As a business owner, you will be very aware that the busiest day of the year for online and offline retail is fast approaching: Black Friday. This year, it falls on the 25th of November.
You might already have some Black Friday plans underway, but here’s a reminder of how to prepare so you can benefit as much as possible from this annual retail frenzy.
The first thing to do is to decide exactly what you want to offer for Black Friday. You might choose to apply a store-wide discount, offer a bulk buy discount, like 3 for 2, or put selected items on sale.
At this time of year, shoppers are ready to buy. They’re already doing their Christmas shopping, and many have held off making big purchases to see if expensive items go into the Black Friday sale. Whatsmore, the short sales window pushes shoppers into a scarcity mindset, making them much more likely to impulse buy.
Savvy online and offline retail businesses can capitalise on this, with plenty of upsells, careful positioning of discounted goods near to the (physical or digital) checkout, and marketing tactics that increase the likelihood of shoppers making a purchase.
A strong marketing strategy can boost your Black Friday sales significantly. Don’t forget that competition ramps up at this time of year, as everyone wants a slice of the Black Friday pie. You must move your marketing up a gear or two, or you’ll be left behind.
Customers’ inboxes become even busier in the lead-up to Black Friday, so you want your emails to stand out. Make sure you use a killer subject line, keep the content fresh and eye-catching, and hook people in with a hard-to-resist offer. Write and schedule email sequences in advance, so they’re ready to go.
You need to significantly increase social media posting frequency in the run-up to Black Friday. Unlike emails, where your content gets straight in front of warm leads, social media posts have to stand out to get people to stop scrolling and take notice.
Use the full range of features for each channel you’re on – short video content does exceptionally well, as a rule, but each platform has its own preferences. Be sure to adapt your content for each platform – don’t simply share the same post across them all (savvy users will spot this a mile off!).
The internet gets so noisy with Black Friday content that you might want to pay to get in front of customers with paid advertising. Used strategically, Google Ads and social media advertising can have fantastic results. Generally speaking, if your organic content performs well on a particular channel, using paid ads on that channel will amplify your results. For example, if most of your sales come from search engine traffic, you might decide to place Google Ads. If you acquire most customers through social media, you may be better off focusing your advertising budget there.
If you want a chat about how Zesty Digital can support you in the run-up to and during Black Friday, contact us here or simply click on the green icon on the bottom right of your screen to open up Live Chat.
