Black Friday is one of the most important dates in the calendar for anyone in the world of sales. It marks the start of a four-day sales holiday, which ends with Cyber Monday. As a business owner, it is imperative that you put steps in place to maximize this opportunity and boost your ROI. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some ideas and suggestions to help you get started.
Work with a PPC & SEO agency
There is only one place to begin, and this is with the importance of working with a PPC & SEO agency such as Global Search Marketing. An agency like this has expertise in all areas of online marketing – both paid and organic. This means that a strategy can be devised that utilises all avenues to give your business the greatest chance of success on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Take a look at your performance in 2019
Assessing your performance last year is important. This is one of the best ways to improve your ROI because you will be able to understand what worked and what did not work, so you can make the necessary tweaks for 2020.
By evaluating your performance in 2019, you will also be able to get a better understanding of what your audience wants. What sort of search terms were popular, for instance? You will also be able to determine whether some ads performed better than others, helping you to put together a more compelling ad copy for your efforts this year.
Get the word out early
One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make when it comes to Black Friday is leaving it until the last minute to reveal their promotions. You need to start planning as soon as possible, and you should have all of your promotions and content signed off weeks in advance.
More and more people plan their Black Friday purchases in advance these days. They look around for the best deals before the big day arrives, and so you need to make sure that you already have marketing material out there that will draw people to your business.
Create actionable buying personas
Technology has enabled us to create personal interactions with customers and potential customers, which is especially important in terms of achieving optimal sales throughout retail holiday periods. Should your consumer database only provide a fragmented view of your targets, then your marketing personnel are only going to be able to put together a one-size-fits-all marketing plan whereby there is no distinction between various consumers and where they are within the purchasing journey.
It would not be possible for even the hardest-working and most talented marketing professionals to act manually on data while still ensuring your objectives are reached. This is why technology needs to be leveraged to capture, store, and asses data, as well as making offers, sending, recommending, automating, and drawing conclusions in regards to deals. This is something that we do here at Global Search Marketing to ensure that a strategy is devised that is most likely to appeal to your customers.
Make sure your site delivers an impeccable user experience
A lot of businesses spend tons of money on Black Friday marketing campaigns, yet their website lets them down. You can have a great advert, but if your site is slow and difficult to use, you’re not going to make the most of this exciting retail holiday.
As well as perfecting your ad copy and your marketing strategy, you need to make sure that your website offers a great experience. This begins with site speed. Research shows that consumers expect a site to load within two seconds. Anything longer than this and you are going to start losing potential customers.
There are lots of free tools out there that can check site speed, and it is advisable that you use one of them. If your site is slow, there are things you can do to change this, such as compressing media files. Remember, you’re going to have more traffic on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so you need to make sure that your website is going to be able to handle this.
Furthermore, your site needs to be easy to navigate and the checkout process must be optimised. Go through your checkout procedure and ensure it is as quick as possible. Are there any unnecessary fields for people to fill-in? Do you require buyers to become a member before they can complete a purchase? These are the sorts of things that put people off buying and result in them heading elsewhere!
Target cart abdandoments
A lot of fast-growing bands are focusing a chunk of their efforts on retargeting consumers who have abandoned their shopping carts and failed to complete their purchase.
If anyone has abandoned their shopping cart in the build-up to Black Friday, you could send an email alerting them to an offer that is going to be available on the product in question. This may encourage them to come back and complete the sale.
If someone abandons their shopping cart on Black Friday or throughout the four-day sales weekend, you could send them an immediate follow-up with an even better offer.
After all, these individuals were interested in your products so much so that they added them to their basket. This shows that you’ve already got their attention, so put in a bit more effort to get this sale over the line.
Maximise add-ons
When it comes to maximising your profits on Black Friday, suggestive selling and targeted marketing are imperative.
Whenever a customer goes to checkout, you could suggest some other items they may be interested in, for example. When this is done correctly, it can result in basket sizes and ultimately sales increasing.
However, for this to happen, you need to make sure that the suggestions you’re recommending are helpful to the customer and something they would genuinely be interested in.
Create product bundles
This leads on from the former point about maximising add-ons. This is all about boosting your average order value (AOV), which tracks the average pound amount spent every time a consumer places an order via your mobile app or website.
To calculate the average order value at your business, you purely need to divide the total amount of revenue by the number of orders.
A lot of businesses fall into the trap of only looking at their discount rates and profitability during Black Friday. However, boosting the average order value per customer is where the increased sales lie.
As mentioned, making product suggestions and maximising add-ons is a good way to do this. Another option is to create product bundles. This means grouping products together to encourage customers to buy more items. Why let them get away with purchasing just one item when they could buy three for a small discount?
Offer live chat
If you do not have live chat as part of your website at the moment, now is the time to add it. This does not mean that it needs to become a permanent fixture on your website; it can simply be an addition for this busy sales weekend.
Live chat can help you to maximise your ROI because customers can easily get in touch with a service agent if they have a concern or query. This can be rectified quickly so that you don’t lose any customers. If a customer is not able to get the information they need about a product, they will probably look elsewhere instead. Live chat assistance presents this from happening.
Optimise your PPC ads
If you run a PPC campaign at the moment, you need to make sure your efforts are optimised with Black Friday in mind. You can read one of our recent blog posts for more information on this.
One step that we recommend is adding a countdown feature to your ads. This creates a sense of urgency because it reminds people that the incredible offer is only going to be available for a limited period of time.
Reward loyal consumers
Finally, you should never lose sight of your loyal customers during the hustle and bustle of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. They should be rewarded with special deals that have been reserved just for them, rewarding them for their loyalty.
A good example of this can be found at Amazon. While there are special deals available for everyone, Amazon also has exclusive offers that are just for Prime customers. This is the sort of thing you could easily implement at your business.
Use High Quality Photography
If you’ve not already invested in high quality photography of your products you should look to do so as soon as possible. Working with a commercial photographer allows you to create custom images of your products that will allow them to stand out from the competition and generate more sales.
Final words
As you can see, there are many different tips and tricks you can use to maximize your efforts on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The importance of working with an experienced PPC & SEO agency cannot be ignored. If you would like to discuss how you can maximize sales and ROI this Black Friday and Cyber Monday, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Global Search Marketing for more information.