Black Friday has become one of the world’s most profitable annual shopping events, with new records being set and broken every year. According to IMRG, UK online retail sales hit a whopping £1.39bn this year, which is 11.7% up on last year.
The numbers don’t lie and it’s clear to see that there’s huge potential for profit, but with so much competition in the market, how can you stand out from the crowd and break some records of your own?
To give you some food for thought, and some advance inspiration for next year, we’ve put together a list of some of the most successful content marketing strategies from this year’s Black Friday.
Amazon — behind the scenes
Amazon has been crowned the Black Friday/Cyber Monday champions, and according to Business Insider, 2017 saw them claim 45-50% of all Black Friday online sales.
Along with heavily publicising their many deals over the weekend, Amazon cleverly posted a behind the scenes video of one of their package sorting machines. This post received over 2,000 engagements on Twitter and helped Amazon reinforce their reputation of providing speedy deliveries.
Ever wondered what happens inside our fulfillment centers during #CyberMonday? #mesmerizing 📦📦📦📦 https://t.co/bQQMVQrWCb— Amazon.com (@amazon) November 27, 2017
Currys – a tongue-in-cheek guide to Black Friday
UK tech retailer Currys have a permanent Black Friday page that stays up all year round. To inject some humour into their campaign this year, they created a tongue-in-cheek infographic with hover-over functionality, offering customers handy tips and tricks on how to survive Black Friday. It also includes some stats from the previous years, highlighting the hottest deals, the busiest times of the day, and fun sales facts.
This page has links from a very impressive 265 websites, with a fair amount of them linking due to its content.
The Black Friday boycott
Ironically, one of the most powerful messages that was sent this Black Friday came from the companies that refused to participate. Some stores even went so far as to close for the day.
Take the car manufacturers Dacia, which tweeted – ‘We’re such good value all year round, there’s no need for a #BlackFriday sale… so we closed for the day instead!’
And true to their word, they shut down their pop-up at Westfield shopping centre and left for the day.
There were two tweets that announced the news, including a short video emphasising their feelings towards the day, which received over 350 engagements.
They also received some excellent PR coverage, from publications including:The Sun, The Mirror, Retail Design World, Motor Trader, and Drive Time.
Others join the Black Friday boycott
Companies such as Asda and IKEA also decided to make a stand and boycott the event – to promote their confidence in their low prices.
Double trouble
One Norwegian eCommerce retailer was so disgruntled by the event that he decided to take things to the next level and went so far as to double all of his prices just for the day.
Owner Selseng told NRK – “It is probably bad business, but I hope I can make a point.”
Patagonia donates all profits to charity
Although not from 2017, it’s worth mentioning this campaign from 2016. Last year, outdoor clothing company Patagonia donated its entire takings for Black Friday ($10 million) to environmental organisations in protest at Donald Trump’s views on climate change. Not only did this tie in with their outdoorsy image, it received global media coverage from the likes of The Independent.
Patagonia’s landing page from 2016 still has 76 backlinks pointing to it, with a further 137 pointing to the CEO’s letter announcing the decision.
Urban Outfitters – social media competition
The clothing retailer ran a competition on Instagram, encouraging shoppers to comment on their favourite weekend emoji. This was well received and got more than 8,000 likes and 2,000+ comments.
Influencer marketing
Other retailers also took to Instagram. Fashion brands in particular partnered up with bloggers using the #BlackFriday on Instagram and other social platforms. London-based influencer Shirley Beniang used Instagram and blogs to post discount codes on the day.
We hope that you enjoyed this blog and that you’ve picked up some handy content tips for next year, but if you’d like to find out more or wish to speak to a member of the team – get in touch.
