It’s everyone’s favorite shopping day/weekend of the year, Black Friday! The holidays are looming near, and that means it's time to start getting your ducks in a row and your marketing efforts in place. This ultimate guide to Black Friday marketing will take you through the steps you need to make your business profitable!
There is nothing worse than launching a big sales promotion just to find out your website is not working at peak performance. Studies have found that 88% of site visitors won’t return to a website if they’ve had a bad experience. To remedy that, let's go through a couple of tips to get your website running at full throttle:
Page Speed – A slow website will cost you sales. Check your website's page speed on Google’s PageSpeed Insights and use their recommendations to increase your website's speed. Why is page speed important? Here are some shocking statistics:
1-second delay reduces page views by 11%.
1-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16%.
1-second delay eats away 7% of a site's conversion rate.
On an annual basis, a 1-second delay can lead to $2.5 million in missed revenue if your shop generates $100,000 per day.
Test the Check Out Process - Walk through the check-out process from beginning to end. Are there any hang-ups? Did you get confused at any point? If so, look at those points of friction and talk to your website manager about how to fix them.
Set Up Landing Pages - Make sure you have landing pages to greet your visitors and show off your Black Friday marketing campaigns. You want to make sure your page stands out from your competitors, so work with your designer to make it exceptional!
Be prepared for the upcoming weeks of people searching for sales. You want to make sure people are seeing your ads and marketing pieces before Black Friday. Having a marketing calendar prepared will save you time and keep you organized as you plan for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Here are some things to prepare and put on your calendar:
Social Media Posts and Graphics - Prepare your Black Friday marketing graphics and content in advance. You can use tools like Hootsuite to schedule all of your posts across all platforms at once.
Ad’s and Discount Codes - Be sure to schedule out your ads and create offers inside each platform. Each platform will have an advertising dashboard you can utilize to schedule and narrow down demographics to optimize your chances for success.
Email Marketing Templates - When scheduling and creating your email marketing be sure to make the title and content catchy and memorable.
Email is a huge driver of sales on Black Friday. Email is responsible for 20% of online holiday website visits. Email marketing can feel ineffective because of your own experiences ( like spam ) but think about the business whose emails you look forward to because of the products you enjoy. Those are the emails that you open and engage with. Consider sending out the following types of emails:
Sales Announcement – Let your audience know in advance what sale promotions you will be having and when.
Secret Discount Codes to Subscribers – Shoppers love exclusive deals. Send out a “secret promo code” to your loyal customers.
Abandoned Cart Remarketing - An average of 69% of online carts are being abandoned by users. 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened. Over 1/3 of clicked cart recovery emails convert to a sale. Email services such as MailChimp and others offer abandoned cart services you can utilize.
Last Chance Deals – Offer a last chance deal to your audience after your main sales have ended. This can entice customers who are on the fence about purchasing to pull the trigger.
Gift guides help shoppers quickly find the right gifts to buy without worrying about where to find them. Social media influencers and bloggers look for well put together gift guides to share with their audiences. Here are a few examples of well-done gift guides:
A flash sale is the sale of goods at greatly reduced prices, lasting for only a short period of time. Studies have shown that flash sales boast transaction rates by 30%! Set times and dates for flash sales on certain products and be sure to send out emails and post to your social channels emphasizing the urgency of the limited time offer.
Who doesn’t love a free gift with purchase? Offering a small gift or free samples of your product can increase your sales and create brand loyalty. One study showed that twenty-five percent of shoppers bought solely because the company offered a free gift with purchase. Customers will feel like there is more value in the purchase making them more likely to convert.
Free shipping is one of the most effective Black Friday promos you can use. One study showed that 90% of participants said free shipping was their number one incentive for buying. You can offer free shipping on all of your products or offer free shipping once the customer purchases a certain dollar amount of products.
In today’s day and age, it's important now more than ever to be engaging your potential customers where they are - social media. Facebook Live, IGTV (Instagram Live), YouTube, and Twitch all offer live streaming directly to your consumers. Try going live to show off your latest sales promotions, have a round table discussion about gift guides, and/or demo your product in real-time.
Black Friday is not the only big day for shoppers. In 2019, 83.3 million people shopped online on Cyber Monday with the average consumer spending $431. Extend your digital sales throughout the weekend to maximize profits.
It’s very important to utilize hashtags when posting to social media. The following are some hashtags you can you when advertising your promotions:
For Black Friday:
#Blackfriday
#Blackfridaysales
#Blackfridayoffers
#Blackridaydeals
#Blackfridayweekend
#Blackfriday2020 (or the relevant year)
#Blackfridayshopping
#Blackfridayspecials
For Cyber Monday:
#cybermonday
#cybermondaysale
#cybermondaydeals
#cybermondaysales
#cybermondayshopping
#cybermondaydeals
#cybermonday2020 (or the relevant year)
This all may seem like a giant undertaking, but the result will speak for themselves. Take one step at a time and remember the more prep you do the less stressful it will be on the big day. Good luck, and Happy Black Friday!
