As Black Friday Cyber Monday are two of the most important dates in the eCommerce calendar, it is important for the planning to start early. If you haven’t already considered how you are going to make the most of these potentially lucrative days this year, now is the time to start. This post will take you through some steps to ensure you make the most of the opportunities.
Start Early
Since you’re reading this blog post, you’re already on the right track. Black Friday Cyber Monday planning needs to start early. The earlier the better when it comes to deciding what you want to achieve, as well as beginning marketing and outreach. The campaign should be big, so the planning will be big accordingly.
Some questions to consider are:
- How much budget do you have for advertising?
- Which audiences do you plan to target?
- Will you work with third parties for marketing?
- What is your social media strategy?
If you are planning on using social media, influencers or micro-influencers, for example, it’s best to reach them early. Since you want your whole marketing strategy to be cohesive, it’s best not to leave things to the last minute, leaving more room for mishaps.
Evaluate Last Year’s Performance
In order to understand what strategy will work best for you this year, it’s important to examine the outcome of last year’s campaign. Analyzing your 2022 performance will highlight which areas worked well, and not so well, and give you clues on how best to act this year.
Sort your data into the following areas:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Assortment
- Pricing
- Profit
- Logistics
- Staffing
Or any other categories that you feel would be useful to look into. If you had any issues with over or understocking, these are the kinds of things to pay special attention to this year. Product forecasting based on previous data is a great way of staying prepared.
Some applications have analytics systems built into them. These are useful all year round, but especially stay useful around this time of year. The best thing you can be is prepared, so that you are aware of any issues you might run into.
Set Your Goals
It’s important to create ambitions and goals for what you want to achieve during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This gives you something to work towards, and will also allow you to evaluate your progress as you move through the period. If you have set goals early on, this increases your chances of success- you know what you are aiming for.
These will also be useful once the period has passed, as you will be able to evaluate how you did according to your goals. The more specific you are about what you want to achieve in various areas of your strategy, the more clear it will be how to achieve this.
These could be based on:
- Sales
- Engagement
- Outreach
- Products
Or any other meter that suits your business.
Optimize Your Website
This is not the time of year for your website to crash. Online traffic can rise huge amounts on Black Friday, for example in 2021 it rose by 37%, so this has to be prepared for. If your website is not optimized, shoppers will simply bounce to another one. There are so many sales on offer that people will not waste time waiting until your website loads.
This should also apply to mobile sites. You should have an optimized mobile store, better yet a mobile app, that allows people to make seamless purchases from their mobile device. Including social proof clearly will also help encourage sales. Making sure all images are high quality is another way of achieving this.
Now is the time to make sure your site is running as powerfully and professionally as you aspire it to be.
Create A Landing Page
Black Friday might attract first time shoppers to your store, or shoppers that otherwise wouldn’t be there. In that case, offering them a landing page specifically for Black Friday is a helpful idea. It can help you stand out from the competition by promoting what’s unique about your offerings. It can also boost sales or business objectives by encouraging sales of your desired products, or best deals.
This page should have a clear call to action, clear links to other pages on your website, and promote a straightforward and intuitive route to checkout.
Choose Your Sales Strategy
Based on the previous considerations, such as what you achieved last year, and the goals you aim to achieve this year; you can create a sales strategy. Obviously discounts are a staple part of the strategy, but this doesn’t have to be the whole campaign.
Other things to consider are:
- Buy One Get One Free
- Giveaways
- Sweepstakes
- Competitions On Social Media
- Coupon Codes
- Incentives
These can all be great ways of getting shoppers to engage with the brand even after the holidays are over. Considering what your target market is will help make it clear what strategy would suit them. You can even ask them directly on social media, and see what they respond. After all, the shopper needs to be happy first of all.
Free shipping is recommended in your strategy- many shoppers won’t purchase if this isn’t the case. Offering choices between different discount options can also be a great way of encouraging shoppers and keeping them engaged.
All In On Marketing
Obviously, marketing is incredibly important when it comes to Black Friday Cyber Monday. This is because your amazing deals are no use if people don’t know about them! People need to be aware of your promotions, able to find them easily, and people need to know about your brand in general.
Increasing marketing efforts around the holidays can bring more shoppers in, especially if the discounts are what originally draws their attention. Optimizing your SEO for the holidays will pay off greatly, and as well as boosting your social media campaign. Perhaps paid or sponsored posts could be a great idea here.
Things such as a social media presence, an active blog and actively using keywords are all great ways to get your name out there. Using email and SMS marketing is also a great way to reach customers on their mobile devices. These tend to have good click through rates, and will let people know your offers.
Conclusion
When it comes to Black Friday Cyber Monday, there’s so much potential and there’s so much to be taken advantage of. The important thing is to not get left behind. If you begin planning your strategy now, using the tips we’ve offered in this post, you could have the most successful BFCM yet.