Since the 1950s, the history of Black Friday has grown massively from being a basic American tradition to a global event for all businesses. Black Friday is something people tend to love or loathe. However, regardless of your view, it is impossible to deny that Black Friday and Cyber Monday can provide a great opportunity for retail brands. However, to make the most of the start of the shopping season, companies need to plan their Black Friday marketing strategy with care. Here we share how to get the most out of your Black Friday Marketing.
Prepare your Customer Service team
With more sales comes the inevitable increase in customer queries. So make sure your customer service team is ready. When it comes to a Black Friday marketing strategy plan in advance, if you need additional members of staff and ensure you hire them in plenty of time in order to provide adequate training before they start.
Many people now judge companies on the level of customer service and often don’t return to companies when they have had a bad experience. Consider taking your customer service to the next level by opting for a live chat function on your site and/or your social media channels. People now expect companies to reply to them quickly and chat functions can help you do this.
Make returns easy
A common barrier to purchase is the returns process, especially for online goods. People need the reassurance that they can return their items if they are not exactly what they want and you need to make this clear online. Make returns as easy as possible. Whilst you obviously don’t want people to return their items, if you do not make returns a simple, hassle-free process, the customer may not buy from you in the first place.
Ensure your website is ready
Even if you are not expecting a huge uptake in customers on Black Friday, always prepare and check your website will be able to cope with your expected numbers. A good Black Friday marketing strategy should drive lots of traffic to your site. If your website is slow or even worse, doesn’t load or errors due to lack of capacity, your Black Friday efforts may go out the window. This can be frustrating for the customer but could be devastating for your revenue.
Plan far in advance
Do NOT leave it to the week before Black Friday to remember to organise a deal or decide to change your offers. A good Black Friday marketing strategy is planned well in advance. The best promotions are ones that have been given a lot of prior thought. Think about what items you want to discount. Calculate what margins you can afford in order to establish the sale price and think about your marketing in the lead-up, the day itself and post event too. By starting early you can effectively tease your customers what deals are taking place and can form a sense of anticipation and excitement.
Also, decide on strict timescales for your offers as you need to have T&Cs for all your deals and it also provides a level of urgency. Are you going to only have the offer on for 24 hours and stick to Black Friday itself? Will you run the offers until Cyber Monday? Or will you have different offers completely for Cyber Monday? The choice is yours, just make it clear!
Use your social media channels
Social media is imperative for a Black Friday marketing strategy. Make sure you successfully use your social media channels during this time. People often follow their favourite brands, especially during the build-up to the Christmas period, so make sure your followers have great content to look at. This time of year is especially difficult to stand out of the crowd so you need to try and build loyalty through great content. You can let your followers know some of the offers to expect and could even give them an early access code or a special promo code as a thank you for being a follower.
Unless you really want to go down the route of personalised codes that can only be redeemed once, try and opt for a simple, generic code. You should expect codes to start being shared on affiliate websites and voucher code sharing sites so be prepared for people who do not follow you on social media to use the code. However, this is often not a bad thing as it means your marketing message is reaching a whole new audience.
Turn your visitors into email subscribers
Do not miss the opportunity to turn your website visitors into email describers. In the build-up to Black Friday, let customers know that they can be the first to receive news on future discounts etc if they sign up to your newsletter. You can also tailor offers to individuals once they are in your database.
Think about mobile
More and more online sales are happening on mobile and Black Friday is no exception so make sure your website not only looks great on mobile but is fully functioning and easy for customers to complete their purchase.
Make the most of personalisation
Where possible use personalisation and incorporate it into the user journey. Send your newsletter describers personalised emails with an individual code, and let them log on to your site and remember their details so you can address them personally. This tactic can also be great for retaining customers for the future.
Merchandise your website effectively
Its important to prioritise products in a Black Friday marketing strategy. When you walk into a brick-and-mortar store, the items you want people to notice are right near the entrance or near the checkout. This level of thinking needs to be translated to your online store. If you have particular Black Friday deals that you want to be the main focus then make sure every customer on your site can see the deal. Using graphics and merchandising to put key items at the top of the page are just some of the tactics to get more eyes on the stock you want to sell most of. You can also use merchandising rules to put items with the most stock at the top of the page, placing it in the prime spot.
These are just some of our top tips on how you can make the most of your online store this Black Friday. Black Friday can be a tough time for retailers to stand out of the crowd, but when careful planning happens, retailers have a fantastic opportunity to boost their Pre-Christmas sales. Follow us on social media for more marketing tips or visit our resource centre here.
Do you need help with your advertising or something adding to your website for Black Friday? DBS Digital provides Digital Marketing Services and Website Services to assist you with your digital business needs. Whatever you need, our dedicated team is ready to help. To learn more, get in touch with us today.
