Black Friday Influencer Marketing Strategies: How & why creators fit into the mix
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are amongst the busiest periods of the year for most brands across industries. The appeal lies in the ‘lowest-ever prices’ value most people have come to associate with the period. Not only do many consumers hold off on making larger and higher value purchases until cyber week each year, many also do the bulk of their holiday shopping during this period.
But whilst there is greater consumer demand and purchase intent, this period also brings increased marketing competition. Even the best offers can go unnoticed if your Black Friday marketing campaigns fail to grab attention and drive recall amongst your target consumers.
Besides, although consumers are looking for good deals, they’re also looking for quality products that last1—especially when it comes to higher involvement purchases like appliances and devices, larger furniture, and so on. In fact, 2024 recorded the highest average transaction value (ATV) on record.
So what does this mean for marketers?
Black Friday marketing strategies have to grab attention, stimulate interest, AND drive recall—all whilst outperforming competitor ads across all these measures. That’s where adding influencers and Podcasters into Black Friday marketing strategies presents a unique opportunity for brands.
Benefits of Black Friday influencer marketing strategies
1. Influencers can help brands break through the clutter around black friday with unique yet recognisable voices.
In recent years, a massive chunk of consumers have turned to digital touchpoints for their Black Friday purchases. In fact, 79% of site traffic on Black Friday 2024 came from mobile devices.2 Besides, even amongst those U.S shoppers who visited a store during the period said they looked up product reviews online and-or located an item in-store by checking it online.
So what does this mean for marketers?
The digital touchpoints are essential to the consumer journey during Black Friday – irrespective of where they ultimately convert.
But, there’s another issue with traditional digital platforms- they aren’t always as effective. Consumers are displaying increasing ad and banner blindness – and this is even more so in periods when advertising volumes increase- like in the lead up to Black Friday.
Recent studies show that more than half of surveyed consumers show “facial confusion” in environments with high-ad volume, leading to irritation and frustration.
Traditional digital channels may seem like a cheaper alternative to influencer marketing- but affordability means higher saturation, which ultimately affects the effectiveness of ads.
On the other hand, Influencer channels offer a level of exclusivity – you can negotiate terms that prevent influencers from promoting any other brand in the same content piece or a competitor within a specific time period (depending on the platform, deliverables, and terms).
This not only boosts the effectiveness of your ad with respect to brand awareness, but also has positive impacts on brand sentiment and credibility- studies show 63% of surveyed consumers report feeling favourable towards a brand in a low-ad environment.
Essentially Black Friday influencer marketing strategies allow you to capture that attention more effectively than other channels do, providing that ever-important competitive edge.
2. Leveraging influencers in Black Friday promotions allows brands to access affordable, likeable, & trusted social proof.
Trust is another major factor when it comes to effectiveness of promotions, particularly in saturated ad spaces and in specific high-involvement product categories.
Traditional TV and display advertising uses celebrities to grab attention and add an element of ‘credibility’ to the brand. However, celebrity endorsements aren’t always affordable, nor are they always effective in driving real action.
This is often because the tightly brand-controlled narratives lack authenticity. Besides, it feels difficult to picture a blockbuster celebrity actually understanding the needs and preferences of a common consumer.
Influencer endorsements, on the other hand, when executed well, feel far more authentic. Compared to mainstream celebrities, influencers often share themselves and their lives as they actually are instead of ‘playing a role.’ Their followers feel like they actually know them and can identify with them in some capacity or the other, and they develop strong parasocial relationships with them.
In fact, the most effective influencer briefs are those where the influencer is encouraged to build the brand into a personal narrative the creator’s followers will relate to, and given the freedom to deliver it in a way that is true to their natural style and tone.
Specifically when it comes to niche content verticals, many influencers are viewed as actual ‘experts’ in specific areas. When these influencers endorse brands in their specific areas of expertise, it adds an unmatched level of credibility to the brand.
Essentially, influencers are your happy middle ground between aspirational celeb endorsements and everyday customer reviews. They can fill both the aspirational and relatable beats, which makes them suitable to promote a wide variety of products.
This also makes them suitable to push a variety of brand messaging narratives – from cost effectiveness to self sufficiency – which may not always seem relatable or authentic coming from a celebrity.
In fact, specific creator-led channels like Podcast advertising rank higher on measures like trustworthiness, authenticity, and ad recall- higher than most other traditional digital and social media channels.
3. Influencer Marketing allows brands to balance brand awareness & performance objectives.
By leveraging a data informed, diverse creator mix & strategic creatives & CTAs, you can leverage influencer collaborations to drive both awareness and performance outcomes for Black Friday.
Mega-influencers can help fuel brand awareness & reach by inducing wishful identification and parasocial relations. Meanwhile, Mid-sized and Micro-influencers can engage core, niche target audiences, with conversion driven messaging and CTAs.
If you have the resources and scope, leveraging additional tactics like contests, giveaways or custom assets can help boost the performance aspect of your campaigns further and drive impact across the funnel.
4. Influencer Marketing can help offer different narrative pitches in a single campaign.
While the unmissable offers are the main appeal of Black Friday promotions, the story and narrative are still an important part of capturing attention and driving awareness. And here, influencer marketing presents a unique benefit that is unmatched by any other platform – you get multiple creative pitches and perspectives to promote your brand in a single campaign.
By working with influencers in different niches and giving them the flexibility to tailor the creative to their own style, format, circumstances, and audiences, you can reach a wide variety of audience sub-segments with tailored messaging.
For instance, within a single campaign, a homewares brand can push a number of narratives, including, but not limited to angles like –
- ‘Holiday decor haul – Prepping for Christmas’
- ‘Holiday gifting haul’
- ‘Surprising my mom with a new couch’
- ‘Furnishing my new home’
- ‘Dorm-room refresh’
- ‘Finding the best mattress for my back pain’
- ‘Setting up the ultimate gaming room’
- ‘Setting up a cosy reading nook on a budget’
The gist of each of these concepts is that they’re all centred around the core idea of buying moderately expensive items when they’re at their cheapest, but the narratives range from vanity products and gifting to utility-based purchases.
Each of these narratives can seem authentic and plausible when they’re delivered by the right source – and influencer marketing is the only channel where you can deliver several of these at the same time, within the same budget, and without much additional research into the kind of language, hooks, colours, and visual creatives each different audience sub-segment will respond best to.
Influencers already know what their audiences like and respond well to. Which means that each of these creatives will already be optimized for your target audience without you needing to do too much of the creative heavy lifting.
5. Black Friday Influencer Marketing strategies let you leverage different formats to reach customers with different purchasing behaviours
Similar to the varied narratives influencer marketing allows you to push within a single campaign, the different platforms across which influencers operate also offers a unique opportunity to reach consumers with different purchasing behaviours and at different points in the funnel.
TikTok’s short-form, transient content & potential for virality can be a good format for promoting limited-time offers and creative unboxings. Meanwhile, YouTube allows short integrations or longer-form deep dives – from unboxings, reviews, demos, giveaways or hauls. Depending on the types of product you offer, the specific objective you’re pursuing, and the activations across your wider marketing mix, influencer marketing offers a lot of variety in terms of what types of consumers you can reach and what kind of actions you can drive.
Black Friday influencer marketing strategies
So how can brands leverage influencers for their Black Friday marketing campaigns?
The specific platforms, influencers, and creatives suitable for each brand and objective will be different, but one of the most important aspects is to start planning campaigns well in advance before influencer inventory in the ideal period gets expensive and booked out. Besides, you want to create hype BEFORE Cyber Week, not during, which makes it really important to allow sufficient time to plan and execute your campaign so people discover the offers in time to actually act on them.
If brand awareness is your main objective, working with mega-influencers is a good option. On the other hand, for more performance-based objectives, opt for mid-sized and micro-influencers with relevant audiences and conversion driven messaging and CTAs.
If your product or service is more complex, or is typically something people put more consideration into before purchasing, opt for niche content creators who are experts in specific areas – they reach engaged audiences with highly credible messaging which is extremely impactful for conversions.
In terms of creatives, again, specific formats and narratives may be more or less suitable for different platforms, products, and objectives. ‘Skit-style content’ where the value of a limited-time offer forms the main narrative focus performs well on TikTok or Reels where awareness and virality in the short term are more important. On the other hand, if showing off product inventory, quality, and features is more essential, and you’re hoping for a long-tail impact beyond just Black Friday, longer-form content with more storytelling, or unboxings, reviews, demos, giveaways or hauls on YouTube may be a better option.
Podcast advertisements are another great option for brands to leverage creator-led platforms. Podcasts as a platform offer a lot of unique benefits – particularly due to their relatively unsaturated advertising space, older and more affluent audiences, and higher perceived trust in advertising messages. If you’re looking for a more personalised narratives, host-read ads are a great option, and rank amongst the highest in trustworthiness and authenticity.
However, if you’re more conservative with your budgets and want to drive a set number of impressions, Programmatic podcast ads can be a good option. Whilst these are pre-recorded and don’t offer the benefit of having multiple unique voices in a single campaign, you still get to reach valuable audiences, get a guaranteed number of impressions, and have the flexibility to reallocate spend in real time. Besides, the halo effect of the hosts’ credibility still somewhat extends to these ads as well, since listeners do believe that hosts have some say in who places advertisements on their shows, so it can still be a great option for your black friday influencer marketing strategies.
Final Thoughts: Black Friday Influencer Marketing Strategies for success
Influencers are a great channel to break through the promotional noise around Black Friday and create a memorable, leading, and effective impression that drives real purchase intent and action.
Leveraging influencer marketing and podcast ads in the lead up to Black Friday allows brands to –
- Break through the clutter with unique yet recognisable voices.
- Access affordable, likeable, & trusted social proof.
- Balance brand awareness & performance objectives.
- Offer varying creative pitches in a single campaign.
- Leverage varying formats to reach customers with different purchasing behaviours
Unlike brand-owned narratives or channels where every second brand’s advert looks the same, black friday influencer marketing strategies allows brands to deliver messages to their target audience through the voices they trust, in a style they enjoy, and through narratives they actually listen and relate to.
Beyond the authenticity advantage baking your brand into influencer content offers, the relationships people have with their favourite content creators means they’re more likely to recall the brands they endorse and actually trust and act on the offer.
Some key tips for Black Friday influencer marketing strategies:
- Start planning campaigns well in advance to secure influencer inventory before the high-demand period.
- For brand awareness, work with mega-influencers. For performance-focused campaigns, opt for mid-sized and micro-influencers.
- For complex products, collaborate with niche content creators for credibility and higher conversion impact.
- Tailor creatives to each platform: short-form skits for TikTok or Reels, long-form storytelling for YouTube, and host-read ads for Podcasts, or programmatic for a more controlled narrative & outcome (but less personalisation).
The specific black friday influencer marketing strategies – right from choosing the right influencer platforms to finding the right influencers and building the right creative narratives will differ from one brand to another. But the bottom line is, if you’re looking to fully capitalise on the consumer spending potential during Black Friday and the wider Cyber Week period, influencers should very much be a part of your mix!
Looking to level up your Black Friday influencer marketing strategies? Book a FREE consultation to see how we can help!