According to a study by Adobe, Black Friday was the most popular shopping day of Thanksgiving weekend with around $7.4 billion online sales and it is expected to increase 25% in the coming years.
Online shopping makes up a significant portion of Black Friday shopping. Whether you’re a retailer or a small enterprise, you’ll need to concentrate on digital execution for Black Friday marketing to drive sales and build enthusiasm for the holiday shopping season.
Given the increasing performance of Black Friday sales, it is expected that the number will increase in the future as well. Though the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 and as well as factory closure in China, the US, and other countries had an impact on e-commerce due to the uncertainty in the supply chain and consumer demand across the globe.
However, now as lives are getting normal in the current situation, e-commerce is also getting back on track. So, if you want to achieve your sales goal this year, you need to make sure you’ve got the best Black Friday marketing ideas.
For this, we have got the 7 best Black Friday marketing strategies to help you curate a good campaign and increase the flow of Black Friday holiday shoppers and boost sales revenue.
7 Best Black Friday Marketing Ideas
1. Capitalize On Your Email Database
Email marketing is still one of the best channels for promotional deals. But before that, you must segment your database as every user has their unique preferences. You can categorize them based on their demographics, location, and what they purchased from you in the past. Segmentation is necessary for email campaigns as it enables you to respond to subscriber behaviors and thus make each segment’s message relevant to those subscribers.
You might think why does it matter? So look at the below study.
Around 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates, 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue.
How to make this strategy smarter?
- An unforgettable subject line. Your email subject line is a vital component of the success of your campaign as it is the first thing your target audience is going to read. The subject line must communicate exactly what the email is about so that the audience can prioritize the email’s importance without having to open it. Example: 50% Off Black Friday Sale + FREE Shipping.
- Personalize emails such as using their name like “Happy Holiday, Emma”. You can also personalize your emails with offers that are specific to the user or the region where they live.
- Timing is crucial. So you must schedule the emails according to time zones or as per customer preferences.
- Save your date. Include a tab that connects your website to a customized “Add this event to your calendar.” You don’t want them to miss their offers on Black Friday.
- Share loyalty program policy amongst your existing and past customers on mail.
2. Power Up Your Old Landing Page
Creating an effective Black Friday deals website means keeping the user experience simple, thus delivering a stress-free online buying experience. You can revamp your old landing page instead of building a new one.
You must also maintain the number of items displayed on your web page to a minimum to grow the chances that the users will notice your selling point and end their browsing sessions with positive purchasing decisions.
How to make this strategy matter?
- To present your message in a clear style, keep your attention focused on a certain line of products that you’d like to promote. If those are new items that were just added to your inventory recently, then make sure that you highlight the main benefits in a clear style.
- It’s important to keep a close eye on the page loading speeds, especially during the busy season of Black Friday sales. No matter what kind of changes you apply to the landing page design, make sure those do not slow down your site.
- While working on your Black Friday landing page, tell them about the main and unique selling points. It is always a good idea to keep a long story short and highlight the key benefits of using your offer.
- You can either add navigation patterns to banners or add a standard navigation bar with Black Friday deals somewhere on your site. This way, people will be able to notice what particular deals appeal to them the most and navigate to the right catalogs or pages with one click.
3. Boost Black Friday Sales via Social Media
In a study, it was revealed that sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday had 3.8 million online posts in 2018, and in 2019 it was more than that. Social media platforms have huge importance and online shoppers should not miss them. Planning social media marketing strategies is a must for Black Friday to enhance its online presence.
However, one of the trickiest parts of a successful Black Friday social media strategy will be for your brand to stand out in the sea of other brands clambering for buyer attention.
As competition is high in the market, you need to be fierce to bring in the buyers and should leave no stone unturned – you can entice visitors from different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
How to make this strategy matter?
- Best time to post. Know when the social media users are online at peak and then schedule your post.
- You can also boost your subscriber list for Black Friday by converting your organic Instagram story viewers into your forever customers. There are many tools out there with this feature. One such tool is Wigzo’s magic link that can help achieve this and it works not only with social media but also for onsite messaging channels too.
- When marketing for Black Friday you should be taking advantage of Black Friday-focused Instagram hashtags in addition to your regular hashtags. You’ll want to include hashtags such as #blackfriday #cybermonday #sale #blackfridaysale #blackfridaydeals. This will allow you to reach customers who are specifically looking for deals over these days.
- You can also use live Facebook videos as it gets 300 percent more engagement than those that don’t use live videos.
- Don’t leave a message unanswered. Netizens are extremely impatient, so it is extremely important to be timely in addressing their concerns or inquiries on your comments.
- You can also add the humor element in your posts to grab attention right away. It makes your brand memorable, invites conversation, and improves shares, likes, and retweets.
4. Start A Referral Program During Promotions On Black Friday
Recommendations or referrals, as stated by Nielsen’s Consumer Trust in Advertising, are the most trusted form of advertising. It simply means that in choosing what to buy, many people rely heavily on the opinions of someone else. The study also found that consumers referred can be a great driver of brand loyalty and stunning productivity relative to any of your other customers.
How to make this strategy matter?
- Double discounts (offering both referrers and referees money off their next purchase) tend to perform particularly well. It’s likely your referral program’s cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is significantly less than other channels, so take advantage of this and offer a generous incentive.
- Consider it convincing. Once you begin a referral program, the question you need to ask is how you will promote a productive referral. There are many ways to create an enticing package of incentives while preserving your productivity. Make sure you analyze what sparks your audience’s curiosity. If your reward system does not magnetize your clients, it will be a waste.
- It is very important to indicate the expiration of a reward. When going for a referral program keep in mind that a sense of urgency plays a vital role. If it takes longer for a referral to make a call to action, then you are missing the opportunity to make a successful sale.
- Turn this viral. Social media is a good platform for a comparison lead, so let your followers talk about your brands. With the power of sharing social networks, more and more people will learn about your brands and land on your website through their friends ‘ shares/posts/tweets.
5. Time-sensitive Offers
In online sales, time-sensitive offers work so well because buyers can visually see how much time they have left to grab discounted items. Such offers alone can increase conversions by 8.6%.
Likewise, scarcity is another tactic that prompts buyers to purchase quickly. For example, if they will know that there are only a few items left, they’ll rush to the checkout before it’s too late. Besides, when items are limited, they’re perceived to have more value.
Also, the FOMO effect in the audience influences purchases to great effect. Around 68 % of millennials purchase due to FOMO, within just 24 hours of feeling it.
How to make this strategy matter?
- Promotional emails to help build days or weeks of excitement before the sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- A homepage banner timer to announce when the actual sale starts so that people can plan to start shopping online.
- Social proof is a powerful strategy you can use to drive more Black Friday sales. It is a phenomenon where people copy the actions of others when they see that people performed the same action in a certain situation.
- Since FOMO is all about missing out on something, you can offer your customers access to something with limited membership and make them feel special. When shoppers feel FOMO, they think that others are getting a deal that they’re not, and create exclusivity to boost your Black Friday sales. As if a shopper isn’t getting that special deal, they’ll do what they need to do to become a part of that special group. For example, Amazon Prime does this by offering free 2-day shipping (and its fastest shipping options) to members only.
- On your social media page, you should include a Black Friday countdown timer tab to broadcast the event and make sure your customers know when to save the date.
6. Cross-sell And Upsell With Irresistible Discounts
Upselling and cross-selling are perfect ways to make decent use of selling more to an existing customer already on your website. Design and build combos of 4-5 similar products that work together well and offer customers the entire package at a full discount.
For example, when a customer buys earrings, offers them a matching necklace, or when they buy a camera then offer them a bigger SD card.
Upsell offers work so well that some stores completely rely on them to make their bottom line. So if you’re not offering upsells and cross-sells on your eCommerce store for BFCM this year, you’re going to miss out on extra sales you could be making on every single order.
Those kinds of bundle deals perform very well on big sales days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where people actively look for a much better price package deal.
How to make this strategy smarter?
- Write a copy message that offers real value to consumers: the sales copy that persuades customers to take the deal is your message in the bid. Polish the copy to ensure that it reflects customers ‘ true values.
- You can now automate your upsells, generating data-driven offers based on the information it collects from your store. In short, you can get your store to do all the thinking for you!
- It is important to recommend items that will fit your customer’s budget to maximize sales and boost revenues. If a customer bought a $200 item, it is unlikely that he will purchase a $1,000 product right after.
- Create a sense of urgency and claim that you only have very few items in stock or bid until midnight. Customers will be more adventurous in buying items they want when they are pressed for time or scarcity.
7. Create Flash Sale Excitement
A flash sale is a crucial promotion that takes place for a short period.
Flash sales have been proven to boost transaction rates by 35 percent. Besides, companies experience better results when using email to drive their flash sales. The best converting flash sales are three-hourly flash sales at a transaction to open rate of 59 percent.
Before the actual Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s an enjoyable way to create hype and boost sales. It may also be a good idea a few hours before the planned event, or a day or two.
How to make this strategy smarter?
- According to recent research, the best time to send your Black Friday email when running a flash sale is in the evening. Emails sent during the evenings had 30 percent higher revenues than emails sent by mid-day or launch-time. These evening flash sale messages converted 23 percent higher too.
- The flash sale to customers can be announced early with a sticky header bar on your page. The bar will easily capture the attention of consumers as shoppers scroll down as it stays on the page. Therefore, you should remind them of their upcoming sales without interrupting their shopping flow.
- As much as you want to sell something, a large number of products need to be overlooked during a flash sale. When planning a flash sale, limited availability should be your top priority. Time is also a critical factor apart from restricting product offerings.
- Limit the selection of products and don’t have all of your products or services discounted for this sale before the main sale on Black Friday.
- Advertise the items that can not be purchased. It is necessary to promote your unavailable products during the flash sale. Remember that the consumers will soon be selling these services on Black Friday or Cyber Monday itself, but they need to be patient only a little longer.
Final Thought
It’s never too early to start planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There is no perfect time to get your strategies in place so that you can beat last year’s sales and revenue.
Black Friday sales are also great for small businesses. They can promote offers across platforms such as Shopify and Amazon but also make sure to use the promotional tools available on each platform to get the word out.
To put it in a nutshell, Black Friday is the biggest retail sales day in the United States so don’t forget to provide exceptional shopping and customer service to visitors. This will not only keep them full of good cheer this holiday season but also turn them into lifelong customers even after the holidays are over.
If you are looking for a platform that can help you achieve your Black Friday marketing goal and boost your revenue, then get in touch with our sales experts for a free demo or you can start a free trial right away.
