In an age where customer attention spans are diminishing, and competition is rampant, Black Friday stands as the proverbial battlefield for e-commerce brands. Gone are the days when traditional Black Friday tactics would keep your revenue numbers high.
So, today, we’re going to be taking a look at 5 unique Black Friday tips that will help you increase your brand’s sales, visibility, and incentives during this prolific holiday.
1. Add An Element Of Mystery Pre-Black Friday
Source: TheHub
Most sellers tend to announce their discounts, sales, and promotions right before Black Friday. This isn’t all that consumer-centric because of two reasons. Firstly, your Black Friday promotions are mangled up in a sea of other storefronts that are offering similar promotions at the same timeframe.
Secondly, if you announce everything outright, there’s really no reason for a customer to check on your store on the day that they’ll actually be making purchases, Black Friday. Mystery sales, therefore, can invoke a sense of curiosity and excitement among your audience.
Unlike straightforward promotions, mystery sales can spark conversation and make your campaign much more shareable on social media. Plus, you can start sharing details about your Mystery Black Friday campaign weeks prior to the actual update.
Here’s how you can go about implementing a Mystery Pre-Black Friday sale:
- Think of Your Mystery Elements: Decide what part of your sale will be remaining a mystery until the specified date. It could be products on sale, the discount percentage, or even mystery gift bags.
- Start Creating Buzz: Use your existing marketing channels like social media, newsletters, and website banners to tease the mystery element
- Execute: Use the mystery element a few weeks before Black Friday or on the day itself, depending on your strategy, and watch the excitement unfold.
2. Buckle Up and Create a Seamless Customer Experience
Black Friday will be one of those days where you’ll see an extremely massive volume of customers shopping on your site. So, without a site that can keep up with the high volume, your customers won’t have an enjoyable experience.
First things first, definitely make sure your website’s server options are suited for accommodating lots of visitors. Whether you are self-hosted or using other hosting services (like a Shopify store) – you need to be sure that your website will withstand the extra traffic that Black Friday will bring in.
There are two other factors you need to keep in mind as well: Customer Support and a great Checkout Experience. Both of these are paramount to ensure that your CTRs remain high on Black Friday.
For customer support it is a good idea to hire extra help just for Black Friday. That way if there are lots of questions from customers, you can manage them fairly quickly and keep things running smoothly.
For your checkout experience, we recommend placing some dummy orders yourself and going through the entire process. If you notice any hiccups or points of improvement improve them immediately.
3. Start Shifting Old Stock
Black Friday can be a great way to clear out old inventory into people’s hands. This is a great way to get some eye-catching headline statistics. If you were to offer something like 80% off, it’d severely complement your store’s overall Black Friday aesthetic since that’s what the Holiday is all about to begin with.
This also helps maintain margins on your current range since shifting old stock will maintain the integrity of your newer lineup but will allow customers who aren’t willing to pay that much money to still benefit from visiting your website.
Customer acquisition and retention is the name of the game when it comes to building brand loyalty. So, if you can get customers in the door even through cheaper, lower margin clearance sales, there’s a high chance they’ll end up appreciating your product to such an extent that they end up coming back and purchasing products that’ll net you higher margins.
Re-Engage Older Customers, Too!
While you are at it, clearing old stock that your older customers may have also been fond of is just an added bonus. These customers are ones that you already have added to your database. Whether it is via a mailing list, a quick message, or a social media post, talking to older customers during Black Friday can help jog their memory about your store.
If you have a list of customers who have made purchases with you in the past, do not shy away from sending them a discounted coupon code on Black Friday to further add to the deals. While it may thin out your margins, it is well worth the effort as you’ll end up developing a longer relationship with these customers as time goes on.
Plus, customers who end up using your coupon code are the ones who actually read your mailing lists, which means that you can provide them with further discounted and personalized deals that they end up resonating with.
4. Offer Timed Conditional Sales
Having a static website isn’t going to have customers coming back on your site after they hit checkout. You should incentivize customers to hop back on as often as they can by offering Flash Deals, timed deals, and particular mystery items that unlock throughout the day rather than unloading them with multiple deals and discounts all at once.
Think about it this way: a customer is more likely to spend multiple smaller amounts in their cart rather than opt for a much larger cart. If they know that there’s a better deal just around the corner, they might be incentivized to check out with what they have right now and then come back later to see if there’s another deal worth snagging.
So, if a customer logs in and sees that the items on sale currently are going to be there for only 2 hours, they’ll put those in the cart and check out. After that, if they notice that other mystery items are going to be added soon, there’s a very high likelihood that they will check back around just to see what the items are. Since they made their previous purchase a few hours ago, there’s a greater chance of them purchasing more than they originally thought they would.
5. Create a Static Black Friday URL
Create either a product category or an entire static URL, filled with keywords like Cyber Monday and Black Friday that you use every year and update once the Holidays roll around. This allows the page to be indexed at higher spots within search engines over time and allows your sites to be recognized for keywords like Black Friday.
Plus, you won’t have to go through the effort of making new pages every single time. We recommend removing the page from your navigation bar once your deals and discounts are over. But, do not unarchive or unpublish the page. Instead, keep the permalink of the page there for next year.
Over time, this page will build a lot of authority, and you now have a static page that you can focus on to improve ranking over time. There are three different ways you can show content on this page:
- Product Category Page: Tag all of your products in your store with a Black Friday tag and then display them on that particular page.
- Content Page: Add some text copy about Black Friday, and insert some products there as well. But keep it very centred around the Holiday and what your brand is doing to differentiate itself within that space.
- Hybrid Approach: This is where you add copy about Black Friday but embed products directly within the page as well. You can also insert particular categories or products that you know are discounted well, and it would make sense to include them on the static page.
Conclusion
From engaging customers with Mystery Pre-Black Friday sales to optimizing your website for high traffic and a smooth checkout process, these tactics aim for more than just a short-term revenue boost. As you prepare for Black Friday, these strategies should help you to not only increase sales, but also improve customer retention and brand loyalty.
