With the infamous ‘Black Friday’ only a week away it’s not too late to start thinking about your campaign. Widely publicised and notorious, this event can be seen as an overwhelming time for small business as you may not know how to navigate through this event and all the way to Cyber Monday. However, it’s important not to panic and by sticking to these five key rules, your business can succeed.
1. Be Prepared
As a business owner, the best (and most important) thing you can do is prepare. This can be done by categorising your deals e.g: him/her/children/gifts etc to make it easy for consumers to find specific deals. Following on from this, you also need to decide whether you will be offering your deals online, in-store or both. Figures show that 57 per cent of users will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load so it is essential to take time tweaking out any bugs from your website and ensuring you are able to handle the volume of customers and sales.
2. Get Creative
Black Friday is a popular holiday across the globe, so it’s important to stand out of the crowd and use more emotive language when advertising your deals. This is particularly useful in email marketing to get customers to click on your product/discount. Remember, ‘urgency’ is not the only emotive you can use. A recent survey by Persado found that challenge words e.g: ‘Are you ready?’, encouragement: ‘Treat Yourself’ and fascination style words ‘You Have to Try This’ ended up with four times more clicks from the consumer base. It would be good to play around with these using A/B style testing on your emails to build up the anticipation around your sales campaign.
3. Social Media
Don’t forget about social media.
This is a great way to get your consumers aware of your sales and grab the attention of the mobile user. The most important format is email marketing where you can reach your consumers and make your coupons readily available to use. This will encourage your customers to save and remember to use these discounts in your store and on your website. Additionally, utilising Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote your posts will serve as a constant reminder. The hashtag #BlackFriday will also help to bring a wider audience to your deals.
4. Customer Service
Building a good rapport is crucial in still appealing to old customers and finding new ones. This can be done by engaging with the consumer base and rewarding loyalty by offering additional discounts to consumers who made purchases during the last Black Friday sale and offering free shipping. Actively asking for reviews and sending thank you emails keeps your business at the forefront of their minds and builds additional traffic to your site. Remember it’s not just about the price and offers, offering good service might just see new customers become loyal buyers down the road.
5. Keeping New Customers
Following on from the last tip, Black Friday will most likely create a new audience and buzz to your product or service but how do you keep them coming back? Introducing welcome campaigns via email marketing will give them an insight and introduce them to your brand. Offering and promoting loyalty can also create interest in your brand and invite them to stay with you for longer.
A bit about Black Friday
Black Friday is on November 23rd, traditionally an American holiday after Thanksgiving and sees stores across the globe pushing various deals to their audience. In 2014, this event has successfully made its way to the UK. Last year there were over 1.4 billion sales in the UK in 2017, this being an 11.7% increase from 2016. Millions of retailers will be looking for a bargain so it’s important to make sure your business is at the forefront of this craze.
Overall, this holiday is an excellent opportunity to really showcase your products and services. Taking into account the steps outlined you can work towards a successful Black Friday campaign to maximise your profits and build more awareness for your brand.
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