By this point you probably have a plan for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. If you don’t, then I would suggest you get started on creating your plan. Most companies spend months planning and preparing marketing strategies specifically for their Black Friday/ Cyber Monday deals. Traditionally, most e-commerce related businesses will set a high budget for marketing and will see increased conversions from their efforts. A well thought out plan is essential in maximizing your results. Here we will discuss some ways to avoid costly mistakes.
When speaking of special promos and offers, there are a few things you’ll want to consider. First, you’ll want to evaluate what you have done with your marketing and look at how your target audience has responded to previous offers. You’ll want to consider where the best response came from, who exactly your target audience is, if seasonality will be a factor, what channel was the most cost effective, will a similar offer be applicable for your audience at the time. If there’s one thing we know for certain is that everyone is looking for the best deal they can find. So how will your offer stand out from the others.
This is where the importance of having good data comes into play. If you have been analyzing your data throughout the year, you should be able to easily pull the reports from different marketing campaigns and from each channel. Because you know that each of your competitors will be running promos at the same time, you’ll want to examine each channel individually and come up with a plan to stand out from the others. What do you do if you haven’t quite found an offer that stands out? Let’s say you have been running offers throughout the year, but they all generate roughly the same result. This could mean that you haven’t quite found the “sweet spot” yet in what you’re offering. What you can take away is that people are responding to an offer, so a really good offer during peak traffic will likely produce the type of result you’re looking for.
You will want to make use of each channel to maximize your results. For example, if you have been building an email list, you will want to start teasing your list and letting them know your plan. If you plan to run multi-day deals or promos be sure to let your audience know. These people have subscribed to your list for a reason. They want to be the first to know when you have big discounts or incentives. You maybe run a special offer just for your subscribers. Keep in mind why someone has opted in. They’ve either done it for a discount or to stay in the know about special offers. You also want to be sure to let them know to be on the lookout for offers for email subscribers only. This will ensure they continue to monitor your emails in the future. This would also be a great time to change your email opt-in, to bring awareness to site visitors that you will be running special offers to email subscribers. In my opinion this is one of the best ways to generate revenue without having to take a ton away from your marketing budget.
When running ads on Facebook or Instagram, it’s imperative to research your campaign. You want to ensure your ads are being sent to the correct audience. If you run your own ads, and haven’t seen much success, I would hire a specialist to help you get through the holiday season. Because you know that increased traffic has a higher chance of converting during this peak season, it only makes sense to allocate some of your budget to a professional who specializes in paid advertising. If you have seen success, and know how to manage your ad budget, then I would suggest getting with your UI/UX person to come up with some clever creatives. Don’t be afraid to try out a couple of offers. The difference between this traffic and your traffic throughout the remainder of the year is that they are all looking to spend, and whomever has the best offer for the product they’re searching for is where they will choose to purchase. Keep in mind, a good offer doesn’t always mean you have to significantly cut your cost. For example, if you have a subscription style business, you could
promo a pre-paid 3 month subscription at a discount. This could be presented as the “perfect gift” for someone. This could also be presented with several options. Let’s say you have 3,6, and 12 month offers. Each of them with discounts, but you are aware that most people won’t opt-in for the 12 month offer. You could easily make 6 month option make the most sense for the average user. The goal would be to lay out the benefits of each. Again, this will take some work with your creative team. You will do your research on your audience to see what they’ve responded best to in the past. You’ll also want to set clear expectations. Would new users purchase 6 months in advance? Would this only make sense for current users? Consider the audience you’re targeting when creating your offer or ad.
Don’t be afraid to create new deals and offers during the peak season. Above all else, be sure that you have proper tracking set in place. As I’ve mentioned in the past, this is key in understanding the success of a campaign. If you have several offers running a few weeks before Black Friday, you could begin to monitor the success of each, and then choose which one’s to modify for the peak season. Remember, the Black Friday/ Cyber Monday deals should be deals available only for that day. You want to push urgency. These offers should be limited time offers. You can let your users know in advance what offers you plan to run, or you can tease that there will be a special
offer. You can even stagger your offers to time of day. Urgency is key when creating a plan for this peak traffic. Because of the time constraints for shipping, you need to be aware that not all of your users live in a close enough distance to be able to receive your product in time to give as a gift if they order too late.
Lastly, be sure to have an exit intent offer on your site. This is one last attempt at getting someone to complete their purchase. Be sure to remind your users that this offer is limited in availability. The chances of someone returning to purchase after they leave your site are very small. Would you rather give someone an extra incentive and get the sale, or get no sale? Of course you want the revenue. When thinking of exit intents, you want to allow for the user to continue with checkout. You don’t want to distract them from continuing with their purchase. The offer should be something simple, like 10% off a future purchase or free shipping on a future purchase. You could even give a “free gift“ for completing the purchase today. It could even be a reminder that the pricing in the cart is only available on that particular day.
Again, I know many of you have probably already sat down and creating some sort of strategy. Hopefully, as you go back and take a look at your plan you can implement some
of these pointers to ensure a successful Black Friday/ Cyber Monday deal day.
Thanks,
Elizabeth
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