Black Friday: 3 strategies to guarantee the success of your marketing campaign

Black Friday is just around the corner! To avoid missing out on the commercial opportunities offered by this event, what could be better than a marketing campaign aligned with your strategy? Discover some strategic inspirations that will help you model your future ideal campaign to collect customer data and increase your revenue. No more excuses not to take advantage of this opportunity!

1. Web-to-store and/or store-to-web

”The union of the two worlds, the physical and the digital, to [offer] the best possible service to the new customers we have become.”
Catherine Barba, Founder of WIN Forum NY and Business Angel

If you want to increase traffic to your physical store or website, opt for a web-to-storeand/or store-to-web strategy through interactive content!

A web-to-store and/or store-to-webstrategy allows you to offer your customers a unique omnichannel experience, since all contact points are linked, and to integrate digital with your physical points of sale. To carry out this strategy, you can use interactive marketing campaigns. This type of campaign is fully integrated into what is also called “phygital“, because it contributes to the provision of fluid customer experiences and promotes the complementarity of digital (social networks, mobile applications, etc.) and physical (digital terminals, stands, etc.) channels.

The benefits of this type of strategy are clear when you consider that 64% of consumers believe the in-store customer experience more important than the price.

In summary, you can develop this strategy by launching an interactive contest on your social networks and offer an additional experience, an added value, only accessible in-store, and/or vice versa.

This customer experience has been adopted by MediaMarkt for several years. The company, which has more than 29 stores in Belgium, organises an annual marketing campaign called “Crazy Run”, offering the winner 100 seconds of free shopping. To participate, customers who have made a purchase in one of the stores must complete an identification form, including an opt-in to the brand’s newsletter. From a perspective to digitising and multiplying the contact points, the form is accessible via tablets in stores and also on the retailer’s social networks.

In this case, the campaign is oriented to attract and retain customers by extending the post-purchase customer experience, but it can be adapted to your business objectives!

To learn more, please read our different marketing tips for your web-to-store strategy and vice versa.

Discover different examples of attractive and original competitions on this page!

2. Ephemeral marketing

“What emerges and disappears is more spectacular and attractive.”
Caroline Couderc, Communication & Marketing Manager at Anacours

The notion of ephemeral marketing has recently emerged thanks to the popularity of social media and the acceleration of the time factor in the purchasing cycle. The principle is simple: it is a question of distributing a message to its customers and Internet users whose attention span is limited. This type of animation is particularly well suited for social networks since they are intended to be viral and generally last 24 hours.

However, it is also possible to set up ephemeral marketing actions thanks to tangible supports. For example, you may have heard about these brands that are generating customers’ interest through the distribution of ephemeral tattoos that reflect their image. The ephemeral tattoo, a creative and fashionable medium, would be a powerful lever to arouse customers’ interest and make its brand known. The latest buzz was the distribution of ephemeral tattoos by Red Star FC to their fans. This original project has been widely reported in many media outlets, increasing the football club’s visibility.

Another way to promote your brand through ephemeral marketing could be to launch an e-couponing action. If this lever may seem rather banal to you, it is nevertheless very effective in increasing the number of visitors in your store. In addition to that, it is a simple action to implement. For example, Herta used this support to promote the release of a new range of products.

We could, therefore, imagine the implementation of an e-couponing action, aimed at distributing discount coupons on Black Friday during the times when your store is least visited (early morning or late afternoon). In order to increase marketing pressure and trigger a sense of urgency among consumers, it is advisable to publish these ads for limited periods of time and to promote them only on certain social networks rigorously selected according to the targeted audience.

To inspire you, do not hesitate to consult some examples of interactive e-couponing campaigns!

3. Influencer Marketing

“The best advertisement is a satisfied customer.”
Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft Corporation

Influencer marketing is very popular, especially for Generation Y. It consists in conveying a brand’s message on the social networks of an opinion leader in his field. This method, which makes it possible to legitimise the brand, create a relationship based on trust and reach a well-targeted audience, is increasingly used by brands. Indeed, the average budget of companies worldwide dedicated to this type of campaign would be around €27,000.

But rest assured, depending on your objectives, it is not necessary to promote your products and services through a famous influencer. Indeed, some regular consumers like to share their passion with their friends and family on their social networks. To give you an idea of the potential return on investment, a nano-influencer with 1 to 5,000 people in its network collects an average of 146 likes on each of its publications. If their level of influence is indeed lower than the mega-influencers, you can combine several types of personalities to carry out your strategy.

To make this action operational quickly and at a lower cost, there are many solutions. For example, we could imagine the broadcasting of an interactive photo contest on Black Friday. The challenge of this campaign could be to offer Internet users to share a photo of themselves, carrying an item from your store and accompanied by a hashtag, on their social networks in order to win this item for free.

This type of interactive campaign has the particularity of federating and animating your community effectively while offering you a high visibility.

For example, FOX and its partner Disneyland Paris had a great success with Internet users in August 2019 thanks to a photo contest!

The photo contest is a format that allows you to surprise your audience. You can find creative examples here!

Of course, these three strategies can be combined to improve your business results. For example, Dogofriends, a marketing agency, carried out an innovative campaign for Nestlé’s Purina brand. This campaign had the particularity of combining the different strategies seen previously, using online and offlinepromotion. The purpose of the campaign was to offer a photo contest to dog owners. To participate, Internet users had to post a picture of their dogs with the brand’s flagship product; a Purina Dentalife stick. Each week, a winner was selected and left with a bag full of surprises, including 6 months of Purina Dentalife.

Here, influencer marketing has been used through the photo contest that brings together and animates the brand’s consumers. To accentuate influencer marketing, the brand had formed a partnership with influencers, thus reaching a broad audience. This is why other influencers, affected by the message, had also relayed the campaign on their networks. In parallel, in order to increase the visibility of the campaign, a web-to-store strategy and vice versa have been put in place. The campaign was promoted in the company’s stores and on social networks. Finally, the combination of these actions with a sample distribution campaign for Purina Dentalife products highlights ephemeral marketing. The results of this campaign were particularly satisfactory for both partners.

Feel free to let your imagination run wild by combining several marketing strategies as part of your campaigns, the results will be even better!

If you would like more inspiring ideas, we invite you to discover our Ebook which gathers 40 marketing campaign ideas from leading European brands.