Black Friday Ecommerce Strategy: How to Prep on Marketplaces

September 23, 2026

Reading Time - 2 min

Kamelia Pusheva

Author

What if your Black Friday strategy is actually hurting your business?

A 50% discount might win you Black Friday — but it could also teach your customers to wait for the next sale.
In this episode of the Marketplace Growth Podcast, Lucas Bassa sits down with Boyd Esser, Marketplace Specialist at Taskforce — a senior-only performance marketing agency and multiple Dutch Search Awards winner — to talk about what it really takes to win Black Friday without sacrificing the months that follow.

From how deep your discounts should actually go to when to start building campaigns, Boyd shares a practical, chronological know-how for preparing your brand for peak season on marketplaces.

You’ll learn how to:

Test and tier your discounts before Black Friday — without unnecessarily sacrificing margin
Build your campaigns ahead of the peak to capture demand before everyone else starts shouting “sale”
Keep your marketplace running smoothly under pressure, from stock and fulfillment to protecting your account when volume spikes

If you're responsible for marketplace growth, performance, or peak-season strategy, this episode gives you some hands-on tips on how to go into Black Friday prepared — and come out of Q4 stronger.

Don't let Black Friday turn into damage control -> See how Channable keeps feeds, ads, and marketplaces in sync during peak season.

Want the fundamentals before the tactics in this episode?-> Get a hold of our Black Friday ecommerce tips.

Listen to the complete episode:

Read transcript

Episode 7 — Black Friday Preparation

Guest: Boyd Esser, Marketplace Specialist at Taskforce | Host: Lucas Bassa

(Channable)

Lucas Bassa (00:00.386)

Welcome to a new episode of the Marketplace Growth Podcast. I'm joined by

Boyd Esser from Taskforce, an agency we've been partnered with for quite some

time at Channable, who also works on marketplaces. Today we're talking about

Black Friday and how you can properly prepare for it on marketplaces. So before

we dive in, Boyd, a quick introduction on your end.

Boyd Esser (00:30.544)

Yes, Lucas, thank you. My name is Boyd, I'm from Borne, and I'm a Marketplace

Specialist at Taskforce — I've been in that role for a while now, and in other

functions before that. My main focus is Amazon and bol, the full-on strategy. So

Black Friday preparation naturally comes with that.

Lucas Bassa (00:54.05)

So, we're recording this in August — from my experience, that's the month when

Black Friday prep slowly starts. Do you see that happen too?

Boyd Esser (01:06.704)

Yeah, people start figuring out their strategy and setting up promotion plans. It's

brand-dependent — some brands rely heavily on Black Friday and promotional

sales, others less so. But generally, most preparation kicks off around August.

Lucas Bassa (01:28.046)

Before we dive in — what's the last thing you bought on a marketplace? Or do

you avoid them?

Boyd Esser (01:33.712)

No, no, not at all — I love marketplaces. I bought a gift for my girlfriend, a watch.

She doesn't know yet, so I hope she doesn't listen to this podcast.

Lucas Bassa (01:45.294)

I would highly doubt it. Nice — and on which marketplace?

Boyd Esser (01:53.488)

bol. Yeah, bol.

Lucas Bassa (01:54.886)

Okay — for us Dutchies, still the biggest channel, though Amazon is gaining

ground fast. For this episode, what I'd love to get to are concrete takeaways on

how to prepare for Black Friday. There are always the obvious ones — make sure

you have enough stock, consider advertising — but let's go through this

chronologically. Where would you start when preparing clients for Black Friday?

Boyd Esser (02:33.327)

It obviously depends on how mature the brand is, and how mature the client is on

marketplaces in general. Black Friday can be a great growth engine as well as a

retention engine — brands get new customer acquisition, but also win back

churned customers who dropped off or moved on due to price increases. So I'd

suggest everyone selling on marketplaces participates in Black Friday in some

form. To start, you need to figure out what works for you, because some brands

actually damage themselves by discounting too heavily. If you give a fifty to sixty

percent discount, you devalue your normal selling range, which hurts your brand

long-term because people start waiting for deal days instead of buying at full

price. A good example — I'm not saying they've damaged their brand, but take

Upfront Protein. I only buy—

Lucas Bassa (03:49.207)

Yeah, for sure.

Boyd Esser (03:53.301)

—their supplements when they run big discounts. That's the kind of customer

base you build when you rely heavily on discounting.

Lucas Bassa (04:01.965)

That's a good example — I've followed them on LinkedIn for a while, and they

started off saying they only wanted to discount once a year. The supplement

space is a good example of how far this can go: the discounted price ends up

perceived as the normal price. I'm exactly the same — I never buy that kind of

product at full price. But for...

Boyd Esser (04:12.421)

Mm-hmm.

Boyd Esser (04:24.081)

Mm-hmm.

Lucas Bassa (04:31.405)

So for normal brands — outside supplements or electronics — setting the

discount percentage is already a strategic decision, both in how deep you go and

how often. Some brands only discount around Black Friday. You're saying you

have to learn what works — does that mean you need a Black Friday or two under

your belt first, or can you learn what works before Black Friday even hits? Say you

start selling in January — could you have a strategy ready by September?

Boyd Esser (05:12.773)

Yes, of course — Black Friday is considered the biggest one, but bol has bol Sale

Days, and there's also Prime Day and summer deal days on Amazon. Those are all

hyped-up discount days before Black Friday, and that's where you can test your

approach and see what discount percentage works best without hurting your

brand. What I see with a lot of clients is they build up toward Black Friday and see

a dip in sales, then a peak on Black Friday itself, then another dip afterward. But if

sales had just continued at their normal pace, the total would often be the same.

By running a huge discount on Black Friday, you create one period where you

barely make any money — sales are low in the lead-up, margins are too thin

during the peak because the discount is so deep, and then you dip again

afterward. Whereas if you'd given a ten or twenty percent discount instead, sales

would have fluctuated less and your margins would have stayed protected.

Lucas Bassa (06:21.453)

Right — part of it is also that Black Friday has gotten so big that I often see clients

have a week of low sales regardless, just because shoppers add items to their

basket and wait to see if the product they were already planning to buy gets

discounted. But indeed—

Boyd Esser (06:34.79)

Mm-hmm.

Lucas Bassa (06:48.141)

You have plenty of data options in Amazon, and bol too, to evaluate afterward —

was I purchased because I gave a big discount, or were they going to buy anyway

and this just gave them the nudge? So this whole decision on how much

discount to give — you're saying it should factor in your actual goal. Is it to win

over new customers? It could also be to clear out stock, where profitability matters

less because you just need the warehouse empty. What decisions go into setting

those discounts? Because that's ultimately one of the most important calls you

make. And do you discount—

Boyd Esser (07:28.497)

Mm-hmm.

Boyd Esser (07:41.392)

Yeah.

Lucas Bassa (07:45.515)

—your entire assortment, or what's the approach?

Boyd Esser (07:49.574)

That's brand-dependent, because a lot of brands have their A, B, and C tiers — top

tier, mid tier, and lower tier — with different margins on each. That ties back to

what I said earlier: you want to protect your brand. You don't want a sixty percent

discount on your A-tier products, because you want to position them as high-end,

and people are willing to pay more for that. So balancing that percentage is what

you should test — and you can test it on Prime Day or bol Sale Days. You need to

find the sweet spot, then measure the results after the campaign: is the brand

growing as a whole, or is it just the same customers waiting to buy from one

discount to the next? Getting that insight through Amazon is fairly easy, since the

data is readily available. bol is less so, which makes it harder to base your discount

decisions on. In those cases, your own webshop is also valuable for getting that

data and trying to match it across marketplaces.

Lucas Bassa (09:20.589)

What do you mean exactly — using your webshop data to inform marketplace

decisions?

Boyd Esser (09:28.485)

Yes — the discounts that work on your webshop should work similarly on

marketplaces. Obviously there's a lot more competition on marketplaces, so you

want to be as compelling as possible compared to competitors. But the insights

from your webshop should broadly match what works on marketplaces in terms

of discount percentages.

Lucas Bassa (09:53.378)

Okay — you mentioned it's fairly easy to extract that information on Amazon.

Which reports or metrics do you actually use to make that evaluation afterward?

And can you apply that same information to bol or another marketplace?

Boyd Esser (10:16.753)

With bol it's more difficult, because Amazon has Brand Analytics, where you can

look back months, quarters, or even years and see which customers have

returned to repurchase within that period. That's especially useful for brands with

fast-moving consumer goods, like olive oil or supplements — products where a

customer isn't a one-time purchase, but has high repurchase value once you've

won them. That's the kind of customer you want to target, though it's also the

category where you need to be careful with how much you discount. Copying

that data over to bol is difficult, because bol doesn't make it readily available.

There, you have to dig into your own data and try to mirror what you see on

Amazon — the closest KPIs you can match it to are overall growth and branded

search.

Lucas Bassa (11:32.674)

Yeah. I'm confident bol will add more metrics on this in the future — I think it's

something they're working on. You also mentioned something interesting: the

repurchasability of your product should influence your discount percentage. If you

can win a customer for a repurchasable product — a consumer good—

Boyd Esser (11:40.165)

Let's hope so.

Lucas Bassa (12:02.317)

—you're more likely to win them over for repeat purchases. So does that mean you

give a high discount to get them into your brand and turn them into a fan, or a

low discount so you don't set the wrong price expectation?

Boyd Esser (12:18.949)

That's the sweet spot you have to find. Luckily, Amazon has abandoned-basket

coupons — so customers who didn't purchase during Black Friday can be

retargeted afterward with an extra discount, bridging the gap between what they

saw and what they get. You can also reward loyal customers with a discount that

way. Those are tactics I've seen work well, especially when a product's repurchase

potential is high. For those products, Black Friday campaigns should really focus

on new-to-brand orders rather than orders in general — that's a great metric

Amazon has, and bol sadly doesn't, not yet at least.

Lucas Bassa (13:16.247)

It's one I've used too — it hasn't been around that long, but you can set

campaigns to bid higher specifically for new-to-brand audiences. If you're focused

on growing brand share, that's a great report to have as a brand owner.

Boyd Esser (13:31.853)

Audiences — yeah.

Lucas Bassa (13:45.408)

If your brand share is low in a certain category and you want to bring in more

customers, Black Friday is the moment to do it — you can spend more

aggressively on new-to-brand searches, since lifetime value is much higher for

newly converted shoppers. Okay, so we've talked about setting percentages and

discounts, and how they can gain you a lot but also hurt your business. What

other variables matter for a successful Black Friday besides percentages?

Boyd Esser (14:29.829)

As you said, you need to have stock, and a clear strategy for why you're

participating in Black Friday deals. Are you clearing old stock, introducing a new

or more optimized model, or trying to grow, as we just discussed? It's also a great

opportunity to reach new audiences, because traffic on platforms like bol and

Amazon is so high on those deal days. If you set up campaigns tactically — not

just sponsored products, but also branded shelves, display campaigns, or product

detail targeting on bol — you can get your brand out there far more, sometimes

cheaper than usual, because the volume is so high and most sellers are still

mainly investing in sponsored product results. I've seen brands that really focus on

display campaigns on Amazon during Black Friday see huge spikes in

impressions and clicks, even as CPC trends downward — because of that same

volume increase.

Lucas Bassa (16:01.559)

So even though more sellers are advertising, the sheer volume of clicks and

impressions tends to bring CPC down anyway? Right. So the point is: don't just

run the regular ads — add sponsored display and sponsored brands too. In

general, if you're already advertising on Amazon—

Boyd Esser (16:11.567)

In some cases, yeah.

Lucas Bassa (16:29.215)

—which, in my opinion, is pay-to-play — you need to run ads as a brand to do

anything on Amazon — what would you change in your advertising strategy for

Black Friday, to leverage that volume increase?

Boyd Esser (16:48.005)

One tool I use in Amazon during Black Friday is dynamic budgeting. It gives

campaigns room to learn and lets their budget increase automatically, without

you having to manually adjust things constantly. If you're running three

marketplaces and all of them have Black Friday deals running at once, you can't

watch every campaign on every platform around the clock — it's usually a week of

activity, with the real peak being about three days. You can't work yourself into the

ground, so give the campaigns space, and make sure you start early. I usually start

two to three weeks before Black Friday, aggressively increasing bids on sponsored

product results to build up top-of-search positioning.

Lucas Bassa (17:36.597)

How early?

Boyd Esser (17:54.616)

—bidding, and I actively start creating new campaigns with a dedicated Black

Friday budget and separate KPIs.

Lucas Bassa (18:05.709)

So dynamic budgeting is an Amazon setting. Do other marketplaces have

something similar, or is it more manual? Do you use external tools?

Boyd Esser (18:14.833)

For bol I use external tools — we've recently partnered with a tool provider [name

unclear in recording] that also allows day-parting. Especially around Black Friday,

you can really experiment with campaigns, and if you have a limited budget, you

can pause campaigns through that tooling too, which takes some of the pressure

off during those busy days.

Lucas Bassa (18:42.679)

And how important is day-parting in that context?

Boyd Esser (18:49.509)

That completely depends on your budget. Sadly, bol doesn't give conversion

percentages per hour, so actively steering budget and bids toward the hours with

the highest conversion rate is still a bit of a shot in the dark — bol just doesn't

share that data. What you can see is trends in when orders are placed. But if you

see your budget running out by three o'clock, you should probably lower your

bids if you can't raise the budget — which is something a lot of brands run into.

Lucas Bassa (19:19.614)

But ideally you want to stay in-budget all day. So then it's—

Lucas Bassa (19:35.022)

In an ideal scenario, you'd have plenty of budget to let everything run. That's

obviously something to discuss with the brand, or internally if you are the brand —

what's the goal? Do you want to make a profit? That will translate into a max

spend or a target margin.

Boyd Esser (19:50.703)

Mm-hmm.

Lucas Bassa (20:04.151)

But that's all part of the broader strategy for how you want to leverage Black

Friday.

Boyd Esser (20:09.871)

Exactly. That's one of the things you need to define beforehand — do you want to

increase brand awareness, increase sales, or are you trying to make money?

Lucas Bassa (20:19.435)

Okay — so for prepping, you start adding new campaigns and increasing budgets

about three weeks in advance. Why is it important to start that early?

Boyd Esser (20:32.677)

Because, as we touched on earlier, pre-shopping is real. We see traffic spikes one

to two weeks before Black Friday — people start adding things to their basket,

then open it on the day itself and make purchase decisions based on what's

discounted. You also want to build up your ranking before the huge traffic hits, so

you get more organic visibility on top of your paid visibility. That combination is

what carries you toward a profitable Black Friday, instead of just spending without

return.

Lucas Bassa (21:28.301)

I've seen that too. The volume now — Black Friday started as one day, then we got

Cyber Monday, and now it's basically two weeks of high-volume shopping. We've

talked about pre-shopping, but you also mentioned reaching out to customers

proactively after the peak. Is that a separate, post-Black Friday strategy?

Boyd Esser (22:03.237)

Yes. After Black Friday, a lot of budgets run out — brands see decreased

performance, or the monthly budget is simply spent. But if you retarget

customers who didn't purchase during Black Friday, December is usually still a

high-converting month, since people are shopping for gifts again. You might be

the one offering a discount when your competitor isn't, because they spent their

entire discount budget on Black Friday. Setting up abandoned-basket campaigns

for those products — especially fast-moving goods people repurchase monthly or

bi-monthly — is a strong way to retarget those customers. It also works well for

gift-giving categories: a Black Friday purchase in November might be for

themselves, and by December, if they're happy with the product, they're looking

for something similar to gift to someone else.

Lucas Bassa (23:11.373)

The gifting category is definitely a winner during these high-volume months. But

it's also interesting to think about after-sales — we often see January as a

relatively low month, even though there's an opportunity to leverage all the new

data and new customers gained in Q4 and try to turn them into lifelong brand

customers by surprising them. I think that's an interesting approach, because

after Black Friday it's usually evaluation time rather than action time — and that

can be an oversight. So, we've covered the lead-up and advertising, and setting

percentages. Is there anything else that's vital for a successful Black Friday?

Boyd Esser (24:25.169)

Yes — a specific example of something not to do is raising your price before Black

Friday, then discounting it on the day. The US and Canada have already rolled out

price-history look-back: people can see the average price of a product over the

past 365 days. So if you raised your price a month before Black Friday and then

only gave an effective five percent discount instead of the fifty percent you're

showing, customers can now see that. It's also already available in the EU, though

you currently have to ask Amazon's AI assistant, Rufus, or Alexa. So the EU market

probably won't be far behind in implementing that feature more visibly on

Amazon. Even bol is testing price look-back, particularly around the red discount

banner and the 'most shown price' tag.

Lucas Bassa (25:46.732)

A lot of channels are doing this now, right? MediaMarkt had real problems in the

past with unfair pricing, and now they show the average price over the last three

months, so you can't game it anymore. It's really just — don't do that, because

legislation is catching up quickly too. Anything else you shouldn't be doing, or

want to avoid?

Boyd Esser (26:23.429)

In the past, I've worked with many brands that have either an account manager or

a promotion specialist from the marketplace itself, reaching out to ask if they

want to actively participate in deal days like Black Friday. What I've seen is that

the reach you get by participating through an account manager or promotion

specialist is a much bigger opportunity than setting up your own promotions. On

bol you get commission discounts, and on Amazon you can participate in Best

Deals and Lightning Deals — if you set those up yourself, they cost money or a

percentage of revenue, but going through an account or promotion specialist is

usually free, and you can do it at much greater scale. The results have consistently

proven more lucrative when participating directly with the marketplace rather

than setting it up yourself. So if you get that opportunity, take it with both hands.

Lucas Bassa (27:33.141)

And if you're listening and want that opportunity but haven't gotten it yet — is

there a way to go after it?

Boyd Esser (27:42.678)

Definitely. In the past I've sent LinkedIn messages directly to Amazon employees

— it's a bit less official, but it works. You can also apply through Amazon's chat

support, open a case, and ask for a specialist. Usually, once you start selling on

Amazon, you should fall under some account manager, but sometimes they just

haven't had the time to reach out yet. On bol, you can also try to get a

promotional specialist through chat support. And obviously, once you grow big

enough, they'll reach out to you proactively — that's a strategy too.

Lucas Bassa (28:24.801)

That's ultimately the goal. Okay, clear. Let's move on to the main takeaways — the

golden nuggets for a good Black Friday. What would be your golden nuggets for

anyone listening who wants to make this their best Black Friday yet?

Boyd Esser (28:48.069)

The most important one is: find out what works for you. Test your discount

percentages on other deal days, and make sure you don't damage your brand by

discounting too heavily. Another one — start building relevancy and advertising

early, to get the ball rolling and reap what you've sown in the weeks beforehand,

taking advantage of that early pre-shopping traffic bump.

Lucas Bassa (29:31.799)

Mm-hmm.

Boyd Esser (29:33.21)

Another one we haven't mentioned yet is more on the protection side — try to use

FBA, or FBB (Fulfilment by bol), to protect yourself, your shipping performance,

and your account, so you don't go offline in December. I've seen it happen a few

times where a warehouse promises next-day delivery, a marketplace manager

isn't quite attentive enough, and a few weeks later you're facing three or four

strikes on bol, or your account gets closed. On Amazon, you can face penalties too,

like losing your Featured Offer.

Lucas Bassa (30:18.455)

Right — because with the increase in volume, if you have an operational hiccup,

the likelihood of cancellations goes up too. That's also part of why, at Channable,

as an integrator, we see very little change happening right before Black Friday —

very few new customers onboarding or existing ones leaving. And I think that's for

good reason: you don't want to change things up in the heat of the moment. Just

like before a race, you don't suddenly change your supplements or your running

shoes. It's not the moment for that. So yes, that's also a very good tip.

Lucas Bassa (31:12.289)

Start early, learn what works for you, analyze your data from previous deal days,

and take advantage of that build-up phase where people are browsing, adding

things to their basket, and waiting for discounts. Don't go overboard with

discounts — or do, depending on your strategy. Anything else you'd want to add,

or is this the core of it?

Boyd Esser (31:44.418)

One of the main things that's worked in the past: don't raise your price just to

discount it afterward — it won't work. Another one is don't adjust your ads too

soon, especially on the day itself. People shop throughout the day, so your budget

might burn through early while conversions actually happen later — because it's

still a Friday, people are working, and they're more likely to buy once they're

home.

Lucas Bassa (32:18.573)

Good point. I do the same as a shopper — I browse and check what's interesting,

but convert in the evening or later. Okay, nice. So have you already started Black

Friday prep for your clients?

Boyd Esser (32:38.437)

Especially the promotion-heavy clients, yes — all the deals are set up. We've got

some nice cooperation lined up with bol as well, and some pretty big discounts

coming. Exciting stuff.

Lucas Bassa (32:47.595)

Cool, nice. Are you still making any big operational changes, or has that window

passed already?

Boyd Esser (33:01.015)

No, that moment has mostly passed — no more expansion to other marketplaces

for now. All eyes are on Q4 preparation.

Lucas Bassa (33:13.601)

Exciting — cool. Let's wrap it up, Boyd. I think this is a nice check-in ahead of Black

Friday to make sure you're doing the right things, especially if you're a brand

without an agency supporting you, running things yourself. I like the FBA tip,

because every Q4 we see the limitations of carriers like PostNL and DHL — and

rightfully so, since we just keep ordering. I believe Utrecht is the city that orders

the most online. So I sympathize with the people delivering all those packages on

that crazy timetable. But thanks for the talk — and if people need help from you...

Boyd Esser (33:58.049)

[laughs]

Lucas Bassa (34:10.615)

—they can probably reach out on LinkedIn, right? Or are you all booked up for

Black Friday?

Boyd Esser (34:14.095)

Yeah, and through Taskforce, of course.

Lucas Bassa (34:17.665)

Cool — Taskforce has been a friend of Channable's for a while, so I'm excited that

you're doing marketplaces there too. Alright, thanks again, Boyd — we'll talk again

sometime.

Boyd Esser (34:32.22)

Thank you for having me, Lucas.

Kamelia Pusheva

Author

Kamelia Pusheva is a Demand Generation Manager at Channable, passionate about building marketing that balances strategy, creativity, and impact. She focuses on demand generation initiatives that educate and engage B2B SaaS audiences, collaborating closely with brand, product marketing, and sales to turn ideas into campaigns that drive measurable growth.

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