Black Friday Marketing Strategy

Black Friday has become a global event, highly anticipated by shoppers and crucial for marketers. Originating from American culture, “Black Friday” refers to the Friday following Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

Known for its exclusive discounts and deals, the Black Friday shopping period often generates more sales than the entire rest of the month. It also typically marks the beginning of the holiday sales season.

Black Friday has been around for years, and it’s still going strong. This year, we’re expecting an 8% increase in sales, with more than $70 billion spent globally.

This event is so well-known that it’s a great chance for your business, but also a must-do, as most customers will be looking for Black Friday discounts.

It’s no different for online sales, either. There are plenty of examples of businesses missing out on Black Friday deals because they didn’t prepare properly.

That’s why Black Friday marketing was born—a series of tricks and strategies to make the most of this event.

In this article, we’ll look at what you need to do to get your portal ready for Black Friday promotions.

Improvement of User Experience

Before you even start thinking about what deals you’re going to offer on your site, there are a couple of things you need to get right.

To get the most out of Black Friday, first, make sure your site is up to speed and performs well. A fast, high-performing site is crucial, as over 53% of visitors will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load (and this threshold is decreasing). If your site has loading issues, it’s essential to address them promptly.

If you have a high-performing site, don’t get too comfortable—make sure it’s scalable, since some hosting services can’t handle the spikes in Black Friday (the last thing you want is for your site to crash when it’s busiest!).

Last but not least, make sure your site looks great on mobile devices. More and more customers are using their smartphones to make purchases, and even search engine indexing tools now take this into account.

You can choose a theme that’s mobile-friendly, like Wonder.

Pricing and Promotional Strategies

Once you’ve got your site up and running, let’s move on to promotional strategies. If you’ve set up a WooCommerce store, you can create a discount code to share with customers on Black Friday. Remember, a promotion is only as effective as it is visible, so in addition to sharing it on social media, it should also be featured in dedicated banners on the site.

Coupons are a great way to save, and there are tons of eCommerce stores that still use them. But, they can sometimes be a bit ineffective on their own.

That’s why you might want to try some more advanced promotional forms, like BOGO (Buy One Get One). This is where a customer who buys a certain product gets another one free. You could even offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount, or create quantity discounts.

There are many promotional strategies available, making it challenging to select the best one for your business. To gain the flexibility to experiment and choose from various promotion types, we recommend using a tool like Dynamic Pricing and Discounts:

Remember the impact of limited-time offers. Black Friday leverages the scarcity principle, making it an ideal time to create urgency with countdowns. This strategy can significantly boost sales, as approximately 64% of people make purchases during limited-time offers (LTO) solely because of the offer.

Improvement of User Experience

We’ve talked about the importance of UX (user experience) before, and we think it’s worth going over the concept again. If your site is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and makes it simple for customers to find what they’re looking for, you’ll see an uptick in sales.

While it’s important to optimize the whole site for the best results, we suggest focusing on two key areas: checkout and content search.

Just a heads-up: Approximately 70% of potential customers abandon their carts before completing a purchase. While there are many reasons for cart abandonment, some beyond your control, you can certainly help by ensuring your checkout process is simple and straightforward.

Remember, customers can change their minds at any time. Even the smallest obstacle can throw them off. This is why so many sellers offer one-click checkout, simplify the checkout screen, or remove unnecessary fields that might come in handy later on.

Another thing we could look at is the search bar. As with many other sites, WooCommerce has a search bar where users can enter keywords to find content.

However, as with many other instances, the search function is often ineffective and basic. That’s why we suggest making the search bar more effective so that help users can find the products they’re looking for right away. Most online shoppers use the search function, and it’s used for about 60% of eCommerce orders.

In short, you can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your search bar by using a tool like WooCommerce Ajax Search.

Pre-Black Friday Marketing

One thing that’s often overlooked about events like Black Friday is that the days and weeks leading up to it are often as important as the days of the promotion itself.

Remember one of our key messages: “A promotion is only as effective as it is known”.

As we get closer to Black Friday, it’d be great to build as much hype as possible. You could also make the site more engaging by adding a countdown clock and using social and email marketing to build excitement.

The newsletter is a great tool, but you’ll need to get sign-ups and offer quality content before you can use it at an event. Otherwise, you’ll just be spamming. So, even if you’re not using this tool yet, now is the perfect time to start.

If you’ve got your own newsletter, make sure you build up the excitement with a series of emails before Black Friday. That way, you can get people even more pumped than they would be if you just sent one email on the day.

It’s also a good idea to start the social media marketing by talking about the event a few days in advance. Show your customers what you have in store for them, and think about using influencers in your niche market to get more people to visit.

Upselling and Cross-Selling Strategies

These well-established sales techniques are utilized by thousands of online stores globally and can significantly boost your Average Order Value (AOV).

Cross-selling is when you encourage your customer to buy additional products. One example is the “Often Bought Together” section on Amazon’s product pages. This is where sellers suggest products that are often bought together with the one the customer has chosen.

This approach is viewed as a service to the customer, allowing them to purchase all necessary products at once and feel like they’re saving money, even if the bundle isn’t discounted.

The same principle applies to product bundles. By offering multiple products together instead of individually, and adding a small discount, you can significantly increase the shopping cart value and overall revenue.

Stock and Shipping Management

Another often overlooked aspect is inventory management. When preparing for a major event like Black Friday, don’t rely on your store’s usual sales and inventory levels. Running out of stock early could derail the entire event, so planning ahead is crucial.

Sales during this period can easily double or triple the usual amount, so it’s essential to anticipate this (even considering potential delays from vendors receiving orders from other vendors).

Additionally, consider offering free shipping during this time. It can significantly benefit your online store.

Customization of the Customer Experience

If you’re aiming for a single sale during Black Friday, you’ll make an immediate profit, but you’ll also lose business in the long run. So, it’s better to aim for a lasting relationship.

Next, we’ll look at how to keep your customers coming back. For now, though, we suggest you set up a system of discounts and promotions based on how your customers behave on your site.

For instance, if customers are more likely to abandon their cart at checkout, it might be because they’re put off by shipping costs. Or, if they buy the same product in multiple quantities, you could offer them a discount for buying in bulk.

Another great option is to introduce a loyalty program which can really pay off in the long run. These programs, popular both online and in the physical stores, are systems that award customers points based on their purchases, which they can then use to earn rewards or discounts.

You can set up a similar system on WooCommerce with the WooCommerce Points and Rewards plugin.

Post-Black Friday: Customer Loyalty

Remember, the battle isn’t over once Black Friday ends. A site without a loyal user base will struggle, even during an annual shopping event like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Beyond loyalty programs and newsletters, there are numerous ways to enhance customer loyalty. Encouraging reviews by offering a small discount code as a reward can create a virtuous cycle. This coupon will prompt the customer to make another purchase, for which they should leave a review, and the cycle continues.

We talked about how to create a review reward system in the dedicated article.

In addition, try to be active on social media platforms and encourage sharing. Many businesses offer discounts for customers who share their purchases on their favorite social networks, so take advantage of the principle of Social Retesting.

At last, make sure you’re on top of communication and customer service during Black Friday and try to get through as many clients as possible as quickly as you can. This is because the first impression these new shoppers get of your business will stick with them for a long time making them loyal customers.

Conclusion

A Black Friday campaign is a great chance for your business, but don’t forget to put all the improvements we talked about in the article into your regular site activity too. While your sales might go up during that time, you can really take your business to the next level by making sure your site is high-performing and optimized.

So, learn from Black Friday marketing strategies by offering promotions based on what your customers do online, making sure your site is easy to navigate, and optimizing it for search, from web search to product search.

Make every day feel like Black Friday for your store!