In the run up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many brands will consider promotional strategies they can use to highlight the relevant offers they’ll have available during the shopping period.

Promoting these offers ahead of the day allows consumers to get a clearer idea of what each brand will offer, and creating an opportunity for non-customers to discover new brands ahead of the shopping weekend.

 

One effective strategy brands may try to implement is the use of influencers. Influencers and brand ambassadors hold a unique advantage in that they’ve already built a loyal following on their social channels. They have a community of followers who want to keep updated with their latest content. Their authenticity has enabled them to become a trusted source of knowledge for those that follow them.

 

So when an influencer promotes a relevant deal to their followers ahead of Black Friday, consumers pay attention.

 

 

Black Friday statistics

 

If you’re still on the fence about whether running a Black Friday campaign will be good for your brand, the following statistics will help to illuminate the potential and possibility of succeeding during this time.

 

• Who is shopping? In 2019, over 93.2 million buyers shopped online during Black Friday. The numbers speak for themselves, Black Friday is a period of increased spending where consumers, all over the world look to find the latest bargains from the best brands. Amongst this group, millennials were the biggest spenders during the 2019 Black Friday sales. Coupling Black Friday promotions with influencers now makes a lot more sense. With many influencers having a majority millennial audience, brands should try to capitalize on these engaged audiences ahead of time.

 

• How much are they spending? During the 2019 Black Friday shopping weekend, brands all over the world witnessed increased spending. So much so that 30% of the annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. 

 

What does this mean?

 

In short, the data here shows that Black Friday is an opportunity most brands can’t afford to miss out on. With increased spend across both digital and physical retail, there’s sales potential ready to graph if brands have the right strategies at play.

 

Although it may seem too good to be true, there are considerations to be aware of. With the increase in consumers’ shopping during this period, so comes the increase in brands offering their products. The cost of advertising during this period significantly increases as more people bid on the same audience.

 

This creates a potential issue for brands without an established audience or the media budget to compete with paid advertising.

 

The solution is to leverage existing audiences working with influencers to promote deals ahead of time. Doing so will put braids in front of potential shoppers and allow them to compete during a time of increased activity for both brand and consumers.

 

Mark Dandy, Captiv8 Influence predicts more purpose driven campaigns and give back campaigns as opposed to pure sales driven discount lead marketing. (Sales will still dominate, but expect more of a varied approach this year).

 

Use it as a creative testing process

 

There’s a common theme amongst e-commerce and retailers, a central problem to which most can relate. Without a full time creative team or agency, brands struggle to create content at scale.

 

Working with influencers on a Black Friday campaign generates additional content brands can use before launching their own campaigns.

 

Work with influencers to establish content usage rights from the offset in order to repurpose the content later on.

 

Rupa Shah, Founder & Director of Hashtag Ad Consulting stated

“Black Friday always opens up a host of opportunities for brands and bloggers to collaborate but it also poses a number of regulatory challenges. Complaints to the ASA increase over this period, with problems ranging from false pricing to lack of availability and exaggerated performance claims. Brands and influencers must take care to avoid falling foul of the rules and ensure that they are clearly disclosing all sponsored posts and affiliate links.”

 

Survey results

 

To help brands navigate influencer Black Friday promotional strategies, we went straight to the source to survey our influencers to gather insights for what, how, when to run Black Friday promotional offers with influencers.

 

We surveyed over 200 influencers to find out their views on working with brands during the Black Friday period.  Our results highlight some of the core considerations brands need to question before launching Black Friday influencer campaigns

 

We asked a range of questions including:

 

• Are you expecting to do any sponsored Black Friday promotions on your social channels?
• How many promotions are you going to or expect to post?
• For sponsored promotions, which format do you prefer and most appealing for your followers?
• Will you share any Black Friday deals with your followers, even if not sponsored by the brand?
• Do you usually shop for products yourself during Black Friday?
• Which kind of Black Friday deals are you most excited about?
• How long before Black Friday do you need it most reasonable to advertise offers?

 

As well as this, you’ll have access to a Black Friday Influencer campaign checklist you can use ahead of your own launch.