Originating in the States, the term ‘Black Friday’ was coined by Police Officers in Philadelphia who, back in the 1960’s, used it to refer to the chaos and mayhem that ensued during the day after Thanksgiving when large numbers of tourists poured into the city to commence their holiday shopping. Black Friday has spread and grown into a renowned and greatly anticipated day for consumers, and with the forever evolving digital landscape the build up has never been greater.
Signifying the beginning of the festive shopping season, the day offers a valuable opportunity to retail and e-commerce businesses, of all sizes, to offer low prices and increase the footfall of their business both in-store and online. With many businesses putting more emphasis and budget behind digital marketing than ever before, the importance of having a specific Black Friday marketing strategy in place has never been more paramount. Additionally, with the cost of living crisis it’s likely that more people than ever will be on the lookout for bargains, so you want to make sure you get yours in front of them.
Why Is It Important To Have A Marketing Strategy For Black Friday?
Planning ahead for major shopping events like Black Friday is vital to ensure the smooth running on the day and over the weekend. Having a Black Friday marketing strategy in place will allow for you to reap the rewards of the busy sales day. From building momentum and gaining exposure, to ensuring your website is prepared on the day, your digital marketing strategy will help for the day to play out as successfully as possible.
How Can An Effective Digital Marketing Campaign Impact Black Friday Sales?
An effective digital marketing campaign can have a huge impact on Black Friday sales. Utilising your digital marketing will allow you to prepare and promote your discount and offers to achieve optimal exposure on the lead and ease for your consumers on the day, ultimately resulting in more sales.
Preparation is key when it comes to creating a Black Friday marketing strategy, you can start pushing content, landing pages and campaigns out a few weeks to a month before Black Friday, this will help to keep you gain momentum and stay relevant and on people’s minds.
Black Friday Digital Marketing Ideas
SEO
In preparation for Black Friday it’s important to review your SEO technical fundamentals and optimise your website to position pages to be crawled, indexed, and ranked properly. When deciding on the best terms to target for Black Friday, you can check success of previous campaigns and also use Google Analytics to check which pages drove the most traffic,
Using a keyword strategy, and using Google Analytics to check which pages drove the most traffic, highest keyword rank, and highest conversions.
If you’ve created a Black Friday landing page (which we would highly recommend) you’ll want to ensure it includes keywords, contains optimised meta tags and clear CTA’s. Creating a sense of build up and urgency by using banners with ‘coming soon’ and ‘limited time offer’ or on the run up and during the sales will help put pressure on consumers to convert.
Launching your Black Friday marketing campaign content early will give it time to rank for the relevant terms, so make sure these are planned and prepared in advance. Reviews are also highly important, and have been found to play a huge role in whether or not customers purchase a product. Pushing for customer reviews on the lead up will help give your products and services validation and sway customers into purchasing.
PPC
Utilising PPC is a great way to get the most out of your Black Friday marketing strategy. Creating dedicated Black Friday PPC campaigns as soon as possible will allow your campaigns to receive optimum exposure and push brand awareness. Raising brand awareness using a programmatic or display campaign in the weeks leading up to Black Friday will help to drive more traffic to your site and this traffic can then be retargeted with your Black Friday messaging.
Implementing a supplemented product feed will help to maximise the visibility of the products ensuring they are being shown to consumers looking for Black Friday discounts and deals.
Social Media
In an increasingly digital world, social media is one of the greatest tools that any business can have at their disposal. With surveys showing that large numbers of consumers regularly use social media to research and look up a service or product before purchasing, it’s important to make sure that your social media profiles are ready. Your socials are also a great way to showcase and push promotions and offers on the run up to Black Friday, and get these deals infront of as wide of an audience as possible, helping to build up momentum and boost sales.
When it comes to Black Friday campaigns, be as creative as possible! The more memorable and eye-catching your social content is, the more likely people are to remember you and purchase your products or services. Creating a targeted Black Friday campaign, across multiple channels, during the weeks leading up to it will work to gauge interest, and push your brand message and upcoming discounts and offers.
The high levels of competition during this time cause ad spend to be considerably more expensive, by showcasing what will be on offer as early as possible you’ll be able to cut through the noise without having to pay high ad cost prices.
Website Design
In the build up to Black Friday you want to ensure your website is prepared and optimised, across all devices, for the day. Creating a Black Friday landing page will make it as clear and simple for consumers visiting your site to find promotional items allowing for great conversions.
You want to ensure site navigation is as clear and simple as possible, allowing for as little disruption for consumers when carrying out their purchase. Introducing sales menus and banners, as well as making clear CTA’s will add to the ease of the process. This can be done with website graphic design services.
Avoiding mayhem and chaos on the day it’s important to run a number of tests. Reactive fixes on the day can be pretty risky so in order to prepare for the day you’ll want to check all key areas which could pose issues, such as site speed, load testing, image size capacity, and search options.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach out and retarget new customers and potential. Including a special discount for those subscribed to your mailing list provides a great incentive and will help boost customer loyalty.
Promotional emails can prepare loyal consumers for the upcoming sale or reward frequent buyers with unique discounts. Multichannel marketing and integration is also highly valuable and will increase the chance of consumers converting, tying your social media in with your email can be effective in optimising reach and boosting sales.
Do You Need Help Developing Your Black Friday Digital Marketing Strategy?
If you find yourself needing help developing your Black Friday digital marketing strategy the Wriggle team are well equipped to assist you in developing a marketing strategy that will work to elevate and promote your Black Friday offers and discounts. Find out more about our digital marketing services today!
Get in touch with the team to discuss.
