How to get ready for Black Friday
What Black Friday is
Myth says the day after Thanksgiving was a chance for retailers to go from red to black in their accounting. Actually, this is the rosey version of the truth.
Black Friday is a term coined by the Philadelphia Police Department to designate the flow of tourists to the city during the prolonged Thanksgiving weekend to do some shopping and attend to the traditional Navy vs Army football match. Chaos reigned in the city, to the point of rioting and looting.
There was a feeble attempt to rebrand it to Big Friday, but Black Friday stuck and so it goes.
This sort of one-day-sales eventually got longer, and it’s so big for business that, just in 2018, generated 90 billion dollars in business volume in the USA alone, and is still the biggest shopping day of the year, since 2013.
As we’re living in a borderless world, businesses in other countries joined in, and it has become a worldwide tradition for some years now or, the same amount of time you can shop online.
Since madness sets in quiote quickly, we have some communication and marketing ideas to make your Black Friday more than a day to get more sales but also to promote your brand, promote customer loyalty and reach new audiences. Without a riot.
Black Friday Tips
Black Friday is whenever a brand wants
Make the most of the hubbub created by the increasing messages and promotions related to this day, and star announcing promotions happening in the days before. Why not, for onde, have a Black Monday that doesn’t mean a financial disaster? Or a full, discount packed, Black Week? To be honest, we have been farther away to having a Black November.
Use FOMO to your advantage, highlight deadlines, scarcity: one day to go, 3 items left. However, be positive, because our brains only can deal with a certain amount of urgency. This season awakens users’ primitive hunting instincts, waiting for that mammoth promotion. Give them the joy of the hunt.
And you don’t have to end on Friday. No one stops their promotions on the day, as a matter of fact. Give a second chance to those who didn’t have the financial liquidity on the last weekend of November and repeat the event next Friday. Get rid of the last products on your shelves with unbeatable offers.
Save the date
Your website’s design should look accordingly. It’s not a thematic event like Christmas or Easter, that involve more icons and symbols, but the color black and the words “Black Friday” in proeminent sections of your website, in a coherent fashion.
The Black Friday theme should be present in your promotional materials, from content to landing pages created specifically for that occasion, and on social networks. Raise expectations, foreshadow surprises.
Create exclusive content for your newsletter subscribers and signed up users of your website. It’s a great opportunity to increase the number of subscribers on your mailing list.
Campaigns to set the ground
Email – in the newsletters preceding the big day, use terms like “Black Friday” or “promotions are coming” or “Best promotions of the year” whatever SEO-suits you better, both in the subject and in the email body. Use visually appealing CTAs (Call to Action), offer promo codes, direct your clients to a specific landing page. Make them feel sharing their email address with you is worth their time, besides being highly useful.
Remarketing – but if you want to go beyond email use remarketing techniques, to recover all those users that got away, after almost buying products on your online store and giving up in the last moment. If you got their attention once, get it back again. Tell them the product they put in the cart and never got to check out is going to have an amazing discount.
Social Networks
As we know, social network power is huge. Raise expectations, assert your identity, share the best Black Friday saving tips with your followers, lift the veil on what they can look for that day.
Use your profile and cover images to promote your Black Friday, and don’t shy on the #hastags – find the most used and the most useful for your campaign.
Set your agenda (and your users’ too)
Since we’re working for a specific date, it is very important to plan ahead the different stages of your promotion actions, and schedule posts in different channels.
On the day itself is easy – just go all in and share the most important information, via email or social networks. Send reminders the day before and send another one when the day is almost done. But be useful and restrain from over-communication.
Promotional newsletter are more effective on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after lunch. Social media posts get more attention on Wednesdays, at:
Facebook: 11h or 13h
Instagram: 11h
Twitter: 9h
LinkedIn: 9-10h
If you’re not getting the expected engagement, try other times. It’s important to analyze your results right from the first email or post and adjust accordingly. Use Google Analytics or any other tool you prefer to gather the data you need.
Be ready for the swarm
If your promotional efforts go well, you’ll have a surge in website visits, greater than you’re used to. Check if you’re ready for that increase in traffic, so your website doesn’t slow down or crash.
CMS and their page loading times, shopping and subscription mechanisms will have to match the demand. The server hosting your website will have to deal with all the stress of having many simultaneous visitors.
Get in touch with your webhost providers and confirm if they’re up for any circumstance, and i your package is the most suitable. And, don’t forget, traffic from smartphones is increasingly higher than visits originating from desktops, so be sure your website is mobile ready.
Stand out
On Black Friday, everyone is going to use the same tricks, procedures, so it’s going to be difficult to do different. But if you already have you own identity and a defined personality, that won’t be hard.
Rebel against Black Friday, if that’s your brand’s style. Cards Against Humanity raised their prices instead of dropping them, because that’s who they are.
Be creative. Get user attention with captivating copy and images, but be pragmatic too: help your potential customers start a new account in your website and create a wishlist. Or adding your event on Google Calendar, so they don’t forget about you that day.
Black Friday is a great opportunity for any online business, and we want you to make the most of it. No riots involved.
Get ready for Black Friday, and get in touch.