Black Friday Ultimate Guide
How to navigate the madness that is Black Friday, and make this years campaign your most successful one to date!
How to navigate the madness that is Black Friday, and make this years campaign your most successful one to date!
Having a profitable Black Friday is essential for many retailers, the holiday season amounts to almost 20% or more of annual sales for many retailers. [National Retail Federation]
Black Friday is now needing to share the spotlight with Cyber Monday – what once was a shopping event consisting of one day and one day only, has now expanded and become a period of several days, also known as ‘Cyber Week’. The sales opportunities throughout this period are endless, check out our recommendations for how you can maximise the potential that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have, and let’s make Cyber week 2021 one for the history books!
Team work makes the dream work – in order to enhance your planning, get in contact with your Account Manager and PPC provider to discuss your plans and strategies for the upcoming Cyber Week and Holiday season.
In order to have a successful campaign, it is essential that planning is in place for before and during the event, as well as after.
Let’s break down the two key parts that will be crucial for your e-commerce strategy.
Before making any crucial decisions as part of your planning, remember to review your data.
Google Analytics will be your best friend – During the week of Black Friday, Google Analytics will be extremely useful in helping with your decision making. Being able to analyse your performance around the world will mean that you can make the most of your opportunities in other countries.
Watch your competitors like a hawk – Subscribe to their email lists and follow whatever social media accounts they have. Keeping up to date with this will allow you to compare and make any necessary enhancements to your own campaign.
A useful tool you could use is VisualPing – this will update you with any new changes that have been made to your competitors website.
Without preparation ahead of time, your campaign will not be successful. Use Excel or another programme to create your sales plan.
Don’t put it off until a later time, or else later will become TOO late!
Where there’s a will, there’s a way – your customers won’t settle for a full price product, they will shop around until they find the best deal they can get, and won’t stop until they do.
Now or Never – If you are giving out special offers or discounts, make sure that your customers are aware that these sales are only lasting for a certain period of time – make the most of the increased traffic by stressing the importance of purchasing NOW before it’s too late.
Offer Intimate Experiences – Make use of different phrases such as ‘From us to you’ and ‘Exclusive Offer’ to give the offer a personalised feel for the customer. Special Offer emails that include their name such as ‘An offer just for you, Jane!’ are also helpful in exploiting the emotional relationship that has been created between brand and customer.
Happiness is… free shipping
When considering providing free shipping for your customers, consider the following:
93% of Customers Prefer Free Shipping over Discounts and now 75% of consumers EXPECT free shipping [Reviews.io, 2019]
Once you have established your shipping methods and prices, make sure you also highlight your Click & Collect service to take pressure off of delivery services.
20% off deals and free shipping when you spend over £30 is great, but why not stand out from the crowd and offer MORE for your customers?
Offering something like a free gift with your purchase or free first class delivery when you spend over a certain amount could be the catalyst in encouraging your customers to spend more.
When it comes to having queries/problems, Live chat has become the leading digital contact method for online customers, as a staggering 46% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media. [SuperOffice, 2021]
It isn’t uncommon for customers to have queries about your product or service. Instead of making them wait for a response, Live Support is a great way for customers to contact you quickly and it means that you can deal with their query in real time.
Get creative with your desktop and mobile websites:
Home Page Banners: Pre-Black Friday week
Home Page Banners: During Black Friday week
Specific banners used for the day of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to mark the sale period.
HTML Banners
Translation of Banners
Stay up to date
Black Friday Pages
Landing Page SEO
Opening hours
Build up the hype!
Prioritise your existing customers
Don’t forget about Christmas!
Custom Mobile Menu Links
‘Enable Add To Basket Direct From Mobile Listings’
‘Enable Ajax Add To Basket’
Email marketing is a great way for you to build relationships with new customers, and re – engage with existing and inactive customers. It is the perfect opportunity to speak directly to them in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them. Along with right messaging, email can become one of your most impactful marketing channels.
Because of this, it is crucial that emails are carefully prepared and scheduled well in advance. Stand out from the crowd – don’t let your email drown in a sea of hundreds of similar BF emails also in their inbox.
Something to think about:
When are your audience engagement levels at their highest? How will this impact the time you choose to send your emails?
Are your emails relevant to your target audience?
Types of emails:
Keep your business and product at the top of your audience’s mind – having multiple places where you can remarket to your customer gives you a better chance at conversion – don’t miss out on the opportunity.
During Black Friday, basket abandonment rates can increase to almost 70%! It isn’t uncommon for shoppers to be jumping from tab to tab, comparing prices and bargain hunting to the extreme, so it is essential that you have a strategy in place in an attempt to recover this lost revenue. [Pure360, 2018]
Try to tailor your ‘Black Friday’ themed dropped basket emails so that they are targeting specific customers according to their basket.
Social media plays a huge part in driving visitors to online stores for Black Friday, and therefore it is important that you have a killer strategy in place.
Keep up to date with the social media conversation leading up to the big day and get the hype around your campaign going as soon as possible!
It’s all about the hashtags – using relevant hashtags will create great visibility for your campaign, and help you reach your target audience – #BlackFriday #BlackFriday[year] #BlackFridaySale #BlackFridayShopping #BlackFridayDeals #CyberMonday #CyberMonday[year] #CyberWeek #ShoppingDay
Consider creating a custom hashtag for your business, which you can include in your email campaigns and on social media, so consumers know to also include it. This will help you to engage with customers more easily.
With Black Friday Weekend only being a short period of time, it is vital that you have a clear strategy in place, so you can make the absolute most out of that time. With the right preparation, the right ad, the right bid, you can reap the rewards of the biggest e-commerce opportunity of the year.
Preparation is key
Consider potential scenarios and plan for them to help you to stay one step ahead of the game when planning out your strategy.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Once all of these questions have all been taken into consideration and answered, it is important to ad copy to your PPC provider to ensure your ads will be approved before they are required to go live.
Facebook Advertising is an important piece that will complete your marketing schedule puzzle. In order to get the most out of this years campaign, ask yourself the following:
Optimise your affiliate marketing activities and capitalise on your Black Friday efforts this year:
Internal
Take time yourself to reflect on previous campaigns and their performances. Evaluate what went well and what could have been improved upon and what changes can be made this time around.
‘Good feedback is the key to improvement’
Customer feedback is your secret to success. Requesting feedback from your customers surrounding your Black Friday campaign can guide and inform your decision making and influence changes which will improve your campaigns performance.
Consider sending out a survey to your customers and enquire about aspects such as:
Give customers an opportunity to share anything else they think that you did/didn’t do well regarding your campaign.
Don’t let the end of your Black Friday campaign be the end of your customer and brand relationship. Try to re-engage with your customers new and old and them send them exclusive offers or product recommendation emails relating to their Black Friday orders in an attempt to upsell.
Reflect on your Affiliate Marketing campaigns and evaluate their performance during this period. Make any necessary adjustments to ensure you are well prepared for your Christmas campaigns.
It is important to not only internally reflect but also would be worth meeting with your Facebook and PPC providers to evaluate your campaigns and analyse what went well, what needs improvement, and HOW it can be improved. This analysis will be important for building on your knowledge just in time for Christmas, to guarantee a successful campaign.
As you can recognise from reading through this blog post, the sales opportunities throughout the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period are never ending. With a well prepared, extensive marketing strategy, anything is achievable.
Let’s make this year’s Black Friday the most successful one to date!
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