5 Proven Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing Strategies for 2024 |   24 Oct, 2024

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are no longer exclusive to the U.S. market. It has gone global and is now one of the most important dates when every business wishes to ensure a spike in their online or in-store sales. With customers hunting for the deal, e-commerce businesses and brands need to get their acts together through intelligent, efficient BFCM marketing strategies that set them apart. Here are some surefire digital marketing strategies to help you make the most of this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

1. Plan Your BFCM Marketing Campaign in Advance

The golden rule of any effective Cyber Monday and Black Friday marketing campaign is early planning. Since the competition increases annually, businesses need to start their marketing preparations for this day well in advance.

First, create a very detailed customer profile based on insights from the past. Study previous BFCM campaigns that you ran and identify essential customer behaviors and purchasing trends. You want to use that information to create targeted messaging and personalized ads that really speak to your audience.

If you know, for example, that sales in electronics spiked early last year, you may want to launch promotions early, ideally in late October rather than wait for Black Friday itself.

Also, make sure your marketing channels-email, social media, and paid ads are in concert with each other. The result of all that is that when you launch a campaign together, having done quite a lot of research on consumer trends, you will catch the attention of deal-oriented shoppers.

2. Using Storytelling to Connect and Convert

How will you stand out when shoppers are bombarded with thousands of ads leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday? By telling stories that connect with your audience.

Storytelling taps into those selling emotions, making connections on a deeper level with the consumer than mere product promotion. Visualize the feelings such as joy, nostalgia, and gratitude during the holiday. A campaign featuring touching family reunions or special holiday traditions will make your products memorable. With those emotions, brands can use their touching messaging to show just how their offerings enhance these special moments.

Video advertising is a great way to amplify such strategies. It is easy to capture these emotional stories with a short video, regardless of whether it is humorous or sentimental. Since holiday shopping focuses a great deal on promotions and discounts, adding emotional storytelling to your advertising can help your brand differentiate itself and increase customer loyalty.

For example, watch this ad from IKEA. The essence of the festive season is captured within one minute; the bond between this child and her grandma is full in the air. It is short, sweet, and leaves a positive effect on viewers.

After all, this approach is not about quick sales; it’s about leaving long-lasting impressions long after the holiday rush. That way, your brand becomes part of their treasured holiday experience, and emotional engagement translates into tangible ROI.

3. Create Excitement Before the BFCM Rush

The secret to a successful BFCM is to build excitement. The sooner you can create buzz, the more momentum you’ll build heading into Big Weekend. Interactive and dynamic ads are ideal for this.

For example, you could use shoppable video content. These ads let your target audience buy your products directly from the video, reducing friction in purchase paths. Reduce friction, and you’re going to increase your chance of conversion.

Another effective tactic involves dynamic countdown ads. The ads dynamically show the countdown to either the start of your sale or how much time remains before a certain deal ends. This will encourage actions since nobody wants to miss a good deal, especially when the clock is ticking.

4. Deliver Ads That Match the Moment, Not the Data

As the focus on user privacy ramps up hugely in response to recent cookie regulations, contextual targeting in digital marketing is becoming a force to be reckoned with. While personal data is utilized in certain forms of ad placement, contextual targeting makes it possible for one to display ads based on the content a user is currently viewing. For example, if a web user is reading a blog about “the best tech gifts for Christmas,” your Black Friday ad related to tech gadgets seems to naturally fit.

Silverpush’s Mirrors, an AI-driven contextual intelligence solution, takes it a notch higher with contextual detection, identifying celebrity name, brand name, objects, and activities within the video for correct ad placements. This ensures seamless engagement and more positive brand recall by aligning ads with relevant content at key moments.

Additionally, it also offers complete brand safety, blocking unsafe content without compromising reach, and dynamic campaign delivery optimizes performance in real-time. This makes certain that the brand will deliver a personalized and privacy-compliant ad experience that is sure to create maximum engagement on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

5. Take Advantage of Dynamic Retargeting

Customers will most definitely look across various sites, add items to a shopping cart, and abandon the whole purchase during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is where dynamic retargeting comes into play.

Dynamic retargeting allows one to serve personalized ads to users per their product interest. Suppose a user was viewing a pair of boots on your site and did not purchase them; you can serve him with a retargeting ad with the very same boots, with a limited-time discount offered, to spur the likelihood of purchase.

The importance of building retargeting pools early in the season cannot be understated. In fact, if you start tracking user behavior weeks in advance of BFCM, you will later be able to retarget users who have had some interaction with your site and show them relevant ads when the shopping frenzy starts. Retargeting works amazingly well for high-consideration products, which require multiple touches before a purchase can be made.

Conclusion: Start Planning for BFCM 2024

As we go into the holiday season, it cannot be emphasized enough just how critical an effective Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategy is. Early planning, emotional storytelling, innovative ad formats, and precise targeting will position you to build campaigns that not only increase sales but cultivate strong, lasting relationships with customers.

Take time to understand the performance of your campaign by learning from the data. You will, in turn, further fine-tune your approach for BFCM 2024 and beyond. And the sooner you get started planning, the better positioned you’ll be for success.