December 4, 2025
How to Build a Winning Black Friday Marketing Strategy with Influencers in 7 Steps
Black Friday 2025 was huge and 2026 is set to be even bigger.
It used to be the exclusive battleground of major retailers, but consumers expect almost every brand and retailer to offer them something special around Black Friday. Yet with every digital and physical storefront filled with slashed prices and flagship products, how are you going to get heard?
While traditional ad channels are packed to the gills, influencers offer direct, personalised and often exclusive routes to specific audiences. Their reach, and the trust placed in them, is your path to the conversion rates you want this Black Friday.
Time is of the essence at this time of year, so we won’t waste yours. Here’s our 7-step approach to leveraging influencers to drive performance, awareness, and conversions during one of the most competitive shopping periods of the year (followed up by extra tips from our experts and some top case studies from the last few years).
Contents
- 7-Step Black Friday Influencer Marketing Strategies ->
- Why Influencers Are Critical for Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy ->
- Timing Your Black Friday Influencer Campaign ->
- High-Converting Content Formats for Black Friday ->
- Crafting Irresistible Offers ->
- Aligning stock and messaging ->
- Black Friday Influencer Marketing Campaigns ->
- Selecting the Right Influencers for Your BFCM ->
7-Step Black Friday Influencer Marketing Strategies
How to build a Black Friday marketing strategy with influencers:
- Define clear performance goals and key conversions
- Select creators whose audiences match your customer targets
- Use early teaser content to build anticipation
- Pair organic creator content with paid amplification
- Offer exclusive deals and time-sensitive CTAs
- Track performance and optimize in real time
- Retarget engaged audiences to drive last-chance sales
Why Influencers Are Critical for Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy
U.S. Consumer Trends Driving Influencer Impact
You won’t see as many customer stampedes in stores these days – Black Friday has shifted to being primarily online. At the same time consumers have increasing blindness to traditional ads. Enter influencers: not only can they actually get your consumers’ attention, but guiding them from the point of first contact to the now-digital checkout has never been easier.
Times are hard right now, and that means shoppers are more discerning and strategic in their purchasing. This means longer research time, more scrolling for deals, but most importantly – turning to trusted creators to guide their decisions.
Performance Media Meets Influencer Content
Performance media is about driving clicks and sales, rather than slow-burn brand awareness. In high-competition, conversion-focused windows like Black Friday, clicks and sales are exactly what you want.
Influencers act as a force multiplier for your performance media spend, giving you more clicks and buys per dollar than a traditional approach will. With shoppable integrations firmly embedded across all the major social platforms, it’s simple to get crystal clear tracking of just how effective each of your partner creators are.
Building Awareness and Driving Conversions Simultaneously
When working at their full potential, influencers can essentially flatten the marketing funnel into a single stage. The proof is in how incredibly effective they are at selling even to users who, until then, weren’t familiar with your brand.
Rather than trying to traditionally build that awareness during a frenetic sale period (and diluting your performance focused strategy as a result), influencers can instantly short cut users to that awareness with demonstrations, recommendations and reviews.
Timing Your Black Friday Influencer Campaign
Pre-Black Friday: Tease and Educate
Three to four weeks out from Black Friday is the time to start dropping groundwork content. Your creators might hint at the scale of the deals on the way, share their wish lists, express their excitement, or demonstrate the value of your products.
With a baseload of understanding and excitement established, your audience will be warmed up and ready to convert quickly when the sales officially drop.
Main Event: Black Friday Week Push
This is the high-impact, conversion-driven phase which usually starts the Monday before Thanksgiving.
Urgency is key – think short form content like Reels and Stories showcasing specific, limited-time deals and direct links, as well as influencers unboxing and enjoying key products to spark hype and FOMO.
Post-Black Friday: Cyber Monday & Retargeting
Black Friday is more of a week-long (or even longer) affair these days, but there’s a surprising amount of fuel left in the sales tank by the back end of the window. Cyber Monday and even the following day are a key time to extend the urgency, allowing you to pick up buyers who are still building to a decision or waiting to see who has the best deal.
Nudge them over the line by emphasizing your final-call offers and inventory scarcity, as well as redeploying your highest-performing influencer generated content from earlier in the week to power retargeting ads.
