The best thing about Black Friday is that it almost guarantees great number of sales. The worst part is, with great expectations comes great preparations, and without preparation, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be just another regular day for you. The biggest shopping season is here, and we are here to ensure you have the right Black Friday marketing strategy to help you get the best result. In this article, you will get Black Friday marketing tips, Black Friday ecommerce strategy and Cyber Monday sales ideas that will put you ahead of the competition.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE GETTING READY FOR  BLACK FRIDAY THIS YEAR.

According to spendmenot, 2019 Black Friday sales had 92.3 million buyers, and 40% of shoppers made online purchases. Considering how Covid-19 has impacted online sales positively in 2020, this year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) possess the potential to yield more results than ever before. So, for your ecommerce Black Friday 2020, how prepared you are for a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions will determine how much of the market you get to keep. With Corona virus restrictions hugely diminishing shopping activities in physical stores in 2020; Marketing experts have predicted that this year could witness a record-breaking digital rush on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BCFM). And you should get ready for that rush now with our Black Friday marketing tips. Here are ways to help you have your successful e-commerce Black Friday 2020 and gain Cyber Monday sales ideas.

GET PREPARED 

You may begin to warm-up your audience by informing them of upcoming sales at least one or two weeks before the much-anticipated Black Friday. Try attracting as many potential customers as you can. Send a series of emails and make some announcements on Facebook, Instagram, and every social medium that you use. Additionally, with Walmart kicking off this shopping season with its first big Black Friday 2020 sale, it's necessary to get ready for at least 2 times demand or even more. Ensure you have enough inventory prepared to fulfil and ensure that all your listings are updated. Additionally, don't forget that Cyber Monday promotions will help push your remaining Black Friday 2020 clearances.

Get ready to launch your campaign by following these Black Friday marketing tips:

Define your audience

Regardless of the objectives of your enterprise, the efficacy of your content is largely dependent on how your followers react to it. This implies that you need to invest some of your time in learning about the needs and online behaviors of your target audience and analyzing them. Popular social media have built-in software that can help you gain the much-needed audience insights. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook analytics give you general information, such as languages, location, age, and gender. Furthermore, it is necessary that you delve deeply into audience analysis in order to help create contents that will address your audience.

Use of social listening tools and take note of the contents that spark the highest engagement. Check out the hashtags they follow and groups they are active in—work on implementing the trending content forms, hashtags, and topics into your communication. The magic here is strategic segmentation. In other words, knowing your audience. You may want to ask yourself these questions:

1. Who needs your offer most?
2. What are they looking for?
3. What keeps them up at night?
4. What gives them pleasure or takes away their pain?

Understanding their differences will enable you to make a much diverse content strategy and the best Black Friday marketing campaigns, which can address the needs of the different groups of followers you have. 

Ensure you have ad splits for test

Split testing is an Ad type that allows advertisers to concurrently create two different ads. Facebook's own version of this tool is called the A/B test. This enables advertisers to assess the effectiveness of the same ad to different target audiences. Split testing can help you know your best audience. This helps advertisers maximize the benefits of each advert and stretch each ad cost for a much successful bidding.

Within your webpage, almost all the elements can be changed for a split test. Advert managers, marketers, and web developers can try testing:

• Text: product descriptions, story, calls to action, and headlines.
• Visual elements: static graphics, videos, and colors.
• Layout: forms, menus, size of buttons, and arrangement.
• Visitor flow: how a website user migrates from the first point to the second point.

Ensure that you have proper tracking setup to measure results

Use landing page pixels: when the top priority of your campaign is to bring more traffic to a landing page or blog post, then you will likely need the traffic objective. This enables Facebook to know that your main goal is to get people to click on your ad and arrive at a landing page. In this case, it is necessary to opt for landing page views (LPV) in order to boost your traffic campaign. Using LPV communicates with Facebook algorithm that you want to target audiences who actually load the page and will be more likely to make purchases.

Choose which standard event actions to track. Currently, an advertiser can track nine event actions— Search, View Cart, Add to Wishlist, Add to Cart, Add Payment Info, Initiate Checkout, Complete Registration, Purchase, and Lead. 

Create custom conversions: Using Facebook pixels is a convenient and useful advert technique for those who want to maximize the effectiveness and success of their marketing on Instagram and Facebook. It is installed on your website to retrieve data about user actions, and delivers this data to your ad manager account. Thanks to Facebook pixels, one can:

I Build target audience for effective remarketing;

ii Optimize one's ad campaign by displaying them to specific audiences who are more likely to boost customer conversion;

iii Evaluate your advertising payback by tracking conversions.

DON’T BE LAST TO THE MARKET

2020 has come with bitter sweet experiences for businesses, especially those in retail. This is one of the reasons strategies for retailers is changing this year. For starters, Walmart is taking the lead of creative Black Friday campaigns. Instead of it’s single day price drop, Walmart is giving buyers time to welcome their black Friday deals, and they are starting early. To help you stay ahead of the competition, like Walmart you have to start your sales early. Start pushing Black Friday products out to gather foot traffic, and save the best deals for last to get visitors coming back. Coming late to the market will cost you business, and market shares. You don’t want to come into the market when everyone already has an eye on another store. One of the best  Black Friday ecommerce strategy for 2020 is getting your presence felt first.

Use Cyber Monday to push your remaining Black Friday clearances

After Black Friday comes Cyber Monday. Whatever products are left from your Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday is where you get rid of them. The best part is, with a sizable amount of traffic pulled from Black Friday sales, you can retarget these demographics with a bigger and better offer for Cyber Monday.

Move The Needle With Your Offer

Another Black Friday marketing strategy is moving the needle with your offers. The more knowledgeable you are about your competition pricing, the better. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the time of the season everyone is looking for the best deal for shopping big. You want to strike the right balance between making profit and being competitive. Visit similar stores and research their past products for the products you both sell. The better your deals, the more conversion you will pull.

Prioritize Shipping With Covid Circumstances

Shipping cost and delay in shipments are the top reasons why buyers abandon cart. With COVID-19 imposing delays and issues with shipping fulfillment, you have to prioritize balancing your shipping cost and shipping time. If your customers have to pay premium on shipping, then they ought to get their products as fast as they paid for it. If it isn't too much trouble, one of the top Black Friday marketing strategy is to totally eliminate shipping cost, or discount it at the least. This strategy should always be applied if you can’t control the shipping timeline.

That's a wrap! We hope your 2020 BFCM campaigns are a success for your business. If you want a free audit of your current digital marketing landscape, and a strategic marketing plan to execute on in 2021 for your business, then book your Free Strategy Call with our team here.