How can brands get ready for Black Friday 2022?

In 2021, UK shoppers spent £9bn during Black Friday weekend, with 78% of purchases made online. This November, retailers will be hoping to cash in on Black Friday sales as households prepare for Christmas, although many consumers will struggle with soaring energy bills and a precarious economy.

Research published today by Disrupt reveals some of the strategies we think brands should be following in order to boost sales using social influencers, customer data and lead-generating campaigns.

After analyzing data from previous Black Fridays, we’ve come up with some tips which we hope will help every brand - large or small. Making the most of Black Friday requires businesses to think ahead, find the right influencer and execute your plan in time.

Partner with talent

Influencer marketing is solidly a multi-million-pound part of the performance channel these days, so it can’t be an afterthought when it comes to Black Friday. As with all digital investments around this crucial trading period, it needs to deliver returns.

When partnering with talent that can drive an audience to take action, you should be providing trackable links as you would for an affiliate, to help drive sales. This is an area where we are seeing massive success across the biggest social platforms, such as TikTok, for their shop partners.

But consumer behavior changes all the time. The pandemic accelerated the rate of digital adoption and online shopping habits have soared, which is good for Black Friday sales, but it has left some businesses revising and re-thinking their whole business model.

These are additional challenges for businesses to accept because suddenly, what they’ve known about their customers for the last 10 years isn’t true anymore.

Lead with customer data

Experts at Disrupt’s sister agency Braidr help clients to understand how their customer’s behavior changes over time.

A lot of the work they do is in the analysis and segmentation of customer data to reveal the true story of their new customers’ behavior and provide a solid data-driven starting point that all stakeholders can agree on and plan from.

This involves predictive analytics, such as machine learning forecasts and predictive customer lifetime value (CLTV), marketing mix modelling, data-driven attribution and good old fashioned exploratory data analysis.

So what’s their top tip? Braidr points out that consumer behavior changes and that brands need to be ready for that. That means that now is the time to deep dive into your customers’ data so you can be seen by them.

Get in front

If you don’t, you could be left trailing behind your competitors. At digital growth agency Found, they point out that this is not a time for 100 ads with separate messaging for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, ‘2 hours left’ etc. Stick to a core of strong creative: go for consistent messaging throughout the week and reduce the percentage of your budget used on learning stages.

It's also important to plan ahead as much as possible. Paid social channels such as Meta are reliant on machine learning to optimize. Big changes to campaign budgets and targeting can reduce efficiency. It's vital for brands to ensure creative is finalized early on.

Our final piece of advice is this: if you’re a brand, think about what you have to offer for this period. Is it worth shouting about? Would the investment in wider marketing for Black Friday position your brand as a leader in your space? If so, get planning (and good luck).

You can read our recommendations for Black Friday on Disrupt’s newly revamped website and watch our colleagues at Found discussing Black Friday strategy here.

Disrupt, Found and Braidr are part of the Tomorrow Group of companies.