Re-Framing Your Black Friday Online Marketing Strategy

Looking for alternative ways to improve your Black Friday online marketing strategy? If so, you’re in luck! In this blog post, we’ve gathered best practices from successful “re-framed” campaigns over the years that you can learn from. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that Black Friday is all about discounts and deals. 

While it is important to offer incentives to customers, you also need to focus on creating a great customer experience. Alright, let’s jump into the good stuff.

Teachable – Smart Discounts 

This one is a simple tweak to the pricing which makes it easy to copy. While businesses are offering 25%, 30%, 50%, or even 75% off, Teachable, the online learning creator platform, decided to go original and offer 36%, 47%, and 58% discounts on its annual subscription plans. 

This was promoted via a short video post on its Facebook page. During Black Friday season, everyone is offering almost similar deals and discounts. With a small tweak, yours can jump out and grab consumer attention too.

REI - Anti BFCM? #OptOutside

Some years ago, REI, an outdoor clothing and gear store, decided to boycott BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday). They encouraged customers to skip the lines and get outside to explore the great outdoors. 

Think about it, on one hand they lead a re-frame which was appreciated while also on the other hand, they also get more people to go outdoors and by extension, increase their own product sales down-the-line from people wanting to go outdoors. In 2015, more than 1.4 million people participated in #OptOutside. By 2016, REI had partnered with more than 275 national and local organizations, including: Google, Subaru, and Burton.

Uniqlo - Appreciation Campaign

Uniqlo didn’t go too crazy compared to other brands during this campaign or even compared to this list but their approach is subtle yet worth noticing. 

Instead of positioning the campaign as a “promotion”, they did a powerful reframe by making it a “thank you” event – hence ‘Arigato”. This puts the focus back to the customers who feel appreciated. You can even do this for your business too!

Chatty Feet – Charity Incentive

In 2021, a sock company called Chatty Feet told Black Friday to “put a sock in it”. Literally. In an attempt to “drown out the noise” of the sale season, the brand committed to donating two pairs of socks to charity for every pair bought before Cyber Monday. 

It is always great to see a brand that walks the talk and really turns Black Friday on its head. Yes they increased their sales while also creating an impact on the beneficiaries of their partner charity organization.

Walmart – #UnwrapTheDeals in TikTok

Every marketer knows that interactive content works, but creating something that really stands out is a challenge. That’s why Walmart’s TikTok campaign that turned Black Friday sales into a fun, engaging, gamified experience is a great case-study in and of itself! The campaign used a shoppable TikTok filter that enabled customers to “unwrap” virtual deals and discover Black Friday surprises. 

Using the #Unwrapthedeals hashtag, TikTokers posted their challenges for all to see, and if they liked their win? They could click straight to the product page on Walmart’s website and buy it. Talk about removing friction! The campaign was a phenomenal success, with over 5.5 billion hashtag views, and an 18.4% engagement rate, breaking all TikTok Hashtag Challenge benchmarks.

IKEA – #BuybackFriday 

Rather than just relying on the usual Black Friday discount concept, IKEA meshed its brand values with its annual Black Friday marketing to launch the #BuybackFriday campaign. The campaign, which ran for a week in 27 countries, gave customers the opportunity to return used IKEA furniture and receive a credit voucher for up to 50% of the value of the item. 

Items that could not be resold were recycled or donated to communities in need. This was a great way to celebrate Black Friday and offer genuine discounts to customers while ‘walking the talk’ of commitment to brand values.

Cards Against Humanity - Price Raise! 

The card game company didn’t do any discounts on BF 2021. They did the opposite – they actually raised their prices! And you know what? The $5 price increase was a hit. 

The move generated buzz via social media. And the customers seem to like it too, as they reportedly sold more than the previous year. This is one of those crazy Black Friday Marketing strategy that seems doomed but it worked anyway.

MeUndies - Livestream Event

They organized a Facebook Live event to celebrate the sales, if you will. First, they created an actual Facebook event to invite their then 314,000 Facebook followers They then ran an ad campaign where they targeted customers who had opened emails from them in the past, but hadn’t made a purchase in over a year. A DJ and a dance contest (or two) drew in the crowd. 

As more and more people tuned in, bigger and bigger BFCM discounts were unlocked. In the end, over 13,000 people tuned it, tallying just under 6,000 engagements. The outcome? Attendees converted at a rate of 25%, 13x the average conversion rate MeUndies sees on Facebook!

Amazon - Humor posts

Humor is one of the most human things and we as humans like sales or marketing campaigns that are human and not robotic. Humor makes us forget we’re being sold to. And since most Brands are not human to begin with, humor is unexpected from a brand’s ads, which makes it pop. 

So, tastefully inserting some humor into your tweets and Facebook posts can work wonders on the persuasion side of things. Amazon did their research to find a passionate group within their community and sell to them using humor. That group amplified the joke by sharing pictures of their own cats in their Amazon cat beds.

Hope you learned something from the Black Friday Marketing Strategy list!

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