Black Friday is here, which means potential customers are all primed and ready to spoil themselves with some of their dream purchases for the past year. Do you have a Black Friday marketing strategy to capitalize on this huge opportunity to rack up sales?
If you don’t have one yet, you’re right on time and you came to the right place to look for some of the most effective strategies that you can use.
So sit back, relax, and learn from these expert vetted Black Friday marketing strategies in our list so you can get your ecommerce store ready for the day after Thanksgiving.
Outline
- Why Is Black Friday Such A Big Deal?
- Black Friday Marketing Strategies: 6 Expert Tips
- Optimize Your Website For Black Friday
- Build A Landing Page
- Utilize Your Mailing List
- Undercut The Competition
- Build Hype On Social Media
- Skip Black Friday Sales
- Bottom Line
Why Is Black Friday Such A Big Deal?
The term Black Friday was originally coined to describe the day after Thanksgiving when workers skipped work to go shopping. This caused widespread business shutdowns during the day, and an uncontrollable influx of shoppers in shopping malls.
The term grew in popularity as years went by as entrepreneurs tried to one up each other to get the most customers into their stores.
And up until today, the Black Friday shopping spree is a much awaited event for both shoppers and businesses.
It has become an opportunity for small and large businesses to be creative in their black friday marketing campaigns in order to maximize their sales.
Black Friday’s popularity nowadays can also be attributed to its inclusion in five-day long holiday (also called Thanksgiving weekend) which includes:
- Thanksgiving Day
- Black Friday
- Small Business Saturday
- Sunday
- Cyber Monday
Let’s take a look at the numbers to see its significance in business.
The number of holiday shoppers in 2022 was record-high since 2017. During the weekend, 196.7 million Americans shopped.
This graph shows the spread of online and in-store shoppers throughout the holiday weekend. Take note that the numbers do not represent unique shoppers as they may have purchased on both online and physical stores.
Let us rank the holidays according to their number of shoppers in-store and online:
Online
- Black Friday - 87.2 million
- Cyber Monday - 77 million
- Saturday - 58 million
- Sunday - 36 million
- Thanksgiving - 33.6 million
In-Store
- Black Friday - 72.9 million
- Saturday - 63.4 million
- Sunday - 30.2 million
- Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday - 22.6 million
On both platforms, Black Friday shoppers topped the charts.
Throughout the Thanksgiving weekend, holiday shoppers spent an average amount of $325.44 on holiday-related items.
The Takeaway
With almost 197 million shoppers and an average of $325 to spend per person, the Thanksgiving weekend is a holiday that all businesses, including ecommerce, should take into serious consideration.
And with Black Friday getting the biggest chunk of shoppers throughout the weekend, you should have a Black Friday marketing strategy in place if you want to make the most out of it.
Furthermore, Shopify stores and other ecommerce sites get a significant part of all sales acquired during the weekend because 42% of the people preferred online shopping as their primary platform.
This means that as an ecommerce business, the financial rewards are within your arm’s reach during the holiday shopping season. But since your competition will probably have their plans in place too, you better be sure that your Black Friday marketing strategy can rise up to the challenge in order to get your share of the pie.
Black Friday Marketing Strategies: 6 Expert Tips
Preparing for the expected influx of sales this holiday shopping season does not begin and end in promoting Black Friday deals.
Developing a holistic Black Friday marketing campaign strategy involves preparing your ecommerce website, building hype in your social media, and implementing some clever strategies to attract your potential customers.
To help you prepare, we have listed down 6 expert-vetted Black Friday marketing tips to help you achieve record-high sales this coming holiday.
01. Optimize Your Website For Black Friday
Since your Shopify store will be the one making all the sales in your ecommerce business, make sure that it is optimized so that customers can easily navigate through your products and collections.
Thus, it will be worth your time if you did a complete SEO ecommerce audit to pinpoint the potential problems of your online store. By doing this, you can fix areas that need to be improved as well as prevent downtimes when you experience an influx of online shoppers.
Website Redesign
If you are noticing that your website is becoming a bit sluggish and harder to navigate, it might be due for optimization. Optimization and website redesign might be a good idea as this won’t just give your website a fresh new look but it will also improve the shopping experience.
Improve website speed
The average conversion rate for US ecommerce websites is only 2.57% (Adobe). Which means that out of 100 page visits, only less than three of them make a purchase.
The number becomes lower if your website performs poorly.
Studies have consistently shown that fast page speed will result in a better conversion rate. In other words, the quicker a webpage loads, the more likely a user is to perform the targeted action on that webpage (Cloudflare).
To increase your ecommerce store’s speed, you should consider:
- Limiting third-party apps
- Using a Shopify 2.0 theme
- Disabling unused features of your theme
- Compressing images in your store
- Removing videos
- Contacting your theme developer to help optimize your store
Put top sellers on the front page
Putting your bestsellers right on your homepage gives you the chance to capitalize on the profitability and popularity of your products. Since these are the items most people buy from your online store, chances are a huge portion of new visitors will also find your bestsellers interesting and useful.
According to OptiMonk:
“Your homepage is the most important place for product recommendations. The items you display will set your visitors’ expectations about what your store sells.
Since your homepage gets the most sets of eyes on it, it just makes sense to promote your best sellers or most profitable products.”
Revamp Website Navigation
The ease of use of your ecommerce website plays a significant role in convincing your visitors to purchase from your store. As such, it is important that whenever a potential customer lands on your website, they can easily find what they are looking for.
According to a study, 38% of users will stop engaging with your website if the content or layout is unattractive. With an already low average ecommerce conversion rate in the US (2.57%), having a disorienting website will hurt your conversion rates even more.
Prevent this from happening by organizing your products and collections page. You can do this by using a Mega Menu to make all your collections one click away from your homepage.
Mega Menu
A mega menu is a feature of Shopify themes that makes website navigation easier. As you can see from the sample above, hovering over menu items drops down a list of different collections further divided into more specific categories.
By adding this feature in your website, customers are only a click away from finding what they are looking for. This becomes very useful if you have a large product collection.
Lastly, since you will be optimizing your navigation, it is also a great idea to revisit your product descriptions to further optimize your website.
According to Dallas (Shopify Staff, retired):
“...make sure to insert captivating descriptions and keyword rich text. This will help to not only grab more of your customers interest, but it will also help you make your pages rank higher on google as well.”
One more thing to remember…
Since 79% of online sessions and 48% of online sales during Black Friday 2022 were from mobile devices, make sure that your website is optimized for people who are using their smartphones for online shopping.
02. Build A Landing Page
Now that your website is optimized and ready for the influx of online shoppers, we now move to the less technical part of your Black Friday marketing campaign.
We start by creating a dedicated landing page to promote your Black Friday sale.
An effective landing page can successfully divert your customers to specific pages on your website depending on the goal of your landing page.
This sample by Liv Watches acts as a sales landing page because they have included a “Buy Now” button underneath their featured products.
It also acts as a referral landing page which redirects visitors to their actual website after clicking “Get Yours Today”.
If you plan to include landing pages in your list of Black Friday marketing strategies, make sure to:
- Write a catchy but clear headline
- Include relevant content designed to capture and convert leads
- Use designs connected to your brand
- Place clear calls to action (CTA) in appropriate places
- Include a countdown timer to give a sense of urgency
Check out this sample landing page:
The term Black Friday Sale is conspicuously placed so as the receiver knows right off the bat that they are looking at a Black Friday deal.
Although written in small fonts, the phrase, “Sale Up To 50%”, is clearly shown because it is right on top of the headline and is padded on a red background that naturally draws attention.
Additionally, a countdown timer is placed right under the headline to signify that this is a limited time offer – thereby communicating a sense of urgency.
03. Utilize Your Mailing List
If you have been building your emailing list since you started your ecommerce store, now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity to announce your Black Friday deals.
Send Pre-Holiday Emails
Since your customers are financially preparing themselves for the upcoming long holiday, it just makes sense to announce your Black Friday promotions ahead of time. This gives you a chance to be on their shortlist of online stores that they will be buying from when the holiday comes.
Baggu is a Shopify store that sells bags, pouches, accessories, and home goods, among other things. Their products don’t look like any other item on the internet. Looking at their product images, one can tell that they target a more mature audience.
But this does not mean that they are not for those who are young at heart. All of their products are manufactured using recycled nylon to further their effort of minimizing environmental waste.
As unique as their products are, their website also has a distinct design that perfectly matches their brand.
This branding effort extends to their newsletters. As shown above, their series of Black Friday marketing campaigns started early in November 2022 – just right after halloween. Although it doesn’t yet announce a Black Friday sale, it is pretty clear that this email prepares the audience for the upcoming season.
They showcased their different collections in the form of an informative email disguised as a “gift guide”.
As an ecommerce entrepreneur, you will learn a lot just by reading this newsletter. So be sure that your Black Friday marketing ideas for emails draw some inspiration from this one.
Right Before The Big Day
Your email marketing plans throughout the month of November leads to this day. So be sure that your newsletter before the Thanksgiving holiday is something that will truly stick to your target customers.
This Black Friday email is courtesy of Nobody Denim. Their Shopify store sells jeans and other apparels for men and women.
Although they are primarily based in Australia, they did not pass on the opportunity to seize the Black Friday holiday for their US customers.
Their email is sent just right in time for the holiday with some explosive announcements of their sitewide sale. If other ecommerce stores only offer 20% - 30% discounts, Nobody Denim decided to implement a 40% plus 40% more discount.
If that does not shock potential customers, we don’t know what would. But in all honesty, if we were to receive this email, it would be a very difficult decision to say No.
Seize The Final Moment
To some ecommerce stores who are feeling generous and want to seize every last moment of their customers’ shopping spree, sending a final discount offer after the Thanksgiving holiday is in their email strategy.
Oofos had this in mind when they sent this email on November 30, 2022. Giving a final discount offer grants last minute shoppers the opportunity to buy their products at discounted prices.
They also seized the opportunity to promote their bestsellers and new arrivals in their email campaign. Additionally, it makes buying from them more compelling by making the products eligible for return until January 1, 2023.
Oofos is a Shopify store that sells footwear for men and women such as sandals, shoes, slippers, and boots, among other apparels.
04. Undercut The Competition
Do you know the saying, “The early bird catches the worm”? This proverb highlights the importance of being early in order to maximize your potential gains.
Such is the mantra behind this Black Friday marketing idea. By launching an early Black Friday sale, you get the opportunity to attract customers who are financially ready to make the purchase.
Wanderlust + Co is well aware of this opportunity. That is why they started their 2022 Black Friday sale one week before the actual holiday. Their email greets you with a headline saying “Black Friday Came Early”, so it’s pretty clear that this is the official start of their holiday sale.
By launching an early email campaign, you can reach a wider audience and prepare them ahead of time for your event. This gives you a chance to impress upon them your exclusive deals, which if they find compelling, will make them consider shopping from you.
Their Shopify store sells accessories such as bracelets, necklaces, and earrings made out of gold or silver. Those who have a penchant for gemstones and pearls will also love their collection.
05. Build Hype On Social Media
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok are no longer just means to socialize. They now play a substantial role for businesses to reach their target customers.
“Finding inspiration for things to do and buy” is the top sixth reason why Americans aged 16 to 64 use social media. The primary reason for social media use in the past years, “posting about your life”, now only ranks in seventh place.
Therefore, we can infer that social media platforms are also business platforms as they are used for marketing.
Because of that, you should take advantage of the power of social platforms to promote your Black Friday marketing ideas. This gives you an opportunity to spread awareness of your impending promotion.
This Instagram reel posted by LSKD back in November 2022 is a perfect example on how you can use different Instagram features to promote your marketing campaigns.
LSKD is a fitness apparel brand that sells different gears for men and women. They also have hoodies, jackets, and pants, among other stuff.
They take social media marketing seriously and we can say that they have gained mastery in doing so. As a proof, this single Instagram post was able to get more than 39,000 views.
Instagram reels are great for acquiring organic viewership. But if you want to widen your social media reach, you can utilize Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ads to reach your target customers.
06. Skip Black Friday Sales
Before you get up from your seat and leave this article, let us explain…
You see, this holiday season is good for business.
But there’s one thing that we can’t deny.
Black Friday sales promote excessive consumerism – which is bad for the planet.
That is why some businesses, including large brands, make an effort to lessen their carbon footprint from the planet. In fact, some pro-sustainability businesses are battling Black Friday with Green Friday – which is also celebrated every fourth week of November.
And that is not a coincidence. This is also dubbed as the Anti-Black Friday.
In 2021, Brothers We Stand, took a stand (no pun intended) against Black Friday by launching a press release announcing that they will be shutting down their ecommerce store on Black Friday. Those who visited their website during that day were redirected to three different links that educate people about overconsumption.
Being a brand whose mission revolves around preserving the environment, Brothers We Stand’s Black Friday marketing campaign was a very authentic and meaningful one.
Bottom Line
With the number of ecommerce stores growing everyday, the competition keeps getting more difficult.
Holiday marketing campaigns like this one present an opportunity for you to showcase your business skills. However, it is worth noting that these things require preparation – sometimes, months ahead.
Financial rewards in your business won’t come naturally if you are only aggressive in marketing when holiday seasons come. Thus, you should develop a marketing strategy for the entire year so you can increase brand awareness. This, in turn, will help you increase sales when important holidays come.
Did these Black Friday marketing ideas inspire you? If YES, then our job here is done.
We now hand you the ball to keep it rolling. Get started and ignite your creativity to make the most out of this holiday season.
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