7 Early Black Friday Marketing Strategies for 2019

The fourth Friday of November is not for shopping, but for crazy shopping.

It would get even crazier for brands and businesses this year – BlackFriday.com predicts online sales will surpass the $12 billion mark for Thanksgiving + Black Friday this season.

But, what’s in this for your brand?

A booming economy and increasing hype around holiday shopping would encourage consumers to spend more. According to early surveys, consumers are willing to spend $502 this Black Friday and $431 on Cyber Monday.

While clothing (41%) emerge as the most sought-after shopping category, tech products such as consumer electronics (32%) and smart home gadgets (30%) are surprisingly popular this season.

With these numbers in mind, incredible times lie ahead for your businesses to increase customer base, shoot up sales, and grow your brands on the holiday wave.

Whereas in fact – with an overload of marketing, sales, competition, stocking, and logistics – a lot of brands get their tinsel in a tangle. Especially true in the case of marketing, which comes earlier and earlier every year.

So with a month to go now, it’s time to get the ball rolling with planning out Black Friday marketing strategy for your business. Here are 7 marketing plans that should be the core of your holiday sales promotion:

1. Dig Up Your Data, Shape New Marketing Campaigns for Black Friday

If you are starting your Black Friday marketing campaigns early enough, why not start with a pre-preparation?

This involves collecting your year-long (last holiday season too!) marketing & sales data; making use of it to get insights and shape new marketing campaigns for this shopping season.

These are some of the materials, you need to get together before you start planning for marketing:

• Email List 

For a yielding Black Friday email marketing campaign, you need to have an adequate email list.

Past customers and year-long leads are good to start. But if you want more, you can start mounting one via multi-channel campaigns a few weeks in advance.

• Copies

Copies are central to any marketing campaign be it ads, emails, social media, or even on-page.

Analyzing data around past copies get you dope information about keywords, content, graphics, etc that have worked in the past, or not.

• Sales 

Data related to what and how people prefer to buy is crucial to customer experience.

With discounts, offers, and cashback being the theme of the holiday season, you need to pull out all the information which would aid in their price-optimization.

Repeat successes, improvise your failures.

2. Get on Your Black Friday Email Marketing Drive

Though a variety of platforms are available now, marketing emails remain the show-stopper of the shopping season.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are certainly the time to double up email marketing efforts. In 2018, major e-commerce stores witnessed click-through rates as high as 57% among their Black Friday email campaigns.

If you have an adequate email list, effective email campaigns are pivotal to building awareness and driving sales for your holiday promotions.

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Consider these tips while creating high-converting Black Friday marketing emails:

• Subject Line

Master of the trade, a catchy subject line is all it takes to get your audience to open your email. It gets them started with their buying journey with you.

• Micro-Segmentation

Dividing your email list based on demographics, buying intent, position in the sales funnel, or past purchases would help you to target a variety of offers at your diverse audience.

• Email Design

The first thing a person scans through your marketing email is the graphics, then the content structure. If that allures them, you have won extra seconds of their attention.

• Body Copy

Your Black Friday email campaign needs compelling copy. This is where you inform, stimulate, offer, and lead them to your landing page.

• CTAs

Hotspot of any successful email campaign; all of your efforts should lead your audience to this. Call-to-action buttons take customers to the next level of the funnel.

• Hyper-Personalization

An emerging trend in email marketing, Artificial Intelligence has now enabled personalized emails to the extent of product recommendation, individual pricing and offers, automated up-selling and cross-selling, etc.

• Timing

Jack of all trades, right offer at the right time would get you that click, and strategically, a potential sale.

3. Grow With Your #BlackFriday Social Media Campaigns

Social Media is the gasoline you need for your Black Friday fire.

And for all the right reasons: people use at least 4 social networks every day – using each platform as frequently as 10 times a day.

Of course, sharing branded content for your holiday sales is the key. But if you want your followers into hook, line, and sinker, you need to make use of every single feature these platforms have to offer.

Some new developments in social media to accommodate your Black Friday marketing:

• Snaps, Stories, Status

Since Snapchat made it hot, and Instagram made popular, it has proved to be very effective in reaching users. With less than 5 seconds of the display, you should craft your stories interactive and impulsive to call users to action.

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• Videos

Recently emerged as the new addiction on the internet, short video formats are binding people like nothing ever. You can even leverage live stream to tease your audience with back-scene preparations to influencer take-overs, which is apt for building hype for Black Friday sales.

• Ads

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn – almost all major platforms are offering creative advertising now. From growing an email list to leading directly on landing pages, social media ads cover it all for you.

• Instagram Store

Just before the holidays of 2018, the platform announced new plans for shoppers and brands. Since then, it has updated a lot from influencer collaborations to price tagging, which gives you new opportunities to be creative this shopping season.

• FB Pixel

Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram combined hail an almost monopoly over social networking in the USA. Pixel – a piece of code is the key to social media advertising targeted at this tremendous audience.

4. Tap into Black Friday Mobile Marketing

Online shopping via mobile devices has become the norm now.

Especially during the cyber weekdays, when flash sales are at the center of shopping culture, commanding a smooth buying experience.

Over the shopping season of 2018, 66% of the online traffic came from mobile devices through apps or websites. And a whopping 48% orders of the cyber week sales were placed on smartphones.

You need to invest in a mobile-first business model if you even want to sustain this holiday shopping.

Here are two of the most underutilized mobile marketing tactics you can leverage for Black Friday 2019:

• SMS Marketing

Do you know, your marketing SMS would be opened by 98% of the recipients? And that too, within 3 minutes of being received.

Quite reasonably, you need to send bulk SMS carrying your Black Friday promotions – most people prefer quick, clear updates on the latest offers.

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First, make sure your audience knows who is sending the message by getting a brand-friendly shortcode. Second, within the 160-character limit, craft your message that includes an offer, a redeem code, as well as a CTA in the form of a link or contact number.

• Push Notifications

A branded-message conveyed directly into mobile notifications is surely gonna make them hit the button. Though the prerequisite is that the users must have downloaded your app.

If you have enough app users, your push campaign can be delivered instantly. This makes it the best method to tune your audience with on-going flash sales and surprise discounts via personalized promos, remainders, etc.

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The cherry on top – use a jingle-jumble of words, emojis, count-down, and image to make engagement favorable.

5. Create Black Friday Package Deals

With heavy discounts being offered, people will always want to buy more – particularly the products that twin their interests.

You can leverage this sitch to cross-sell, and even, upsell products to customers that are already checking your Black Friday sales.

People like it when their shopping is done quickly and easily; with package deals, you would be doing exactly the same.

On the other hand, creating various connections between products for different target audiences, you can sell a wide variety of products.

Here are the popular package deals to offer this Black Friday:

• Hampers 

Offer a discounted package of 3-4 products, or more, that people generally use together.

Hamper discounts do well with clothing and grocery categories, where people tend to buy a variety of products, but in small quantities.

• Combos

People tend to stock several daily use products during holiday shopping with discounts are at the peak.

Be it a combo of all variety holiday chocolates, 12 office winter socks, or a pack of 20 AAA batteries on discount, combos are a great way to sell your products in bulk.

• Product Kits

Often people would buy accessory kits such as gaming mouse with a laptop, teleport lens with a camera, and tempered glass with a mobile.

To profit from this buying behavior, you can offer complementary products at special holiday rates, attached to the main product.

• Frequently Bought Together

Floral t-shirts and casual shorts, silver knives with silver forks, books by J.K Rowling – some products are bound to get bought together.

Make use of data from past sales to determine what kind of products are sold together – chances of more people buying the same products together are thick.

• Gift Guides

Often, people search for “Christmas gifts for mother in law” or “New Year gift for father in law”.

Pitch your products to gift guides curated by influencers or retailers to get an edge with the potential shoppers.

6. Offer More to Your Loyal Customers

Most of the customers adhere to a brand that offers a loyalty program; even during the shopping season when competitors offer deep discounts.

In fact, if a customer has purchased at least three times from you, there are 54% chances that he/she is coming back. Thus, brands need to work out plans that bring customers back to your business, especially for the holidays – when they tend to spend the most.

You can consider setting up any, if not all, of these reward systems for your Black Friday loyalty program:

• Special Reward Points

A Black Friday centered reward system on any regular day purchase might do the charm. Unique points that can be redeemed during the shopping season would leverage your year-long marketing efforts to ensure continual traffic during the sales.

• Free Gifts

Freebies are cool Black Friday gifts for showing some gratitude to your loyal customers. With normal discounts, you can give away a free gift (out of the options) or extra reward points to your customers who have shopped with you year-long, or even to those who buy products in bulk.

• Early Access

Black Friday sale starts half a day early for Amazon Prime users, while it remains open the whole night of Thanksgiving for Walmart loyalists. Offering early access to the stock and the discount, online stores can create exclusive time zones for their loyal customers.

7. Get Your Customers Tell Others About Your Black Friday Sales

Your customers might be the best brand ambassador you can ever get.

There are a lot of ways to trigger an interest in your audience; recommendation from friends is one of them. While marketing efforts would be at the peak of the holiday season, word-of-mouth can improve your marketing effectiveness by up to 54%.

You need to create a striking referral system, that can be redeemed easily and instantly.

Here are some of the ways you can induct referral programs into your Black Friday marketing:

• Reward Points

Encourage your customers to spread a word about your discounted products by offering special reward points. It is a cost-effective way for long term gains, as most people are already depending on other’s opinions on what to buy and from where.

• Gift Cards

Gift cards and coupons are among the most popular Thanksgiving gifts; triggering friends and family to check out sales and overspend while using them. Offering discounts or reward points on the purchase of gift cards, you can sell a ton of them.

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• #BlackFriday Contest

Hashtag contests on social media are a great tool for guerilla marketing. That being said, brands can offer freebies to promote their hashtags. This way they create a community around their products as well as holiday sales.

Don’t Get Your Tinsel in a Tangle

For every customer, shopping always feels better on Black Friday. Brands can make them feel even smarter with their great Black Friday marketing.

It’s never too early to start preparing for the holiday shopping season. With the right strategies in place early enough, you can profit from streamlined marketing campaigns – that will increase your customer interaction and timely conversions.

Get started today, so that you can manage a successful holiday season this year!