How To Build A B2B Black Friday Marketing Strategy That Works

After the uncertainty of the last couple of years, now is definitely not the time to chuck a discount out there and hope that it pays off.

Here’s 5 things that you should consider before embracing the holiday…

5 considerations for creating a Black Friday marketing strategy

1. What is the ultimate goal?

Yes, Black Friday is a sales holiday that brings new customers through the door.

But is there another KPI that is important to your business?

If so, ask yourself whether you really need to discount.

Knowing your overarching goal is key to the success of your Black Friday marketing strategy on this holiday.

2. Ask yourself, can you afford to discount?

If you do decide to discount, how much can you afford to offer on your product or service, without making a dent in your ROI?

Keep in mind that your costs will be higher than usual, especially when it comes to online advertising – CPCs are higher and there’s more people bidding!

3. If you can’t discount, what can you offer?

If things are a bit tight, but you’re still keen to piggyback on the holiday, think about what you can offer with as little cost to you as possible.

In a B2B world, your core offering is likely to be a long-term, high cost investment, which may not discount well (i.e. you could lose a lot of money, over a long period of time).

If your main product or service is something you just can’t afford to cut, then think:

• What about sideline offerings? Do you have any standalone services (i.e. expert support, strategy sessions, data bundles etc.) that better suit the Black Friday model?
• Can you apply a deal to only discount one element of your offering?
• Can you boost AOV and prevent churn by tailoring offers to customers instead of new customers?
• Can you segment one high-value portion of your prospects and target an offer to them, and them only?
• If you’re adding bigger discounts, can you upsell any of your other products and services on your Black Friday campaign landing pages?
• Can you offer something for free to build loyalty?

Lisa Alexander from PR Secrets did just this. She had a think about how she could stand out on Black Friday, which resulted in her giving away a marketing bootcamp for free.

“This campaign allowed people to experience my brand in a way typically not available to prospects. Forty-one percent of the people who requested the free session had never engaged with my brand previously.”

Lisa N. Alexander

4. Think about fulfilment

Another huge consideration for participating in Black Friday is whether you have the (wo)manpower to deal with an influx of users 🦸🏾

• Do you need to automate your support?
• Are your training guides and help materials up-to-scratch and in place for an increase in questions?
• If you’re offering an exclusive new product or service, do you have product education in place?

5. Think: is Black Friday the right day for you?

According to Henry Clifford-Jones of The Drum

“B2B brands in the US may not get very far with targeting professional audiences around Black Friday since [in some states] it’s a public holiday, and most professionals will be at home with their families.”

With this in mind, ask yourself: "Is Black Friday definitely the right day for me to be launching my offer?"

Some brands enjoy less competition and have been successful in building traction early on, while others surprise and delight their customers by extending their sale beyond the shopping weekend.

The Oberlo team think that the latter strategy can be very effective:

“Do this last-minute or when your competitors have ended their sales. When customers see you’re the only [one] offering them a second chance to save, they’re more likely to buy from your brand. However, make sure to associate a deadline with an extension. [This will create] a sense of urgency.”

Decided a Black Friday marketing strategy is right for you?

Once you’ve considered all of these questions, and are happy with the answers, you can get going with building your B2B Black Friday campaign.

Here are 5 more practical tips for making it a success…

1. Create deal content that hits the mark

What do your customers find engaging around Black Friday? What are they most receptive to?

Get to know them a little better. Start by jumping into the Keyword Tool to find out what kinds of things they search for.

In this instance, we’ve typed in "Black Friday Software".

As a SAAS business, this is the kind of thing we think our customers would search to find software like BuzzSumo on Black Friday.

With the Keyword Tool, we can see whether our keyword expectations match reality.

They do! And we also find a bunch of longer-tail keywords ideas related to our topic in the "Similar keywords" tab.

With 170 searches per month, and a CPC of $2.55 ‘Black Friday software deals’ looks like a great option.

Checking the context of a keyword is also super important.

A quick look at the Question Analyzer helps us to confirm this keyword is the right focus for us, as many of the queries appearing on forums and online communities are from customers searching for Black Friday SAAS deals.

Make a mental note to bank some questions for later – answering them will help you promote your deal via a standalone blog post linking back to your deal page.

In our 2022 B2B content marketing research, we found that FAQ content is one of the most link-attracting forms of B2B content on average – earning 5 links apiece – so creating FAQ content is a great way to drum up interest in your deal.

When you’ve found your focus, take it over to the Content Analyzer to see how your customers are already engaging with content around this topic on social.

Once you’re there, add the B2B filter to prioritize the most relevant content.

From this we worked out that a deal compilation guide was the most popular piece of Black Friday content for "Black Friday software deals".

In this case, it came from Entrepreneur.com.

With this insight, we might also consider creating our own deal-based advertorial guide, featuring our offer alongside other complementary deals.

2. Promote your deal to specific customers

Is there a certain type of customer you really want to target this Black Friday?

Why not find out where they’re already seeing mentions of you, and place your deal on that site?

This will help you be more selective in your discounts, and keep costs to a minimum.

Here's couple of ways to do that...

1. Set up brand alerts

Setting up a Brand Alert with a relevant keyword modifier will help you find mentions that have the potential to drive your target customers to you.

For example, imagine at BuzzSumo we were targeting the SEO audience.

We’d start off by heading to our Monitoring Tools, setting up a Brand Alert for "BuzzSumo", and adding the keyword modifier of "SEO".

This would show us all articles that mention our brand, and the keyword "SEO".

Then we can just sort by Total Engagement to find the content that's driven the most interest.

In this case, the best article comes from Search Engine Journal.

• Published recently ✅
• Good engagement ✅
• Tool mention ✅
• Relates to our target customer (SEO audience) ✅
• Strong domain authority ✅

This could make for a good link to our Black Friday offer.

The next step would be to reach out to the author or publication editor, and ask if they'd mention our deal with a link back to our deal page.

But remember: SWIFT (So What's In it For Them?)!

In this case, it's the value our deal will bring their reader.

As with all outreach, there's no guarantee of this happening, but it could open up a discussion and lead to other opportunities (ie. sponsorships, content partnerships etc.)

If you don't try, you'll never know!

Set up keyword alerts

Remember the keyword discovery process earlier on? This can inform the keyword alerts you set up.

Your keywords don’t always have to be Black Friday specific to return a good campaign placement opportunity.

For example, at BuzzSumo, we might want to set up a keyword alert for "SEO tools", and contact publishers to request a mention of our B2B Black Friday offer in their tool guides.

Customers searching for "Tools", "Software", "Deals" or more product / service specific keywords often have a higher intent to purchase.

Setting up alerts around these keywords is a great way to find link opportunities for your Black Friday B2B offer, without having to spend a dime.

Get your alerts sent straight to your inbox, so you’re notified of new promotion opportunities as and when they’re published.

Optimize existing referrals

See which referrals are most likely to convert on Black Friday, by checking your historical referral traffic in a tool like Google Analytics.

Which sites have driven the most opportunities in the past? Can you partner with them in some way this holiday?

3. Create your deal content far in advance of peak purchase

If you’re planning on taking part in Black Friday every year, getting your year-round "Deals" landing page up and running in advance will please Google, and put you in prime position.

Treat your B2B "Deals" page as a pillar for your most valuable keywords, and link to it from any other related cluster content.

In some cases, internal links can be more important than backlinks, so make sure you’re using your focus keywords as anchor text in cluster pages, to direct authority to the pillar page and avoid content cannibalization.

What you can include on your B2B Black Friday pillar page:

• Answer FAQs discovered in the Question Analyzer Tool to drive traffic to your page
• Put your main deal / offering front and centre
• Upsell some complementary full-price products and services
• Create a sense of urgency with clear deadlines and countdown timers

As well as being top of the SERPs, having your B2B deal page ready in advance means you can showcase your offer early, build interest in advance of peak purchase and set up ads before costs have skyrocketed.

4. Spy on your competitors' Black Friday content

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, on Black Friday the competition is fierce, and the stakes are high.

It’s vital you get your content and your message right.

One way you can do this is by examining your B2B competitors’ Black Friday content in the Content Analyzer.

Just enter their domain followed by the keyword "Black Friday".

If they've created Black Friday specific articles, you'll be able to examine their engagement and think about what you can do to overtake them.

Can you create a more engaging content format?

Create a more detailed guide?

Maybe even prove the value of your Black Friday offer with a customer case study?

You're bound to find some new ideas here to fuel your Black Friday strategy.

5. Partner with Influencers

Finding authentic influencers to promote your B2B brand is a creative way to kickstart your Black Friday offer.

Think about creating content where your thought-leader test-drives your most popular service or product, and shares a discount code with their viewers.

This is an awesome way to get new audiences engaged with your brand.

To find relevant influencers in BuzzSumo, you can just head to the Twitter Influencer tool.

In our example, we were looking for SEO influencers, so we entered “SEO” into a Profile Includes search.

Adding quotation marks helps you to hone in on that keyword alone.

This is especially useful to use when you’re searching for multiple keywords, and want to see the exact match phrase in your influencer search results.

We added a couple more filters to this search to make it extra specific, including a Location Filter for influencers based in ‘New York’, and an Activity Filter to eliminate broadcasters from our search results, and hone in on active influencers.