Black Friday is almost here, and most businesses are gearing up intensely for record sales. However, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, consumer behavior has undergone some pretty big changes over the past couple of years. This is one of the reasons why every business should review and also adjust its digital marketing strategy to achieve the desired results. Statistics provided by PwC highlight that consumer interest in Black Friday has dropped from 51% to 38% in the last year alone. Knowing this makes it more important than ever to try a new approach, based on techniques designed to not only maintain but also increase audience interest.
Here are 4 tactics to include in your Black Friday digital marketing strategy this year:
1. Be more present on social media
Social media platforms are the perfect place to interact with your audience, becoming a powerful marketing tool that can influence their decisions. On Black Friday, platforms are largely used to bring deals to the attention of consumers, but this year try to do more than that. Use social media to listen to your audience and find out what their needs are. This will make it much easier for you to take action and improve the consumer experience. Some tips in this direction would be to always respond to messages and comments from customers, to optimize your social media accounts so that users can easily find you, and to connect your online store with social platforms to allow them to buy directly from your feed. The latter will save them valuable time, enticing them to make a purchase by making the buying process easier.
2. Optimize your website
Website performance is one of the most important elements of eCommerce. When it comes to Black Friday, users expect it to load as fast as possible, to be error-free, to not crash, and to display properly. Otherwise, they will be very likely to give up making a purchase from your website. To increase your conversion rate, you’ll need to make sure your website load speed doesn’t exceed three seconds, although the slower the better. To find out what your loading speed is, you can try a speed testing tool like GTMetrix. In addition to load speed, you should test whether it can handle a massive increase in traffic. If your website is already quite busy and tends to crash when traffic is increased, an upgrade will certainly help. This way, you’ll be able to avoid any problems that could affect the buying experience of consumers when they come into contact with your eCommerce store.
3. Offer more than discounts
On Black Friday discounts are at the forefront, but to get an edge over your competitors, you should consider offering more than that. In addition, offering incentives could also be an incentive to make a purchase. You can try offering free shipping or returns, bonuses, or additional discounts when buying more than one product. Offering a gift at the completion of an order would also be helpful. This could consist of a small gift to be included in the parcel or even other discount coupons that users can use on a future purchase. Whichever option you choose, incorporating such a tactic into your digital marketing strategy will have positive effects that will be reflected in sales and beyond.
Don't discount yourself, no matter what you're doing. - Mark Zuckerberg
4. Try to reduce abandoned carts
Abandoned carts refer to the situation where a consumer adds products to the shopping cart, continues towards checkout, but leaves the page before completing the transaction. They are a major problem for online businesses, causing substantial financial losses. One of the main reasons why this happens is that users want to see if they can get a better deal elsewhere. To make sure they come back, i.e. to reduce the rate of abandoned carts, you can consider the following practices:
- Implementation of an automated abandoned cart email
Email marketing is a great help when you want to reduce the abandoned cart rate. Implementing such a campaign would consist of sending automated emails to customers who do not complete their order, as a reminder but also as an incentive to complete the order. To get the desired results, use the email subject line to remind the user that they “left something behind”, but don’t forget to include a discount code to increase their motivation to come back and complete the order.
- Make sure the checkout process is quick and easy
No one wants to waste a lot of time completing an order. To avoid the situation where the consumer gives up shopping, simplify the check-out process. Make sure you only ask for relevant delivery information and don’t burden the user with extra details.
Black Friday marks the biggest shopping event of the year, so implementing a strong digital marketing strategy will help you make the most of it. Make sure you consider these practices and prepare your business properly so you can get noticeable results. If you need help, you can turn to a digital marketing agency that will give you the guidance you need.
