Black Friday has become much bigger than a single day, and social media is playing an increasingly important role in how shoppers discover deals, research products and buy.
TikTok Shop’s UK Black Friday sales grew 45% year on year in 2025, with 27 products sold every second on Black Friday itself. So if social is part of your ecommerce strategy, this is not the weekend to simply schedule a few promotional posts and hope for the best.
Here are 10 practical tactics to help your Black Friday social campaigns work harder.
1. Countdown campaigns with early access
Build excitement by launching a countdown campaign, teasing special Black Friday deals with daily posts or stories. Offer exclusive early access to loyal customers via email sign-up or app downloads to drive pre-sales.
2. Flash Sales and Limited-Time Offers
Run flash sales and limited-time offers during Black Friday weekend, with short videos or story posts that create urgency. Highlight that the deal is only valid for a few hours to encourage quick purchases.
3. Influencer partnerships and giveaways
Partner with influencers to create unboxing videos, haul posts, or giveaway contests. They can offer their followers exclusive discount codes, amplifying reach and driving traffic to your store.
4. Social media-only discounts
Promote exclusive discounts available only through social media platforms. Use an exclusive discount code, product tag or trackable link so customers have a clear route from the social post to the offer.
5. Use live shopping to turn attention into sales
Live shopping has moved well beyond novelty status. TikTok Shop reported a 68% increase in LIVE Shopping sales during Black Friday 2025.
Use live sessions to demonstrate products, answer questions, compare options and reveal limited offers in real time. The format works particularly well when customers need to see a product in action before buying.
6. Turn customers into your content
Encourage customers to post pictures or videos of their favourite purchases using a branded hashtag. Repost user content during Black Friday weekend to build trust and social proof, while also promoting key products.
7. Retargeting ads based on engagement
Use retargeting ads to reach people who’ve already engaged with your social media content, visited your website, or added items to their basket. Tailor these ads with Black Friday promotions to remind them of products they showed interest in.
8. Shoppable posts and ads
Make the route from discovery to purchase as short as possible. Use product tags, shop links and native commerce features such as TikTok Shop where they’re available, so customers don’t have to hunt around your website for the product they’ve just seen.
9. Optimise your social content for search
More shoppers are using social platforms as search engines, particularly when they’re looking for products, reviews and deals.
Think about the phrases customers might actually search for and build them naturally into captions, spoken video content and on-screen text. “Best Black Friday skincare deals” is much more useful than simply posting “Our sale is live”.
10. Collaborations and bundle offers with other brands
Partner with complementary brands to offer special Black Friday bundle deals. Cross-promote on each brand’s social media channels to expand your reach to a larger audience and increase the perceived value of the deals.
And don’t forget the mobile experience
In 2025, 61.5% of UK online holiday spending came from mobile devices, accounting for £16.5 billion in sales. So when you’re planning your Black Friday social activity, make sure the journey from post to product page to checkout works just as well on a phone as the social content that got someone there in the first place.
The important thing is not to be everywhere
Pick the channels your customers actually use and make the experience useful there, whether that’s helping them discover a product, answering a question or giving them a quicker route to buy.
Need more help making your social ambitions into reality? Sort out a demo of our social platform here.
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