How to successfully advertise during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

11/17/2023 The Media Buying Academy : Basics to get started

Black Friday. A marketing phenomenon straight from the United States that takes place on the Friday following Thanksgiving (every year on the fourth Thursday of the month), it marks the beginning of Christmas shopping. Black Friday" has become an unavoidable commercial event in France, without the harvest festival which is associated accross the Atlantic. It will be held this year on November 25.

In a few numbers, Black Friday is:

+33% of online sales compared to 2019;
+19% of sales in home appliances and tech equipment in 2020;
+13% of purchases at the point of sale;
2 times more sales in stores than online.

Source : cabinet GfK

In the same vein, we find Cyber Monday, a marketing action set up to promote online shopping. As its name indicates, it takes place on the Monday following Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

In a few figures, online shopping is :

42 million cyber shoppers in the third quarter of 2021 (+1,100,000 compared to 2020);
33% of cyber shoppers took advantage of Cyber Monday in 2022.

Source : Médiamétrie - Fevad

These are two commercial events that should not be neglected and whose communication should be properly prepared. Discover all the devices to put in place to succeed in your advertising before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

>>> Discover all our display advertising offers

Article Summary: How to successfully advertise during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Step 1: Optimize your website before your campaign
Step 2: Make sure your web pages are properly referenced for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Step 3: Plan digital campaigns for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Step 4: Understand the consumer media journey
Step 5: Get in early
Examples of Black Friday campaigns

Step 1: Optimize your website before your campaign

Even before launching your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional campaigns, it is essential for any company to ensure that its website, the showcase of its brand, is perfectly capable of receiving visits. For consumers, a website is one of the only elements that allow them to judge the credibility of a company:

75% judge credibility on website design;
56% do not trust companies that do not have a website.

In order not to scare away the cyber-buyers from the first seconds on your website, think first of improving the performance of your pages:

improve the loading time of your pages on desktop as well as on mobile;
add call to action buttons;
get rid of all error pages (404 pages, 301 pages);
set up an efficient conversion tunnel;
and it goes without saying: make sure your site is secure (https format).

Internet users must be able to navigate from page to page without a hitch during the frenzy that is the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. Their user experience must be impeccable and allow them to find what they want in a few clicks: the frustration of unsuccessfully searching for a product, service or information can lead them to leave your site for one of your competitors. Spend a lot of time on UX design. An optimized customer journey will :

enhance your company's image ;
increase your conversion rate;
and ultimately, it will help you get more sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

>>> Discover how to optimize your website before launching your campaign

Step 2: Make sure your web pages are properly referenced for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Before consumers can judge the quality of your site, they must first be able to access it. When people search for your site as a result of a Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday ad, it's important that they can find you in a search engine. And there is only one recipe to help people find your web pages during Black Friday and Cyber Monday: SEO.

If your web pages are well done, with the right keywords, where they should be and in sufficient quantity, then your website will have a good chance to appear at the top of the results on search engines. Don't forget to create links between your different pages (internal links) to help Google to reference your pages in its databases. And above all, make sure to be first on your brand name.

Step 3: Plan digital campaigns for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consumers are on the lookout for good deals and what better way to find the best promotions than by surfing the web. That's why you should not hesitate to plan digital campaigns with visuals that clearly display your promotions.

Display advertising has a significant advantage that will allow your campaign not to lose audience: its very precise targeting: you can choose the display parameters of your digital ads from A to Z:

sites on which your display ads appear
the pages that present a certain keyword
the geolocation
age of your target, gender, etc.

Display advertising guarantees a high conversion rate for your Cyber Monday and Black Friday ad campaigns. In addition, its digital nature allows you, thanks to performance monitoring tools, to realize the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns in real time and to correct your current trajectory, in case of error.

Nevertheless, don't put all your eggs in the same basket by relying only on display to ensure your sales in this autumn period.

>>> What is a display ad?

>>> Understanding digital advertising

Step 4: Understand the consumer media journey

In the course of a day, a consumer encounters different media that can be used to support your Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads. This is the media journey.

Understanding your target audience's media journey allows you to choose different media to carry your message and create a cross-media campaign that relies on both digital and offline media:

radio
billboards
TV
press
street marketing
etc.

Be careful, however, to go sparingly. Don't spend lavishly, especially in the current economic context. In addition, the French are also preparing for Christmas: the idea is to plant a small seed for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and to accelerate the pace for the end of year celebrations.

>>> What is the customer journey?

Step 5: Get in early

As you can see, preparing an advertising campaign for Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday requires a lot of preparation and is therefore very time-consuming. To avoid any embarrassment and especially any glitches, prepare your campaign in advance!

Is it premature to start thinking about your campaign during the summer and the beginning of the school year? No! on the contrary: you can consider all media supports to carry your promotional message. And (a significant advantage) not all the advertising space will have been purchased.

Examples of Black Friday campaigns

NRJ: example of a local radio spot for Black Friday

An advertising medium that can be found on a national scale, radio is also a medium that adapts to more geolocalized communication. This is perfectly illustrated by the example of the NRJ station with its three commercials promoting offers on a local scale. Short messages, they are no less effective: all the essential information for the consumer is presented and the context is well mentioned: Black Friday.

Back Market breaks free from Black Friday

Communicating around Black Friday without having special Black Friday offers is possible, as Back Market's TV commercial perfectly highlights. In 2020, the refurbished products specialist uses the marketing event as a pretext to promote its brand image and above all its service: refurbished objects, at low prices, throughout the year.

Amazon extends Black Friday to a whole week

Who said that Black Friday should last only one day? Well, it's certainly not Amazon who decided to extend the Black Friday offers over a whole week: "Black Friday Week". Note that to push shoppers to order more, the spot, broadcast in 2017, promotes free shipping on all eligible products.