Just 3.2%?

Metricooler,

Black Friday is 19 days away, so by now chances are you have a few ideas floating around and maybe even a post or two half-written. 

Before you schedule anything, I’ve got three findings to share. They came from going through more than 3,000 posts from 72 e-commerce brands, plus another 100 Black Friday posts. 

All three go against what people usually take for granted this time of the year, and all three give you more room than you’d think: to sell without repeating the same offer, to get there in time, and to compete with brands that have ten times your followers. 

Here’s what the data says and how you can apply each one to your brand:

A Black Friday campaign works like a party: if you send the invitations that same morning, most people will already have plans. 

That’s why brands spend more time on the days leading up to it than on the day itself. Pre-launch is the longest phase of the whole campaign, and it can start anywhere from two weeks to a couple of months ahead. 

BÉIS knows exactly how a pre-launch works. In the five days before its Disney collab, it posted 9 teasers on TikTok with the date and time, and they reached a median of 91,300 views, about 5 times more than the rest of its posts. 

The party doesn’t end on Friday, either. According to Adobe, Cyber Monday online sales came in $2.45 billion higher than Black Friday, so it’s worth saving one last push on Monday.

In our new video, we show you how to plan your campaign with examples from more than 100 Black Friday posts by brands like OSEA, Owala, and Ridge. 

➜ Try it in your campaign: Split your campaign into phases: pre-launch, launch, a reminder that the offer is ending, and a last call in the final hours. That way, you will know what to post each day without improvising. 

Within the same brand, posts that ask for something (buy, visit the website, or comment) perform the same as posts that don’t ask for anything. It’s the most surprising finding in our ecommerce report, because it goes against every instinct. 

In fact, those 72 brands spend just 3.2% of their posts on direct promotion, and these are brands that make their living selling online. 

On Black Friday, that matters even more. When every feed is saying the same thing with a different percentage, the post that entertains, teaches something, or tells a story has a better chance of making someone stop scrolling. 

Since 2015, REI has pushed this further than any other brand. The outdoor gear brand closes its stores on Black Friday and encourages its team and customers to spend the day outside with its #OptOutside campaign. On the biggest shopping day of the year, instead of asking you to buy, it invites you to enjoy what it sells. 

➜ Try it in your campaign: keep your offers and surround them with content that gives people a reason to stay. If you run a bookshop, recommend books to give as gifts depending on who they’re for. If you sell skincare, show a routine using the products on sale. The discount closes the sale, and what surrounds it is what gets people there.

On Black Friday, the competition in your feed is even tougher than any other week. You’re sharing it with brands that have way more followers and a much bigger budget than you, and it can feel like your posts will get lost in the noise. Buuut, the data from our reports says otherwise. 

Of all the industries we analyzed, food and beverage has the biggest following on Instagram, 9.5 million, and a typical post from those brands gets 162 interactions. Beauty brands have 4 million fewer followers and get 1,074 interactions, almost 7 times more. And it’s not just one standout brand: 8 out of 10 beauty brands get more interactions than the typical post across all the brands we analyzed.

These are different industries with different audiences, so it’s not about one being better than another. What we want to point out is that your follower count doesn’t predict the response you’ll get. 

On Black Friday, that works in your favor. Your job these next few weeks isn’t to gain new followers, but to get the ones you already have to comment, save, and share your content. 

In our Social Media & Ecommerce Report, you can see how many interactions each industry gets on each network, how often they post, and what kind of content they share, so you can compare your account with brands like yours. 

COMPARE YOUR BRAND WITH 72 ECOMMERCE BRANDS

➜ Try it in your campaign: Before you put time and money into getting new followers, focus on the ones you already have. Look at which posts have performed best for you this year and use that format and tone in your campaign. 

Get your Black Friday and Cyber Monday content ready in a single afternoon. Download the Black Friday CSV Template, fill it with your posts, and upload it to Metricool’s Planner to schedule them all at once. 

DOWNLOAD THE BLACK FRIDAY PLANNING TEMPLATE