- By Camila Ante
There is less than a month for the madness of discounts to flood the streets, our emails, SMS and social networks. And as an online business it is not recommended that you get caught off guard, so get down to work to start preparing your Black Friday campaign.
It is the best opportunity to increase sales and it is that, both the Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday, are two of the dates with the most orders of the whole year. Some consumers take the opportunity to do their Christmas shopping and others simply wait with their cart ready for these promotions.
To get the most out of this Black Friday, keep in mind the following 22 recommendations to have a successful Black Friday.
1. Offer free shipping. For consumers, free shipping is a very attractive digital marketing hook, even if it means raising the price of products. You can offer free shipping with no limit, or you can offer free shipping above a certain total spend, to encourage purchases to reach that minimum.
2. Express the discount in the most attractive way. According to Jonah Berger's "rule of 100", if the price of the item is below 100, it is better to use a percentage (e.g. 25% discount). On the other hand, if the price is more than 100, it is better to use an absolute value (e.g., $25).
3. Offer discounts that are easy to calculate. Avoid "weird" figures such as 23%, as they are difficult to calculate and may end up discouraging consumers. Instead, go for promotions such as 25%, 50%, 10%, 5%....
4. Offer the biggest discount possible. Logically, the situation of each company is different, so it is not possible to advise a percentage discount for everyone. But if possible, on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, go for big figures (35% and up). The idea is to convey to consumers that if they do not buy that day, they are missing a great opportunity.
5. Use the color black in your content. Take advantage of the name of the event to reinforce the message with videos or images where black is the dominant color, both in emailing and in social ads and other channels.
6. Make differentiated campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday generates better sales, since you can launch promotions in both ecommerce and physical stores. But as soon as the date passes, my recommendation is that the following 3 days you focus on exclusive Cyber Monday promotions to take advantage of the pull.
7. Include keywords in your copy. Here is a list of the terms that work best: free, savings, limited time, you (or the name of the person we are targeting), easy, opportunity, exclusive, guaranteed, new, fast, best, more, no strings attached, now, gift, solution, results, discover, secrets, enjoy and the percentage symbol (%).
8. Use Stories in your campaign. This is a format with very good acceptance in our country and that has already demonstrated its results in previous years.
9. Use TikTok and Reels videos. They are starting to be very well accepted and will be a must this year in your marketing strategy.
10. Use hashtags in your social networks so that users looking for offers these days can find your products. For example: #BlackFriday, #BlackFriday2020 or #CyberMonday2020.
11. Raise your bids during the key days and the week before. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, competition is more aggressive and prices are higher. Therefore, to stand out, receive more traffic and increase your sales, it is worth increasing your maximum bids, as the potential profits are also higher.
12. Appeal to emotions. Many of the purchases during Black Friday or Cyber Monday are intended as Christmas gifts, so you can convince them by saying that they will be the "ideal" and "best" priced gifts for their loved ones. Keep in mind that there is also a lot of shopping for personal wants and needs, so you can appeal to the "you deserve it" or "fulfill your dreams now or never".
13. Get ahead of the curve with your email marketing campaigns. While the competition is still deciding what to do, you can be alerting your mailing list of the fantastic discounts that await them. For maximum effectiveness, find a catchy subject line, personalize the message for different types of customers and be sure to send the email at peak times.
14. Don't retire your landing page after Cyber Monday. If you create a permanent landing page for Black Friday, you will accumulate SEO throughout the year and you will be at the top of the rankings during key dates. Just make sure the content is relevant at all times.
15. Leverage the power of social media. According to a 2017 study, that year there were no less than 1.5 million mentions of the event on social media during the key Black Friday date alone. So make sure your online marketing plan includes options to join the conversation.
16. Put a referral program in place. According to Nielsen, referrals are the most trusted form of digital advertising. If you coordinate your referral programs to be more active during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you'll give your promotions an extra boost.
17. Add a countdown. Putting a highly visible countdown on your product pages is a simple and super-effective way to get more conversions. You can use one countdown to announce when the offer will start and another to indicate when it will end.
18. Take advantage of cross-selling opportunities. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are dates when users are on the hunt for bargains, so take advantage of them to create packs of related products at a reduced price.
19. Create buzz with flash sales. This strategy comes in handy in the weeks leading up to the key date. It involves putting a product or a small series of products on sale at a deep discount for a very limited time. A small appetizer of what is to come in your digital marketing.
20. Video Ads. Bet on making small advertising videos in your campaigns. They connect better with the public and people are more likely to watch them. In Instagram it is a tool that is gaining a lot of strength and that will help us reach the younger audience and that consumes more assiduously, for example in Stories.
21. Organic actions. Not all the actions of our marketing strategy should be ads, but also organic actions are essential through social networks, the blog, communities and the brand's website. We must disseminate the contents of our campaigns choosing very well the message, the keywords, include quality images, take advantage of the Apps and complementary tools offered by each platform and put a lot, but a lot of creativity on our part as marketers. Always with the goal of creating excellent content that will attract our followers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
22. Create several types of promotions. Differentiate yourself from the January sales, which usually put all the goods with the same discount. Apply different promotions for different products. Even depending on whether consumers are members or not. For example, in a clothing ecommerce you can put up to 50% on selected items, 30% for the rest of the items without promotion, only for members, and 20% for the rest of the items (if you are not a member).
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are already important dates in our promotional sales calendar. Put them into practice or write to us to achieve your sales goals.
