On Black Friday, many retailers offer special deals and discounts on a wide range of products, and this has made it an attractive event for consumers in the UK. In fact, according to some estimates, spending on Black Friday in the UK has increased by more than 50% in the last few years.
One of the key ways that retailers have promoted Black Friday in the UK is through the use of social media. Many retailers have used social media to create special offers and discounts that are only available to their followers on social media. This has been an effective way to drive traffic and sales on Black Friday, as people are more likely to follow a brand on social media if they know they will get access to special offers and discounts.
Why are Black Friday Social Media Posts Important?
Every single day, people spend hours on social media. Currently, there are over 4 billion active users on social media, so why not use this to your advantage? Chances are, most of the consumers that you want to reach are active on social media, regardless of the target demographic. Further, more and more people are heading to social media to find brand or product information, so Black Friday is a golden opportunity.
With consumers turning to social media for inspiration and deals, it makes sense that consumers are increasingly clicking through on the deals that are advertised on social media. In 2021, UK shoppers spent a total of £9.42 billion over the Black Friday weekend, of which online sales accounted for 61.49%. So, in order to reap the rewards of the influx of shoppers heading to social media for Black Friday deals, you must be active during the Black Friday weekend.
ASOS – Early Birds and Reel Opportunists
This year, ASOS started their Black Friday sales on the 23rd November. Although that is two days early, some brands started in early November, so this is not the earliest we have seen. ASOS’ strategy to start a few days before the big hype was likely so they would try and get in before their competition.
Think of it this way. If you know that your customers will open their phones on Friday 25th November and will be bombarded with deals and offers from pretty much every single brand, how are you going to get ahead? Well, by posting ahead of time. If they posted about their Black Friday deals in early November, some may argue that it is before the hype has started to build. However, many shoppers who plan to get their Christmas shopping done when they can save the most money will likely start planning around the 22nd /23rd November.
Not only did ASOS plan to get ahead of the game, but they also planned the format for their Black Friday content very well. As I’m sure we are all aware, Instagram is pushing Reels like there is no tomorrow. Therefore, it makes complete sense why the entirety of ASOS’s Black Friday content on Instagram was Reels. Their Reels were of high quality and not only showcased their products and the offers that were available but there were also clever animations alongside user-generated content.
ASOS is a great example of how you can plan and prepare and utilise key dates like Black Friday to get ahead of the competition. Also, at times when you want to reach your audience more than ever, know the type of content that the specific platform is pushing and use that to your advantage.
SuperFoodio – Small Business partnering with Big Brands and Big Creators
On TikTok, #BlackFriday2022 currently has over 280 million views. As previously mentioned,
consumers are using social networks to search and discover things, so the use of hashtags and relevant keywords is essential. TikTok is constantly improving their search feature, so it is no surprise to see the traffic for #BlackFriday2022 this year.
The small business, SuperFoodio, is the home to the world’s first peanut butter buttons which are available on Amazon. For Black Friday, as well as advertising their own deals, Amazon wanted to showcase their smaller businesses on the platform. So, Amazon and SuperFoodio worked with Hannah Lowther, a musical TikTok star. She was tasked with creating a song about SuperFoodio as part of Amazon’s Black Friday campaign.
This fun and unique way of collaborating with an influencer is a great way for businesses to reach a wider audience. They utilised the talents of the Creator that they were working with and incorporated their brand into content that would be very familiar to her audience. This helps paid ads seem not so ‘salesy’.
If you do not have a large following on social media and you want to increase your brand awareness, perhaps look into collaborating with influencers with a higher following.
HULU – Sharing is caring
Over on Twitter, the TV streaming service Hulu indirectly shared their Black Friday deal by reposting others who are talking about it. What is even more interesting, Hulu did not directly Tweet out anything about their deals, aside from their reshares. Again, this technique may come across in a less ‘salesy’ way.
Some of the pages that spoke about Hulu’s Black Friday deal included Variety, Rolling Stone and Billboard. All of these publications featured a guest blog about the brand, which was ready for Hulu to share on their own Twitter feed.
Their retweets were captioned with the likes of ‘the one time doing math has made me happy’, ‘I’m just giving the people what they want’ and ‘with that kind of deal, I’ll be binging all season long’.
Clearly, Hulu likes to showcase a more light-hearted and friendly personality on their Twitter
account. By them sharing tweets from other, well-known accounts, they are able to keep that level of informality, whilst still sharing their Black Friday deal.
This multi-level marketing campaign shows how guest-blogging in well-known publications, can partner quite effectively with your brand’s social media account. It makes you feel like it is a friend sharing the deal with you, which is a great marketing strategy.
Key Takeaways
- Be prepared and try to stand out from your competition by either getting your content out
before them, or by ensuring that your content is likely going to be shown on whatever
platform you are posting on. - If it is in your budget, seek out influencers who can help promote your brand and product in a fun and engaging way. A lot of content creators will be promoting products at the end of the year, so make yours stand out.
- If you don’t want the ‘voice’ of your social media account to change, just because it is Black Friday, find a way to share your deals whilst maintaining your brand identity. If you have a larger marketing team, perhaps discuss the possibility of a multi-channel marketing campaign for such a big event.
Tinisha Osu
Tinisha Osu is a Marketing Executive with two degrees in Psychology. She is the first-author of a published psychology paper and is beginning her career in marketing through blog-writing, creating social media content and running marketing campaigns.