Black Friday is one of the most important dates of the year, a season that brings big discounts and a sharp increase in product purchases. It began as a holiday celebrated on the last Friday of November and has become a date consumers recognize as an opportunity to get great deals, and a promotional channel for companies.
It has become so popular with consumers that it’s now considered the start of the Christmas season, a sales surge that can carry into the holiday campaign and end with the winter sales. In Spain, 35% of sales are concentrated over the Christmas period, and thanks to the convenience and ease of online shopping, it’s expected that 40% of the year’s online purchases will be made this Christmas.
This year there’s an added twist: it’s the first Black Friday of the new “post-Covid” reality. After a 2020 in which almost all purchases had to be made online and eCommerce was undoubtedly the star, this year online and offline stores will coexist, and it makes more sense to talk about omnichannel. Customers are also much more used to buying online after the pandemic. What does the new consumer look like? How should we approach Black Friday 2021? In this post we share 10 key points to succeed this Black Friday.
Even so, competition at this time is much fiercer than at any other time of year, which is why we need to build a solid strategy for our eCommerce. How should we prepare our online stores for Black Friday? Read on!
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Planning
In digital marketing, planning is the starting point of every campaign and is key to its success. It’s crucial to prepare a strategy tailored to our business and our customers.
As November approaches, CPC values rise exponentially, driving up the cost of our campaigns. That’s why our strategy should focus on building brand awareness in September and October. Starting to generate traffic in the months before Black Friday is vital. That way, when the time for deals and promotions arrives, searches will be focused on our brand.
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Omnichannel
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What is omnichannel? It’s a very important concept for our strategy: a business strategy based on interacting with users across different channels (online store, app, physical store, etc.) as if they were one.
All channels should be used under the same strategy to reach customers from different angles. As we’ve mentioned, this year physical stores will want to recover the sales they lost last year, while online stores have gained a lot of ground in this context. Consumers also browse more and are better informed (they might check a product in store, look at deals on the website and complete the purchase in the app, for example), which is why omnichannel is a key concept in 2021.
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Branding
A customer who already knows you is more likely to buy from you. It may seem obvious, but we sometimes forget that we need to work on branding and build awareness of our brand. This step is essential to your campaign’s success.
In September and October, users are in an awareness stage: comparing prices, seeing related ads, browsing discounted products, etc., and we need our brand to be present at that moment. So we should plan a brand-focused strategy to attract buyers.
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Get your eCommerce ready
Make sure your online store is ready to handle the increase in sales and demand. In just a few days, orders rise exponentially, and your eCommerce needs to be running at 100%. What are the most important points?
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- Have enough stock
- Work with more than one carrier
- Secure shipping during peak periods
- Make sure your online store can handle more users without hurting their experience.
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Advertising campaigns
Online advertising is one of the most effective ways to reach consumers quickly and in a targeted way. Invest strategically across paid platforms such as Google Ads to maximize sales and visibility.
Remember the points made in this post about branding, traffic generation and omnichannel.
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Facebook Ads
Social media is undoubtedly at the center of our lives. You need to know each network’s target audience and work on segmentation to reach your user niche, but they’re a great channel for Black Friday campaigns.
Facebook is a platform that reaches a huge number of users and has enormous influence on consumer purchasing. Post deals your users care about and promote your product on Instagram or Facebook.
The platform even lets you create a landing page where you can publish your most popular products and promote them for the Black Friday season, bringing your business into one of the 2022 trends: Social Commerce.
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Remarketing
Focus your strategy on existing customers or users who have visited your website in recent months: they’re more likely to buy because they already know you.
Targeting these users pays off more than a strategy focused solely on new customers. Concentrate your efforts on attractive promotions so users who already know your brand complete their purchase with a little nudge from remarketing.
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Black Friday keywords
Lots of people search for Black Friday deals and information. Focus your strategy on new keywords to attract customers, and invest your search campaign budget in the terms most used during sales periods. You can even create a landing page or blog post to rank for these keywords and drive traffic.
Some examples would be: Black Friday coat deals, best Black Friday gifts or Black Friday sweaters.
Try to find the terms that best fit your business.
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Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is the use of software to automate marketing actions, such as building workflows, so you communicate with each user in a unique way. At Trilogi we use Connectif, the Marketing Automation tool par excellence, which lets us trigger pop-ups, send abandoned cart emails, personalized offers and much more!
For Black Friday, it’s essential to build a Marketing Automation strategy around Pre Black Friday, In Black Friday and Post Black Friday. Want to know which workflows are a Black Friday must? We’ll let you in on the secret!
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- Countdown: Show a countdown timer to the first Black Friday deals. Build anticipation!
- Mass campaigns: Combine email marketing and web push notifications to reach your users with Black Friday deals.
- Paid Media segmenter: Engage contacts coming from your Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns by showing them different messages on your website.
- Ending alert: Encourage last-minute purchases by showing how much time is left before the deal ends.
- Loyalty: Offer a discount coupon for their next purchase to those who bought on Black Friday. Turn users into loyal customers!
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Discount coupons and timers
How should you apply discounts on your website? We’ve talked about the days before and which strategy to follow in the run-up to Black Friday 2021. But what about the day itself?
Discount coupons are a very effective way to showcase promotions and break through the price comparison barrier. Offering personalized coupons to your users secures the sale and builds brand loyalty.
Timers, on the other hand, create a sense of urgency, reminding customers that Black Friday deals are limited and very short, lasting a single day or, at most, the weekend after D-Day.
Black Friday 2021 is just around the corner with a new, much more digital reality that now has to coexist with online stores, and much better-informed users. That’s why it’s key to plan a strategy for your brand and not improvise.
What did you think of these 10 tips for a great campaign? Online sales will play an even bigger role this Black Friday, and at Trilogi we’re already getting ready so our clients have a successful Black Friday. How about you, are you ready?
