After the devastating effects of Coronavirus in 2020, many brands turned to ecommerce in tough times. Online shopping has always been popular, but it is now inevitable for retailers.
Black Friday and shopping season ecommerce performance will significantly affect your success in 2020.
As many ecommerce stores think this way, there will probably be a significant competition. Online advertising costs will increase and many brands will struggle to achieve high conversion.
How can you achieve the best performance and maximize your ecommerce sales?
Discover 10 Effective Black Friday Marketing Tips to Boost Ecommerce Performance.
1. CREATE INTEREST BEFORE THIS PERIOD, MAKE SURE YOU COMPLETE ALL THE NECESSARY PREPARATIONS BEFORE GOING ON THE STAGE
The customers will probably browse many websites in this period. You should complete a full check-up on your website before this period and make sure your website functions perfectly on all devices. As 53% of mobile visitors leave a website that does not open in 3 seconds, you should concentrate on site speed.
You should plan your Black Friday campaigns well before this date, test them, make sure they work properly. Do not seek adventure and try new things. Implement the campaigns you have already tried and you are certain that they will produce good results.
Prepare your special landing page on your website for your Black Friday campaign and test this page on various browsers and devices.
When collecting new subscribers on your website, it is a good idea to use a small explanation such as “Subscribe to our newsletter to get amazing Black Friday deals in your inbox!”
Start your communication at least 10 days or 1 week ahead of Black Friday. Make announcements on your website and other digital marketing channels and create interest. Start your campaign when you maximize the interest of your target audience.
2. START EARLY, MAKE SURE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE SEES YOUR CAMPAIGN, BENEFIT FROM DELAYED DEMAND
Many consumers delay their demand (if they can) to benefit from Black Friday online shopping campaigns. As they are ready to make a purchase, it is a good idea to start your Black Friday campaign early to benefit the most from this delayed demand.
The consumers have a certain budget and some products in their mind that they want to buy. If they buy from another online store that started the campaign early, they will not buy from you. Some ecommerce stores will act this way whether you do this or not. So, you may start early too.
Make sure every visitor coming to your website sees your campaign. Using only a single banner on your home page will be a very bad decision. Use your message on every page. You may consider using a red or orange row at the top of your website to announce your campaign.
3. FOCUS ON THE PRICE, PEOPLE WILL BE PRICE ORIENTED
During the Black Friday period, even the consumers who are not normally price oriented will focus on the prices (at least they will be affected from this). Don’t waste your time trying to communicate other messages and focusing on other factors.
Focus on the price, offer really good deals. If this is not possible for all of your products, at least feature selected products or categories.
As the online customers know the prices of the products they are interested in, and most of them are savvy shoppers, do not raise the prices first and then make a discount, trying to fool them.
You may motivate the visitors by communicating a message such as “limited number of products” or try to make them revisit your website throughout the day by communicating a message such as “surprise discounts for only 1 hour”.
4. MAKE YOUR CAMPAIGN GO VIRAL
If your campaign really motivates people, they may share it with their friends and family to inform them or to get their opinion.
You should organize your website to make this possible. You may use “inform your friend” feature. Make sure that social media share buttons are functioning properly on your campaign and product pages.
5. USE SMART ADS STRATEGIES
Ads click prices increase significantly during Black Friday period. Brands generally use higher budgets, the competition intensifies and the online shoppers receive high number of marketing messages.
Taking this into consideration, focusing on result-oriented ads campaigns and keywords will be a good decision. You may feature the products that will most likely to generate sales.
Generic keywords communicated with large audiences will consume your budget very fast and your conversion will be low. Try to focus on result-oriented long-tail keywords. You may consider optimizing the ad schedule.
Branded campaigns will be very important. As these people know your brand, conversion will be high. Make sure this campaign has enough budget. Shopping, remarketing, and dynamic remarketing campaigns will also generate good conversion.
In addition to email newsletters, it is a good idea to use Gmail / GSP campaigns. As the users will check their emails on Black Friday, you should communicate your message.
If you want to discover the most effective strategies, you may look inside the Google Ads 2021 book and read the first chapter here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KHQWPDV
6. BENEFIT FROM DIVIDE AND CONQUER METHOD
Today’s consumers see hundreds of marketing messages on an average day and recall almost none of them. Human brain is loaded with 34 gb. of information every day.
The attention span has declined to only a few seconds. Users spend only 1.7 seconds for any given piece of content on Facebook.
Every day, users post 95 million photos on Instagram, post 500 million tweets on Twitter, upload more than 700.000 hours of video on YouTube, send 281 billion emails.
The number of marketing messages people receive has increased so much that people are not reading anymore. They are glancing over content until they see something that they are really interested in.
For this reason, you should segment your target audience and communicate with each segment using tailored messages.
Read more about Divide & Conquer Method here.
7. USE SOCIAL MEDIA WISELY
People use social media heavily but organic reach of the posts declined significantly on many platforms. Recently, Instagram began to follow the steps of Facebook and decreased the organic reach of the posts.
For this reason it is important to support your posts using Facebook and Instagram ads. You may also consider using Messenger or WhatsApp ads to support your messages during Black Friday period.
You should plan your posts before this period, start communicating with your target audience early, create interest and start your campaign when the interest is at its maximum.
If it is not against your brand policy, it will be a good idea to use hashtags related to Black Friday.
8. FORMULATE YOUR EMAIL NEWSLETTER STRATEGY CAREFULLY
Black Friday is an excellent time to focus on your email newsletter subscribers. Check your subscriber list before this period and -if you can- separate your customers from the subscribers who have not bought anything.
In accordance with the Divide & Conquer method, you may feature different products to these segments. You may motivate the subscribers who have not bought anything by featuring low priced products and focusing on trust factor in your marketing message.
As is the case with other channels, you should start your campaign early, create interest and focus on conversion.
9. CHARM THE FIRST-TIME CUSTOMERS
You may have high number of orders during Black Friday period. You should make sure that this higher than normal workload should not result in lack of attention.
On the contrary, you should show extra care to all your orders, especially to your first-time customers. You should charm them now to make them your regular customers.
You may consider adding some surprises to product boxes such as colorful candies. You may offer a special discount only to these people to use in their next purchase. People will like these little surprises.
10. CONTINUE COMMUNICATING WITH THE PEOPLE WHO CAME TO YOUR WEBSITE BUT DID NOT BUY ANYTHING THAT DAY
As the ecommerce conversion rate is usually 1% to 5%, more than 95% of the website visitors leave the websites without buying anything.
It is a good idea to focus on these people after Black Friday. For example, you may focus on the people who have visited your website in the last 7 days and try to motivate them with an additional campaign.
Cyber Monday follows Black Friday and it is a good opportunity to implement this campaign.
+ BONUS TIP:
It is a good idea to subscribe to the email newsletters of competitor brands to monitor their communication closely. If you haven’t already done this, do it now. You may also follow their websites and social media pages with the same perspective. You may do this without using your real name or company email address.
Like these tips? Look inside the Digital Marketing Strategies book and read the first chapter to discover more.
BLACK FRIDAY MARKETING CHECKLIST:
- Have you performed a website check-up before Black Friday?
- Have you planned your Black Friday campaigns and tested them?
- Have you prepared your special landing page for your Black Friday campaign?
- When collecting new subscribers for your email newsletter, have you added a small text to motivate them?
- Have you prepared your communication plan, starting at least 10 days or 1 week ahead of Black Friday?
- Have you considered starting your Black Friday campaign early to benefit the most from delayed demand?
- Have you organized your website so that every visitor will see your Black Friday campaign?
- Are you focusing on the prices of your products? Have you formulated a strategy?
- Have you determined the products or categories that you will feature?
- Have you added “inform your friend” feature to your website?
- Have you added social media share buttons to your campaign and product pages?
- Have you decided on your online advertising plan? Have you decided on the budget and which campaigns to focus on?
- Have you arranged the settings of your ads campaigns?
- Are you using Divide & Conquer Method to provide tailored messages to segmented audiences?
- Have you decided on your social media plan? Have you secured advertising budget to promote your posts?
- Have you decided on your email newsletter plan?
- Have you secured the manpower to handle high number of orders during Black Friday period?
- Have you considered adding candies or some other little surprises to orders?
- Have you prepared your plan to target the people who came to your website on Black Friday but did not buy anything?
- Have you subscribed to the email newsletters of competitor brands? Are you following their websites and social media pages?
Do you have any other suggestions?
Feel free to share!