Reflecting on Black Friday: 6 insights to improve your paid media strategy

As the waters calm after the Black Friday storm of sales, it is clear 2023 definitely bucked a few trends. Our team has been reflecting on the overall market and customer behaviour to see what we can learn from this year’s activity. We’re also sharing tips and advice for building a better long-term strategy for peak sales periods such as Black Friday.

Customer expectation and engagement

In times of financial pressure and environmental awareness, people increasingly expect transparency and accountability from brands. This year we noticed in our news and social feeds that, when faced with unclear info about discounts there has been backlash from consumers against the whole Black Friday concept.

Brands who want to strengthen customer loyalty could consider how to participate without compromising on their values and work to avoid causing user frustration or disengagement.

Late sales period

One noteable trend this year was for retailers to condense activity to a very short period close to Black Friday. This can make it harder to plan and allocate budget, and could be one reason customers have struggled with messaging which is changing daily to react to market conditions, rather than being planned in advance.

6 Tips for a user-focused Black Friday

Research shows the highest value customers are those who are loyal to your brand. If you want to invest in these leads, here are some strategic tips:

1. Be decisive ahead of time on what discount you will offer, stock available and for how long deals will apply. Make this info easily accessible and transparent to customers, for example by adding a clearly visible banner to your website header.
2. Consider offers carefully rather than jumping on a Black Friday bandwagon – if you do so you are likely to get lost in the noise. For example: one retailer contacted a Launch team member offering a deal for first time customers, despite the team member already having purchased from them. This poses a risk to customer loyalty.
3. On that theme, make sure your customer exclusion lists are up to date and dynamically populating so that when you go into sale you’re not targeting people who have already bought (at a higher price!) in the last few weeks or months (dependent on your purchase cycle).
4. Chopping and changing messaging between Black Friday/Cyber Monday takes up more time and resource with little benefit – customers may even find it confusing and inconsistent. Stick with one clearly defined discount period. It can also have a negative impact on ad performance, kicking ads back into learning phases meaning they are not fully optimised during the peak period.
5. Be patient if you’re not seeing peak performance in the lead up to Black Friday, especially if you are running sales for the whole of November. We find the Friday and Sunday of Black Friday weekend are often key days for sales volume as users have waited to see if a bigger discount is offered, and when it isn’t they snap it up anyway. This is amplified by Black Friday weekend being closer to pay day.
6. Businesses opting not to participate in BF may benefit from cutting ad budget during the Black Friday period as the data suggests people are only really shopping for discounts at this time. One of our clients who was not in sale pulled ad spend right back as we entered Black Friday week. Spend week-on-week dropped 50%, as did traffic, but conversion rate increased and profitability increased despite lower volumes, a result of not wasting money on traffic that’s looking for sale prices.

An effective approach: Launch case study

Another strategy is to offer a discount during the Black Friday season without participating in the messaging. This worked well for one of our clients, a luxury candle brand. They offered a 20% discount sitewide over a four-day period around the Black Friday weekend, but framed as a sale without mention of Black Friday. Revenue was up by 24% on their previous Black Friday record in 2021.

A note on stockists

Be aware of stockists and their discounts or your agreements with them on how much control they have over price, as this can heavily impact sales. For example, if a stockist has the same product as you for 25% cheaper, this will of course impact on custom.

Need advice on paid media?

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