Improve Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy
In the space of a decade, Black Friday deals have gone from an “American” thing to a worldwide shopping frenzy that can make or break the entire year for businesses, e-commerce, and even influencers, so having the right approach when it comes to Black Friday marketing ideas can be paramount.
Before getting into Black Friday marketing strategies and different approaches to Black Friday sales, let’s step back and see why this unofficial start of the holiday shopping season is making the headlines year after year.
Where did Black Friday come from?
While today, the term Black Friday can have a negative connotation due to some of the ugly scenes we’ve seen around shops in recent years, originally, the name Black Friday, and events around it, had no implication on violence, giant crowd stampedes, or race for that matter.
The term Black Friday initially originated in 1950s Philadelphia and was used by police, as the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy would coincide with the big Army-Navy football game, resulting in high traffic, shoplifting, and general mayhem. While this term does have it’s similarities with what we see these days, what we call Black Friday today, became popularised later, in the 80s, as retailers saw the potential of a broad shopping day event.
The name was chosen from the fact Thanksgiving, being the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season, meant stores went from “red” - making a loss, to “black” which meant profit. Not as interesting, I know.
How Black Friday deals became so popular?
Obviously, it starts with psychology. No need to get scientific to understand that consumers love it when they pay something less than they were happy to (they did get scientific though). You can add fear of missing out to that list as well. People don’t want to look stupid while everyone around them is finding the best Black Friday deals. It’s also a great way to do your Christmas shopping early while making the most out of all the discounted prices.
But the explosion of the Black Friday phenomenon came as shopping switched from the real world to digital. Initially, Cyber Monday was invented to separate online from actual shopping but as digital purchases became more and more common, the two merged into a huge weekend of shopping, both online and offline.
In recent years, Black Friday deals truly became a worldwide phenomenon. With online sales topping $6 billion alone during Black Friday 2018. An IPSOS report from 2019. registered a global sales jump of around 6.6 times compared to a regular Friday.
But the fact consumers are out there, actively looking for great deals doesn’t change the fact that you are competing with some of the largest retailers. This makes your Black Friday marketing strategy even more important. You will need to be creative and proactive in your approach to Black Friday sales.
Ultimately, no article can replace creativity from you or your marketing team, since you know the brand and its consumers better than anyone but here are a few steps you should take to prepare your business for the upcoming Black Friday 2020, which could be the first time in history where the entire shopping holiday occurs online.
What should my Black Friday offer be?
Before you decide on the type of promotion you want to offer for Black Friday 2020, you need to ask yourself, “what do I want to achieve here?”.
Obviously, the easiest strategy would be to provide an enormous discount on all of your products or services, but with the global discount average already at a whopping 55%, you’ll need to be more creative than that. Also, while discounts will improve your conversion rates, you need to be smarter and think of ways to attract new, high paying customers, and upsell your existing customers.
The way I see it, Black Friday is the perfect time to allow your customers to explore the highest level of service, product, or subscription you offer, at a discounted price. While it may seem like you’re losing more money than you must, you will increase your average order value, hopefully for the long term.
Another opportunity, especially for apparel e-commerces, comes with out-of-season clothing. As winter arrives, most people are looking for cold weather clothes, but an even bigger discount on summer collections can still attract customers, who may return next summer if not before.
I know it’s easy to just say “give them a huge discount” and some shops will definitely have issues with it, considering the Covid pandemic and the ongoing economic downturn. This is why you need to be creative and proactive. Think about what your consumers will appreciate, whether it’s free shipping, lifetime access, or loyalty programs, look for an opportunity that won’t hurt your budget too much, but will look huge in the eyes of your customers.
Start with your website
As I mentioned, Black friday deals were turning more and more online, even without the pandemic and a lockdown. This years' traffic might be expected to be lower overall, but online spend should break all previous records with people sitting at home, isolating.
It’s paramount that your website is prepared for this surge in visits, as you won’t sell much if your website keeps on crashing through the day. Make sure the whole website is Black Friday oriented, with pointers to the best Black friday deals you offer, competitions and lead forms.
This is why your business' Black Friday marketing strategy needs to start much earlier than November, even if the actual advertising part strats at about that time.
Preparing your website for Black friday not only includes optimization, you could create Black Friday blanners, specialized landing pages, custom pricing, widgets for flash sales, etc.
Create and maintain a dedicated Black Friday landing page
Obviously, SEO is something you have to work on through the entire year so try to include Black Friday promotion to your broader SEO strategy, so when the time comes, your Black Friday landing page ranks as well as your website does, if not better.
Creating a Black Friday landing page that stays active all year will help drastically when your Black Friday ads come out, as your ads will be better placed, even with a smaller Back Friday campaign budget. Adding to that, any customer that searches for your brand + “Black Friday”, will see your offer ranked high, if not on top, especially for people who use ad blockers.
Keeping a specialized landing page on your website through the year, will also help you gather leads, as you can ask for email addresses, in order to notify interested potential customers when the Black Friday marketing campaign, or any other accompanying promotion is up and running.
Update product descriptions & their appearance
While consumers may be looking at that lovely discount at first, they’ll still need to be convinced to purchase one or the other product, from your shop or a competitor. You need to make sure your products or services are presented and showcased in the most appealing manner possible, with product descriptions that can convince consumer yours’ are indeed the best Black friday deals available.
Finding the best converting product description is naturally hard, but it is something you have been probably working on for a while as they can be key for SEO, as well as conversion rates. This is not a “Black Friday thing” but with consumers as willing to spend as they’ll ever be, you need to apply everything you’ve learned previously.
The other key part is how you visually present the products or services you sell. The (still) dominant approach is to create the best product images but if you want to stand out, you could replace those still images with videos showcasing the product, features and the discount in one smooth animation. The best side of creating product videos is that you automatically have plenty of content for paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as well as original content for your social media posts around Black friday.
Create and send personalized Email campaigns
Having a big list of contacts in your CRM can be a huge advantage for Black Friday sales. Not only does it mean they are already aware of your brand, but that you can re-target them through ads or contact them directly via email.
Since these are leads you have concrete information on, you can segment them efficiently and find consumers with the highest upside. These are contacts you want to sell your top products to so make sure you have an email campaign just for them. Leads with lover upside can be a good targeting group for your biggest discounts, as these are “low potential” leads and anything you make from them can be considered a bonus.
Personalized email content
When you have your targeting groups segmented, you need to think about the content their email requires. Starting with the header, you need to be as engaging as possible, without sounding like a salesman too much. Keep in mind that overuse of terms like “discount”, “promotion” or “sale” can make your email end up in the Promotions tab, which not a lot of people read. Also, don’t forget that everyone’s inboxes will be full of Black Friday offers, so the term itself ironically might not be a good keyword to use in your header.
Social Media campaigns
Social media has become a key channel of communication for basically anyone trying to sell something. Not only can Black Friday sales now be done completely without leaving the social media of your choice, social media is a perfect way to promote your business online, with little to no spend. An active social media following will make it easier to keep your brand’s fans well informed, for Black Friday deals, or any other marketing promotion during the year.
Social media is obviously something you should work on yearlong. While some may find social media juvenile (which it can definetly be), it is undoubtedly key for building your brand image and raising awareness. This is why you should think about everyday social media content as organic awareness campaigns. These posts will be shared all over the internet so you need to consider how you brand each article, image or video you post.
You need to incorporate your logo and brand colors into each piece of content you post. This is something that’s becoming increasingly easier to do with video making platforms like Videobolt, at least when it comes to video. You can easily create video intros with your logo and brand colors presented effectively, or you can create branded daily social posts, as well as animated Instagram stories.
And what does this mean for your Black Friday marketing strategy? Everything mentioned creates a good platform for your BlackFriday offer, starting with your followers, you will need to bombard them with posts, stories, blog articles, starting early November, going all the way through Cyber Monday. You will need a lot of branded content that portrays products, discounts and special offers that make yours the best BLack Friday deals.
Adding to that, provided you have the time, you should be creative with social media competitions, gift guides and flash sales. Be thorough in your research of your followers habits. There’s always a time of day they are most engaged and open to online purchases. Use this info to create hype around your Black Friday event and create a strong sense of urgency when the perfect time comes.
Looking to boost your Black Friday sales? Register to Videobolt today and start creating videos for your Black Friday marketing campaign. Whether you’re an individual, looking to boost your channel, or a business, we have a plan that will cover all your video needs.
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