Every year, Black Friday returns, and marketers kick into high gear months in advance. The UK remains one of the world’s ecommerce giants, yet 2024 has been anything but predictable. For brands straddling multiple categories, the message is clear: keep a pulse on these industry shifts and double down where the momentum is building.
WHAT IS BLACK FRIDAY MARKETING?
Black Friday isn’t just a shopping event – it’s a battlefield for brands to dominate the market and capture consumer attention. This is when your marketing strategy needs to go bold, with tactics designed to break through the noise and deliver unbeatable deals. Black Friday is about giving customers offers they can’t resist, driving sales to new heights. While it’s a time for aggressive pricing, it’s also a unique opportunity to build customer loyalty and engagement that lasts well beyond the holiday rush. This is the time to go all in and turn casual browsers into devoted fans.
A QUICK LOOKBACK.
Before we discuss the BFCM checklist for 2024, I thought it would be useful to take a quick look back at 2023.
1. Black Friday online sales grew 8% year-over-year (YoY) to $70.9 billion globally in 2023.
2. Black Friday started much earlier and finished later with a lot of brands extending discounts online. No change this year with Amazon kicking off their Black Friday deals in October!
3. Last year, customers were more likely to search directly for brands and deals compared to the year previously.
4. Shoppers researched more across platforms (mobile, Shopping, YouTube) than any previous year – a trend likely to grow this year.
HOW TO PREPARE FOR BLACK FRIDAY CYBER MONDAY?
We’re expecting that retailers and brands will lead with a digital first strategy this year – making sure they are present during the different touchpoints of the consumer journey, from awareness right the way through to driving action on site.
Struggling with where to start?! Fear not – the team at Found have pulled together a whitepaper which contains all the information you need! We’ve brought some of our best minds together to predict the trends that we’re expecting to see over the next few months in retail and consumer behaviour – using data modelling of previous years and applying what we know about 2020 so far to help you build your plans.
You can download the whitepaper here which already contains all of the handy checklists we’re going to go through below.
2024 BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLISTS
GENERAL PREPARATION
Your go-to list before any Black Friday:
B2C BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLIST
Specific checklist developed for B2C companies, focusing in on preparation and activation across different channels:
B2B BLACK FIRDAY CHECKLIST
Specific checklist developed for B2B companies, focusing in on preparation and activation across different channels:
BIDDABLE MEDIA BLACK FIRDAY CHECKLIST
A checklist which details the must-do actions across all Biddable channels including: Search, Social, Local, YouTube and Shopping:
GOOGLE SHOPPING BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLIST
A huge proportion of overall revenue is tracked through Google Shopping campaigns, so much so that we thought it deserved it’s own checklist, covering everything from feed set up through to activation:
SEO BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLIST
This checklist contains everything you need to know/action from an organic perspective including site accessibility and crawlability through to keyword coverage and content:
BLACK FRIDAY 2024 KEY DATES
It’s important to remember that even though BFCM is one of the key shopping events of the year, there’s other key dates to be aware of which I’ve listed below:
November:
- Singles Day: November 11th
- Black Friday Week: November 22nd – 29th
- Thanksgiving (US): November 28th
- Black Friday: November 29th
December:
- Cyber Monday: December 2nd
- Free Shipping Day: December 14th
- Christmas Day: December 25th
- Boxing Day: December 26th
Planning and preparation will help to ensure a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday – the checklists which I’ve included above should help to cover most of what you need to know for this year’s upcoming peak shopping event and will hopefully put you in the best position to succeed during this holiday season.
If you would require any help and support with your Black Friday planning please don’t hesitate to get in touch here.
