Like it or not Black Friday and, to a lesser extent, Cyber Monday are now part of the annual retail and e-commerce environments. We speak to loads of businesses who forget to add Black Friday marketing strategies to their marketing planning until after the day has gone or try and rush their strategy for it days before Black Friday. Either way not being prepared is the best way to miss the opportunity or waste time and effort doing it badly.
Black Friday is going to be more important than ever before in 2025. The cost of living crisis and increasing inflation in the UK is also going to make shoppers eager to find bargains this year as they think twice before purchasing anything.
With this in mind, we’ve got some ideas you can use to make sure you make the most of Black Friday 2025.
Add Black Friday to your marketing strategy
This might sound obvious, but as we said above, the biggest issue lots of small businesses have is they don’t plan for Black Friday and so they miss it and get annoyed or do it last minute and get annoyed. Annoyance abounds either way. So, time one is plan for Black Friday and all your other promos.
By the way, Black Friday is 28th November 2025
Decide if Black Friday is right for your business
Black Friday doesn’t suit every business. If you’re a hairdresser, plasterer, accountant, construction firm etc then why are you jumping on this particular bandwagon? There are lots more appropriate marketing opportunities around for you. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to be involved.
Think carefully about your Black Friday offers
Black Friday was created so that retailers could clear their warehouses to make way for new stock before Christmas. So the majority of the lines available are at the end of their lives and new versions will be available not long after the offers close. When you put together your Black Friday deals think in the same way. If you discount all you have then you’ll just lose lots of money for no good reason in the sale period.
If you discount the products you need to move and throw in a handful of great offers then you’ll have a better time financially while taking advantage of the promotion.
Don’t give customers a way to delay their purchase
As part of your Black Friday promotion strategy, you’ll want to tell your customers before the offers begin. But if you say “Black Friday offers, everything 50% off” and that’s two weeks away, what do you think they’ll do? Our guess is they’ll wait until Black Friday to buy, leaving you with a big hole in your cash flow for a few weeks! So rather than offering 50% off everything, think about offering sales on a small selection of your products instead of the whole inventory.
Black Friday marketing strategies you can try
Following the crowd isn’t always the best plan. There’s lots of noise on Black Friday, so how can you stand out? Here are a few marketing strategies you could use on Black Friday.
- Run a treasure hunt around your website, store or social media accounts with clues that lead to your offers.
- Rather than discounts for everyone create a large giveaway, say £100, and award that every hour to one randomly selected customer
- Totally black out your shop or website with no other indication of what’s happening. Remember to give them a way in!
- Launch a new product on Black Friday with a limited number at a discount
- Promote one Black Friday offer each day leading up to the day
- Combine products and rather than a discount give the cheapest item away free
- Discount only your black coloured products
- Discount all products except black ones
- Reverse promotion with prices starting at a discount 2 weeks before and the discount getting smaller every day until Black Friday
- Make a charity donation for every sale on Black Friday but keep your costs the same
- For every 10 items sold on the day donate one to a charity e.g. sell 10 pairs of shoes, give one pair to a charity
- Hold an event on or off-line, to help your customers learn more about your product or service. Give discounts only to those who attend
- Offer discounts only to people whose birthday is on Black Friday
- Discount only for those coming to your store who wear clothing from your brand e.g. Nike Store apply discounts for customers wearing Nike clothing
- Record and bookstores only discount items with the word Friday in them
- Only offer discounts at a certain time of the day on Black Friday. E.g. 7pm to 8pm
- “Midnight Madness” – items go on sale at midnight for 1 hour only
- Just pay the postage
- Create a ‘Spin the wheel’ to reveal what offer customers get – ranges from anything from 10% to 90% off
- Don’t offer a Black Friday promotion at all. Be anti-Black Friday and own it
