Black Friday's around the corner
Black Friday. Two words that, for most shoppers, now mean one thing: the best prices of the year and the moment to finally buy what they have been putting off.
They also mean something less flattering. Low expectations, discounts that are not really discounts, and a general lack of trust, because enough brands treated that spike in purchase intent as something to exploit rather than earn.
That is the landscape an online store has to stand out in โ winning back trust while also growing sales. It is a hard problem, and without a plan it is the kind of problem that quietly swallows a quarter.
So we have put together a detailed Black Friday guide for 2023, to help you prepare your store for the most demanding and most valuable stretch of the year. If you own an ecommerce business or work in one and you want to get the most out of the period, keep reading.
Facts and insights about Black Friday
From a long weekend to a month of offers
The days when Black Friday and Cyber Monday lasted four days, Friday to Monday, are long gone. Plenty of stores now start in early November, build gradually from Singles' Day on 11 November, peak through Black Friday week, and keep going into Cyber Monday week after that.
A four-day event has become a four-to-five-week campaign. That changes how brands run it, and it changes how customers behave.
People start looking two to four weeks early
The natural consequence is that shoppers are researching online well before the day itself โ comparing pre-discount prices, checking which of their favourite stores are about to run something. They are in the early stages of buying far sooner than they used to be.
The brands that make the most of this offer early access, run customer-only groups, and give interested shoppers a way to register for the announcement. That is what separates a store during Black Friday.
Source: Google
The game is on mobile
In 2022 alone, 79% of all Black Friday purchases worldwide came from mobile devices. Treat that as the prompt to look hard at your store's mobile experience and to test and fix it before the period starts, assuming you want the maximum out of it.
Payment methods are shifting
Buy Now Pay Later is here to stay. Being able to pay after receiving the goods pulls people toward it, especially during a sale. In 2022, global revenue through BNPL platforms over the Black Friday period rose 88% against the immediately preceding period of normal, non-discounted trading.
What shoppers expect
With inflation climbing over the past two years, customers have become far more sale-sensitive. They want the best possible discount, and the data suggests they will visit more than 30 websites comparing products before completing a purchase during this period.
The guide: what to actually do
So how do you make your store stand out in all that noise and take the most from the period?
Think of ways to add value
The single most important factor in a successful Black Friday is the value the offer genuinely carries. Thousands of other stores will be running at the same time, all with offers and messages built to win the attention of the same people.
So work out the size of the offer you are willing and able to make. That starts with the financials: understanding your margin and finding your breakeven point, the minimum revenue required before the campaign costs you money.
The conversation gets more involved as a store grows, because customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value enter the same analysis. If your store is at that stage, we can help.
With the analysis in front of you, you can shape a competitive offer that is worth something to the customer โ or go back to your suppliers and negotiate better terms so you can put a stronger offer on the table.
Take a full-funnel approach
During Black Friday every store is running promotions, all trying to catch interest and convert it. Meanwhile the people you want to reach are being hit with hundreds of offers and messages at once, while actively hunting for the best deal themselves.
The bottom of the funnel โ people with clear intent, close to buying โ is both finite and permanently overloaded during this period.
The answer is a full-funnel strategy that strengthens brand messaging at the earlier stages of the journey. Running that for four to six weeks gives a store a real advantage by the time the peak arrives.
Extra tip: as with any digital marketing activity, measurement decides whether you can tell what worked. Use softer conversion actions to judge upper-funnel work โ product views, add-to-carts, newsletter signups โ the actions that show someone is getting to know the brand rather than buying from it today.
Build your audience, and your remarketing lists
Competition during Black Friday is brutal, and standing out and earning trust is harder than at any other point in the year.
So start building your audience earlier. Reach people who do not know the brand yet through branding campaigns on YouTube, Google Display and social. That inflow does two things: it introduces the brand to new people, and it leaves you with a substantial list of users who have shown genuine interest in your products, ready to hear about your offers when the period starts.
Prepare the assets in advance
We regularly meet stores that begin preparing one or two weeks before their promotions go live, sometimes still missing key assets the day before launch. The result is incomplete campaigns that never reach their potential โ or worse, campaigns that never go live at all because they are stuck in review.
That is precisely where another brand will pull ahead. Start planning early and design the landing pages, the creative and the messaging as far ahead as you can. Agree the campaign and targeting plan with your partners in advance, including how hard you intend to push and when. Set a timeline with milestone dates so you can judge progress against it.
Do not leave out your product feeds, for every channel you are active on โ Google Ads, paid social, affiliates, marketplaces. Improve the structure and the information they carry so you get the most from the period. On the ad platforms especially, a well-built feed is a real advantage during Black Friday.
Not sure how? We are here.
Bravescale tip: we recommend starting careful planning six to eight weeks before the Black Friday period begins. That is what we do with our own clients.
Give your most loyal customers something exclusive
Your most committed customers can become your strongest advocates. Reward that loyalty with a closed-doors offer during Black Friday.
Start with an analysis of your customer database. Identify the people who buy most often across the year and the people who place the largest orders โ your top 20%. Then isolate that group and look closely at what they buy, which categories, and when. That analysis tells you both who the offer is for and what kind of offer actually makes sense, always in relation to your margins and costs.
With that in hand, design the offer and choose the channels to deliver it โ email, SMS, direct mail. One piece of advice: make it good enough that buying is a genuinely easy decision, even if that means running close to your cost floor.
Satisfied, loyal customers are the ones who talk about you and generate word of mouth, which brings in more new customers than the discount itself.
Bravescale tip: even if you decide against a VIP offer this year, run the analysis anyway. It gives you a clear picture of your ideal customer profile, which is useful for everything the store does afterwards.
One way to push it further: connect it to a referral scheme, so a customer can refer a friend and both get the discount.
Do a test run
You have never seen a race car go straight onto the track on race day. So why do it with your store during the period you expect the biggest results of the year?
Once the Black Friday setup is complete, run a full test across every system โ a dress rehearsal, to make sure it holds during the peak.
Check the landing pages, any automations you have built, server capacity, the state and structure of the database, and the website's backend functions. Leave nothing to chance.
Extra tip: include your customer service team in this. They matter more during this period than at any other time. Make sure everything they need to do can be done quickly, and that they have had the training to handle the volume.
Buckle up
After weeks of preparation, planning and adjustment, the period arrives โ the peak for most online stores.
With your team, internal and external, you switch everything on and get ready to watch the results.
But it does not end there.
The game's not over: during the peak
Do not relax yet. All that methodical planning will not pay off unless you stay on top of a few things while the period is running.
Customer service has to be excellent. Ten out of ten, the kind people mention. That covers pre-sales โ questions about availability, product details, shipping and payment options โ and after-sales, from order progress to resolving anything that comes up.
A tip: make getting in touch as easy as possible, with several options available. Online chat, call-me-back, email and phone all earn their place during this period.
Keep the site technically fast. Response time at every step of the purchase matters enormously for an online store, and it matters most during the busiest period of the year, when any friction can send someone to a competitor instead.
A high volume of orders can also put real load on the server hosting the site. Solutions such as batched order processing โ sending order data in groups rather than all at once โ handle that far better. Talk to the team supporting your website so there is a plan and both sides are ready in advance.
One more tip: use automation wherever you can โ email and SMS for order progress, a post-sale email covering the most common questions โ so the customers who trusted you stay informed all the way through fulfilment.
Last words
For many brands, Black Friday is the highlight of the final quarter, sometimes of the whole year. You now know what it takes to stand out during the period and reach new highs in revenue and orders. Apply the guide and finish the quarter properly.
If you are looking for a strategic partner to guide and advise you, and to help your business stand out, let's talk.
