The countdown to Black Friday has officially begun! A high-pressure time for retailers. Somewhere between planning the Halloween campaigns, and planning Christmas promotions, a Black Friday strategy must be built. But with so much going on, where do you start?
It’s easy to want to focus on your revenue and profit during this trading period, but the most successful Black Friday campaigns are centred around preparedness. With insights from Ecommerce Expo, here’s our guide to creating a Black Friday Strategy.
Step 1: Prepare Your Products
Ensuring you have a large number of products in your range during the sale is key, this will help you gain wider visibility from search engines resulting in a higher volume of traffic on your website. This trading period is a fantastic opportunity to focus on attracting new customers and retaining your current customers post-sale.
Now you have all your products ready in line for your sale, have you got adaptive technology prepared in the background? If you witness a sudden spike in sales for one particular product you need to be able to adapt your pricing, stock levels and promotional messaging to help keep those sales steady.
Step 2: Promote With Intention
Once you’ve decided on products and have all the necessary technology in place, it’s time to show them to your audience. Choosing how you’re going to make your Black Friday promotions stand out in the inboxes and feeds of your consumers can be tricky. But here’s a hack to a strong open rate.
Think about how many emails you receive every day – I bet it’s a lot right? This is why personalisation is key. You need to make your customers feel like your brand cares about them, otherwise, why would they shop with you? 41% of people stick to their 2-3 favourite brands meaning that your current customers are likely to stick with you during the sales, whilst the challenge still exists of battling your competitors for new visitors.
You can achieve this through personalised emails which will always make your customer double-take what they’re reading as they’ve noticed their name.
As a bonus tip, making yourself accessible is also vital. Having an easy Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or Email never goes unnoticed when a customer has a query about your product.
Step 3: The Best Time To Launch
Like any marketing campaign, timing is everything. During 2022 over 55% of retailers pushed their campaigns live during earlier periods of the month compared to 2021. However, 20% of retailers didn’t change their launch date at all from 2021 to 2022. So, what does this tell us?
There is zero correlation between starting your campaign early or decreasing the length of your campaign with earning a higher revenue. The overall trend showed retailers increasing the length of their campaign and in fact, losing money meaning you starting your Black Friday campaign earlier in the month doesn’t guarantee an evenly distributed amount of revenue.
Now you have the dates, let’s talk timings. During the Black Friday sales in 2021, the busiest trading hour was between 10 am and 11 am, however in 2022 this changed to 8 pm-9 pm. The rationale behind this was the date of Black Friday in 2022 coincided with the World Cup game where England were playing, meaning more shoppers were likely bored of the football match and jumped on their phones to do some shopping instead. As for 2023, it is predicted that the busiest hour will replicate 2021.
Step 4: Tracking Your Results
Although the common measuring metrics of revenue, average order value and conversions are important, there are other aspects you should also consider.
It’s great to track returns as this will help ensure that your sizing guides work, whether there is enough product information at the point of purchasing and whether the quality of your goods are to your consumer’s satisfaction.
Long-term collections from customers can be a great way to upsell. For example, if you sell a TV, you could offer streaming services within that around their personalised interests or even better get them locked into a subscription. Personalisation and segmentation are key in customer retention, which can result in a fantastic Black Friday result.
Final Thoughts
Ensure that you are organised and prepared for your Black Friday campaigns. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Having the right technology in the background and a wide variety of products in your sales will be the key to your success.
Make sure your customers feel like the brand cares about them. Personalised emails and easy-to-access communication points make all the difference.
Consider the timing of when you are launching your campaigns. Also, remember that the length of your campaign will not directly impact your revenue.
Finally, the only thing left is to measure your success, so remember to use a wide range of metrics!
DO YOU WANT TO PUSH YOUR DIGITAL GROWTH STRATEGY FORWARD? LET’S CHAT.
Interested in working with INFINITY NATION to create a successful digital experience for your company or product?
Get in touch to set up a meeting with our team.
