Black Friday has a huge impact on sales, but the double-edged sword of cultural selling and changed buying behaviors presented a challenge. Our target was to turn a risky phase into a productive priming period. Priming is a technique used to expose an audience to a certain stimulus that influences their future responses to subsequent offers.

The Black Friday period accounts for a strategic boost in sales and revenues in the Romanian market. However, it was necessary to consider a cultural blueprint if these campaigns were to succeed. Analyses of cultural trends connected with buying social behavior on Black Friday eve resulted in two significant phenomena. 

1. Each year, the start of the holiday starts earlier than the previous one. Due to the unpredictable start, many offers get buried under early bird offers or simply fail to hit the most favorable social buying moment. Therefore, their products become marketed to less-interested and less-decided buyers, which are, by default, pickier and less inclined to buy.

2. During October, buyers start doing their research and as most companies don’t start their campaigns until the 1st/2nd week of November, there’s a gap between the moment buyers make their minds up and the moment they actually buy products. Although they mainly use mobiles to conduct research, the same behavior is observed on different devices. 

Another reason for brand identity shrinkage during Black Friday is the vast number of offers, making it difficult for someone to discern one from the other. So, by simply advertising discounts and memorable campaigns, retailers could represent effective ways to stand out in the crowd. A more dynamic data-based strategy is vital to guide customers during Black Friday.  

The Black Friday bible is all about discounts. Customers are hunting the most significant savings on products while considering the suppliers’ reliability and their capacity to provide as many goods as customers want to acquire at reduced costs and successfully fulfil the orders. Hence, the primary focus is to create as many discounts as possible.

Due to the strategic significance of Black Friday, many managers and digital marketers easily slip into overinvesting in ad campaigns. Dynamic tracking and interpretation of results while doing the maths to identify thresholds above which investing doesn’t bring back enough growth to justify the costs should be constantly covered.

The first was to clearly inform audiences about the precise start of Black Friday and when the main types of product discounts would be applied.

The second objective was, of course, to increase sales during Black Friday by taking into account all risks mentioned above. We defined a mix of appropriate channels: Gmail, Facebook, Google Ads Search, Google Ads Display and YouTube Display.

Because Black Friday sales are more about maths and science than creativity in crafting promotional messages, a closer look at target audiences should be taken to approach pre-qualified potential buyers who are the most likely to act on the provided stimulus. 

That’s a laborious endeavour, as it concerns identifying cohorts of potential buyers and differential management of several categories considered based on used channel, familiarity with the company, past behaviours and acquisition intent.