Out­door retail­er REI struck hol­i­day mar­ket­ing gold with its #OptOut­side cam­paign, which will like­ly pay great div­i­dends this sea­son even though the brand itself will be closed on what was once the holi­est of shop­ping days. While the effort has inspired much chat­ter in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing uni­verse over what this means for the future of Black Fri­day, it remains a rel­e­vant mar­ket­ing moment.

Black Fri­day isn’t dying, it’s sim­ply chang­ing, accord­ing to the Nation­al Retail Fed­er­a­tion. Stephen Larkin, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer of cre­ative agency 180LA, agrees there are too many greedy retail­ers and too many con­sumers look­ing to get a deal for Black Fri­day to ever real­ly die out. “As long as there is a Fri­day after Thanks­giv­ing, there will be a Black Fri­day,” Larkin said. So what do mar­keters need to know now about this hol­i­day mar­ket­ing moment? Here are 10 tips.

1. Start Black Friday Early

It is crit­i­cal to get infor­ma­tion about Black Fri­day sales out ear­ly to max­i­mize impact, accord­ing to Rebec­ca Brooks, part­ner at mar­ket research com­pa­ny Alter Agents. “Cus­tomers plan this shop­ping event and you don’t want news of your sales to reach poten­tial cus­tomers after they’ve already solid­i­fied their plans,” Brooks adds. In fact, per Google, 20 per­cent of con­sumers start their hol­i­day shop­ping in Sep­tem­ber.

2. Check Your Organic Search Visibility

A recent analy­sis by SEO plat­form Linkdex of the most pop­u­lar phras­es used by UK shop­pers research­ing Christ­mas gifts under­scores the impor­tance of organ­ic search. “Brands who per­form poor­ly in organ­ic search are often forced to invest heav­i­ly in paid media and adver­tis­ing to make up for short­falls in vis­i­tor and sales vol­umes in a peri­od when such costs are fre­quent­ly heav­i­ly inflat­ed by high lev­els of com­pe­ti­tion,” accord­ing to the study. Jonathan Alder­son, glob­al head of dig­i­tal at Linkdex, points to invest­ment in SEO strate­gies, site improve­ments, con­tent mar­ket­ing and PR as means to improve retail­ers’ search vis­i­bil­i­ty ahead of this cru­cial shop­ping peri­od.

3. Try Facebook Retargeting

While Black Fri­day and Cyber Mon­day present spec­tac­u­lar oppor­tu­ni­ties to dri­ve con­sumers to web­sites in search of spe­cials, pro­mo­tions and dis­counts, many busi­ness­es fall short here, said Kyle Reyes, pres­i­dent and cre­ative direc­tor of The Silent Part­ner Mar­ket­ing. That’s pre­cise­ly why brands need to start invest­ing in dis­play retar­get­ing strate­gies – par­tic­u­lar­ly on Face­book – to fur­ther enhance their close ratios. “The first step is run­ning a Face­book Dark Post cam­paign,” he said. “Cre­ate a cus­tom audi­ence and dri­ve that audi­ence to your web­site. Then drop a cook­ie in their brows­er that will fol­low them after they leave your web­site back onto Face­book or through­out Google’s adver­tis­ing net­work. These pen­nies-on-the-dol­lar adver­tis­ing strate­gies return tremen­dous div­i­dends when exe­cut­ed prop­er­ly.”

4. Make Black Friday An Experience

Brands can fur­ther cap­i­tal­ize on Black Fri­day by turn­ing the day into more of an expe­ri­ence for con­sumers, said Cody Sim­monds, strate­gist at cre­ative agency Struck. “This is some­thing intan­gi­ble that isn’t direct­ly tied to the ratio­nal ben­e­fit of sav­ing on items, gifts, etc.,” he said. “Retail­ers are already doing things to make Black Fri­day more com­fort­able for cus­tomers, such as offer­ing more places to sit, cof­fee, food, etc.”

5. Reward Consumers In Multiple Ways

Retail­ers should also look for emo­tion­al rewards in addi­tion to eco­nom­ic ones. “For exam­ple, a retail­er like Tar­get could use its loy­al­ty card to offer tiered shop­ping times, start­ing with the most loy­al cus­tomers — maybe Red­card users,” Sim­monds said. “This does not have an entire­ly emo­tion­al val­ue, but it elim­i­nates some of the in-store chaos and incen­tivizes shop­pers to shop more fre­quent­ly or apply for a Red­card.” Fur­ther, these extra incen­tives can help com­bat price trans­paren­cy as con­sumers real­ize they may not be sav­ing as much on Black Fri­day pur­chas­es after all, he added.

6. Tap Into Distinct Consumer Motivators

Some con­sumers still love the thrill of the hunt when it comes to find­ing great bar­gains, said Sarah Hard­wick, CEO of val­ues-based mar­ket­ing agency Zen­zi. Brands tar­get­ing these con­sumers want to build excite­ment for great deals. Oth­er con­sumers may be focused on the tra­di­tion of the sea­son, like shop­ping trips with fam­i­ly and friends or see­ing San­ta and dec­o­ra­tions. “Brands whose top cus­tomers are most moti­vat­ed by tra­di­tion will want to tap in to the cus­tom­ary sights, smells, and sounds of the sea­son to con­nect,” she said. Still oth­er con­sumers may see the hol­i­days as a time to pri­or­i­tize giv­ing back to oth­ers. “Brands whose cus­tomers fall pre­dom­i­nant­ly into this group can bet­ter con­nect with their top con­sumers with inspir­ing cam­paigns focused on giv­ing back and enjoy­ing the spir­it of the sea­son to make life bet­ter for those around them,” Hard­wick said. “The impor­tant thing for any brand is to under­stand what is impor­tant to its top con­sumers and to tap in to those moti­va­tors in a cre­ative, brand­ed way to lever­age what mat­ters the most to their con­sumers dur­ing this sea­son.”

7. Find Shared Values

Julie Lyons, pres­i­dent and COO of Zen­zi, says it’s all about under­stand­ing top cus­tomers and what is most impor­tant to them – and then con­nect­ing with them on those shared val­ues. Again, Hard­wick points to REI’s #OptOut­side cam­paign as a good strat­e­gy because it focus­es on con­nect­ing with cus­tomers’ shared val­ues of expe­ri­enc­ing nature and enjoy­ing the com­pa­ny of oth­ers ver­sus the chaos of the hol­i­day sea­son. “This is a good way for REI to con­nect on shared val­ues with its con­sumers, but it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the best strat­e­gy for every brand,” she said.

8. Accommodate Millennial Preferences

Mil­len­ni­als are deal hunters and will pur­sue Black Fri­day spe­cials in this tight econ­o­my, but they are also extreme­ly eager to revamp the retail expe­ri­ence to match their dig­i­tal lives, Brooks said. For exam­ple, inter­est in online pur­chas­es that can be picked up at the store is rapid­ly grow­ing, she not­ed.

9. Make Black Friday Work For Your Brand

Brands also need to look at their mis­sions and pur­pos­es and fig­ure out what they can do to make an event like Black Fri­day unique, Sim­monds said, point­ing once more to REI and #OptOut­side. “They’ve cap­i­tal­ized on the wide­spread trend of con­sumer back­lash to the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the hol­i­days in a way that’s authen­tic to the brand and its pur­pose,” he says. “With­out call­ing it cause mar­ket­ing, [mar­keters should look at] how defy­ing Black Fri­day can work in favor of a brand while build­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty in the process.”

10. Consider Closing

If your pri­ma­ry goal is build­ing a brand, rather than max­i­miz­ing hol­i­day sales, you could take a page from REI’s book and close on Black Fri­day, Brooks said. “This will send a mes­sage to your staff and cus­tomers that you stand for more than just prof­its,” she said. “It’s the smart strat­e­gy in the long run than a pric­ing race to the bot­tom.”