How to Master the Art of Black Friday Marketing
Over the years shoppers have not only created a holiday to kick off the Christmas shopping season, but they have also stretched a one-day event into an entire weekend of deals with Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) kicking off the major shopping event and ending on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Black Friday).
As a retail owner and operator, knowing how to best navigate the busy shopping weekend can be challenging. If you need a marketing tip or two, or maybe just some inspiration, you’re sure to find the answers below.
Gift Guides
Black Friday kicks off the holiday buying season. This usually means that shoppers are buying mainly for others. By creating gift guides and holiday shopping lists ahead of time, you allow customers to find you during the holiday season.
Let’s say your company sells mainly outdoor adventure equipment, similar to that of an REI. Creating collections and blogs on Shopify such as “Gifts Every Hiker Wants,” “Outdoor Gifts for Her,” “Outdoor Gifts for Him,” “50 Gifts for Lovers of the Outdoors,” and “20 Gifts Your 20-Something Boyfriend Secretly Wants” can help increase your SEO results and are sure to get you noticed by potential customers. Keep in mind, many of the shoppers will be out with pre-made lists and on a mission this Black Friday.
Sneak Peek at Black Friday Deals
Delight your social media followers with sneak peeks at the products that will be on sale along with their discounts. This method helps to reward your loyal customers and give them a leg up on the deals. Your followers will likely share your posts either physically online or by word of mouth. Providing a sneak peek helps customers to engage with your store before the sale even happens and can result in people lined-up outside waiting to be the firsts to buy.
Increase Ad Spend
You might be tempted to skip over this one – don’t. Increasing your ad spend doesn’t have to mean buying a billboard on the busiest highway or taking out a front-page ad in a relevant newspaper or publication. However, if you wish to market this way, by all means, go ahead. But for those companies with smaller budgets, this can also mean increasing your ad spend on social and online platforms.
During Black Friday weekend, advertisers are spending way more than usual, resulting in the cost per click to be driven upward. If Facebook is a key marketing space for your company, consider increasing your ad spend a few days out from Black Friday to give your ad enough time to optimize for conversions. Remember, the average adult shopper spends $483.18 on the shopping holiday meaning your profits will likely be higher, giving your budget space for a higher advertising budget.
A Deal and Hour
Disclaimer: This tip is not intended for solopreneurs.
Having an hourly deal for Black Friday is great for stores in high trafficked areas. When embarking on this method, it is recommended to keep the deals a surprise. Your store should still be offering Black Friday deals on other items in addition to the hourly deal.
For example, if you have your entire store marketed down to 30% off, then from 9 AM to 10 AM all sweaters are 50% off and then from 10 AM to 11 AM, all shoes are an additional 10% off and so on. You can run hourly deals all day or just for a specific time block. Make sure you let your customers know about the additional mystery deals happening to keep them coming back throughout the day.
There is a reason that this method isn’t for every company. Black Friday has stores and employees busier than usual and running multiple changing sales during the day can become too much. It is highly recommended that you schedule out the sales ahead of time through an app such as Product Discount by Bold and to automate your social media posts with a tool like Buffer. Even when sales and posts are scheduled to go live on their own, managing a deal of the hour sale takes a team to manage social media reactions and engagements, graphics, customer inquiries, and other administrative work.
Offer Additional Savings
If a deal of the hour seems like too daunting of a task to take on this year, offering additional savings to every purchase can be a more sizable supplement. For in-store purchases, add a fun element of a spinning wheel or scratch-off cards that customers can spin/scratch to try for an additional saving or maybe even a freebie. You can add the same experience to your online store by using tools like Zembula, Wheelio, or any other form of gamification.
If you haven’t started planning your strategy for the biggest shopping weekend of the year, now is the time to do so. Pick the methods that will best fit your company and start preparing and advertising for them now to ensure that everything will go smoothly the weekend of. Best of luck!
By: Miranda Hardesty Hoffpauir
