99 Marketing Ideas For Black Friday 2020

Kinga Gawron •
99 Marketing Ideas For Black Friday

The holiday shopping season is already on. Triggered by the Amazon Prime Day launch on October 13th, and some of the biggest retailers announcing there’s no point waiting until November 27th, many have already launched their Black Friday campaigns. 

How is your Q4 strategy going? Are you one of those early birds? Or have you just frantically started to think how to kick off your campaigns a month earlier than expected?

Whether you’re into e-commerce or any other affiliate marketing vertical that rocks Q4 year after year, here’s a treat for you.

Read below for a list of 99 marketing ideas for Black Friday 2020 from the biggest brands in the industry!

Black Friday checklist for best landing pages & ad creatives.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2020 are less than a month ahead of us. That means it’s a last-minute call for marketers of all kinds to get their Black Weekend campaigns ready to go. Having analyzed the past year’s campaigns, we’ve discovered three areas that advertisers need to focus on asap or otherwise risk falling behind their competitors. These areas are:

  • testing your creative funnels,
  • getting just the right amount of attention with your ad creatives,
  • making sure your campaigns don’t suffer from creative fatigue too quickly.

In other words, you need to find the best performing set up for your offer and eliminate ads that don’t bring expected results. Then, you need to keep adjusting your campaigns. Add, delete, rotate, swap, bring back — do anything to keep your CTR at the most optimal level. You don’t want millions of clicks and no conversions, but you also don’t want your ads to just sit there unnoticed. 

That’s why balancing the CTR and WinRatio metrics may be the key to keeping your campaigns both successful and sustainable. How to do just that?

Well, there’s never an easy way. It’s impossible to give marketers a one-trick golden nugget that would turn all their advertising efforts successful overnight. Instead, advertisers are often able to find the most optimal setup for their campaigns if a series of small steps and checks is followed.

The Black Friday checklist:


✔︎
  Loading speed is of utmost importance — the faster the better.

✔︎  Keep your ad visuals according to the policy guidelines or nobody will ever see them.

✔︎  All creatives should appear both credible and appealing to users.

✔︎  Avoid shady-looking landers and/or ad images — people are able to spot those quickly.

✔︎  Match the language with the country so your audience can understand the offer.

✔︎  Adjust the theme per seasonal trend, e.g. the Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Holidays.

✔︎  Match your ads, pre- and landing pages visually so people won’t feel the difference switching through the next steps.

✔︎  Increase credibility and user-engagement to help the audience continue through the funnel.

✔︎  Add positive reviews or user comments to raise the sense of credibility.

✔︎  Try using a problem and a solution angle.

✔︎  Include numbers and percentages in your headlines.

✔︎  Use power words.

✔︎  Add clear and visible CTAs.

✔︎  Create a sense of urgency to prompt users into action.

✔︎  Use icons imitating unread messages — they’re great elements for driving attention.

✔︎  Use simple icons or images — they tend to convert better (especially with smaller graphics, like push ad creatives).

✔︎  Use images of people — they tend to perform better rather than cartoon-like visuals.

✔︎  Don’t clutter your ad creatives with too many elements.

✔︎  Test your creatives using images of men vs. women to see which works better.

✔︎  Use spy tools for research purposes but don’t just copycat content.

✔︎  Test your creatives to find the best-performing one.

✔︎  Rotate your creatives to avoid creative fatigue.

That list may seem like a lot of work, but it’s not. These are small details that can be fixed quickly yet have a huge impact on the performance of your creatives. You might be already using some, most, or all of those tricks already! 

The most important thing is to keep optimizing your ads while at the same time monitoring their performance. Always track the changes made and try to attribute the campaign’s results so you’ll know what works and what doesn’t in the future. Also, don’t try too many things at once or otherwise you won’t be able to detect what technique is responsible for what results. 

Remember to:  

No more theory, though. Have a look below and draw inspiration from 99 marketing ideas for your Black Friday campaigns and beyond!

Black Friday 2020 —  advertising ideas in times of coronavirus.

Our buying habits are very much influenced by what’s happening around the world. That’s why this year marketers cannot forget about accounting for the global pandemic angle. Especially that there’s a number of items in great demand due to the lockdown situation. Here are some of the most striking shopping trends that can be observed during this year’s Golden Quarter.

  • This year’s shopping season came early and it’s mostly happening online!
  • People declared to spend their money on physical items rather than experiences.
  • Lockdown has certainly prompted new hobbies and so new equipment and gadgets will be in demand this Black Weekend!
  • There will be tough competition online so advertisers really need to hustle!

And where’s demand, the supply should follow. Here’s our proposal of Black Friday marketing ideas in times of coronavirus.

Lockdown gift ideas

Black Friday & Cyber Monday ad examples.

Black Friday is always a busy time of the year and advertisers need to really go out of their way to get through the competition. Also, testing various marketing angles, visuals, ad copy, or any other assets you may use is necessary to protect your ads from banner blindness and secure the right amount of user attention. 

For those of you who don’t want to limit your advertising efforts to the COVID-19 angle alone, here are more general guidelines for Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising ideas.

Black Friday Cyber Monday Ad Ideas

Holiday shopping marketing ideas.

The end of Black Weekend does not mean the end of the shopping season, though. The Holiday shopping season continues! 

What’s also worth knowing for marketers planning to scale their business in Q4 is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping means gift shopping for a massive part of the buyers. That’s why tuning your marketing ideas to match the Christmas/Winter Holiday mood might be just the right idea to tap into an even bigger part of the purchase-ready audience. 

Holiday Shopping Ad Ideas

Surveys & Sweepstakes vertical ad ideas.

If you’re into affiliate marketing, then you should know that e-commerce isn’t the only profitable option. People are happy to engage with various content that offers them the ultimate Black Friday goals — cheap gains. 

Whether it’s promoting e-commerce sale deals, or a chance to win an item during a Surveys & Sweepstakes lottery, or maybe extra credit offered by their favoring gambling site — they’ll be happy to take it! Tune your Surveys & Sweepstakes or even Gambling ads to match the Black Friday mood and you’ll be sure to do just as well as running e-commerce.

Surveys & Sweeps Gambling Ad Ideas

Dating vertical ad ideas.

The same rules apply to the dating vertical. Online dating ads are often sought after by users looking for both physical and emotional connections… while keeping their anonymity. With all the special events taking place in Q4, but also the general marketing communication, people are prompted into thinking that November or December is the time of love and romance. 

Why not tap into an eager and motivated audience with your Black Friday/Holiday Season ad ideas?

Dating Ad Ideas

Black Weekend landing page & pop ads ideas

When the competition is tough, there’s little time, things kick off earlier than expected, but stakes are high — it’s best to use all the help you can get. That’s why below you’ll find a collection of landing page and pop ads ideas coming from some of the biggest players in the digital marketing industry. Have a look at the various ways these brands promote their Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns and draw inspiration for your own marketing efforts.


Electronics


Samsung

Source

Samsung

Source

Samsung

Source

Source


Clothing


Adidas

Source

ASOS

Source

Clarks

Source

Dr Martens

Source

Forever 21Source

Nasty Gal

Source

Ikea

Source

Select

Source

SHEIN

Source


Cosmetics


MAC

Source

MAC

Source

MAC

Source

Sephora

Source

Kylie

Source

Source


E-commerce


Aliexpress

Source

Amazon

Source

Amazon

Source

Amazon

Source

JCPenny

Source

lazadaSource


Retail


Argos

Source

Argos

Source

Asda

Source

Best Buy

Source

Ikea

Source

 Ikea

Source

Ikea

Source

Ikea

Source

KOHL's

Source

Macys Black Friday

Source

Sears

Source

Target

Source

Walmart

Source


Subscriptions & Other


Disney

Source

HULU

Source

Hulu

Source

 Voluum

Source

Sweepstakes Black Friday

Source

Conclusions

This year has been unique in all possible ways — and so is the whole Golden Quarter. Whether you’re an affiliate marketer, digital retailer or e-commerce savvy, we’re all going to be hustling. That’s why making sure you’re as prepared and ready for what’s going to unravel is the most important thing you can do at this point. 

Do take all those new trends and angles into consideration, watch the timing of your campaigns, monitor the performance, spy on your competition, react as fast as you can to what’s happening to your campaigns, and make the most of the Black Friday and Holiday shopping season 2020.

Ready to scale your business this Golden Quarter?
Run Ads In Zeropark Now!

Kinga Gawron

Zeropark Logo
Team Internet Logo