Benard Kiplangat It’s no doubt. Black Friday is the best time of the year to stretch your goals and achieve maximum revenue for your business. If Q1-3 wasn’t great for you, Q4 can help you get the sales: thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
According to Finder Black Friday statistics, about 140 million Americans plan to shop during pre-holiday sales this year. Additionally, Black Friday online sales have grown from $1.93 billion in 2013 to $8.9 billion in 2021, with no signs of slowing down.
That means a huge opportunity to promote your business, acquire new customers, and boost your sales this season. So, let’s dive into the seven marketing strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday that can help you attract those who plan to shop during the season.
Seven Best Black Friday Marketing Strategies To Try This Year
To make the most of this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday season to attract and retain more customers, check out these 7 BFCM marketing strategies to get started:
Early promotions
One of the marketing strategies for BFCM that is often overlooked is building anticipation and awareness ahead of time. Early promotions can make you stand out, capturing your customer’s attention and interest way before the noise of other promotions starts.
To boost your sales during these holidays, try these three sure-fire ideas to build anticipation and excitement before your competitors:
- Special discounts and deals – let your customers know about exceptional deals and offers or sneak peeks of the products or services you will provide during this holiday to increase curiosity, anticipation, and excitement.
- Countdowns and reminders – include running countdowns on your emails, social media posts, websites, and all other marketing platforms to generate excitement and reminders for your special Black Friday holiday deals and offers.
- Pre-event engagements – before the holiday, ensure that you increase your engagement with your audience. Share relevant and informative content about your products, clearly showcasing their benefits and how they will fulfill your customer’s needs and desires.
Create scarcity and urgency in your campaigns
One of the most popular strategies for Black Friday campaigns, which is almost a cliche, is to infuse urgency in your marketing. While this BFCM holiday in itself can create a sense of urgency because it spans only a few days, you still need to encourage quick decision-making from your customers to get the best results.
Scarcity and urgency are great marketing strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday because they provide many benefits. By encouraging the customer to act now, you will instantly stand out amidst the noise of other promotions competing for the customer’s attention.
To infuse a sense of urgency and scarcity for your products and services, provide limited-time offers, like flash sales, one-day specials, early bird discounts, and more for your Black Friday customers to act sooner rather than later. Also, choose words that drive urgency and create scarcity in all your marketing campaigns.
Also, remove distractions in your messaging and communicate clearly to ensure customers make informed purchasing decisions. You can also send notifications or run campaigns that remind your customers to buy your products while they are still available or while offers are still valid to encourage even more purchases.
Craft irresistible offers and provide exclusive deals to customers
Many customers will receive thousands of promotional messages During Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And to stand out, it’s crucial to craft irresistible offers that customers can’t help but buy.
Ask yourself what offers or deals will most likely make more people buy your products. What can’t they miss on this BFCM season?
For example, you can offer a product with a deeper discount that customers will find a great bargain. And as more customers visit your store to take up your deal, there’s a chance they’ll purchase even more items in your store.
That is, the more your deals attract more customers, the more chances you have at hiking up the sales of other items.
Here are four other BFCM tips to convince and motivate your customers to place orders:
- Offer Buy-Now-Pay-Later services to increase conversions.
- Add banners and hero images on your website or social media channels.
- Use push notifications and chatbots to nudge customers to complete their orders.
- Offer personalized product suggestions to make it easier for users to find what they need.
- Give gifts for purchases and minimum spend rewards to your customers. Many people will stay loyal and become brand ambassadors to your brand when you show that you care about them, even with smaller gifts.
Offer quick and effective support with AI chatbots
Black Friday and Cyber Monday will most probably cause a surge in your web traffic. And while it is a good metric, ensuring customer support efficiency is key. Different customers on your site will need information about products, orders, shipping, returns, etc., and you should help them quickly.
So, how can you streamline and automate your customer support? Surely, a chatbot can be the best option. AI Chatbots can allow you to answer your users’ inquiries faster and remove the repetitive work that could take time.
Additionally, AI Chatbots can provide more benefits beyond efficient customer support. You can build them to automate other repetitive tasks while they provide even better user experiences to your customers. Thus, they can make it easier for customers to buy, get support, and perform countless other tasks instantly.
Reduce cart abandonment rates
Cart abandonment will most probably be your constant source of frustration during and after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to SaleCycle, 79.88% of customers on 2021 Black Friday added items to their carts but never made their purchases. And to lose over 75% of customers who expressed a clear interest in your products is not a thing you would like to happen.
So, how can you reduce cart abandonment rates and encourage users who’ve come to your site to complete their orders?
The first step to reducing cart abandonment rates is to show clear calls to action. After users find what they want, provide clear CTAs and links to relevant pages.
Make your cart visible and offer users the clarity they need to proceed. Aim to reduce unnecessary processes and provide several checkout options to ensure customers have the best shopping experiences.
Also, set up automated notifications to convince customers with abandoned carts to complete their purchases. Create compelling messaging that will encourage them to take the next steps. More importantly, ensure these follow-ups are not too pushy, or you risk losing the customer forever.
Track and optimize the performance of your BFCM marketing strategies
Tracking your marketing strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday will help you spot the campaigns that need to be dropped or improved. Your marketing data can help you understand a lot about your customer’s behavior and the performance of your campaigns.
You can test your user’s experience on your site, follow different campaigns on social media, and access your checkout experiences to learn what to improve in your Black Friday marketing strategies.
For example, after monitoring your customer’s behavior on your site, you find that some of your campaigns have lower conversion rates. Upon further analysis, you realize that your calls to action are unclear. And when you tweak them, the rates will start rising.
With powerful marketing reporting tools like Dataslayer, you can gather all your PPC and SEM marketing data (including real-time analytics) in Google Sheets, Google Big Query, Looker Studio, and other destinations during this BFCM season.
Turn Black Friday one-time buyers into life-long customers
Gaining a higher retention rate for your seasonal customers will ensure more success and growth for your company after these seasons. You should nurture and maintain good relationships with new customers during this pre-holiday sales season to help you increase your customer retention rates.
Because new customers may not know anything about your brand, start by sharing your story to introduce them to your business. Include a series of engaging welcome emails and thank-you letters to ensure that you help them understand the perks of remaining loyal to your brand.
Another great strategy to turn one-time seasonal customers into loyal customers is to give them more discounts to encourage recurring orders. If you provide more deals on the products that customers are more likely to order again, they will see value in doing more business with you.
And if you’re retargeting, ensure you craft compelling ad copies to entice your holiday customers to buy from you again. You can show them your latest and personalized products that make them return.
Another effective way to make seasonal buyers return and become long-term customers is to provide loyalty programs to new customers. One report shows that 64% of customers are more likely to spend more on companies that offer loyalty programs.
Wrapping up
Good preparation is often the key to successful marketing strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In this article, we have covered most of what you need for this year’s pre-holiday sales season for you to win it.
To summarize, create irresistible offers for your customers and prospects, infuse a sense of urgency into your campaigns, and provide quick support with chatbots. More importantly, monitor and optimize your campaign’s performance with Dataslayer to improve your BFCM campaign strategies.
Also, don’t forget to turn new shoppers into life-long customers! That way, you will gain loyal customers and more revenue to grow your business. In any way, stay ambitious, be proactive, and set realistic goals as you double your efforts on this BFCM.
