Black Friday is coming faster than a lot of us realize – and if you work in ecommerce, BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) is a now-or-never situation.

So I wanted to see how the holiday season impacted the way brands manage their influencer marketing campaigns. I found out:

• When marketers actually start BFCM campaign planning
• How much they really invest in influencer marketing for the holidays
• How their campaigns change for the holiday season

Here’s how marketers do BFCM:

When should you prepare for Black Friday?

I asked marketers a series of questions to establish their overall BFCM timelines:

• When does your company begin planning Black Friday promotions and sales?
• When do you begin planning your influencer marketing campaigns for Black Friday?
• When do you begin your influencer outreach and negotiation for Black Friday campaigns?
• When does your Black Friday influencer content start going live?

While responses were varied, a lot of marketers had a defined time range for when they were pinning down certain details of their campaigns, or when they were completing certain steps.

A lot of companies begin planning their overall promotions long before the summer. For others, August and September are the sweet spots for planning your BFCM initiatives.

So when should I start planning?

A good rule: use the 80/20 rule. Plan 80% of what you’ll do by the end of Q2, and leave 20% for what pops up.

It’s a great idea to have your general ideas worked out, and then save room for trends, exceptional influencers you want to work with, etc. For Cheyanne Pettyjohn, knowing what’s happening ahead of time is critical for her.

Cheyanne Pettyjohn

Director of Influencer Marketing, Rookie Wellness

You need to have a good idea of what your company is going to do well ahead of time so you and your team have enough time to execute it. Use all the resources in your hands to understand what other companies are doing, and if there are things that could work for your brand partners. Try to be creative and find something motivating within your niche that would set you apart from your competitors!

When this won’t work for you:

You might need to wait to plan big rocks if:

• Your promotions and needs completely depend on performance across Q1 and Q2.
• If you’re very small, and don’t have the bandwidth to plan before the summer.

You may need to plan before Q2 if:

• You already know you want to work with larger influencers, and need to lock them down ASAP.

For many marketers, planning the actual influencer marketing campaigns around their overall sales and promotions happens squarely in the summer ahead of BFCM, with a peak in September.

But even this might be later than you should be getting promotions out there. According to Google consumer insights, 35% of US consumers had already started their holiday shopping in September of 2023.

Mark Dandy, agrees:

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

I would be advising brands to already have your Black Friday plans in place. If you are starting to plan Black Friday in September, you're pretty late to the party. I know a lot of brands that will start planning their Q4 in June. That's not necessarily booking influences at that point, but it's really building out their overall strategy for what they're aiming for.

Shoppers begin thinking about holiday shopping starting at the end of September, so now is the time to begin brand building – if you haven’t already done so.

According to Mark,  you’d ideally stagger brand with performance influencer marketing, and look at which initiatives performed the best. Then, when September and October roll around, you’d amplify your brand initiatives.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

During that September-October time frame, the brand awareness spend should go up because you want to be front of mind when the discounts kick in as well. Who are people going to search for when they're interested in purchasing? They should be measuring how much you are spending for the reach. How much are you getting back in engagements? And then probably starting to track your influencer spend against your Google search traffic and traffic that's coming into the site.

Consider this: customers don’t go out looking for new brands for their holiday deals. They want to see what the brands they already know and love are offering first and foremost – as they’ve likely already had their eyes on a few pricier items.

September is that moment to make sure you’re getting your brand and products in front of as many eyes as possible. Grant Walker recommends making sure that you have the content you need before BFCM really picks up.

Grant Walker

Founder, Hype Nerds

To get the most value out of the influencer channel for BFCM, you'll want to start early enough to have content in your library ready for whitelisting and targeted ads starting on October 1st.

Getting your UGC content nailed down before peak shopping season will help you stay ahead of the game. Think about creating evergreen content in September and early October so you can use that content in ads throughout November. Don’t forget to add a repurposing clause in your influencer contracts!

So if the average BFCM timeline for ecommerce marketers looks like this:

You should do everything a little earlier to stay competitive.

However, a word of caution: If you’re going to start promotions early (which a lot of brands do. Looking at you Amazon, with your prime day in mid-October), make sure you cool off on the winter/holiday imagery until the beginning of November. Customers can have a negative reaction to seeing winter and holiday campaigns too early – so frame them as a fall promotion.

Mark also recommends not discounting too much before BFCM, even if you do start earlier.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

Customers aren’t stupid. If they look at heavy sales messaging in September or October, they’ll think, ‘oh, if you’re offering 30% off in October, what are you going to do in November? I’ll wait.' Therefore, you’re clouding that message.

Which channels should I use for Black Friday?

I then asked marketers where they were primarily driving traffic, and which influencer channels were performing the best for them during the BFCM period.

Where are influencers driving Black Friday traffic?

Results:

• Our site: 75%
• Several channels: 16.7%
• Amazon: 4.2%
• TikTok shop: 4.2%

For many marketers, their site is the best place to send their holiday traffic. For those who haven’t dove too deeply into TikTok shop, or an Amazon storefront, your site is still a solid bet for holiday traffic.

For others, a multichannel approach was the ticket. A multichannel approach for the holidays is a great way to meet your customer where they are. Many will prefer to purchase on your actual site, but for some, those extra click-throughs can be the death of a potential sale.

I also asked marketers which social channels drove the most BFCM sales for them last year – many of whom answered with at least two core channels they focus on:

Results:

• YouTube: 37.5%
• Instagram: 58.3%
• TikTok: 29.1%

While it might seem that Instagram is the top channel, it’s important to consider that different brands/products will have different mileage per channel. Viktor Wiśniowski explained it well:

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, LikeLab

It depends on the product. When it comes to tech, then it's Youtube but FMCG and cheaper products do better on Instagram and TikTok.

Lower-ticket, high consumption products are going to do better with smaller ad spots on TikTok or Instagram. However, larger-ticket items that require a lot more information are probably going to do better on YouTube.

In addition, if you have higher-ticket items, you’re more likely to see a positive ROI on YouTube, as it’s a more expensive channel overall. Also, YouTube videos have a longer overall lifespan compared to both TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. A YouTube video has a lifespan of about 30 days, but can drive results for up to a year. A TikTok video’s lifespan is a few minutes, and if it goes viral, it can drive results for a few weeks. For Instagram Reels, the lifespan is between 24 hours and 14 days, depending on how well it performs.

As with any social media post, the better it performs, the better its discoverability will be.

For Mark, the highest-converting channel is clearly YouTube.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

A lot of brands shy away from YouTube because of the cost of entry. A typical TikToker or Instagrammer with 100K followers might charge you £500 - £1000. On YouTube, that could be 4-5 times that amount for the same number of subscribers. It’s long form, there’s more effort, filming and editing, etc. But, your watchtime on YouTube might be 4 minutes, whereas your watchtime on Tiktok might be 7 seconds.

Tamara Torrecillas agrees, mentioning that although it’s the brand’s first year, they’ve had good results with YouTube throughout the year and anticipate the same results for BFCM.

So which channels should you use and where should you send that traffic?

• Go where your ICP is – It’s common sense, but a channel where your ideal customer is will always perform better for you than the trendy channels that work for wildly different brands.
• For FMCG – diversify where you’re sending traffic, but prioritize your site when you can. Use Instagram and TikTok for best results and to recoup your ROI quickly. TikTok is typically better for lower AOVs that could feasibly be an “impulse buy.”
• For high-ticket items – invest in YouTube with evergreen sponsored spots, and send traffic back to your site. More complex products might require the long-form content to explain details that would be too difficult to get across in short-form content.

And if it makes sense, a mixture of both short-form and long-form content can help you capitalize on fast-moving platforms while scooping up evergreen sales throughout the year.

Should I budget differently for BFCM?

Do influencers raise prices for the busy holiday season?

When asked if influencers increased rates for the BFCM holiday season, 2/3rds of marketers said that they absolutely did.

I then wondered how much rates increased for the busy holiday season. While answers were varied, it turns out that, on average, influencers increased their rates by nearly 20% for BFCM content.

For Lee Drysdale, that price hike might jump 3 times those of off-season prices:

Lee Drysdale

Influencer Marketing Lead

This completely depends on the talent and also if they're managed by an agency or manager. I have seen usual fees of £300 jump to way over 1k around the cyber weekend.

According to Victor, this is why it’s important to book influencer talent early.

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, LikeLab

It all depends on the influencer, but prices usually increase by about 10-20%. That's why we try to book them as soon as possible before they get any other offers so that they don't "jack up" the price.

Mark agrees, recommending booking influencers on a monthly retainer during the summer months and then, if they perform well, increasing that retainer across September, October, and November. If you’re offering influencers a retained service (and so, stable income) across their three busiest months, they’re going to be much more likely to lock in early and agree to BFCM promotions too.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

It sounds cliché, but it’s about relationships. Like the whole of this space is about relationships. If you can build your relationships early with influencers where you've built up a rapport with them, you've given them access to earlier releases in the year leading up to that Q3–Q4 period. You've already built a really close knit relationship with that influencer, there’s loyalty to you as a brand – and not just you as a brand, but probably you as an individual.

He goes on to mention that treating influencers well throughout the year can pay off when busier seasons pop up. While an influencer may not always remember the brand they worked with, they’ll always remember the person they worked with, and how you treated them.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

Otherwise, if you're going after influencers that you've never worked with, or you're looking to test out their performance in October or November just ahead of Black Friday, they're gonna charge you 50-100% more, Influencer prices go up straight away because they're just in such high-demand. I remember speaking to an agent, and normally they might have 10 brands contacting them to work with a particular influencer, but that jumps to 40 or 50 brands during BFCM.

How much of my budget should I dedicate to Black Friday?

First, I asked marketers how much of their Black Friday marketing budget is dedicated purely to influencer marketing.

Results:

• < 10%: 12.5%
• 11% - 20%: 29.2%
• 21% - 30%: 37.5%
• 31% - 40%: 8.3%
• 41% - 50%: 4.2%
• >71%: 8.3%

For the vast majority of marketers, somewhere between 11%-30% of their overall holiday marketing budget is dedicated to influencer marketing.

I then wondered if any of them decided to dedicate more budget for Black Friday compared to last year. It turns out, only 2/3rds of them plan to increase their BFCM spend by about an average of 32.9% (and 58% of marketers said they increased their influencer budgets by at least 10% for the holidays).

For over a third of marketers, increasing the budget wasn’t the answer. One marketer mentioned that as they recruit throughout the year, they maintain the same budget even during the holidays.

For others, there’s no increase because their budget accounted for BFCM when it was originally set anyway. This is a good tip for those planning Black Friday campaigns – even if you got a late start this year. Pay attention to the price changes that might be happening, and factor that into your budget for next year.

So should you increase your budget for Black Friday?

The short answer is YES if:

• You haven’t already recruited the influencers you’ll need before September
• You haven’t factored BFCM into your yearly budget
• You’re truly going to make the most of the content influencer marketing will provide you

It’s important to be smart about the content you’ll generate between September and November. You’ll want to repurpose as much as you possibly can as UGC throughout the busy holiday season, and use paid ads to get it in front of as many people as possible.

You shouldn’t increase your budget if:

• You’re already working with long-term partners and have secured your rates earlier in the year
• The product is very new, and you're not confident in product-market fit yet

Should I recruit new influencers for the holiday season?

I asked brands how many new influencers they recruit for BFCM – I wanted to know how many new faces they were working with, and how many were longer-term partnerships.

Results:

• 1-10: 29.2%
• 11-25: 29.2%
• 26-50: 16.7%
• 51-100: 16.7%
• 200+: 4.2%
• We don’t recruit new influencers for Black Friday: 4.2%

Of the influencers you work with for BFCM, how many of those are influencers you’ve worked with in the past?

Results:

• < 20%: 8.3%
• 20% - 40%: 33.3%
• 40% - 60%: 25%
• 60% - 80%: 29.2%
• 80% - 100%: 4.2%

For many marketers, recruiting for BFCM happens throughout the year. They use the months leading up to BFCM to test and thoroughly vet creators for the big partnerships during the holiday season. Nearly 60% plan to recruit up to 25 influencers for their campaigns. Over a third say that at least 20-40% of their influencers are creators they’ve worked with in the past. Over half say it’s closer to 40-80%

According to Mark, you’d use your campaigns throughout the year to test out influencers for the holiday season.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

You might be using a paid media strategy to compliment your influencer strategy using that content you generated throughout the year. You would have some influencers focused on sales, with discount messaging or maybe data capture (competitions and contests to capture email addresses).

It’s good to test and vet influencers throughout the year and pick your heaviest hitters for BFCM. Chances are, these same influencers introduced your brand to their audiences in the first place, and that’ll be a sure fire way that your brand will be top-of-mind during the holiday season.

If you are going to recruit new influencers specifically for BFCM, you’ll have the added challenge of the madness that is BFCM, plus starting a brand new partnership.

I reached out to Alex Sabucido for more clarification, and for him, he does an affiliate/paid mix for the holidays.

Alexander Sabucido

Influencer Marketing Specialist

We have 2 programs, flat fee and affiliate (which contributes more in terms of numbers). We start working with and onboarding influencers for both programs in January and test out flat fee influencers for BFCM potential. Meanwhile, everyone in the affiliate program is automatically part of our BFCM campaigns.

Alex normally reaches out to and recruits over 200 influencers for the holiday season, 40% of which are influencers he’s worked with in the past. For him, his ratio of flat-rate paid influencers to affiliates is about 1:5.

This blended method between affiliates and paid influencers can help you pack a 1-2 punch for BFCM. Affiliates have a lower labor cost for you, so you can afford to recruit a lot of them – and they’re budget-friendly since they’re paid based on performance.

For your paid influencers, vetting them throughout the year helps you pick the ones that have the best performing content for your brand. Since you’ve already worked together, you’re not adding messy onboarding on top of an already hectic holiday season.

For Miroslava Petkova, it’s about choosing the right influencers from the beginning:

Miroslava Petkova

Regional Influencer Marketing Manager, COCOSOLIS

Pick influencers who are good storytellers. Promotional content with influencers, unlike regular ads, should not be so ad-like. They need to make it relevant and interesting. That’s the only way their content will get results.

Do marketers have a harder time booking influencers for BFCM than they do during the off-season?

Results:

• Yes: 37.5%
• No: 62.5%

The majority of marketers don’t have trouble booking influencers for BFCM – likely because they did so months ago – as is the case for Michael Todner.

Michael Todner

Influencer Marketing, Gear4music

Influencers are booked well ahead of time, and typically, rates are higher due to demand. We factor this in and look to book several months ahead.

For Alex, he tries to have his influencers booked well before fall.

Alexander Sabucido

Influencer Marketing Specialist

Some creators are already booked in advance. That's why we try to lock in our creators as early as August.

Bakktawar Shahzaib says it’s not just about pricing – influencers get choosey with the brands they work with over BFCM.

Bakhtawar Shahzaib

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing Executive

Influencers are often fully booked 2-3 months before Black Friday. They charge higher rates and are more selective with brands. To secure partnerships, plan early, offer competitive rates, and be flexible with content ideas.

How much should I change my normal campaigns for BFCM?

We asked marketers what they change about their BFCM campaigns from their off-season initiatives, and most marketers were aligned.

The big rocks of your campaigns won’t change:

• Who you target
• What value you bring to the table
• Why customers should choose you over the next guy

But, this is what should change:

• Your tone, your surface-level messaging. Bring the value that you offer to the forefront of your messaging (regardless of what that value is).
• The frequency and aggressiveness of your content
• The scale – it’s time to pull out all the stops.

For many marketers, it’s really the amplitude that changes

Campaigns are on a much larger scale, and are more aggressive overall – at least that’s the case for Victor:

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, LikeLab

We usually run more affiliate marketing campaigns during BFCM and the holiday season because influencers are more keen on these types of deals. They know that there are significantly more people looking for deals than during the off-season.

Cheyanne agreed, mentioning that her campaign management often takes a more direct approach.

Cheyanne Pettyjohn

Director of Influencer Marketing, Rookie Wellness

Communication will be ramped up for BFCM and sometimes the mode of communication will be more direct (texts and DMs instead of emails.) Also, we increase education on the products and more selling points/data for our partners to use.

The tone of campaigns also changes and becomes more sales-focused. One marketer mentioned that they normally rely on an organic style for their influencer campaigns, like natural UGC or genuine recommendations from creators. But for Black Friday, the language becomes a lot more promotional.

For Joshita Dodani, there’s a natural progression from organic campaigns to overtly promotional ones.

Joshita Dodani

Head of Social Media and Influencer Partnerships, DigiOrange

In the earlier months, our content is focused towards the natural integration of products, whereas the content closer to Black Friday will focus more on the discounts.

Obviously, you’ll want to match the vibe. Customers are in a particular mindset during each season. Have you ever seen a sale on winter coats in the summer? It might be smarter to purchase then, but if it’s sweltering outside, it can be harder to wrap your head around purchasing a coat.

It just feels wrong.

Black Friday is the same. You’ll want to lean fully into the cozy holiday imagery – because that’s where your customer’s head is at.

This is the case for Nicole Ampo:

Nicole Ampo

Influencer Marketing Manager, American Hat Makers

Since we're a product-based company, and as we're getting closer to the holiday season, we're doing more promotional campaigns. Of course, we change the theme, colors, and products to fit the season. In relation to influencer marketing campaigns, we're more doing paid collaborations since we want specific content.

However, the core shouldn’t change

There might be extra sparkle and snowflakes in your content, but the content at its core shouldn’t change. For example, you’re not just going to start targeting everyone outside of your niche.

Michael says it’s really just about tweaking the messaging and volume, but everything else stays the same.

Michael Todner

Influencer Marketing, Gear4music

Messaging and the volume of influencers we work with are the biggest changes. Our main focus will be those that we have existing relationships with and that we know convert well, however we will look to bring in new influencers too. We rely more on PPC during the BF period.

He brings up a good point – solid influencer relationships means your content won’t need to change too much for BFCM. Cheyanne agrees:

Cheyanne Pettyjohn

Director of Influencer Marketing, Rookie Wellness

We keep our influencer marketing approach as organic as possible. We mainly promote through our current partners, and we want them to see the value of each sale and that they can always expect consistency from us. Sometimes less can be more with solid partnerships.

How should you stand out?

There’s no noisier day than Black Friday – so I asked marketers what they were doing to stand out from the crowd.

Lee mentioned how difficult it was, and said that his goal is just to do it all “bigger and better” than the competition.

Lee Drysdale

Influencer Marketing Lead

It's a really hard time to stand out in such an influencer-heavy period – we always try to keep on top of trends so we can jump in there first. We offer bigger and better PR boxes, plus amazing giveaways with huge prizes!

Bakhtawar agreed that contests and giveaways were a hit for BFCM:

Bakhtawar Shahzaib

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing Executive

During BFCM and the holiday season, we create more engaging content, offer exclusive deals, and partner with influencers to stand out. We also use attention-grabbing tactics like giveaways, contests, and limited-time offers to drive sales and attract customers.

For Cheyanne, it was about incentivizing her influencer partners.

Cheyanne Pettyjohn

Director of Influencer Marketing, Rookie Wellness

We will attach higher bonuses to the campaigns to motivate our ambassadors to prioritize our brand over other partners they are working with. We will also try to create meaningful content and resources for them to utilize so they feel confident in our product and program. We want them to feel the community aspect of our brand and have an emotional connection instead of only transactional.

Victor mentioned honing in on live content for BFCM to do something a little different from the norm.

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, LikeLab

We’ll try to push more live-stream content, especially during the BFCM and the holiday season. It just lets people feel more connected to the influencer, and gives them a chance to see the product in real time.

For Mark, it’s about cutting through the noise before your competitor does.

Mark Dandy

Influencer Marketing Specialist

The brands that cut through the noise are going to do so in September or October. They’re already ahead of the game. It’s not about discounting early – it’s about making sure you’re already front of mind and your customer already knows where to go.

So how should you stand out for BFCM?

• Start brand-building and email capture right now
• Go big – contests and giveaways will pull people into your funnel
• Incentivize your influencers and make sure those relationships are solid
• Do something your competitor isn’t doing – like live streaming

Key Takeaways and Advice for Black Friday

Black Friday is going to be madness no matter what – so here’s how you can carve your own little mental zen garden heading into the busiest shopping season of the year.

• Start early. No, earlier. Every step of your BFCM journey will go a lot smoother if you give yourself (and your team) the time to do each step properly. You’ll likely be able to negotiate lower rates for yourself, and you’ll be able to secure great UGC content for targeted ads and other Black Friday promotions.
• Prioritize the relationships you’ve already built. Your best-performing influencers throughout the year leading up to now will be your best bet in the coming months – lock them in ASAP and incentivize them appropriately. You can’t put a price on a great relationship.
• Bring in affiliates to diversify. A lot of marketers are leveraging affiliates to really get their products in front of the right people. They’re a lower-effort collaboration that can have a big payoff for both you and the creator.
• Pull out all the stops. Email capture like contests, giveaways, etc will help you pull people into your sales funnel well before Black Friday. If possible, go bigger and better than the competition.
• Let authenticity be your best salesperson. You can have a more promotional message without losing the authenticity that only an influencer can provide. No one is disillusioned on Black Friday – we all know why we’re here. It’s okay to have genuine content with an exclusive discount code or limited time offer.

And as cheesy as it sounds – you got this.

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