30+ Black Friday Marketing Ideas: Tips, Templates, and Examples

Black Friday sale is expected to break all records as the average consumer spend has already reached $340.93. While you plan to promote your sale offers around this time, your competitors will do the same. Don’t worry. With this blog, you will not fall short of Black Friday Marketing ideas.

In this blog, you will find more than thirty marketing ideas for Black Friday, covering various formats, platforms, and even offline marketing. Along with these, get suitable examples and templates.

What is Black Friday Marketing

Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. It marks the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season and is known for huge discounts, flash sales, and limited-time deals both online and in stores.

What Day is Black Friday and How did Black Friday Get its Name

It is celebrated in the United States on the fourth Friday of November, the day after Thanksgiving. The term initially referred to retailers “going into the black” (becoming profitable) due to the massive sales volume on this day. On this day, businesses run heavy discounts across categories, and consumers shop early for holiday gifts. 

Here are some record-breaking stats from Black Friday sale.

When Do the Ads Come Out for Black Friday 

If you are confused about when should I start advertising for Black Friday, you can start promoting in late October and early November. It’s a good time for visibility as most consumers are looking for holiday offers and deals. As you can see in these stats, how consumers and brands plan around this time.

Brands advertise full-fledgedly for two weeks leading up to Black Friday. To reveal major deals and surprise offers, you can utilize Thanksgiving evening. Later, the retail stores start their sales on the D-day.

How Long Do Black Friday Sales Last 

Although the hype around the sale peaks on Black Friday, the sale extends till the weekend. Afterwards, the brands combine the offers with the Cyber Monday sale to engage the audience for the next week.

How to Advertise on Black Friday: Key Components

So, how do businesses promote their Black Friday deals? Here are the major components to keep in mind before you consider promoting Black Friday.

• Strategy and Planning: Develop a Black Friday marketing strategy, including timelines and campaigns. Also, set clear goals with key performance indicators and optimize your campaigns accordingly.
• Offers and Promotions: Offers are a significant part of the Black Friday sale. However, brands also focus on creating value for the customers.
• Customer Engagement: Create a sense of urgency, offer incentives, and leverage loyalty programs to drive repeat orders.
• Omnichannel marketing: Leverage multiple channels, including emails, social media, and mobile apps, to diversify your marketing efforts.
• Experience and optimization: Focus on social proof by posting authentic customer reviews and optimizing websites for smooth checkout processes. 

Black Friday Marketing Ideas for Website and UX Enhancement

Goals: To boost conversions by making the buying journey faster, more precise, and more intuitive. It also aims to help shoppers quickly find relevant deals while increasing trust and average order value.

Before you explore the ideas, you may ask, ‘Why should retailers have a unique marketing Black Friday strategy for their website?’ 

Black Friday visitors are deal-driven, impatient, and quick to switch tabs. A focused strategy helps retailers clearly highlight deals, reduce friction, handle traffic spikes, and create exclusive online offers that boost conversions. 

That’s why you need a tailored Black Friday website experience that turns massive seasonal traffic into real revenue. To do this, you can transform the website into Black Friday celebration package with offers, pop-ups, and exciting gifts. Here are some ideas you can take inspiration from.

1. Limited-Time Homepage Takeover

It’s a powerful tactic that lets you temporarily dedicate the homepage to promoting Black Friday offers. You can include special deals, new arrivals, and early sign-up pop-ups to engage the visitors. Take inspiration from Patagonia’s website, which provides a lot for the occasion.

2. Interactive Deal Finder on Website

Turn your Black Friday website into a smart, guided shopping experience with an Interactive Deal Finder that helps customers instantly discover the best offers curated just for them. Instead of letting shoppers wander through hundreds of deals, you guide them to the right ones through quizzes, categories, and budget-based tools. You can also compare pre- and post-discount charts to simplify decision-making.

4. Smart Personalization Ideas

With AI and geotagging, you can tailor Black Friday marketing to every user. You can show recommendations based on recently viewed, added to cart, frequently brought together, browsed categories, etc.

Further, you can offer geo-specific shipping banners and personalized offers for the customers based on their behaviour. It’s an impactful way to personalize offers that actually matter to various customers.

You can also add a pop-up ad to your page to entice the customer with exclusive deals. Here is an exquisite design from Black Friday Large Rectangle Ad Templates. 

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5. Cart Value Boosting Ideas

For Black Friday, you can boost the cart value to encourage customers to buy more. To do this, you can upsell pop-ups with real-time suggestions, add small add-on items just before checkout, or create smart bundles that offer higher perceived value.

Further, you can also advertise on the website’s leaderboard to promote the sale. Here is one such design from Black Friday Leaderboard Ad Templates.

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Black Friday Email Marketing Ideas

Goals: Drive maximum opens, clicks, and conversions by delivering timely, compelling, and action-focused email content that pushes customers toward faster purchase decisions.

Black Friday email marketing strategy is all about grabbing attention and guiding customers along the purchasing journey. Across all other channels, customers most often expect to learn about offers via email.

There are many ways to do it, like teaser countdowns, VIP access, flash-sale offers, and more. Check out these marketing ideas along with relevant Black Friday email marketing examples.

1. Offer Exclusive Discounts and Product Visuals through Email

Highlight the products that are exclusively discounted in Black Friday email campaigns. While doing so, you can also add curated combinations for the most popular picks or tailor options based on customer behaviour. Remember to add bold text and high-quality visuals as shown here.

If you want banners with professional designs, you can pick from DocHipo Black Friday Email Banner Templates. Here is a stunning design for you.

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Further, you can categorize products for a sorted display, like in this Etsy email.

2. Multi-Phase Storytelling Emails

You can also send multiple emails at different times for Black Friday, as pre-sale and post-sale phases. To begin, you can send emails with teasers and the big reveal date. The Bonus deal can follow these mails and culminate in the final call.

To illustrate, here is a last-call email from Udemy reminding customers to grab the offer, with a CTA.

If you want to post limited-time offers, this bold red banner is perfect for Black Friday marketing.

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3. Interactive Emails

Make your emails enjoyable by adding games and interactive elements. These can be scratch-to-reveal deals, puzzles, or lucky draws for rewards. When emails are flooding with Black Friday offers, it’s a great way to engage customers.

4. “Never-Before-Seen Deal” Announcement

“Never-Before-Seen Deal” Announcement emails work brilliantly during Black Friday because they instantly spark curiosity, exclusivity, and urgency. This message positions your offer as something truly special, a once-a-year or first-ever discount customers can’t afford to miss. 

Pair it with a clean hero banner, a big reveal moment, and a countdown timer to build anticipation. Keep the CTA strong and straightforward: “Unlock the Deal” or “Reveal the Offer.”

5. Exclusive Deal Drop with Special Code

Build excitement among your existing subscribers with special Black Friday coupon codes that motivate them to make a purchase. You can also create special offers only for cold subscribers to catch their attention. 

To create urgency, mention how long the sale lasts and add a code, like this email banner with an intriguing design.

Here is a similar Email banner template that you can use to post offers with Black Friday coupon codes. 

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Black Friday Social Media Marketing Ideas

Goals: Maximize visibility, engagement, and conversions by using high-impact, fast-moving social content that builds hype, showcases irresistible deals, and drives followers directly to shop during the Black Friday sale.

Social media marketing is essential for Black Friday advertising. Although there are plenty of Black Friday social media posts you can post, strategy is the backbone of successful marketing. Here are some posts you can strategically use to promote Black Friday.

1. Social Treasure Hunt Campaign for Black Friday

Instead of simply announcing discounts, you drop clues, riddles, hidden codes, or secret product hints in Stories, Reels, captions, or comment sections. Users must follow the trail, like watching multiple posts, visiting your website, checking highlights, or engaging with creators. 

To encourage them, you can offer special rewards like exclusive discount codes, early access links, bonus freebies, or limited-time flash deals. 

2. Comment-to-Win Black Friday Giveaways

It’s the fastest way to increase engagement and create buzz on your social media post. The mechanic is simple and addictive: ask followers to comment with an answer, tag a friend, or share their wish-list item to enter the giveaway. 

You can theme it around your Black Friday deals, such as “Comment your must-grab product,” “Guess the discount,” or “Tag someone who needs this sale!” This format encourages a viral loop, thus, perfect for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and even YouTube.

3. Offer Products in Black Friday Deals Bundles

When you offer complementary products that customers need together, it increases the likelihood of purchase. To do this, pair the products in bundles depending on utility. For instance, you can pair skincare products based on treatments and routines, as in this example. Plus, you can offer early sign-up options.

Here is a template to post bundle products for Black Friday from Black Friday Square Post Templates.

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4. User-Generated Haul Photos after Black Friday Shopping

When you reward users for posting, your products reach out through organic content as social proof. Encourage shoppers to share photos or videos of their purchases, including their “Black Friday haul,” and tag your brand for a chance to be featured or rewarded. 

These posts feel real, relatable, and highly persuasive, helping potential buyers see the value and excitement through the eyes of authentic customers. 

5. Social-Only Promo Codes for Existing Followers

Social-Only promo codes create instant urgency and exclusivity during your Black Friday push by offering discounts available only to your social media audience. These exclusive codes make followers feel like VIP insiders while boosting clicks, saves, shares, and fast conversions.

To do this, you can share unique codes in Instagram Stories, TikTok videos, reels, or pinned posts to reward engaged followers and drive direct traffic.

If you want to upload a similar post with a promo code, here is a template design from Black Friday Square Post Templates that you can use.

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6. “Predict the Price Drop” Contests

Hosting a contest adds suspense and fun to your Black Friday campaign. You can get massive engagement by letting followers guess the discount or final sale price of a specific product. For this, post a teaser image or short video of the item, hint at a massive price drop, and invite users to share their predictions in the comments. 

The closest guess wins a prize, like early access, an extra discount, or even the product for free on Black Friday. It works perfectly for fashion, electronics, beauty, gadgets, and lifestyle brands looking for a playful, high-engagement contest format.

7. Announce Sale with a Seasonal Makeover of Headers 

Transform your page headers announcing the Black Friday sale so that your visitors can instantly check out the offers. You can do this on many platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, X, etc. Pair up the design with bold typography and highlight the discount offer.

If you want a ready-to-use design with all the necessary elements, check out Black Friday X Header Templates. Here is one such template design for you.

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Black Friday Promotion Ideas with Paid Advertising

Goals: Drive maximum reach, high-intent traffic, and fast conversions by using data-driven, time-sensitive paid ad campaigns that highlight value, urgency, and personalized product interest throughout the Black Friday sale period.

Black Friday paid ads need to be bold, precise, and conversion-focused to cut through the noise during the busiest shopping week of the year. Here are a few ideas that can help you stand out when brands are rigorously advertising.

1. Multi-Ad Story Sequencing for Black Friday Sale

The goal of this Black Friday paid advertising format is to build curiosity and lead to purchase through desire. To do this, you can build anticipation for the viewers with big reveals and price drops. It works well when paired with quick and snappy carousel shots of all the big offers.

Visual storytelling is the key to building the intrigue. So, ensure that you pair the text and graphics well to construct a narrative.

2. Dynamic Ads for Frequent Visitors

Using information about consumer behaviour, you can target frequent visitors who have abandoned their carts or added products to them. You can target such customers with special discounts and price-drop promotions to encourage their purchase decisions.

If you want ready-to-use Black Friday ads, you can pick one from Black Friday Facebook Ads. Here is a template design for you.

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3. Creative Ad Formats with Interactive Graphics

Creative ad formats help brands stand out during Black Friday by moving beyond standard static posts and tapping into interactive, immersive, and high-impact visuals that grab attention instantly. 

By mixing motion graphics, personalized elements, bold typography, and interactive touchpoints, brands can create an ad experience that feels fresh. These fast-paced Black Friday sale advertisements seem impossible to scroll past, driving higher clicks, conversions, and overall campaign impact. 

5. Black Friday Gift Guide Ads

This format is a digital gift guide customers can browse instantly, helping them discover more options, compare effortlessly, and get into holiday-shopping mode. Packed with inspiration, variety, and irresistible deals at a glance, these ads act like mini gift catalogs, turning your Black Friday promotions into a curated, scroll-worthy shopping experience.

If you want a stunning design to post Black Friday ads, here is one that you can use with minimal tweaking.

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6. Black Friday Sale Extended Ads

It’s obvious to leverage the following weekend after Black Friday, as many brands extend their sales. You can do it too. Inform your audience about the extension period and give a glimpse into the offers and products.

Black Friday Retail (Offline) Marketing Ideas

Goals: To increase foot traffic, extend in-store dwell time, and drive higher conversions by turning offline shopping into an engaging, immersive, and deal-rich experience.

Black Friday retail marketing thrives when your offline store becomes an experience. It feels fast-paced, discovery-driven, and full of unexpected value. Here are some ideas to create a buzz with offline marketing.

1. Queue-Attraction Displays

Put up posters and banners outside the shops featuring attractive deals and offers to attract local shoppers. While doing so, you can add variety to your posters by using plenty of Black Friday poster ideas. Further, you can also add a QR code to these designs to encourage audience interaction with the boards. 

Want a stunning poster design for Black Friday market store? Here is one that you can use.

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2. In-Store Treasure Maps

Gamifying the retail experience can make shopping much more enjoyable. Especially when you add something like in-store treasure maps, it can increase in-store movement and help customers explore more aisles, boosting overall basket size. 

Moreover, you can make navigation easier by adding a QR code for the in-store map that leads customers to the sale section.

3. Doorbuster Event Passes

If you are wondering, ‘How do you attract customers on Black Friday to your shop?’, you can opt for a doorbuster event and offer early-access passes. These passes can be handed out to the first few customers in line or given to loyalty members beforehand, making people feel special and rewarded for arriving early. 

Each pass can include perks like limited-time discounts, priority checkout, exclusive bundles, or early access to high-demand items. 

4. Shop-in-Shop Black Friday Booths

Turn regular retail spaces into high-impact mini-zones dedicated to specific themes, brands, or deal categories, creating an immersive shopping hotspot within your store. These booths are among the most effective Black Friday retail ideas for malls and department stores.

Plus, you can feature curated product displays, limited-edition bundles, interactive demos, and bold Black Friday visuals that instantly catch attention. Here is a poster design to help you grab attention at Black Friday booths.

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5. “Buy In-Store, Redeem Online” Hybrid Offers

Combine offline and online offers to enhance customer convenience. This way, you can lead customers from offline to an online funnel, giving them the flexibility to unlock digital perks with an offline purchase. 

Shoppers who buy in-store receive a unique QR code, coupon, or digital token that they can redeem later on your website or app for exclusive discounts, add-on products, loyalty bonuses, or early access to Cyber Monday deals.

6. Video Screens Showcasing Countdowns and Hourly Deals

Ever wondered how to announce Black Friday deals that nobody can ignore? For this, digital signage is an excellent way to communicate your Black Friday offers with countdowns and hourly deals. You can display limited-time offers and hourly-changing deals to create urgency among viewers.

Black Friday Etsy and Marketplace Seller Marketing Ideas

Goals: To help Etsy and marketplace sellers increase product visibility, attract high-intent Black Friday shoppers, and maximize conversions through strategic offers, persuasive listings, and visually compelling promotions. 

If you are wondering how to sell on Black Friday, it’s a goldmine for Etsy and other marketplace sellers. With the right strategy, you can help your shop skyrocket in both visibility and sales. You can do a lot to promote your Black Friday sale.

1. Seasonal Etsy Shop Makeover

Transform your Etsy banner into an eye-catching billboard with a seasonal makeover. You can announce your discount offers, list themed thumbnails, or add a CTA to direct traffic. To personalize it, you can use your signature brand colors. Here is an inspiration for you.

If you want a ready-to-use Etsy banner design, here is the perfect one for Black Friday.

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2. Limited-Edition Black Friday Product Drops

Create urgency with limited-edition and exclusive items in small batches. You can get creative with your banner and add a countdown to the sale’s end. While doing so, remember to add a relevant CTA so customers can make a purchase smoothly.

3. Bundle Listings on Etsy

Creating bundle listings on Etsy is one of the most innovative Black Friday tactics to boost your average order value while giving shoppers a deal they can’t resist. Highlight the total value versus the bundle price to make the savings instantly obvious. Add strong visuals, clear descriptions, and urgency-driven wording to push quick decisions.

Here is an arresting Etsy banner template to announce Black Friday sale.

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4. Etsy-Specific Coupon Strategies for Black Friday

Attract an audience with Etsy coupon strategies. You can compare the shop-wide prices of the items against the Etsy prices after applying the coupon code.

Use percentage-off coupons for your bestsellers, send exclusive discount codes to people who have favorited your items, and set up “Thank You” coupons that automatically go out after each purchase to encourage repeat orders.

Creative Content Marketing Ideas for Black Friday

Goals: To stand out with unconventional marketing campaigns and leave a mark. It’s more about creating an unforgettable impression and showing what your brand truly stands for.

If you are still unsure how to do a Black Friday campaign that can create a buzz, check out some out-of-the-box Black Friday creatives that brands have used for marketing.

1. Turn Black Friday into Green Friday

Ever heard about Green Friday? Black Friday has a negative impact on the planet, as the ‘shop till you drop’ mentality leads to enormous wastage. You can use Green Friday to promote conscious shopping with sustainable practices in mind. 

Not only is it ethical, but it also portrays your brand as one that really cares about the environment. If your brand image aligns with Green Friday’s values, you can run a campaign across all channels.

2. Sell Your Success Story

When brands are selling products, you can show why and how you performed around this time. Just keep it clean and concise with all the facts and data. For inspiration, you can take this example that hooks you with the first slide and takes you through the set of achievements.

3. Give Your Customers Some Reality Checks

With every passing year, Black Friday takes on greater meaning than just superficial price drops and offers. When you choose to keep transparency, it builds trust for your customers. 

That’s what The Ordinary did. The brand dropped some truth bombs about Black Friday sales and ‘shrinkflation’. The idea of providing real value that lasts longer aligns perfectly with the brand’s vision.

4. Encourage Customers to Act with Buy Back Friday Offers 

When all the brands want customers to buy more, IKEA flipped the script on Black Friday. It encouraged its customers to declutter by offering to buy back their furniture at 50% off.  IKEA proved that Black Friday marketing can be much more than discounts.

How DocHipo Helps You Turn Any Marketing Idea into Reality in Minutes

We have seen plenty of ideas that will help you run Black Friday marketing campaigns. However, bringing ideas to life and executing your vision takes time and expertise. That’s why you need an all-in-one design tool to design everything within minutes.

Introducing DocHipo. It’s an AI-powered design tool that streamlines your brand’s design process. To see how DocHipo takes the hassle out of designing, here are some highlights of the software.

1. Eye-catching Black Friday Templates for All Marketing Purposes

Whether it’s posters for retail marketing or online posts, you can get every type of Black Friday sale template in one place. With an assortment of libraries for social media posts and ads, you can design posts for any platform, be it Facebook, Instagram, or X. 

On top of that, you can grab attention with stunning Black Friday advertisement templates with leaderboard and large rectangle ad templates, perfect for website banners & remarketing campaigns.

DocHipo also offers curated banner templates for Etsy, X, and email marketing. With these, you can catch attention all at once while announcing your Black Friday Sale.

Create Black Friday marketing materials with DocHipo.

2. AI Writer for Persuasive Copy and Headline in Seconds

For Black Friday marketing, you need crisp, impactful text copy that highlights your offers. With DocHipo AI Writer, you can generate Black Friday ad copy, ideas, headlines, social media captions, taglines, body text, and much more within seconds.

All you have to do is describe the text that you wish to create and select a tone from various options like professional, friendly, excited, dramatic, funny, etc. 

Moreover, you can use Black Friday text frames to highlight the offers within the designs. 

Learn more about the AI Writer in DocHipo with this video.

3. AI Background Remover for Polished Product Photos

To seamlessly incorporate your product photos with the designs, you can use the background remover. 

With this, you can remove the background of any image with just a click.

4. Brand Kit for Quick On-Brand Designing 

Let your designs speak for your brand with high recall by incorporating brand elements. Store all the brand assets like logos, colors, fonts, and images within the Brand Kit for quick access every time you design.

To bring the season’s cheer, you can apply the Black Friday color themes to the design and switch the entire palette with a click.

Discover the Color Themes feature in DocHipo.

Explore more about using the Brand Kit.

5. Vast Library of High Quality Design Assets

With DocHipo, you can access a rich library of high-quality stock images and videos. All you have to do is search for the type of image you want, and you can filter your results by color and orientation.

Plus, you can filter stock videos by orientation: square, horizontal, or vertical. Along with these, you also get in-house vector graphics, such as icons, stickers, illustrations, animations, etc., to revamp your designs.

6. Layered Animation Editing Capabilities to Create Dynamic Designs

Turn your static images into dynamic designs by adding animations to every element. Plus, the layered editing feature makes it easy to customize every aspect.

Here is the result of the animation.

7. Smart Resize Feature to Repurpose Designs

With Smart Resize, you can use the same design for several other platforms. Once you select the page size option in the editor’s toggle, you can switch to a variety of preset standard sizes or customize your own.

While resizing to a custom size, you can choose any unit, such as cm, mm, or pixels, and resize the document in seconds.

Explore the Smart Resize feature in DocHipo.

Final Words

We have seen plenty of Black Friday marketing ideas for different platforms and formats. Whatever you choose, strategy is the key to reaching your target audience. That’s why pick ideas that work for your brand and fit your budget.

Once you have offered discounts on Black Friday, you can further extend them on certain items through the weekend. Likewise, you can gradually transition to the Cyber Monday sale, keeping your audience hooked.

Whatever ideas you adopt, you need to promote Black Friday sales with attention-grabbing visuals. To ace the game of stunning designs, you can try DocHipo as your ally. With numerous templates for the occasion and advanced AI features, you can create eye-catching designs within minutes. Sign up for DocHipo and develop designs that help you sell more!

FAQs

How to advertise Black Friday deals?

You can advertise Black Friday deals on both offline and online channels. Here are some ideas that you can try:

• Offer early access to loyal customers.
• Create a special collection for the occasion.
• Create urgency with a flash sale.
• Offer compelling deals with bundles, packages, and coupon codes.
• Collaborate with influencers
• Run ads on various social media platforms
• Inform the local audience with posters.
• Gamify promotions to make them interesting

When to start marketing for Black Friday?

You can start marketing for Black Friday at least 8-10 weeks in advance, or as early as early November.