Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are round the corner and is one of the busiest times of the year for any retail business. With more and more shoppers turning to online shopping, it is essential to have the right Black Friday marketing strategy for your E-Commerce business.
In previous years it had been focused purely Black Friday itself, however over the years Black Friday spending has increased to become a Black Friday weekend/cyber week which now includes Cyber Monday. In fact in the US Cyber Monday in 2021 surpassed Black Friday for spending.
Black Friday promotions aimed at your target audience gives a huge opportunity to increase your customer base, not just for the holiday season but all year round. Our blog post will provide tips and advice for Black Friday marketing strategies which will help online stores to maximise any sales opportunities from Black Friday shoppers.
Ben Webster
Creative director at 1PCS. Addicted to design, SEO, pizza and helping companies big and small succeed online.
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Do Your Homework
The first Black Friday marketing tactic is to spend time researching the playing field within your industry and among your competitors. This will help to identify if there are any gaps in your own Black Friday marketing campaigns or areas that could be improved.
During Black Friday Cyber Monday it is a very competitive space with online shoppers researching and receiving information on many Black Friday deals, whether that be from social media posts, in store shopping or email marketing campaign.
Therefore you will need to know from your research that your offer is going to be one of the best Black Friday campaigns. To give some context, a study found the average discount in 2021 was 24%. As a result to entice potential customers to you over a competitor then your offering for your Black Friday campaign needs to be the most competitive.
This doesn’t have to be purely based on price discount, it could be a free gift, perhaps offered free shipping with a minimum purchase value. Or advertised as a flash sale, a one time only price offer or special bundle package to encourage customers to complete their purchases with your E Commerce store.
Taking the time to do your research and homework will help achieve the best Black Friday results.
Intuitive Checkout
Black Friday holiday shopping is a great way to attract customers with flash sales and using discount codes for any online business. However an abandoned cart is one of the biggest challenges for online retailers. It isn’t enough to just be offering discounts, as holiday shoppers will expect to be getting good Black Friday bargains already.
If an online shopper is on your E-Commerce site as a result of your Black Friday marketing ideas. Unfortunately if your online store is not easy to use then along the way you would be likely to be losing out on online sales.
In particular Black Friday Cyber Monday not only attracts loyal customers, it can also attract new customers who will not be familiar with your E-Commerce website regardless of your industry, whether it be for luxury brands or a small business.
We recommend imagining it is the first time you have visited your E-Commerce site and do a test run of browsing on your website and proceeding to make a purchase. Ask yourself if the experience was user friendly, was it easy to complete your purchase. If you are running promo codes, were they easy to use at the checkout.
Using yourself or a team member as a guinea pig will help you to make your checkout process as intuitive and simple to use as possible to reduce your percentage of abandoned carts.
Inventory Planning
If your Black Friday marketing strategy is to offer a significant discount with a site wide sale then it is important to ensure your have planned in advance to have sufficient stock levels. A useful resource for cyber week inventory planning is to use reporting tools to analysis your brand’s products and inventory.
This could be to identify your best sellers which you want to push during your Black Friday deals or you may have stock items you have been struggling to shift but keen to clear from your warehouse. You could potentially offer them as free gifts against a minimum purchase order. This would help increase the average order value (AOV) for both new customers and existing customers.
The last thing you would want is a successful Black Friday campaign only to not have the right inventory levels causing long delays for customers to receive their orders, which could result in negative reviews and losing out on future customers. Ensure you plan your inventory to be able to deliver customer purchases as expected and hopefully receive positive reviews thanks to their excellent experience and service received.
Inventory planning helps to decide the right products to promote for your Black Friday campaign.
Mobile-Friendly
Shopify found from their study that 79% of all Black Friday Cyber Monday purchases were made on mobile devices. With mobile far outweighing desktop for the holiday shopping season it is imperative to make sure your E-Commerce site is a positive user experience both on desktop, and more importantly on mobile.
Therefore when running the tests above for the checkout process, our tip would be to test this not only on desktop but also mobile. To achieve more sales during Black Friday Cyber Monday with your Black Friday marketing campaigns then your E-Commerce website will need to be responsive.
This will include having a fast load time without images taking too long to load. Easy navigation whilst browsing products and product ranges, with a simple to use checkout process. If it is too clunky on mobile unfortunately online shoppers will likely abandon their cart and go elsewhere to make their purchases.
Be The Early Bird
Online shopping especially with Gen Z consumers isn’t thought about once Black Friday Cyber Monday comes round, shoppers are planning in advance and doing their research in anticipation of Black Friday shopping. Our advice is to be the early bird to make sure your target audience are making their Black Friday purchases with your business.
Some tips to help with this include making the most of your social media marketing and email marketing when planning your Black Friday marketing strategy. Ideally you want to encourage people before Black Friday to sign up to receiving your email newsletters. Ways of doing this is to offer exclusive Black Friday deals or early access to your Black Friday sales if they sign up.
On your social media platforms you can also be sharing engaging and informative posts about what to expect from your Black Friday Cyber Monday promotions with a clear call to action. For example you can use social media accounts too to encourage people to sign up to your emails with a countdown timer until your exclusive Black Friday Sales.
You can also use your social media platforms to boost sales during cyber week for example with an exclusive Facebook live party. Pulling in even the anti Black Friday people to your Black Friday campaign.
The early bird catches the worm. Get ahead of your competitors with your Black Friday marketing.
Customers For Life
With your email marketing and social media marketing once Black Friday Cyber Monday has ended gives the opportunity to segment your targeting for future marketing campaigns to turn new customers into loyal customers, and increasing the average purchase value of customers with cross selling and up selling.
For example in the email subject line offer customers an exclusive offer for your VIP customers. Or you could retarget customers who had abandoned their cart to reduce that percentage with more customers with a nudge going onto complete their purchases. Holiday gifts for Christmas is a logical and effective next email marketing strategy following on from Black Friday Cyber Monday.
When delivered effectively your Black Friday campaign isn’t only a Black Friday sale that might offer free stuff, it is an opportunity to gain a loyal customer base who purchase from you time and time again. Both for in store shopping and on your E-Commerce website.
How can we help?
We hope our blog post has helped to give you tips and advice to help your business make the most of Black Friday Cyber Monday to maximise your sales during this important sales period for any E-Commerce business.
Our team have the right knowledge and expertise to help your E-Commerce website. Whether you are in need of a review or looking to make improvements to increase your sales, we can happily discuss with you the goals for your online store. Please feel free to get in touch to see how we can help.