Black Friday is fast approaching and as many of you already know, this is the time to go big to hit it big. The busiest shopping day of the year is an amazing opportunity to increase the number of retail sales. Of course, you have to understand that as with any opportunity, you actually have to plan something to stand out and make the most out of it.
Given the increasingly fierce competition any business has to face during this time, it’s extremely important to have a strategy to guide your efforts. But how should you design one? Here, let us help you with that with these tips.
Appeal to a sense of urgency
Various marketing studies and reports have shown how effective a sense of urgency can be for selling products. Whenever you make a limited time offer or create some sort of time frame to make a purchase, people tend to act more swiftly – before they miss out. That’s why you should use a countdown timer to make hourly offers and encourage visitors to your site to buy before it’s over.
You can even use countdown timers before Black Friday to create even more anticipation about the special deals you’ll have on that day. If you use that technique to also ask for emails, you’ll have hit the jackpot, since you’ll have a database to offer new deals later on.
Don’t forget Black Friday Emails
You might be wondering “emails? That’s ancient”. We’ve told you before but we don’t mind telling you again – if that’s your way of thinking, you won’t get far. Email marketing is as good as it ever was and days like Black Friday can prove its potential for you. Case in point, email marketing amounted for 27% of holiday sales in 2014. As you can see, that’s a huge figure you can’t miss.
Of course, having a good email marketing strategy is pretty hard, especially because people are very strict when filtering incoming emails. What can you do? Offer discounts right off the bat, be humorous, use eye-catching images and send several mails with different subjects to maximize conversions.
Make your customers share your promotions
You can have the best offers on the Web but if you don’t have enough visitors on your site, then they will be as good as nothing. Of course, you can’t double the number of visitors to your site overnight. The only reasonable thing you can do is drive more traffic through social media. If you entice your customers to share your deals with their friends, then your reach will quickly multiply at no cost.
People don’t like to share commercial stuff in social media – unless there’s something in for them for doing it. If you offer a discount or an extra benefit for people sharing your offers in social media, then you’ll see how quickly your message gets around.
Aim for the deal hunters
You already know how people shop – especially during holidays. The surf around and compare everything they want and only settle for the best offer. Basically, people hunt for deals. So, to make your offer stand out from the rest, you’ll have to make yourself as clear as possible. Why should they shop from your business instead of shopping from anyone else’s?
You can offer free shipping, special guarantees, unique items, samples from other products, gifts – whatever you can think of. Whatever you go for, make sure you put it in the most visible spot in your site and make it available throughout it. This will serve to remind your visitors what makes you special and why they should shop from you.
Make it personal
If you have the possibility, then your offers should be as personalized as possible. A customized shopping experience can be a major differentiator for most people. That’s because you’re offering them something that feels like it was made for them. Of course, this will work better with returning customers but that doesn’t mean that new visitors can’t benefit from this experience.
Depending on the source of your traffic, you can have separate sections of the site with adjusted call to actions. If you have the knowledge, you can even set up your whole store to “learn” from the customers choices and then make automatic adjustment to what you offer them.
These tips won’t guarantee more sales just because you use them. But if you use them creatively, chances are that your sales will go up this holiday season. Just a reminder – Black Friday is almost here, so you should already start planning your strategy. If you do it right, the benefits won’t only appear on Black Friday but will also show up in Cyber Monday and beyond.
