5 strategies for driving sales this Black Friday
You probably already know what all the Black Friday Cyber Monday rave is all about.
Black Friday is the biggest shopping season of the year all around the world where retail businesses and even service based businesses offer incredible discount off their products and consumers go hunting for the best deals. This often times ushers in the holiday shopping as people use this opportunity to get Christmas and New year presents for their loved ones.
It's one of the most exciting periods for businesses and customers alike.
As a Seller merchant or small business owner in general, this is most likely the first Black Friday you're participating in. If you're slightly unsure of how to execute your sales, cut through the clutter and get your target audience visiting your website and placing orders, this blog post is just right for you.
In this post, I'll be sharing five helpful strategies for adequately positioning your business for massive sales this Black Friday season.
- Craft your message: Everyone is talking about black Friday but what specific message are you passing across? How much discount will you be offering and for how long? Will it be timed - available at only specific times throughout the period? Will you have a tagline or a theme?
Your communication has to be clear and concise. People have to understand what you're offering upfront without having to dig deeper for more information. Remember that the market is crowded and customers can easily move on to other options who's communication is clearer and more attractive.
2. Distribute your message: Now that your message has been crafted, it needs to be distributed to the right people at the right time. There are two major means of sharing your Black Friday campaign; Organic channels and Paid channels.
Organic channels, although free, can be somewhat hard to control. It comprises Google Search Engine, Social Media, Word of Mouth, Email Marketing.
Paid channels on the other hand gives you a level of control as you can determine who sees the message, when they do, how frequently they do and what action they take after they do. Paid channels comprises of Social Media Ads, Google Ads, Influencer Marketing, Video Ads e.t.c
These are all platforms that can be used to distribute your black Friday campaign.
3. Measure and track your campaign: Measure the effectiveness of your campaign. The metric being tracked will vary based on the objective of your campaign.
For a brand awareness campaign where you’re interested in simply creating awareness for your brand this black Friday, Impressions, reach and frequency are the metrics to track. For a campaign that’s focused on Sales, you’d be tracking metrics such as Add to cart, check out e.t.c.
This bit is important because it helps you determine what is working and what isn’t and you’re able to make adjustments to your messaging, creative designs and offer accordingly.
4. Explore creative ways to promote your product: There is no doubt that a number of brands will be vying for the attention of the same market however, you should be thinking of creative ways to cut through the noise and keep the attention of the consumer, especially when you’re operating within a niche market.
An example is a brand that sells Ladies shoes. The vast majority of businesses that deal in Women’s shoes will be trying to reach women who are their target audience, however, a good proposition is to reach Men who are looking to purchase a present for their female partner or loved one. Very few brands will be thinking of reaching men as that is not the primary consumer of the product even though that’s a large addressable market for that product depending on how you craft the messaging.
This is just one example of the various ways you can promote your product and rack in sales this Black Friday.
5. Start early and set the tone: Although Black Friday is known to hold on the last Friday of November, several brands start to run their Black Friday sales two or three weeks early to capture a large chunk of the market and get consumers thinking about them first. This is something you should consider doing. Also, your website, graphic assets and social media platforms should reflect the Black Friday Sales so as to set the tone and pique your customer’s interest.
Finally, be sure to learn from the experience, what works and what doesn’t work for your business. This will help you better understand the market, your competitors and generally how to improve on subsequent Black Friday and Holiday sales.