One of the biggest shopping days of the year is a few days away, and online retailers are getting set to ensure that they make the most of the most significant promotional and discount day known as Black Friday.
Black Friday was initially created in the United States of America and is usually the day that follows Thanksgiving. Back then, Black Friday was an off day from work and school, thus making people enjoy a four-day weekend. Brick-and-mortar shops decided to take advantage of this holiday to promote heavily discounted products. Cyber Monday, which follows the same idea showcased on Black Friday, is more recent but focuses more on online retailers instead of within large stores.
In 2016, the United States e-commerce industry recorded a whopping $3.34 billion just on Black Friday. According to statistics, that is a staggering 21.6 percent year-to-year growth rate. This is a positive trend that e-commerce sites need to take advantage of fast as more people seem to be spending less time offline, and instead of visiting brick and mortar stores, choose to shop online. Black Friday promotions are juicy and if your business depends on online traffic, then getting on the Black Friday wagon is a no-brainer if you’re looking to boost sales astronomically.
Therefore, here are some of the top Black Friday marketing ideas that you should help you launch a promotion successfully, grab the attention of teeming hordes of online users, and make good money:
1. Collaborate With Other Small Businesses
Corporate businesses have all the dough to spend on ads, and this could smother your voice and make it difficult to hear over the marketing din. The best way to combat this without breaking the bank is to collaborate with other small businesses in your community. Together, you can attract shoppers with money to spend on your activities by organizing joint shopping events. You can split the cost of the ad campaign. Partnering with more businesses will help you promote offers that are too mouthwatering to pass up for shoppers.
2. Add new products
One of the best days to launch new products is on Black Friday, and since people are more willing to spend money in making purchases on this particular day, featuring your introductory offer gets you immeasurable sales and exposure. Shoppers love looking at new products, and if your shop is aglow with new items a few days before Black Friday, the fresh look of your store will attract multitudes to your shop.
You can even decide to launch new products made available at exclusive prices only on Black Friday. You can tag the new products as ‘Exclusive’ to let customers know that the products will just be available at that rate on that day. By creating this sense of urgency, shoppers will instead purchase the product immediately rather than later. If you are selling an online product, you can increase this sense of urgency by adding countdown timers and showing how many products are left in-store.
3. Extend your sale
You can also decide to extend your sales beyond Black Friday so that you can make more sales. You can check our set of free Black Friday sale badges for inspiration.
4. Offer incentives to spend
You can express thanks to your customers for spending a particular amount in a single transaction. This could be gift cards or any other incentive that is not too costly. You can also send emails to your best customers and promote exciting deals on gift cards when they go shopping on Black Friday.
5. Increase your ads spend
It is a known fact that advertisers spend more than usual on advertisements during weekends, especially Black Friday weekends. There are different platforms to use when placing ads, though the most effective platform for putting ads at the moment is Facebook. If you decide to use the Facebook platform to promote your Black Friday discounted products, then you should increase your ad spend a few days away from Black Friday. Doing this will enable your ads to optimize properly for optimum conversions, and you can even tweak and adjust your ads for maximum profitability before the D-Day.
6. Ride on the wave of social media
A lot of people spend copious amounts of time on social media. This is why you should use these channels to your advantage by generating a lot of buzz about your Black Friday offers. Taking into account the fact that more than 68% of adults now own and use smartphones and gadgets to access their social media accounts, you will be leaving a lot of money on the table if you pay no attention to social media.
Keeping these tips in mind even as you prepare for Black Friday will enable you to make the most of your marketing return on investment (ROI), encourage the loyalty of your customers, and increase brand engagement.
