Don’t hit the sack just yet, there’s so much to do before Black Friday on November 25th!
Don’t hit the sack just yet, there’s so much to do before Black Friday on November 25th!
Black Friday is important because this is the shopping day on which many retailers have traditionally made enough sales to put them in the “black” for the year.
In the past, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the pinnacle of the holiday shopping season, marking the weekend when retailers could expect a significant surge in sales. However, the landscape has dramatically shifted. These peak shopping events are no longer confined to just one weekend. Instead, they’ve expanded into an extended sales season from October to early January.
This shift is driven by changes in consumer behaviour and the increasing influence of digital platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok, which have all observed longer periods of heightened consumer activity. Shoppers are now more strategic, starting their searches for deals earlier and continuing to hunt for bargains well past Cyber Monday. This extended period provides marketers with a unique opportunity to capture and engage shoppers over several months rather than just a single weekend.
For businesses, this means the need to adapt their strategies. Planning for extended sales, offering timely deals, and maintaining a consistent presence throughout this longer peak period is essential for maximizing sales and meeting business goals. By understanding and leveraging this new reality, marketers can ensure they are not only ready for the traditional rush but are also positioned to take full advantage of the entire holiday shopping season.
For those in eCommerce, it’s the perfect time to attract shoppers to your door. It’s also an amazing way to grease the wheels for the all important Christmas rush. We’ll explore the top 10 things eCommerce marketers must do to take advantage of the soaring conversion rates and demand.
1) Take a closer look at your stock levels weeks before Black Friday. If you don’t have inventory to sell, your business will have zero chance of leveraging the benefits of even the most cutting-edge Black Friday eCommerce trends. Dropshipping is great, but there are sometimes no guarantees that your suppliers won’t sell out of key products during Black Friday, leaving you with no option but an embarrassing refund.
Although each individual store varies, it’s not uncommon to see the following discounts
Travel: 60%.Office supplies: 50%.Electronics: 47%.Clothing: 32%.Gifts: 31%.It’s likely that some of your suppliers and distributors themselves have thought about pricing. Ask them what they are discounting, and special bundles and promotions, and reflect it when the time is right.
3) Use Black Friday and Cyber Monday related keywords in your paid search campaigns. For e.g: Electronics Black Friday, Shoes Cyber Monday etc. Look for “interests” and “topics” related to Black Friday or generic gifting periods in your Paid Social and Display Network campaigns.
4) Create the Landing Pages that mention Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This could be as simple as including a site wide banner. Other options including a home page banner, or creating yoursite.com/blackfriday which lists all discounted products. Don’t be afraid to put this live early and gather interest by asking for email subscribers.
5) Early Engagement is Key for Deliberate Shoppers, today’s shoppers are planners. They start researching and making purchasing decisions well before key sales moments. Engaging with these deliberate shoppers early in the season is critical, as they seek out inspiration and are open to discovery and exploration.
To effectively reach these shoppers, it’s essential to be present early in the season. Using YouTube Video View campaigns, Video Reach campaigns, Demand Gen campaigns, and ads on Meta or TikTok, you can inspire shoppers as they browse for gifts and convert them with a clear call to action. Additionally, you can capture more intent by running targeted campaigns to reach them when they’re ready to purchase that perfect gift, driving consideration and action.
6) Coupon codes like BLACKFRIDAY are an amazing way to communicate savings to consumers. Decide if you will create a store-wide coupon code or if it will apply to particular products only. Using deal sites like Ozbargain, ensure all offers are drafted and ready to submit. Communication will be essential if you use affiliate networks like Commission Factory or Rakuten, as BF/CM banners and offers can help with CTR during this period. Finally, don’t forget offline marketing, such as pamphlets, catalogues, and flyers. For advertisers with both online and brick-and-mortar channels, handing out flyers describing your offer can help drive people into the store to redeem your coupon code.
7) Test your website’s ability to scale with users and check your site speed. A slow page speed kills your chances at a sale: 46% of shoppers have said they’ll never return to a slow website. There is no point in all this planning if you can’t convert on game day.
8) As well as being one of the largest Sale days of the year, you may find that Black Friday and Cyber Monday also deliver records for daily unique visitors. Keep some retargeting strategies in place so you can follow up with people who never checked out online. Also, collecting email addresses or other soft conversion points like downloading of pdfs or joining your socials is valuable.
9) Focus on the Customer Experience – Staff Appropriately: As traffic increases during Black Friday & Cyber Monday so too does the need for customer support, developers committed to problem-solving, and salespeople ready to answer phone calls. Automated ChatBots like Pivot Point https://pivotpoint.biz/ can help here.
10) It’s crucial to thoroughly review last year’s analytics and lessons learned. Dive into your site-side analytics tool and thoroughly investigate the previous year’s numbers, especially traffic sources and product skews purchased. The most crucial part is a forecasting exercise around advertising budgets needed for the day. Be prepared to spend up to 5 times more than your usual daily spend caps on essential channels like Google Search Ads and Facebook Ads.
