What strategies should you implement on your e-shop during Black Friday?
Do you know of any opportunities offered by this commercial opportunity?
In this article, we show how to take advantage of the natural advantages offered by the Black Friday wave, the key factors that allow an online sales platform to take full advantage of it, and practical tips for implementation.
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How to increase your e-commerce sales with Black Friday, the global online shopping event
With the rapid development of online shopping, Black Friday and the Monday following Cyber Monday have become the annual shopping events. Absolute imperative: Shocking discounts!”
Literally translated, “Black Friday” is a real carnival of discounted shopping. Why black? Traditionally, inks of different colours were used for accounting: red indicated a loss or deficit, and black indicated a profit. So this Friday is black because it’s profitable!
This is another phenomenon born in the United States, proclaimed on the day following Thanksgiving, celebrated on the Thursday of the fourth week of November. “Black Friday” is the date that represents the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, which will last for almost two months.
Black Friday is usually in November. But be careful; it is imperative first to study sales and marketing strategies dedicated to super-discounted shopping to be successful on this day.
Many are mistakenly convinced that Black Friday opens and closes on the same day. In recent years, many e-commerce sites have offered discounts and promotions in the days preceding Black Friday. Sometimes, some best-selling items are sold out before the fateful date. But not only do online sellers start earlier, but they also extend super discounts after Black Friday, often including Cyber Monday, the following Monday. It is an excellent opportunity for sellers to implement up-selling and cross-selling strategies and achieve sales objectives, empty the warehouse and raise cash.
Black Friday between anticipation and opportunity
Black Friday is one of the most influential promotional phenomena in large-scale international markets. It represents the last chance for E-Commerce sellers to increase “annual sales”, the fateful final rush. In fact, these days, consumer behaviour and habits are very different from the usual purchasing method: the sales volume for some brands could represent almost 1/4 of the total annual turnover in a single day and sell, on average, hundreds of pieces per second. But be careful because it’s not just the discounted price that makes you sell; it can seriously become an opportunity to exploit for future sales.
Black Friday has enormous significance: an online shop that opens to this festival of “promotional purchases” must not concentrate all activities with a beginning and an end on this day but exploit its potential. Black Friday must represent the beginning of a lasting relationship with consumers. To do this, it is necessary first to develop a good Marketing Strategy that makes the products of your online shop attractive.
Black Friday sales strategies
In such a great business opportunity, how do you set strategies, create topics and achieve final sales goals? Here are some practical tips to prioritize marketing and optimize customer interaction, offering them a good shopping experience.
1- Plan
If you want to be successful and take full advantage of this event, you must have a comprehensive plan. If you set up a highly actionable plan, you will have a high chance of success. Start by asking yourself these questions:
- Check the Merchandise: Do you know how to promote existing products? Are you leveraging enough inventory to meet consumer demand?
- Segment your customers: who is your target group? Do you know how they like to shop? Observe the behaviour of community followers, purchasing availability and the traffic you receive on average on your platform.
- Define Resources: What resources do you currently have to support your strategy? Do you need assistance? You need to check the current status and what resources are available to you, such as how many people are needed to complete the trading and distribution task, the time spent on sorting and fulfilling orders, etc.
2- Reach customers
How to reach the target audience? Find your e-commerce site, and take care of search engine optimization ( SEO ). Optimization makes the user’s search process intuitive and fast, making winning a click easier.
Take care of public relations; for example, leverage relevant third-party websites; brand awareness will increase referral traffic. Digital PR is a great opportunity to consider.
3- Encourage interaction
It’s about convincing site visitors or potential customers to take the next step, the next action in their “journey” when they reach your site or social page. Create eye-catching banners for social campaigns and your online store’s homepage. Create the right calls to action that encourage people to learn more about the company, products, read, or blog.
4- Convert
After optimizing the constant flow on your E-Commerce platform, it is essential to change these flows into actual conversions, i.e. leading the user to purchase.
5- Engage and build loyalty
This is a critical phase, creating interaction with the consumer after the purchase. Don’t stop at Black Friday and Cyber Monday; customer loyalty doesn’t happen in a few days. It is a long-term commitment to develop a long-term relationship with buyers to lead to repeat purchases using on-site communications, social channels, and emails.
A planning structure of this type is called RACE (reach act convert engage) and is designed precisely to offer customers an excellent purchasing experience.
Practical advice on riding the Black Friday wave
We now list practical tips to improve the customer experience, increase interaction opportunities and improve loyalty and satisfaction. You want consumers on your e-commerce site to make more than one purchase!
Here’s what you absolutely must do:
- Black Friday page countdown timer. You can set a countdown timer on your landing page to remind customers when the promotion is time and when to revisit your store, using a visual emphasis on the importance of time.
- Countdown on products. Unlike the page countdown timer, the countdown timer is for the individual product. When a customer is interested in a certain product, he will check the price, shipping costs, expected time and other information, so add the countdown on the product page.
- Activate live trends data. These messages provide information to the user, leveraging the depletion of a product. An element of urgency like this at checkout could encourage the user to purchase with phrases like “only one pair of glasses left” or on social proof “, 22 other people have seen this product occasion.”
- Create a marketing page exclusively for Black Friday. Make it enticing and keep product information for promotion at the front and centre during this period. If creating a new marketing page is too much trouble, you can also create a Black Friday landing page and link it to your product page.
- Package the product. The delivery of the package is the most awaited moment for a customer. Even if you know the content, you can add value to this moment by creating the “Wow!” effect with a fun and more original experience. The customer will be impressed.
- Use Remarketing campaigns. At best, your potential customers will visit your online store to see product and discount information before the Black Friday event. They may block the product to return on the day of the event to complete the purchase of the order. However, because they are still hesitant or caught up in the euphoria of having too many things to choose from, they may end up abandoning the cart. To stem this situation, you can activate a customer remarketing campaign to increase the chances of getting them to return to the site.
- ALWAYS optimize for mobile devices. Today, it is essential to avoid missing opportunities.
Special discounts for customers and followers
If you already have many followers on your social channels, let them know about upcoming promotions, prepare eye-catching images, and reserve particularly favourable discounts for those who follow you. Social media is a channel that encourages potential customers to visit your E-Commerce site. You can, for example, create a topic or pre-event before Black Friday to collect emails from your potential customers to get more information about upcoming discounts. After receiving emails from potential customers, you can maintain contact and communicate by improving the interaction between them and your brand, offering them small discounts even after the event.
A festival like Black Friday goes perfectly with the operations that can be conducted through social media. Since customers don’t just want a low price, they will be more willing to share their savings gains with their relatives and friends.
Find out how to conduct market research and evaluation in advance to calculate the balance between discounts and profits to plan the best strategy for your e-commerce and seize the opportunities of an annual event like this.
Also Read : Hubspot Is The Right CRM To Open An Online Store
