Black Friday is still the highest-stakes opportunity for brands, but 2025 has totally turned the tables. Google’s new Generative Search Experience is now popping up AI-generated shopping recommendations before even showing you the traditional results. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has made attribution a real pain to get right. And with consumers getting fed up with generic discounting, you need to bring your A game with real value propositions, not just slapping a percentage-off badge on everything.
The brands that are going to come out on top in this environment aren’t just throwing more money at their campaigns; they’re running smarter ones. Here’s how to set yourself up for success.
1. Get Your Technical House in Order Before the Rush Hits
Before you spend a single penny on promotion, you need to make sure your digital foundation is bulletproof:
Get your website ready for the chaos – Black Friday traffic can be 10-20 times your normal load. Test your site speed, mobile responsiveness, and server capacity now – a slow site isn’t just frustrating customers, it kills your Quality Score and raises your ad costs.
Build some serious conversion-focused landing pages – Don’t just slap a banner on your homepage. Create dedicated Black Friday pages that tell customers exactly what they need to know, with a streamlined checkout and mobile-friendly design. Every extra click is costing you conversions.
Update your SEO for the way people are searching in 2025 – Search intent has changed. Target terms like “early Black Friday deals for 2025”, “verified holiday savings”, and “limited stock alerts” rather than generic seasonal keywords. With AI-generated search results now prominent, you need to make sure your content is answering questions directly and comprehensively.
Get your tracking in order before you need it – Privacy regulations have made attribution a right old mess. Audit your analytics setup, make sure you’re doing proper consent management, and get first-party data collection up and running. You can’t optimise what you can’t measure properly.
2. Running a Multi-Channel Play That Drives Action, Not Just Awareness
Getting people to notice your promotion is the easy bit – now you need to get them to do something about it. Here’s where to focus your effort:
Email and SMS for creating a sense of urgency – Start building anticipation two weeks out with early access offers for subscribers. While the event is on, push out cart abandonment sequences aggressively. Post-event, send some last-chance messages to people who didn’t convert yet. SMS is especially good for time-sensitive flash offers – people are opening these messages at a rate of 90% within three minutes.
Social media with ad spend that’s got some real strategy behind it – Organic reach just isn’t cutting it during peak competition. Allocate 60% of your social budget to retargeting people who’ve visited your site, 30% to lookalike audiences, and 10% to cold prospecting. Short-form video content – especially product demos and customer testimonials – is outperforming static imagery by a whopping 3:1 in engagement metrics.
Leverage your existing customers – they’re your best friend – Your customer acquisition costs spike during Black Friday. Counter this by activating referral programs (both parties get something out of it) and offering loyalty members early access or exclusive bundles. It’s cheaper to expand existing relationships than to try to build new ones.
What Your Competitors Are Getting Wrong (and You Should Be Doing Better) – Most brands are still treating Black Friday like a one-day discount event. They’re missing the 10-day window on either side where purchase intent is high but competition is lower. And they’re ignoring retention mechanics entirely – burning through ad budget to acquire customers they’ll never see again.
3. Turn Black Friday Momentum Into 2026 Growth
The real winners this year will be the brands that use Black Friday to build a solid 2026 foundation, not just hit a quarterly revenue target.
Get your new audience activated right away – The week after Black Friday, start transitioning new customers from discount-seekers to brand advocates. Send them some valuable content (how-to guides, product care tips, exclusive previews) instead of more promotional offers. You’re building the relationship that will pay off all year.
Do a proper post-mortem within 48 hours of your campaign ending – Analyse which channels, messages, and offers delivered the best return. Don’t just look at revenue – examine customer lifetime value indicators, repeat purchase rates, and engagement quality. These insights should drive your entire 2026 planning.
Focus on experience over acquisition – that’s where the margin lives – With customer acquisition costs rising 15-20% year-over-year, retention is the way to make some real margin. Focus on delivering exceptional service, personalised follow-up, and building genuine loyalty. A 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25-95%.
4. Smart Budget Deployment: Where a Steady Hand Beats a Big Wallet
A clever approach beats a massive budget every single time. Here’s how to spread your investment wisely:
Social Media Marketing (a decent chunk, 40% of budget) – We’re talking organic content (20%) and paid amplification (80%) here. Focus on Facebook and Instagram for a broad reach, TikTok if you’re looking to make some noise with younger demographics. Whoever told you video content is a no-brainer was right – its engagement rates are consistently 2-3x higher than your standard static posts.
Search Marketing (30% of budget) – Paid search (60%) and SEO content (40%) – divide and conquer. Target high-intent keywords, make sure your Google Shopping feed is ship-shape and you’re bidding aggressively on your branded terms – competitors will be all over them.
Email & SMS Marketing (20% of budget) – The highest ROI channel for existing customers – don’t forget it. Invest in some segmentation and personalisation – generic blasts are like shouting into the void. SMS works a treat for time-sensitive offers but you’ll need to do your opt-in compliance homework.
Retention & Loyalty (10% of budget) – Often the forgotten child but critically important. Early access offers for existing customers, referral bonuses, and post-purchase nurture sequences. The customers you keep are worth way more than the ones you go out and buy.
5. Stay Ahead of the Game When Things Go South
Black Friday never goes exactly to plan. Smart preparation is key:
- Have backup creative on standby – If your main offer sells out or underperforms, get an alternative messaging queue and approved ASAP
- Communicate with your customers – If there are delays or stock issues, let them know straight away via email or SMS. Silence is like a ticking time bomb – honesty builds trust
- Monitor and adjust in real-time – Check in on your campaign’s performance every 4-6 hours during peak days. You need to be ready to reallocate budget from underperforming channels to the ones that are actually firing
2026 – The Road Ahead
This is a hard truth most agencies won’t share: Black Friday 2025 is actually your first campaign of 2026. The customers you sign up, the data you collect, and the systems you stress-test this November will basically seal your competitive position for the entire year.
Brands that treat this as just some one-off promotional sprint will get a revenue boost, and then it’s back to business as usual. Brands that use it as a strategic inflection point, to build their audience, refine their systems, and establish market position, will compound that advantage all the way through to 2026.
Ready to Make Black Friday Work for You?
HyperWeb specialises in helping Australian SMEs turn seasonal campaigns into a real, sustained competitive advantage. We don’t just help you survive Black Friday, we help you use it to absolutely dominate 2026.
From technical site optimisation and multi-channel campaign execution to retention strategy and full-year planning, we build campaigns that deliver results beyond the quarter. Get in touch.
