOGO (Buy One, Get One) Offers

Buy One, Get One Free: A classic offer that works well for products that can be easily paired. Works best when people want multiple items of what you’re selling, and if it’s something they’ll need to buy again if they run out.

Buy One, Get One 50% Off: Provides a discount on the second item, encouraging customers to buy more.

#3: Flash Sales

Limited-Time Offers: Run hourly or daily flash sales with deep discounts to create urgency. This is best for bigger brands who want to generate excitement with new offers each day.

Doorbuster Deals: Offer extremely low prices on select items for a limited time to drive traffic to your store. This is also good for bigger brands who have a large enough team to coordinate doorbuster deals.

#4: Bundle Deals

Product Bundles: Bundle related products together at a discounted price.

Build-Your-Own Bundle: Allow customers to create their own bundle with a discount on the total.

#5: Free Gifts

Gift with Purchase: Offer a free gift when customers spend a certain amount. This offer is best when you have a large ticket hero product and high margin accessories.

Buy One, Get a Free Gift: Entice customers to purchase by offering a free item with a purchase.

#6: Free Shipping

Free Shipping on All Orders: This can be a strong incentive, especially for stores that typically charge for shipping.

Free Shipping Over a Certain Amount: Encourage larger orders by offering free shipping on orders over a set amount, like $50 or $100.

Pro Tips on Selecting the Right Offer

Based on our experience working with 100+ brands over the past 10 years, here are some of the top tips we’ve learned for selecting a winning offer for your brand:

• When in doubt, keep it simple. Brands like Best Buy can afford to do door busters, different offers each day of the week, etc. etc., but if you have a smaller team, then you don’t have the same amount of resources to pull off a complicated sale. In situations like this, it’s much better to keep it simple (we recommend a single sitewide discount).
• If you do decide to go with a more complicated offer like a tiered discount, make sure your offer messaging is super super clear. We’ve seen brands give a percentage off AND a free gift AND free shipping when you buy more, but that can become really confusing if you’re not careful.
• Make sure you choose a discount that makes you money. Just because other brands are doing 50% OFF doesn’t mean you have to. The offer you decide to do needs to make you money or else it’s not worth it. Remember, you’re running your own race, not someone else’s.
• As much as possible, make sure this is your best deal of the year. If you offer 20% OFF for regular holidays, then you should offer at least 25% OFF for Black Friday (unless your margins can’t support it or you don’t have enough inventory).
• If you have a lot of inventory and want to sell as much as possible, you have room to be more aggressive with your offer. If your inventory is low, you don’t need to be as aggressive with your offer since you have less inventory to move.
• Consider running an “Up to 50% OFF” sale. This allows you to mark most products down for less (let’s say 25%) while marking down some clearance items 50% OFF. Running an “Up to 50% OFF” sale makes your ads feel super strong, even if only a small percentage of your products are marked down that much.
• Don’t be afraid of running a really strong Black Friday offer. Yes, you’re marking your products down, but the stronger the offer, the higher the demand for what you’re selling, the more you’ll sell, and the lower your acquisition costs will be. You need to make sure you’re profitable, but don’t be afraid to be aggressive since this should be your biggest sale of the year.

How long should you run your sale?

Now that we’ve talked about the different types of offers you can run, how long should you run your sale? Here are some options to consider on how long to run your sale:

#1: Traditional Black Friday (1 Day)

Duration: The sale lasts for one day, typically on Black Friday itself.

Advantages: Creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging customers to act quickly.

Considerations: This short window can lead to intense traffic and high sales volume, but it also limits how much you can scale your ad campaigns since you only have 1 day to scale them.

#2: Black Friday Weekend (3-4 Days)

Duration: The sale extends from Black Friday through the weekend, often ending on Sunday or Monday.

Advantages: Gives customers a bit more time to make purchases, reducing the pressure of a single-day event while still maintaining a sense of urgency.

Considerations: Can help capture more sales, especially from those who may miss out on Black Friday.

#3: Extended Black Friday Week (7-10 Days)

Duration: The sale starts in the days leading up to Black Friday and continues through Cyber Monday, sometimes extending into the following week.

Advantages: Gives customers more flexibility and can spread out demand, reducing the risk of website crashes and logistical issues. Also makes it easier to scale your paid ad campaigns since you have more time to scale and adjust.

Considerations: While it offers more opportunities for sales, it may dilute the urgency of the Black Friday event.

#4: Black November (1 Month)

Duration: The entire month of November is dedicated to Black Friday deals, with various promotions and discounts offered throughout the month.

Advantages: Allows brands to capture early holiday shoppers and reduces the intensity of a single sales event.

Considerations: A month-long sale can lead to "promotion fatigue," where customers become desensitized to discounts, potentially leading to lower overall effectiveness.

#5: Flash Sales Within Black Friday Week

Duration: The brand runs multiple short-term flash sales during the Black Friday week, each lasting a few hours to a day.

Advantages: Keeps customers engaged throughout the week and encourages repeat visits to the site.

Considerations: Requires more frequent marketing efforts and can be resource-intensive to manage. It’s important to have a large team in order to pull this off.

#6: Post-Black Friday Sales (Cyber Week)

Duration: The sale extends beyond Cyber Monday into what is often called "Cyber Week," continuing discounts for another 3-7 days.

Advantages: Captures late shoppers and those who may have missed the initial Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.

Considerations: This approach can stretch resources and may result in diminishing returns if customers expect even better deals later.

Ultimately, how long you decide to run the sale is 100% up to you, but I recommend the Black Friday Weekend (Option #2) or The Extended Black Friday Sale (Option #4) for most brands.

I also recommend keeping your sale simple as much as possible if you have a smaller team so you don’t get overwhelmed with needing to design multiple ads and emails for different days, swap out different offers on your site every couple of days, etc.

Step 2: Prepping Your Website (and Inventory)

In order to have the strongest Black Friday possible, you need to make sure your website is ready for action. Here are the most important things you’ll need to get ready:

• Design a New Homepage Hero Image: It’s important that people know about your sale as soon as they land on your website. In order to help with that, you need to design a homepage hero image that communicates your offer and gets people excited about shopping.
• Update the Website Banner: In addition to designing your homepage hero image, you also need to update the website banner with your offer. This helps to make sure people know about your sale no matter which page they use to enter your site. If possible, be sure to include a timer to create urgency for your sale.
• Be Sure You’re Ready to Take the Sale Live: If you’re looking to max out sales, it’s best to discount the prices on your site instead of using a coupon since this creates a more exciting buying experience. But regardless, no matter how you decide to do your discount, it’s important to know you have the right mechanism in place and ready to go before it’s time to go live with your sale. You need to prep codes, have a mechanism in place to offer discounts, download a plugin if needed, etc.
• Purchase & Plan Inventory for Higher Sales: In addition to getting your website ready, you also need to make sure that you have enough inventory for your Black Friday Sale and Christmas shopping. With the right strategy in place, it’s possible to do a month’s worth of sales in a week and to at least 2X your monthly revenue in November and December. Be sure to plan your inventory management ahead of time to make sure you’re ready for increased demand.

Step 3: Paid Ad Campaigns

Next up is paid ad campaigns which you're going to use to pour gas on the fire. Here are the top things you need to do to make sure your Paid Ad Campaigns are ready to fire on all cylinders.

1. Set Clear Objectives

Define your goals around your ROAS targets, how much revenue you’re looking to drive from paid ad campaigns, etc.

2. Audience Targeting

Segment your audiences to make sure you acquire new customers and reach past customers and site visitors.

3. Creative and Ad Copy

Design scroll-stopping ads and persuasive sales copy that highlight your offers and create urgency.

Design more creative than you need so you can A/B test creatives to find winning variations.

4. Cost Caps and Ad Budget

Instead of trying to predict the demand for your sale and products, use cost caps to protect your downside while offering unlimited upside.

Set your budgets higher than your expected budget to give Meta room to scale sales more when you’re hitting your ROAS targets.

5. Monitor and Optimize

Keep a close eye on ads so you can optimize, duplicate campaigns, adjust budgets, etc. as needed.

Optimize underperforming ads and reallocate budget to top-performing ads as needed.

Pro Ad Creative Tips

Here are some ad concepts you can design to increase your chances of finding winning creative. Ideally, you will create at least 3-5 versions of the ads below to make sure you have enough creative for your campaigns.

Concept #1: Evergreen Creative Updates

The first ads to create are updated versions of your top performing ads with your Black Friday offer overlaid on the ad. Find your top-performing photos and videos from the last 6 months, and ask your design team to update them with your Black Friday offer.

Concept #2: Bold Black Friday Ads

With these ads, you’re going to use a product or lifestyle image and put a large callout on the ad to draw attention to your Black Friday offer. Make sure the offer is super bold and people 100% know this is a Black Friday Sale.

Concept #3: Direct to Camera Video

With these videos, you’ll have the founder or someone on your team talk directly into the camera and share your Black Friday offer with your audience. Be sure to bring a lot of energy with these types of videos. The best thing about these videos is that they provide a personal touch for your Black Friday Sale.

Ad Sizes

When designing your ads, be sure to keep the following in mind.

• Videos get cropped to 4x5 in FB and IG feeds.
• Images get cropped to 1x1 in FB feed.
• Images get cropped to 4x5 in IG feed.

To make sure your ads look the best in every placement, I recommend:

• Editing your video ads to be 4x5 and story sized so you have the right size for both placements.
• Editing your static ads to be 1x1 or story sized so you have the right size for each placement.

Here’s a checklist to make sure you have everything ready when it comes to ad creative:

• Design ad creative at least two weeks before your sale is scheduled to start.
• Review ad creative and make changes as needed.
• Set up Black Friday campaigns at least 72 hours in advance since it may take time for ads to get approved and you don’t want to deal with any last minute technical issues.
• Don’t pause or change your evergreen campaigns once your sale starts. Why? Because your evergreen campaigns have a lot of data built up and can outperform your new Black Friday ads in some cases.
• Monitor results and be ready to scale up spend multiple times per day as needed during the sale.
• Be sure to use cost caps with your campaigns so you can set the budget high and allow Meta to determine how much demand there is for your products.

Pro Ad Copy Tips

The goal with your ad copy is to be short, direct and to the point. Here are some ad copy templates you can copy:?

Primary Text 1

?? Black Friday Is Here ??

?? 25% OFF Sitewide

?? Hurry, Sale Ends Soon!

Primary Text 2

Our biggest sale of the year is HERE! Save up to 50% OFF sitewide!!!

Shop now and save while best-sellers are still in stock! ??????

Headline Options

• Black Friday Sale: 25% OFF Sitewide ??
• Hurry, Save Up to 50% OFF ??????

Step 4: Retention Marketing

In order to make sure you get the most out of your Black Friday Sale, you need to make sure your Retention Marketing is super dialed in. To do that, you need to:

#1: Create a Content Calendar

Retention Marketing takes the most time to plan when it comes to your Black Friday Sale. You need to make sure you have an offer and plan in place ahead of itme. Then, you need to plan out your Black Friday Marketing Calendar with the following in place.

• Black Friday VIP Access: First up is Black Friday VIP access. You want to make sure you give your email + SMS subscribers early access to your Black Friday Sale so they can shop first while you still have the most inventory in stock. Be sure to remind people they are getting early VIP access and that they need to shop now while the hottest products are still in stock.
• Launch Day: Once you’re Black Friday Sale is live to the public, you’ll want to send another announcement to let people know.
• Black Friday: Plan multiple sends on Black Friday itself—early bird offers in the morning, reminders in the afternoon, and low stock alerts in the evening. Even if you launch your Black Friday Sale a week earlier, more people will still be shopping on Black Friday since people are hard-wired to shop the day after Thanksgiving.
• Ending Soon & Last Chance: Be sure to send Ending Soon and Last Chance campaigns to let people know that time is running out to save. These campaigns will be some of your top performing campaigns.

#2: Segment Your Audience

• Customer Segmentation: Divide your email and SMS lists into segments based on behavior, purchase history, engagement level, or demographics.
• Personalized Content: Tailor messages for each segment, such as sending exclusive offers to VIP customers or re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers.

#3: Design Eye-Catching Emails

• Mobile-First Design: Ensure all emails are optimized for mobile viewing, with responsive design and fast loading times.
• Brand Consistency: Maintain consistent branding across all emails, including logos, colors, and tone of voice.
• Visuals and GIFs: Incorporate high-quality visuals, GIFs, and product images to make emails more engaging.

#4: Craft Effective SMS Messages

• Concise Messaging: Keep SMS content short, direct, and to the point, with a strong CTA.
• Personalization: Use merge tags to include the recipient's name or other personalized information.
• Timing: Send SMS messages at optimal times, avoiding early mornings or late nights, and consider sending reminders closer to the sale's end.

#5: Automate and Schedule Campaigns

• Email Automation: Set up automated sequences for different segments, such as abandoned cart reminders, welcome emails, or post-purchase follow-ups.
• SMS Automation: Use SMS automation for key moments, such as when a sale starts, reminders, and exclusive last-minute deals.
• Scheduling: Plan and schedule your sends in advance to ensure everything goes out on time, even if you're handling other tasks on the day of.

#6: Test and Optimize

• A/B Testing: Test different subject lines, CTAs, visuals, and offers in your emails to see what resonates best with your audience.
• SMS Testing: Test different message lengths, timing, and offers to determine the best approach for SMS marketing.
• Pre-Launch Testing: Send test emails and SMS messages to ensure everything displays correctly across devices and platforms.

#7: Monitor and Analyze

• Real-Time Monitoring: Keep an eye on campaign performance in real-time, tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
• Analyze Results: After Black Friday, review the performance of your campaigns to understand what worked and what didn’t.
• Iterate for Cyber Monday: Use insights from Black Friday to refine your approach for Cyber Monday and other upcoming holiday promotions.

By following these steps, eCommerce brands can ensure their email and SMS marketing campaigns are well-prepared, targeted, and optimized for maximum impact during Black Friday.

Wrapping It Up

Black Friday is the most important time of year for eCommerce brands. In order to succeed, you need a clear plan in place, and you need to be able to communicate that plan clearly with your team.

My hope is that this guide gives you the tools you need to plan ahead, execute your plan, and have your most successful Black Friday of all time.

If you have any questions about how to use this guide and how to make this your best year ever, feel free to reach out!

You can also visit ConversionEngine.com to book a call if you’re interested in hiring an experienced growth team to help you execute a growth plan and scale your brand's sales.

Until next time,

Joe Putnam

Founder & Owner @ Conversion Engine