Jump to Section
arrow down

How to Prepare Your Small Business for the Black Friday 2021 Shopping Surge

By The Leadpages Team  |  Published Aug 26, 2021  |  Updated Oct 06, 2023
Leadpages Team
By The Leadpages Team
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

Black Friday grows more and more popular with each passing year. In 2020, total ecommerce revenue for the event hit a record $9 billion, up from $7.4 billion the previous year. This staggering level of spending equates to $6.3 million per minute!

But Black Friday isn’t just reserved for the nation’s retail heavyweights. It also presents a great opportunity for your small business to find new customers and kick off the holiday season.

In this post, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to excel this Black Friday. We’ll start by walking you through some quality landing page examples, which are key to converting traffic from your Black Friday ads (BFAds). You’ll also receive a marketing checklist to give your campaign the best shot at success.

First up then, Black Friday landing pages...

7 high-converting Black Friday landing page examples

Every marketing strategy needs a focal point, and when it comes to your Black Friday campaigns nothing beats a dedicated landing page.

For most of your customers, your Black Friday landing page is the gateway to making a purchase. This is the page where you present your offer in the best light possible and persuade visitors to click the buy button.

Oftentimes, businesses direct their email subscribers, social media followers, and BFAds traffic to a homepage or product page. The trouble with this is that these destinations are either too full of distractions (in the case of a homepage) or too specific (in the case of a product page). This causes them to leak conversions. Meanwhile, a dedicated landing page allows visitors to get fully acquainted with your Black Friday offers before making a purchase.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of our favorite landing page examples. Use these as inspiration when deciding what to incorporate into your own Black Friday landing page.

(Note that each of these landing pages was built using Leadpages’ very own Drag & Drop Builder. You can find more examples of mobile-responsive landing pages by checking out our template gallery.)

1. Handle The Heat

Handle the Heat is run by trained chef and cookie-queen Tessa Arias. She shares various baking recipes with her audience and explains the science behind them. Here’s a snapshot of her Black Friday landing page, where she offers a discounted bundle of her baking books and classes:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

You can find the full landing page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • When you arrive on the page, your attention is immediately drawn to the offer thanks to prominent imagery and the high color contrast in the headline copy.
  • Tessa does a great job of emphasizing the value of her offer by letting us know how much we’ll save on the regular price. She also ramps up the level of urgency by telling us that it’s only available for a limited time and won’t happen again.
  • As we scroll down the page, Tessa provides a rundown of all the features and benefits contained within the bundle. Each rundown is separated by a prominent call-to-action button to ensure visitors have every opportunity to make a purchase.
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

2. Passion For Savings

Passion for Savings is a money-saving website that posts printable coupons, online deals, and savings tips. As part of their Black Friday 2020 campaign, the business created a downloadable cheat sheet of Black Friday deals as a way to generate more sign-ups for their email list:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

You can see the full landing page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • The copy is short and to the point. Visitors immediately know exactly what’s on offer and what they need to do to get it.
  • While the page makes use of tasteful, seasonal imagery, the overall layout is clean and straightforward.
  • The form only asks for the visitor’s first name and email address. This ensures that the page remains uncluttered and makes it very easy for visitors to sign up.

3. Creative Memories

Creative Memories sells top-of-the-line photo albums and scrapbooks. As part of their 2019 Black Friday promotions, the company offered anyone who spent over $150 one of two free bundles valued at more than $100:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

You can check out the full page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • In just a few lines, this page manages to explain what’s included in the bundle deal, how customers can claim it, and how long the deal is available. The copy is also sprinkled with urgency-inducing language to prime readers for a purchase (e.g. “exclusive, can’t-get-anywhere-else holiday bundles” and “while supplies last”).
  • As we scroll further down the page, we’re given an overview of what each bundle offer contains. We also get two short videos which showcase the bundles in more detail:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples
  • To ensure that you’re completely clear on what you need to do to claim it, Creative Memories provides a simple, numbered step-by-step guide:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

4. Hip 2 Save

Hip 2 Save is another deal-of-the-week type website that posts deals, promo codes, and money-saving advice. As part of their Black Friday 2020 campaign, the company ran a giveaway where their audience could win one of four Amazon gift cards every hour.

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

Check out the full landing page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • The hero image immediately lets you know what the giveaway prizes are and that the contest is holiday-themed.
  • The giveaway description uses easy-to-understand language and makes use of capitalization and color to highlight the most important information:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples
  • At the bottom of the landing page, visitors can stay up-to-date with future deals by following the company’s social accounts and signing up for text-based deal alerts:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

5. The Winery at Bull Run

The Winery at Bull Run is a Virginia-based company that sells award-winning wines and offers artisanal wine tasting experiences. For their 2019 Black Friday campaign, the company offered an exclusive deal every hour for eight hours:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

You can find the full landing page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • The monochrome page design is simple, classy, and keeps with the whole “Black” Friday theme. Also, by emphasizing that this is an “online only” offer, the page manages to heighten the exclusivity of the promotion.
  • The inclusion of a prominent countdown timer is a compelling reminder to customers that they only have a limited time to capitalize on the company’s special offers.
  • Further down the page, each special offer is explained in more depth and categorized by the hour they’re available. This gives visitors an advance notice of when they can get their hands on different deals, thus ramping up the anticipation.
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

6. Oh Hot GRAM

Oh Hot GRAM was a course designed by hairstylist and salon owner Jamie Dana. It teaches other hairstylists how to grow their business using Instagram. Although this Black Friday landing page is longer than most, every piece of information works to overcome customer objections and persuade visitors to sign up:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

Check out the full landing page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • Jamie goes to great lengths to tee up her offer by highlighting three major pain points that she knows her target audience is experiencing. By emphasizing these problems early on, readers are left eager to learn more about the solution:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples
  • Another strength of this page is its heavy use of social proof. Here we see three testimonials from previous course members explaining in detail how Oh Hot GRAM has benefitted them. Positive reviews like these from real people are often what convince fence-sitting leads to become new customers:
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples
  • Jamie also provides a detailed rundown of what each module of her course involves. This reassures any potential customers by letting them know exactly what they’re paying for.
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

7. LongTail Pro

LongTail Pro is a keyword research tool for content marketers and SEO specialists. Once their 2020 Black Friday promotional offer had expired, the company made sure to replace it with an “offer expired” landing page:

Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples

Check out the full page here.

What we love about this landing page:

  • Replacing the original page with an offer expired page lets visitors know that the offer has closed. This achieves two things: it reduces any potential confusion and reminds visitors that they’ll need to act fast to cash in on any future offers.
  • By including a “subscribe here” button, LongTail Pro uses the offer expired page as an opportunity to capture more leads. This ensures visitors don’t leave empty-handed.

2021 Black Friday marketing checklist for small businesses (5 steps)

Now that we’ve seen the elements of an effective Black Friday landing page, let’s turn to some general principles you should follow to ensure your campaign hits the ground running.

Here’s our simple five-step checklist to guide you to success this year:

1. Set definitive objectives for your promotions

The first thing you’ll need to think about when planning your Black Friday campaign is what you want to achieve. Without clear objectives, the rest of your planning and implementation will lack direction and you’ll risk squandering the opportunity to benefit from this once-a-year shopping event.

For most businesses, the main objective is to increase sales. However, you may also have secondary objectives such as increasing your leads, retaining existing customers, and boosting your brand awareness.

In order to determine realistic revenue and sales targets, you’ll need to factor in your available marketing budget. If you can only invest $300, chances are you won’t manage to attract 5,000 new customers. But 50 to 80 customers might be feasible depending on your industry and niche.

It’s a good idea to conduct a thorough performance review of any previous Black Friday campaigns you’ve run. This allows you to apply previous lessons to this year’s promotions and helps you avoid repeating your mistakes.

As a general rule, your campaign objectives should be SMART: simple, measurable, actionable, results-focused, and time-bound. For example, “sell 100 units of product X within 24 hours of the promotion going live” is a much better goal than “increase sales”.

2. Clarify your target audience

Another essential component of planning your Black Friday campaign is to define who you’re targeting. More than likely, you’ll already have a pretty good understanding of your target market. But it’s important to build a crystal-clear picture of your ideal customer in order to develop messaging that appeals to them.

When we analyzed the Oh Hot GRAM landing page earlier, we saw how getting to the heart of your customers’ problems allows you to frame your offer in a more compelling way. Therefore, you should do all you can to identify any ambitions, pain points, or objections that your customers share, then present your offer as the no-brainer solution to these issues.

One way to boost your understanding of customer motivations is to dig through third-party reviews of your products or services. It’s also worth checking out reviews of your direct competitors as well. Finally, ask your sales team to share any feedback they’re received from customers. Be sure to work these insights into your promotional messaging.

3. Craft a compelling offer

Sitting at the core of your Black Friday campaign is your Black Friday offer. With thousands of businesses competing for consumer attention, you’ll need to come up with something uniquely appealing to draw in the crowds.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to follow the lead of huge retailers and offer massive discounts. After all, such drastic price cuts simply aren’t viable for most small businesses. Instead, get a little creative and come up with an offer that’s both irresistible to customers and profitable for you.

Here are a few suggestions:

  • Site-wide sales with universal coupon codes.
  • Free shipping for customers within a certain distance.
  • Free or personalized gift-wrapping.
  • Buy-something-get-something-free.
  • Gift bundles or gift boxes.
  • Free or reduced-price trials.
  • Gift cards with a minimum purchase.

For more tips on how to come up with appealing Black Friday offers, check out our guide to small business holiday marketing.

4. Build a calculated promotion strategy

When it comes to getting the word out about your Black Friday promotion, you’ll need to determine which channel(s) give you the best bang for your buck.

You probably already have at least one or two well-developed marketing channels, be it an email list, Twitter account, or company blog. These assets will play a big role in your promotion strategy.

You should also determine which platforms your target audience tends to use the most and consider running some paid BFAds through these channels. For example, if you're a B2B business perhaps LinkedIn ads are your best bet. And if you're a lifestyle business, Instagram ads are probably a better option.

But no matter where your audience hears about your Black Friday deals, you’ll need to point them to a dedicated landing page on your website. And don’t forget, you can also promote your offers across other pages of your site by using pop-ups or alert bars.

5. Urgency is your friend

As we saw in some of our earlier landing page examples, creating a sense of urgency, exclusivity, or scarcity is a powerful way to persuade customers to take action now. This is especially true during Black Friday, when shoppers know that deals expire quickly and stocks are limited.

Make the most of this by emphasizing the limited nature of your Black Friday offers throughout your campaign messaging. Frame your offer with language like “while stocks last”, “only X spaces left”, and “for one day only” so your audience doesn’t hesitate to take action. And of course, don’t overlook the power of a countdown timer to give your customers a little extra encouragement.

Time to gear up for Black Friday 2021!

Black Friday is the first major shopping event of the holiday season. It gives small businesses like yours the perfect opportunity to make some serious headway with respect to your Q4 revenue.

We’ve seen that a key element of executing a successful Black Friday campaign is to build a beautiful, dedicated landing page for your promotions, and to incorporate persuasive tactics like good old-fashioned sales copy and on-page countdown timers.

Now it’s time for you to put all this theory into practice and start planning your own 2021 Black Friday campaign. We promise that the sooner you start, the better!

Looking for more tools to help you launch your campaigns? Download our free 2021 Holiday Hustle Kit to get access to 30+ promotion ideas, a campaign checklist, holiday-themed graphics, and more.

Share this post:
Leadpages Team
By The Leadpages Team
Boost your BFAds with 7 landing page examples
squiggle seperator
Try it free for 14 days

Curious about Leadpages?

Create web pages, explore our integrations, and see if we're the right fit for your business.