Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most anticipated sales of the year, and you surely don’t want to lose extra purchases. Brands that launch promo campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday leverage all possible channels to attract new customers and convert existing ones; social media platforms such as Instagram are no exception.
This article reveals tips and best practices for having your perfect Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign on Instagram and getting the most out of it.
When Are Black Friday & Cyber Monday in 2022?
To plan your fruitful campaign and fit it into your Instagram content calendar, you should know the sale's date several months prior to the actual day. Every year, Black Friday falls on Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. Cyber Monday is Monday after Thanksgiving.
đź’ˇIn 2022, Black Friday is on the 25th of November, and Cyber Monday is on the 28th of November.
Black Friday & Cyber Monday Instagram Campaign Best Practices
Now that you know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are approaching, it’s time to get ready and come up with campaign ideas.
Here’s our top advice on how you can get the most out of the Black Friday campaign this year.
Start Your Campaign Early
Don’t post the first Black Friday-related publication right on Black Friday; let your audience know about the sale a little beforehand. Thus you’ll ensure more potential customers learn about your campaign and make a purchase.
In addition, you can create a feeling of urgency and anticipation with your campaign. You can do so by adding stories or posts with a countdown, limited deal warning, and sneak peeks of your offer.
Plan Your Campaign in Advance
To make sure the campaign is running smoothly, pay attention to how organised it is. One step to do that is to prepare and plan your campaign content in advance and schedule it for publication beforehand. This will allow you to control your creatives, content stockpile, and sort your marketing priorities.
Tools like Combin Scheduler are perfect solutions for that. This free Instagram content planner allows you to schedule posts and stories to be automatically posted later or instantly publish the content. You can add a caption, link in bio, tag other users, repost, and add hashtags to your post.
Everything will go live on Instagram just like you prepared it in Combin Scheduler. Besides, Combin Scheduler lets you preview how your feed will look after you add the planned posts. You can change the layout by simply dragging and dropping posts in the in-app preview calendar.
Clearly State When Your Campaign Ends
This will not only create this anticipation vibe we mentioned above but also helps your customers understand when the promotion is no longer active. This will keep you safe from unpleasant surprises, such as unhappy customers who tried to use a promo code outside the stated dates. Not entirely, however, but still.
Similarly, if you want to prolong your Black Friday campaign to Cyber Monday, make it clear in your content.
Allocate Managers to Reply to Customers on Instagram
Poor customer service may affect sales, and all your efforts and even the most incredible ideas will be in vain. Excellent customer service, on the other hand, will come in handy and increase sales. But excellent customer service requires resources and the capacity to engage with customers and reply to their enquiries in DM.
đź’ˇHow to Set Up Auto Reply on Instagram Direct Messages
You can create posts or Highlights with the most frequently asked questions that your customers might ask, but that will not secure you from questions entirely. So make sure you have enough people to communicate with customers.
Leverage Instagram Targeting & Retargeting Ads
The earlier you’ll start the Black Friday campaign, the more time Instagram retargeting algorithms will have to reach their full potential and target the right audience. Retargeting ads will help you convert those who added an item to their cart but haven’t completed the purchase or those who visited your site.
Here’s our detailed guide on Instagram retargeting ads.
Attract influencers to your campaign
To gain extra reach, don’t count on your own Instagram page; leverage the power of influencers. Before the campaign starts, reach out to influencers who have a relevant audience and offer them to collaborate. The chances that they’ll accept it are high: an influencer will get paid or get your products with a discount, and you’ll obtain their audience.
💡Beyond that, Instagram allows users to discover items with shopping tags when they browse not only brands’ content but influencers’ as well. Creators tag your products in posts, and their followers go right to your Shop to browse them.
Black Friday & Cyber Monday Instagram Content Tips
The tips above are general practices that’ll help you squeeze everything out of the campaign. Now let’s dive deeper into content activities you might consider to attract more people to take part in your promo.
Giveaway
Giveaways mean that you give your customers presents for a certain action from their end: reposts, comments, challenge participation — the scenarios can be different. Giveaways are an excellent way to entertain and engage with your audience; the trick here is to make the giveaway present relevant. You shouldn’t give away items that have nothing to do with your brand, like iPhones, because you’ll attract an irrelevant audience who’s there for a prize, not for your brand.
Give away something you sell so that your current audience and buyers would be excited about the contest.
Gift Guide
In November, people usually start thinking about holiday shopping and presents for their loved ones. You can help your followers by creating a couple of gift guides with your products included. Share them early to give people time to choose.
Do you remember Instagram Guides, a content type the platform introduced a couple of years ago? You can create your gift guides in, well, Instagram Guides by compiling your bestsellers or new products.
💡What’s more, Instagram now allows users to shop right from Guides. Check our tutorial on Instagram shopping in 2022 to find out more.
Reels & Stories
These two are the most popular Instagram content features at the moment. If you rarely make Reels on Instagram, consider adding them into your Black Friday campaign to help people discover your products through the content they most enjoy. Try to include as many videos and stories in your Black Friday content calendar as you possibly can.
You’ve probably already guessed that Instagram surely allows people to shop right from Reels and stories: tag the products directly in your video; Reels viewers just need to swipe them up and browse the product in your Shop.
Create a Custom Hashtag for Black Friday or Cyber Monday
If you don’t want your posts to be lost in the pile of other publications tagged with #blackfriday, come up with a custom hashtag for your campaign. You can add your brand’s name to the hashtag and use it under each of your Black Friday-related posts to let people navigate easily.
Try the Combin solutions to help you prepare for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Instagram campaigns 👇