How to create a Black Friday social media marketing strategy

Black Friday is almost here. But don’t expect busy shopping malls and crowded parking lots. Your customers will be looking for deals online and on social media.

According to the Q4 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey, 80% of social users plan to use social as much if not more to find gifts this year compared to 2024. Social has become a go-to destination for discovering gifts, making purchases and seeking customer service.

Data from Sprout’s Social Listening tool shows there were more than 73,000 posts on X discussing Black Friday, holiday shopping, holiday deals and the holiday season from August 11 to September 11, 2025. Message volume is also up more than 200% from conversations on the same topics in 2023.

So, if you want to make the most of the holiday shopping surge this year, start planning your marketing strategy now. In this guide, we walk through how to build effective Black Friday social media campaigns this Q4.

5 types of Black Friday social media posts (+ examples)

Spurred by the growth of online shopping and social commerce, Black Friday has become a multi-day event, including Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. And according to the data, extending holiday shopping is increasing consumer spending. In 2024, Americans’ online Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) spending hit US$10.8 billion on the Friday alone. This figure represents a 10% increase from online spending in 2023, indicating that more consumers are turning to e-commerce to meet their holiday shopping needs.

According to DHL, the majority (71%) of shoppers are motivated to spend during this period by discounts and savings. Per the brand’s 2025 E-Commerce Trends Report, shoppers are buying the following products the most (meaning businesses in these retail segments could see the biggest spikes in sales):

• Electronics (37%)
• Clothing (32%)
• Footwear (26%)
• Sport, leisure and hobby items (22%)
• Cosmetics and beauty products (22%)
• Toys or games (22%)
• Household products (16%)

With that said, travel and hospitality is an area of growing interest among shoppers, particularly in North America. This is largely thanks to the addition of Travel Tuesday to the BFCM weekend lineup, which often sees an uptick in hotel, cruise and airline bookings. Per McKinsey & Company 2024 data, the search interest for the term “Travel Tuesday” increased by more than 500% from 2021–2023.

To create a winning Black Friday marketing strategy, it’s crucial to tap into the power of social. Here are different types of Black Friday social media posts that have worked for other brands to inspire your campaign planning.

1. Influencer collaborations

Partner with influencers to create tailored content for specific demographics. From fashion lovers to tech enthusiasts, influencers usually have niche audiences. If your Black Friday deals are perfect for a particular type of customer, working with influencers who already speak to that crowd is a no-brainer.

Best of all, there are influencers to suit every budget. Small businesses with modest budgets can embrace micro-influencer marketing, while large companies can splurge on mega-influencers.

For example, Alix Earle is hugely popular with young women on social media for her beauty, fashion and lifestyle content. Earle often features her loved ones—including her NFL player boyfriend and fellow influencer sister—in her videos, giving her 7.5 million TikTok followers an intimate look at her life.

Amazon capitalised on this style of content by partnering with her for a Black Friday post. In it, she and her sister, Ashtin, unbox gifts they purchased for each other from Amazon, including skincare, footwear and homewares.

2. Giveaways and contests

Grab consumer attention by giving away free merchandise. Create a social media giveaway or contest to improve your engagement and supercharge the buzz around your brand.

Giveaways and contests boost your follower count, convert leads, amplify brand awareness and increase loyalty.

Founded by Irish makeup artist Keilidh Cashell, KASH Beauty specializes in high-quality, cruelty-free cosmetics. Tapping into the Black Friday hype, Cashell ran a giveaway for KASH customers. The rules were simple: spend €50 for a chance to win a range of prizes, such as a Sol de Janeiro fragrance set, a Brown Thomas voucher and Apple AirPods.

Not only did this generate buzz around KASH Beauty’s Black Friday offers, but it helped the brand spike sales simultaneously.

3. Loyalty programs

Want to incentivize your audience to return to your website or shop with you after Black Friday ends? Promote your rewards or loyalty program. These programs typically offer discounts, coupons or early access to repeat shoppers—all of which encourage brand loyalty.

In 2024, Lindt Canada offered MyLindt Rewards members early access to its Black Friday deals, letting the brand tap into the holiday hype while broadening its rewards membership.

4. Omnichannel activations

When consumers shop on social, they don’t stick to a single platform. According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, consumers make most of their direct purchases on Facebook, followed by TikTok and Instagram. However, this varies for Gen Z, who are most likely to buy on TikTok.

With this in mind, it’s crucial to adopt a multichannel marketing approach to meet your customers exactly where they are in every stage of their journey.

During Black Friday, use omnichannel marketing by creating a seamless customer experience—from your social platforms and chatbots to email strategy and customer care.

Share your promotions across channels and use different social platform tools to captivate your audience. Prebiotic soda brand Poppi did exactly that to promote its Black Friday sale in 2024, which saw its 12-packs discounted by 33%. The brand spotlighted the sale on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Threads.

While all the posts conveyed the same information, Poppi tailored the length of the caption copy and visuals (or, in the case of Threads, lack thereof) to suit each platform.

5. Community-inspired posts

A brand community comprises people who have an emotional connection to your brand. When you reach your community effectively, you increase brand loyalty and even encourage customers to become brand evangelists.

Take a cue from your community when creating your Black Friday content. Get to know their other favorite brands, personal values and how they spend their holidays. Use these insights to guide your social content development.

On GivingTuesday—the Tuesday after Black Friday when people make donations to charitable organizations—Partridge Creek Farm worked to raise money to buy the land one of its community gardens sits on. In the months leading up to the day, the business interviewed staff and garden members, asking what the space meant to them. Partridge then shared these stories across social media, tapping into community voices to deepen the emotional connection with its audience.

7 Black Friday social media marketing tips

When developing a Black Friday social media marketing strategy, you need to plan ahead. Now is the time to get your content calendar in order, take stock of what’s been successful for you this year (metrics-wise) and think about how you will stand out in a swarm of other Black Friday social media campaigns.

Follow these tips to execute your Black Friday social-first marketing strategy successfully.

1. Encourage opt-ins and new followers

Start building awareness for your brand by engaging new potential followers and email subscribers. Use an early-bird special to entice customers to follow your social accounts or to opt-in to your email newsletter for a unique Black Friday discount code.

The takeaway

Focus on growing your customer base long before Black Friday so your content can reach a wider audience.

2. A/B test different creative strategies

Kick off your Black Friday campaigns early to A/B test your different creative options. For example, analyze how a short-form video performs compared to an infographic with the same message.

When it grows closer to Black Friday, go with the creative format that will bring the most engagement, awareness and positive sentiment.

The takeaway

Using a data-driven approach to guide your Black Friday marketing can help you yield better results (e.g. more engagements and conversions) by ensuring you use the creative that resonates with your audience.

3. Partner with creators and influencers

Creators and influencers can help you generate more engagement, reach new audiences and strengthen your community on social this Black Friday. Search for creators that resonate with your audience and start reaching out to them as soon as possible to build the most impactful campaigns.

Finding and vetting these creators is made easier with Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger). Our AI-powered semantic search capabilities take a closer look at the context of influencer content, making it easier to assess influencers’ topical alignment with your brand and audience.

For example, say you work in the travel industry and want to partner with influencers to promote your Black Friday holiday package deals. Rather than manually hunting for creators with a travel niche, you can simply search “Europe travel vlog” or “budget travel tips”.

Sprout Influencer Marketing will then show creators who explore relevant themes and topics in their content, even if those phrases don’t appear verbatim. This makes it easier to find a broader range of influencers, including those you might’ve overlooked with standard search filters.

The takeaway

Align your Black Friday influencer content with what your audience cares most about to drive engagement and foster trust.

4. Prepare your profiles

One of the easiest ways to prepare for Black Friday is to get your profiles ready. An up-to-date profile is essential to converting viewers and followers into buyers and brand superfans.

People will first notice your profile photos (both headers and profile pics). Consider updating your pictures with a holiday-inspired or sale-focused theme.

Consider also adding links to your profile bios (Instagram, X, TikTok) or the About sections (Facebook, LinkedIn) to your Black Friday promos.

The takeaway

Refreshing visuals and links across your social media profiles can help grab user attention and entice them to click—essential for increasing Black Friday sales.

5. Automate elements of your social strategy

Expect to ramp up your customer care strategy and content production as you enter the holiday season. Customer care is particularly important. While it may be one of the busiest times of year, it can’t fall to the wayside—if it does, you might just lose your customers. According to The 2025 Index, 73% of social users agree if a brand doesn’t reply to them on social, they’ll buy from a competitor.

Here’s how you can use  a social media management platform like Sprout to level up your customer service:

• Quick, 24/7 support: Program chatbots to provide instant, round-the-clock customer support—with no need for human intervention.
• Case classification: Immediately identify which customer queries need manual responses with automatic case categorization.
• Personalization: Use Enhance by AI Assist to detect the sentiment of inbound messages and align the tone of your response with that of the customer (i.e. more friendly, confident or professional, depending on the context).
• Compliance capabilities: Ensure your team provides consistent, compliant care during every interaction with features like Blocked Words, Secure Forms, Data Masking and more.

You can also use Sprout’s automation and AI marketing resources to manage other elements of your social media strategy, scale smoothly and prevent burnout:

• Content production: Generate scroll-stopping captions and accessible image alt texts in seconds to free up your team’s time for strategy.
• Approvals: Create automated approval workflows to keep your social media approvals running smoothly and efficiently. Automatically loop in relevant team members, get the green light to post content and send messages, and establish approval timelines.
• Scheduling: Use Sprout’s Optimal Send Times to publish your content at times that will garner more impressions and engagement.

These tools will help you seamlessly and effectively execute in advance and during the big sale.

The takeaway

With the help of automations and AI, social media management tools empower your team to provide quick and personalized customer care, optimize content development and build stronger social strategies.

6. Create different promotions for different audiences

If you serve one specific, hyper-niche audience, skip to the next section. But, if you have several audience types, you should create different Black Friday social media posts for each market segment.

For example, department stores should create posts highlighting holiday deals geared toward different audiences, whether it’s a customer interested in home decor and electronics or looking for clothing and outdoor gear.

The takeaway

Tailor your Black Friday marketing to your audience segments (including their interests and product preferences) to enhance relevance and, in turn, drive engagement.

7. Measure your campaign’s impact

Creating a reporting strategy for your Black Friday campaign is key to knowing what worked and what needs tweaking. A campaign performance report should provide insights on reach, engagement and conversions to see if your marketing efforts hit the mark.

According to Sprout’s 2025 Impact of Social Media Marketing Report, the latter two metrics are key indicators of social ROI among social media marketing leaders. Other important metrics include revenue, efficiency and discoverability.

These insights will help you make smarter, data-driven decisions to optimize your budget and resources for next year.

The takeaway

It’s never too early to start planning future Black Friday campaigns. Draw insights from this year’s campaign data to refine your strategy, allocate resources more effectively and yield greater results in years to come.

Black Friday social media campaigns to inspire you

Take a look at these successful Black Friday social media campaigns to help get the ball rolling as you plan yours.

Gymshark

If there was ever a time to leverage the power of influencer marketing, it’s Black Friday—just ask Gymshark, a business that’s been doing it masterfully for years.

In 2024, the activewear brand generated buzz around its Black Friday sale by partnering with creators of all sizes across social platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

It sponsored influencer Vicky Plamenova’s try-on haul on YouTube, featuring some of the items that were going to be on sale during the promotion.

But the brand also participated in collaborations that more subtly promoted the sale in a tongue-in-cheek way, like McKenna Crisp’s TikTok.

In both ads, the creators also included their personal discount codes, giving viewers an extra incentive to shop.

The takeaway

While creating your own Black Friday social media posts is essential, partnering with influencers is a great addition to your strategy. Leverage the built-in trust these creators have with their audiences and translate it into sales. Using related strategies—such as discount codes—is also an effective tactic for boosting conversions.

Google

Black Friday with a purpose—that’s what Google has been championing for the last five years. Since 2020, the tech giant has put a unique spin on Black Friday social media campaigning in the form of Black-Owned Friday.

The initiative puts Black-owned businesses across a variety of industries—from beauty to wellness to food—front and center on Google’s socials. Rather than spotlighting its own sales to boost revenue, Google uses the holiday to encourage people to search, shop and support Black-owned brands, not just on Black Friday but every day of the year.

Google has partnered with beloved Black influencers and celebrities to bring the campaign to life, including Keke Palmer, Druski and GloRilla. And with each passing year, the impact of these creators and the campaign itself is becoming more prevalent.

In 2024, Black-Owned Friday received over 19.7 million video views across social platforms—a 35% YoY increase—and 218K engagements. The campaign also generated 27 press stories in major publications, broadening its reach and spiking Google’s brand awareness.

The takeaway

Black Friday isn’t only for promoting your own products, deals and offers. It can be an excellent opportunity to highlight your brand’s core values, which can cut through the holiday hype and straight to the heart of consumers who share your beliefs.

Bass Pro Shops

Sporting goods brand Bass Pro Shops is known for its down-to-earth, no-frills brand identity—and it maintained that voice in its Black Friday marketing.

In a series of videos posted to its TikTok account, the company had staff in-store performing walk-throughs and product demonstrations. In one video, a staff member shows how quickly a Bass Pro Shops lifejacket inflates while highlighting that it’s $20 off on Black Friday.

Bass Pro Shops also followed the best practice of updating the links in its bio, leading users directly to the sale products mentioned.

The takeaway

Your Black Friday campaign doesn’t need to be flashy to be effective. Keeping things simple, practical and directly tied to the value of your products can capture consumer attention and generate sales just as well.

Cards Against Humanity

It’s no surprise that one of the most unconventional Black Friday marketing campaigns came from one of the most unorthodox games. Known as the party game for horrible people, Cards Against Humanity is bold, irreverent and often downright random. Its Black Friday campaign can be described the same way.

Rather than discounting its games, the brand opted to introduce a brand-new product: a diamond potato. Yes, it was exactly what it sounds like: a diamond-studded potato.

The product’s absurdity was perfectly on brand for Cards Against Humanity. Not only did it playfully mock Black Friday mania, but it showcased the out-of-the-box humor the company is known for.

Plus, it generated revenue. People flocked to the website, selling out the limited-edition item—a powerful reminder that, in some cases, strangeness = sales.

The takeaway

Black Friday is a great opportunity for unorthodox stunts, whether in your messaging or products. Tapping into shock value or eccentricity can set you apart in a sea of discounts, deals and offers.

Plan (and schedule) your Black Friday social media posts

To prepare for the retail holiday, make sure your Black Friday social media campaign and customer care strategy are in place well before the end of November.

As you build your campaign, remember to reinforce your mission, align with your organization’s goals, make your creative count and schedule your content ahead of time.

For more resources to help you plan your holiday strategy, check out our insights about holiday retail social media data.