Izzy James
Digital Marketing
Everyone knows that meeting deadlines leads to a much more efficient outcome and there is no exception when it comes to your eCommerce store’s marketing.
Black Friday might seem like a little while away yet but when considering what’s needed to prepare, your store will perform so much better with a well-thought-out and structured plan in place, so you can be available to your customers from the get-go – after all, it is one of the biggest shopping events of the year!
What are your Goals?
It’s pretty standard that all businesses have some kind of sale or huge discounts over Black Friday weekend, but rather than just following this with no objective in mind, think about what you want to achieve in the long-term from your sales, across the shopping event.
It might be that you’re looking to grow your database from your influx in sales or are trying to convert some of your one-time customers into repeat customers to generate a high customer value and build loyal relationships with them.
Once you have your goals mapped out, this will help you to implement exactly what discounts and offers to put in place and what effect these will have, so you can increase your return on investment as opposed to the year before.
Get the Word Out Early!
Don’t just wait until the week before to announce the offers you have planned. Get your customers excited long before so that your website is the one they go to when the time comes, rather than your competitor.
Using a mixture of resources; like email marketing, social media posts and paid marketing will help you target as many people as possible.
Email Marketing
Email marketing will be your ultimate power tool and we highly recommend planning a Black Friday series to slowly release over the weeks building up to Black Friday.
Make them stand out from your standard email campaign too. This could be done by using custom graphics about your promotions or ever so slightly switching up the colour scheme to catch people’s attention. Reds, blacks and golds tend to be recognisable and well responded to for Black Friday.
Ensure all of your automated emails are set up and ready to go, this goes for the following…
- Cart abandonment emails
- Welcome emails
- Order confirmation
Pay-Per-Click
Pay per click advertising can be a great way to get the word out there to new and existing customers in Google Search and, on social media platforms, the people you feel will respond best to your products and promotions.
You may find you want to run a campaign before Black Friday weekend starts to advertise that you’ll be taking part and to remind people to come back on the big weekend.
Starting early will also mean you’ll avoid paying a high cost per click – if everyone’s running campaigns during this particular weekend, it’s going to be extremely competitive, meaning the price you pay per click will be higher and a larger budget will be needed to beat your competitors.
Schedule your campaigns to make sure they are running as soon as Black Friday weekend starts.
This would be the perfect time to get branded Black Friday banners and graphics designed, especially if you plan to run a remarketing campaign. There’s no better time to try and re-engage people from the past than on the biggest sale weekend of the year.
Set-Up Tracking
Make sure tracking for all of your website and marketing activity is set up. This includes your Facebook Pixel, campaign tracking in Google Analytics, conversion tracking and so on.
If you haven’t already, set up eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics, so you can track exactly how many sales you make, what products these were and where these sales were sourced from, so you can find out which of your marketing was the most successful.
Website Usability
Checking your website is easy to use and up to date should be a regular task anyway, but it’s even more important that everything’s in order if you’re participating in the Black Friday sales.
Here are some of the main things you should be checking are in place…
- A renewed SSL certificate, so your site’s secure
- Optimised page speed
- A quick and easy checkout process
- Secure and well-known payment options
If you’re starting to think about your marketing for Black Friday, our marketing team within the Nican Group can advise on the best practices for your digital marketing to generate an influx in sales and increase your return on investment.
To make sure your website is in order, ready for November, contact our specialists here.