How a good Black Friday strategy can save your year
We are fast approaching Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two of the days that mark the start of the year’s most important campaign in terms of sales volume. Therefore, this date is earmarked by all businesses to save or boost their sales. Increasingly, businesses are preparing for these dates more thoroughly and need more time to get organized… That’s why we want to help you speed up your planning process to ensure the total success of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
What is Black Friday?
Black Friday is a commercial event held the day after Thanksgiving Day. This date marks the start of Christmas shopping for consumers, which is why retailers advertise their stores and reduce their prices to attract both online and in-store buyers.
What started as a one-day event was then stretched out to four days, concluding on Cyber Monday. Now, the tendency is to maintain offers for a week, leading to Black Week, or even the whole month for more ambitious businesses.
Although this initiative may appear to have been promoted by businesses to create consumer habits, it was actually consumers who started this event, when increased consumption was observed in Philadelphia the day after Thanksgiving. Interestingly, there was a football game between the army and the navy that attracted a great deal of attention and people would rush out to make purchases before the game. It was the police who named the day, based on the fact that they had to work extra time due to the increased number of people and insecurity.
Black Friday, as we know it today first, emerged in 1924 at Macy’s department store. Later, other giants such as Amazon joined the initiative, spreading the commercial event across the globe and resulting in the participation of businesses everywhere, who did not want to get left behind.
Today, not only is Black Friday one of the most important shopping days of the whole year, but it is also one of the most competitive. With so many businesses trying to forge their place, brands have to stand out from the rest if they want a piece of the action.
With so many businesses all fighting for attention and trying to attract buyers with juicy discounts, creating eye-catching Black Friday ads is more important than ever. With this in mind, we have brought together some design ideas for Black Friday ads that will help you leave your mark as a brand. Whether you’re designing a banner, an email, or printed material, such as flyers, invitations, etc., these graphic design tips will give you everything you need to stand out on Black Friday, on Cyber Monday, and beyond.
Digital strategy on Black Friday
In addition to making a significant budgetary effort when creating offers, reducing your profit margin, etc., it is important to know how to advertise the action you are implementing. The way to do this is to create an advertising and communication strategy, both online and offline, depending on the characteristics of your business. At Freepik, we can help you create your own physical material with hundreds of proposals in Black Friday flyers, Black Friday posters, and Black Friday logos that you can edit, adapt and use to create your own content.
However, one of the things that has led to the widespread nature of Black Friday is its digital presence. Businesses understand that with such fleeting offers, users tend to impulse buy, and the online environment is ideal for this. That’s why you have to show off your offers with amazing Black Friday banners , using eye-catching formats. It is also necessary to communicate with your customers, going wherever they are. Whether you do this in a physical format, through actions such as leafleting, handing out flyers, etc., or with digital presence, you have to go wherever your potential customers will see you.
Now you have to implement a good communication strategy on social media, as this is where you are sure to find a large part of your market niche. With this aim in mind, we offer a large number of resources such as posts with Black Friday post offers prepared for your social media, whether that be Instagram or any other network.
A digital strategy must be accompanied by communications through email marketing. That’s why we offer hundreds of Flaticon Black Friday icons for your mail communications, or for use on different landing pages that you can create ad hoc for such an important occasion.
As Freepik is always thinking about helping different types of people, we understand that a large part of society is not familiar with the graphic design tools necessary for a good design. That’s why we’ve created a powerful online design and editing tool called Wepik.
On Wepik you can design your posters, banners, flyers, posts, and Black Friday Instagram stories without any knowledge of graphic design, as with this editor you will simply have to modify the online content or move the necessary elements. You can also perform all types of actions such as including your own product photos, your logo, removing black friday backgrounds, etc. When you’re happy with the result, you can easily download it or share it with just a few clicks.
Tips for designing your Black Friday ads
Now that you have the resources and know what to do, it would be useful to know how to do it. One of the most effective ways of making your Black Friday ads really stand out is to use contrasting colors. The reason is simple: the use of two contrasting colors instantly creates two focal points. Therefore, where there would usually only be one focal point, there are now two. This automatically pushes your ad to the height of visual hierarchy and will ensure that your customers pay attention to it.
To select the best contrasting colors, you must base your selection on the product displayed in the ad. For example, if the material is advertising a pair of red jeans, you should select green as a contrasting color. This is because red and green are on the opposite ends of the color wheel. Therefore, these two colors will create the most effective visual contrast.
There are many tools that will tell you which colors are contrasting, one of our favorites being Adobe Color, where you will find different color palettes to apply to your designs and where you can explore different trends and color combinations that are visually eye-catching. If you want more information on color selection, you can read this article on our blog.
Another great way of creating visual impact for your Black Friday ads is by using original and contrasting fonts. This can really help to draw attention to certain parts of your ad and can also be used to highlight special offers. Depending on the product that you’re selling, you can use a font with more personality for the title or a more traditional font for the rest of the text. You can even mix the two to create a more dynamic ad. At Freepik, we have created a collection of fonts that you can download and that we are sure will become part of your library of favorites.
Combining text size and the visual elements of your ad will also help it stand out. However, you must be careful not to use elements that are too big or too small, as this may make the text illegible or decrease the clearness of your images. Therefore, it is always necessary to find a middle ground and build a good hierarchy.
Adding movement to your Black Friday ads will make them more interesting visually. This can be done in different ways, such as the use of videos, GIFs, interactive images, and parallax scrolling on your landing pages. At Freepik Company, we are promoting the use of video for your audiovisual creations and on Videvo you will find a section dedicated to Black Friday video clips with text animations, video intros, motion graphics, etc.
However, when using visual elements of this type, you have to be careful not to go over the top. If an ad is too overloaded and has too many different elements, it will just distract your customer rather than entertaining them. Therefore, it is best to keep things simple and only add a few of these interactive elements.
Product photos are a crucial part of the design of any ad and can really make all the difference in terms of attracting customers. Once again, you must present product photos in a way that makes them stand out from the rest of the ad, sparking the interest of customers to buy them.
Cyber Monday, the counterpart to Black Friday
The origin of Cyber Monday dates back to 2005 when the e-commerce world was just taking its first steps, at a time when not many users would make online purchases. The idea was to link Black Friday and Cyber Monday so that those who had not been able to take advantage of the discounts on offer on Black Friday could enjoy the discounts available online.
It was the “shop.org” community that thought up the name of Cyber Monday. Over the years, this day has grown significantly. Today, there is very little difference between these two commercial events as the majority of businesses offer their services both online and at a physical store.
So, Freepik offers a large number of Cyber Monday resources that stand out for their eminently online nature, including Cyber Monday banners, Cyber Monday flyers, Cyber Monday backgrounds, Cyber Monday gift cards, Cyber Monday logo and designs for offers, and other elements such as Cyber Monday poster.
Free Premium resources to light up your Black Friday
We want to help make this Black Friday special for you and your business. That’s why we’ve prepared a pack of free premium resources that you can enjoy totally free of charge.
These resources include:
- 5 mockups. Editable .psd files that can be used on laptops and tablets to design your offer, as well as other resources such as labels, credit cards, and ads with an interesting torn paper texture.
- 4 sets of vectors. Vector resources that include a collection of stories for Instagram, social media posts, banners, and backgrounds for offers.
- 10 photos. With special Black Friday resources such as gifts, offers, discount labels, and balloons, as well as other resources like 3D elements that are representative of shopping in general and of Black Friday in particular.
