Today, shoppers often discover brands online before buying in-store. For CPG marketers, that creates an opportunity: turning the digital attention they’ve worked hard for into retail sales.
1. Spotlight a Retail Partner
Black Friday is crowded. Simplicity can win.
Many CPG brands focus their Black Friday campaigns around a single retail partner. This can make creative alignment easier.
A clean, co-branded landing page or ad creative featuring your brand and the highlighted retailer partner can build instant trust with new customers experiencing your brand.
2. Drive Paid and Owned Traffic to Your Store Locator
This same concept applies across channels — whether it’s paid social ads, influencer swipe-ups, or email campaigns. The formula is simple:
- Use messaging that highlights retail availability (“Find us in stock at your nearest Target”).
- Send users to a store locator showing the nearest locations & products carried.
- Make it easy for them to take the next step — ensure you store locator includes directions, hours & phone number.
Lalo saw double the engagement rate in social media posts that included links to their co-branded landing page: Lalo x Target. BlendJet had a 2.2% click through rate for the 325K messages they sent during an SMS campaign linking to their store locator, resulting in 7-figures incremental retail sales.
That direct path from awareness → confidence → purchase is what drives incremental retail sales.
3. Focus on Customer Confidence
Update your store locator. Include products sold at each location. Each distributor will have a different resource you can pull from. Here is how you can export products carried by store from KeHE.
Brands that show accurate stock availability see higher engagement and better use of their ad spend. Customers who trust what they see are far more likely to act on that impulse — whether that’s driving to the store or buying online for pickup.
4. Build Your Black Friday Toolkit
To make this tangible, here’s a quick checklist for CPG marketers preparing for the holidays:
- Update your store locator. Make sure your locator reflects the most recent product availability that you have available.
- Choose your retail focus. Align your brand creative and budget around one or two key retail partners & offerings.
- Create a dedicated landing page. Clean & co-branded - feature your partners logo.
- Plan your paid and owned traffic. Think SMS, social, and influencer activations that guide shoppers in-store.
- Measure performance. Track engagement, locator usage, and store-level sales lift.
Final Takeaway
For CPG brands, Black Friday isn’t just about competing for attention — it’s about making the path to purchase easier.
Once shoppers know what they want; your job is to show them where to find it. The brands that win will be the ones that bridge the gap between digital discovery and physical availability.
(And if you’re building that strategy now, our team is offering to build a co-branded retail landing page for new signups through November 15, 2025 — just in time for Black Friday & the holiday rush.)