Table of Contents
The day after American Thanksgiving is termed as Black Friday which marks the beginning of Christmas holiday shopping. A tradition followed for hundreds of years, it is also one of the best days for consumers to save money on expensive items like electronics and appliances.
2019 showed record-breaking participation of 190 million consumers which includes both online and in-store shopping, But this year with the social distancing norm in place some retailers are assuming the sales to drop considerably, but that’s not the case. They need to understand that this year it won’t be a traditional experience with stores overflowing with customers but the sales overflow WILL STILL HAPPEN!
It just requires some serious planning to reap the benefits of this holiday. So let’s get started with tips to build up strong sales strategies compatible with the situations this year –
1. Start an Early Sale
Big or small, everyone awaits the in Black Friday deals! One great way to get an edge over your competitors is to take actions early. Create anticipation and a sense of urgency among consumers by talking about the offers days before the actual sale begins.
Start sharing Black Friday teasers on social media platforms or emails. Like this year Black Friday is on 27th November, so as an active retailer start talking about it at least a month before, say the end of October. As well as building up excitement, teasers are also good for building up email lists which can be used for sending multiple campaigns using advanced drip email campaigns.
2. Establish an online presence on social media channels
With widely popular tools of social media, it gets easier for an e-commerce company to reach out to the consumers and drive website traffic.
Ways in which social media platforms can be used to gather maximum reach and sales
- Regular engaging posts: Prepare a content calendar in advance including posts like a brief of upcoming deals, offering gift cards, rewarding social media fans etc.
- Take Advantage of Hashtags: Include Black Friday hashtags together with regular hashtags when marketing is focused on Instagram. Be creative in using the hashtags though do not forget to include basic hashtags such as #blackfriday #cybermonday #sale #blackfridaysale #blackfridaydeals as they will allow you to reach customers who are specifically looking for deals over these days.
- Paid Marketing: All popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter etc offer paid marketing. So depending on the budget a retailer can increase the online marketing sales by opting for digital marketing.
- Offer hot deals to prime influencers: Influencers can play a major role in Black Friday marketing campaigns as research says more than 71% are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference! But the problem is at this time of the year they are in high demand so you need to put forward a compelling offer they just can’t resist.
3. Promotional emails to existing clients and prospects:
Maximising reach means maximising the ways to reach consumers. Depending only on social media channels will not be wise. Email marketing, a channel known for returning the highest ROI, should also be taken into consideration.
There are two approaches when it comes to email marketing for Black Friday
- Existing customers: Gather the data of your previous customers, run them through a highly accurate bulk email verifier to remove junk email addresses and offer them special deals like VIP discount codes. Together with customers from the past years’ sale don’t forget to include the ones who have bought within the last 30days as your brand will be fresh in their mind.
- Potential customers: If you don’t have leads already you may want to run some ads to build up an email marketing list with hot leads. Automate your email marketing campaigns to send out emails specifically for the deals day-wise. Ensure the subject lines do not sound too promotional.
Tips on email marketing content to drive better engagement
- Include a dynamic countdown timer – The Black Friday discounts are offered for a limited time period so why not create urgency among the users by showing the days, time, hours and minutes left for the end of the sale.
- Including user-generated content has always proven its worth by showing shoppers what your product looks like in real life.
- Sending a cart and browsing recovery email is a lucrative Black Friday email tactic. Why? Because the users are surrounded by hundreds of deals which makes them hop between different websites. WIn the distracted customers back by sending such emails.
- Do not forget to include the ratings & reviews of the products highlighted in sales as ‘word of mouth’ works as the best promotional tool.
4. Team up with other small businesses
The bigger a team, the stronger its voice!
It can be tough to shine up in the advertising blitz of corporate chains, partnering with other small businesses and focusing on a similar goal can be beneficial in attracting shoppers. This can include planning online promotions, creating joint shopping events and even splitting advertising costs.
The more the number of participants, the more tempting your promotion can be for the shoppers.
5. Use Apps to Help With Black Friday Marketing Promotions
Some apps that can be helpful in encouraging sales
- Live chat app: Wouldn’t it be great if your customers could have a live chat with you? With social distancing norms in place the customers will miss the personalised interaction experience, so why not maintain it with personalised chat? While live chat is a great option, it’s important to respond to their queries before they bounce off your website.
- Upsell apps: Such apps work well all year round. Upselling will increase the average order value especially during the holidays where people tend to purchase more.
6. Initiate referral programs
Referrals have been one of the strongest and trusted ways of advertising. This means
people heavily rely on someone else’s opinions in deciding what is best for them. The best example of growth through referrals is ‘Dropbox’ which generated 3900% customer growth in just 15 months! Basics for creating a good referral program
- Irresistible deals: There are multiple ways to create an appealing reward system but before creating one make sure to research on what triggers the interest of your audience.
- Give it an organic boost: Let the audience talk about your brand through social media platforms. Join groups and communities relevant to your product, mention the offers so that more and more people come to know about it.
- Set expiry for the reward: Urgency brings in quick actions. Limited time will make the referral take quick action instead of stretching it for long.
Conclusion
There are always quick wins for holiday season shopping whether it is Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Christmas. Give these online strategies a try for this new normal year and you will realise that in the end strategy is what matters the most.
Goodluck 🙂
Bharti Jain is a senior content writer at Clearout & ClearoutPhone. Earlier involved in the finance field, now she has completely switched towards content writing and content marketing. Together with writing articles, she is interested in creating vlogs and demo videos and designing social media content.
