With buying percentages expected to increase up to 47% when compared with last year’s BFCM sales, you need to gear up advertising methods for Black Friday in 2017 right away!
So whether you’re an offline or online business, we have gathered the most effective strategies for Black Friday Market Advertising that can rock your sales.
In short, we will help you employ the smartest marketing tips so that you can also get a mug full of Black Friday Gold!
7 Pro Tips for Black Friday Advertising
Online deals are expected to reach $3.52 Million for Black Friday -- but all these products won’t sell themselves.
With the biggest shopping event just days away, you may have missed out on excellent advertising opportunities already. Rest assured, we have the blended the best digital and physical tricks to make a blast with BFCM advertising this year.
1. How to Start early on Black Friday
Don’t wait until the eleventh hour to prepare for Black Friday.
For both Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), fishing early will land you the best customers. Starting your campaigns in September or even the second week of November is ideal.
Create a plan that Works
The motive is to ensure that you do not face unexpected disasters and the customers do not see your deals surprisingly, when BFCM finally dawns.
Take an Accurate stock of your inventory
Most Black Friday shoppers prepare their shopping list early. If your store is a brick and mortar retail space, start by updating your stock inventory RIGHT NOW!
Create a Content or Ad calendar
Based on the total items to sell and discounts you offer, create an ad calendar listing your product launches, blog posts and other campaigns for Black Friday. Don’t forget to create the best promotional offers during BFCM week!
Contingency plans
Many things can go wrong during BFCM. So, begin risk assessment plans such as hiring temporary staff and creating backup plans early. Create a customized BFCM orientation for your staff and affiliated companies too.
Exclusive Landing Page since Thanksgiving
Next step is to update your website with an exclusive landing page. Add Promo Codes, lead pop ups and countdown timers on the BFCM Landing page since the Thanksgiving weekend.
Email marketing for Notifying your Customers
According to Custara, 25.1% sales during Black Friday are a result of influential email marketing campaigns. By revamping your subject line, and timing for emails, you can create up to 330% increase in engagement with every email!
2. Social Media Promotions for Black Friday
To start your advertising campaigns, conduct social media listening and find the trending topics on Black Friday.
The most popular social media platform with over 2 billion active users, Facebook can be used for BFCM by creating sponsored ads or via influencer marketing.
The best way to use Facebook for Black Friday is by joining FB Groups with significant following such as Black Friday +Christmas Deals and Black Friday & Christmas Toys to promote your deals.
With Instagram having released the brand new feature of going live with a friend, you can incorporate the best strategies for influencer marketing here. Use Instagram Stories to promote your best deals and maximize your reach.
Considered the Guru of social media forums – Reddit is the 8th website with the highest visitors across the globe.
Using subreddits such as r/BlackFriday/, you can target the customers with attractive AMAs, contests and deals about your products on BFCM.
Boasting over 175 Million users worldwide, Pinterest for Black Friday can turn your products viral. By creating boards to pin your best products and deals, you can assess the involvement of the audience too. Making buyable pins are another excellent way for advertising on Black Friday.
Adding hashtags to your Twitter promos will be effective on Black Friday as the platform claims up to 330 Million active users! The most popular hashtag to use on Twitter is #Blackfriday.
Quora
Having reached 50 Million to 100 Million users within one year, Quora is a question-answer forum to advertise your Black Friday deals. It can be used by promoting the best deals as answers to the most popular questions on BFCM.
3. Focus on the customer
Customer service and customer experience are vital to ensure that your customer shops for long and in excess, at your store on Black Friday.
Segment your Customers
If you’re a brick and mortar store, it is best to hit the streets to find people and manually hand out coupons to the public. You can also segment your customers based on their clicks and engagement online by using website tools such as GetResponse.
Place for Shoppers to relax or sit
Black Friday rush is daunting and rarely reviewed as smooth.
Offer a respite to your customers with a place to sit or refreshments. Moreover, if you want to see added customers buying stock, this is the best way to advertise in return of the facilities you offer during the prime hour!
Free cookies and In-Store Pickup
Extending the respite, you can also offer free cookies to entice new customers to your brick and mortar store.
Offering free shipping is another excellent way of enticing customers to your webpage. Alternatively, offering in-store pick if you have a retail store as well, cuts the mailing delay for many customers.
Moreover, it will boost small purchases from foot traffic too!
4. Incentives
Add-on incentives are a great way of luring your customers to your shop or page. As BFCM is a savings extravaganza, incentives are considered mandatory for making a Black Friday fortune.
Referral Programs, Contests and Giveaways
Referral programs offer discounts or coupons to customers when customers refer a friend or acquaintance to your store. Dropbox was once such company that increased growth by 3900% with referrals.
Quiz contests are another way of boosting your reach if you customize the same with holiday themes for portraying a wide variety of products or deals.
You can add giveaways or discount coupons to contest winners during BFCM!
Free Shipping and Special Deals
From creating printable gift cards to VIP Discounts, offering in-house deals to your customers can boost excitement and make them purchase right away.
You can also send promo codes to customers via email quoting it as special deals.
Price matches and hourly flash sales
Hourly sales with shocking discounts make the big bucks on Black Friday as they are considered as sales motivators.
Akin to the lightning deals on Amazon, offer your products at a slashed price for one-hour to see dramatic purchases!
5. Leverage deal sites
An ideal place to promote your deals, deal sites are excellent as most black Friday shoppers often scout far and wide for savings.
How to use Deal Sites on Black Friday
Make a record of the best deal sites with highest customer reach for your niche.
Select relevant deal sites that permit business owners to submit deals.
Best deal sites to use on BFCM
Source
6. Upsell and Cross-Sell
Offering complimentary accessories or products with the target product chosen by the customer can add more purchases to the cart.
Pricing Rule of 25
When you upsell or cross-sell products, the added product must not be more than 25% of the original product.
Ways to Upsell on Black Friday
Upselling refers to selling a product of higher price than the opted product by the customer.
Smart Upsell
By using the stored data to reveal the customer purchase and browsing history on your website, you can smartly use upselling during BFCM. Boost Sales report $3,579,000 in bonus purchases that came with upselling.
Custom Upsell
You can customize your upsell strategies for BFCM by motivating the buyer to add an expensive item to the cart.
Custom upsell is added by replacing the target item in the cart with the upsell product.
Ways to Cross-Sell on Black Friday
Cross-selling refers to promoting products of similar value or category as the target product chosen by the customer.
Bundle up to 3 Items
In cross-selling you can add up to three bonus items with discounts or slashed price rates in addition to the target.
Multiple Offers for the Target Product
You can add multiple types of complementary products with respect to the target product.
7. Multi-Channel Selling
From digital to retail, multi-channel selling maximizes your customer reach by selling the products where your customers are.
Is your Website Capable of Black Friday Rush
The first step for customizing your website for increased sales and traffic is by optimizing it for your target audience. If your website can’t take the surge in traffic and higher demand during the Black Friday sale, your campaigns will be a failure.
Mobile optimization
According to research, shoppers spend 51% time using internet on mobiles unlike 42% on desktop. Moreover, with customers reviewing every purchase online prior to buying, mobile optimization is the key to increasing your BFCM sales.
Conclusion
BFCM predictions state that shoppers will extend Black Friday and Cyber Monday to 2-3 weeks after too.
As a bonus, open your shops late to beat the competition and appeal to a vast demographic as most vendors open too early, making the customers suffer.
Opening late can also save your time, money and energy instead of competing with big sellers around the curb.
Combined with our expert tricks and tips to maximize your sales on Black Friday through advertising, you can run the BFCM sales easily this year!
So go get ‘em tiger!
For marketing strategy guidance, get in contact with Visioneer!
We're experts at strategizing business-specific campaigns and planning - find out for yourself!
Sources
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