Black Friday Marketing 2021
Black Friday has evolved into one of the most important marketing and sales promotion periods of the year. For many brands, a significant percentage of yearly sales are during the Black Friday event each year. Black Friday originally was solely focused on in-store deals the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, however, in the last several years, it has become a month-long e-commerce focused event for brands small and large. Even automotive dealerships will be running black Friday-themed ads for the month of November.
How should you plan and execute a Black Friday sales promotion campaign?
The immediate focus should be developing a list of profitable promotions on items you have sufficient inventory of. In years past, inventory shortages have been less of a problem, but with the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions are a major hurdle for brands wishing to run large sales promotions. Often they simply have very limited inventory for many products.
The other strategy could be to promote slower selling items, that you’d like to reduce the inventory of, to the sale. These could even be in bundles with other items. Keep in mind though, you should focus on promoting items your customers want. Often promoting your top-selling and most popular products as the “flagship” items of the sale is the most effective strategy.
Pricing and Promotions
Developing a pricing strategy for Black Friday deals can be simple or very complex depending on your typical margins, the number of products you sell and what channels you sell them through. While loss leader strategies can work, this is riskier and requires a very detailed understanding of likely volumes in addition to feeling very confident the loss leader will create additional profitable revenue on other items.
If you are also offering discounted shipping, which we’ll go into detail of below, your product and fulfillment costs can rise rapidly.
Customer demand and your competitors are also a factor in how you price your items for a black Friday sale. If your competitors have a specific item that directly competes against a product you offer, it might make sense to keep an eye on their price as a benchmark. If your customer demand is quite high, heavily discounted pricing might not even be needed.
Don’t forget Free Shipping
Including free shipping beyond a dollar point of an order is a great way to encourage your customers to make larger total orders. Many online retailers will offer free shipping for a limited time on orders of $50 or $100 etc. This is very enticing and can result in customers choosing to make a purchase from you over competitors.
The speed of your discounted shipping is also important. Consumers have become accustomed to the amazing speed of Amazon’s prime style shipping, which is tough for other online stores, even large ones, to match.
How to Promote Black Friday Offers
The answer is everywhere. You should use every marketing channel you have to spread anticipation, show off deals, etc for your Black Friday specials.
If you have an online store, your website should be refreshed with a Black Friday homepage and very clear navigation to the reduced black Friday priced items along with a clear explanation of any altered shipping policies.
Email is a hugely important black Friday marketing channel. You should be segmenting your email lists, based on signups, prior sales, demographics and other metrics to build targeted email content that is highly relevant to the recipient. A quick look at your inbox right now will likely yield dozens of brands you’ve bought from or signed up to sending you tons of emails regarding holiday and black Friday specials. Larger brands do this because it 100% works, or they wouldn’t waste the money and time!
Even for smaller businesses, email marketing campaigns around black Friday specials are a great way to entice prior customers to come back and make a purchase. And remember that selling to prior customers is generally easier than closing new customers, with prior customers many times making up greater than 50% of total business. – This is a good thing since you already have the contact info and at least some idea what your prior customers like which makes targeting them with relevant ad content and emails much easier.
Paid PPC for black Friday Sales
Google search ads, youtube ads, Facebook, Instagram and Google display ads are all widely used to promote black Friday specials and drive new and return customer purchases.
The specifics of campaign setup will vary significantly on your niche, and customer demographics data, but paid campaigns will yield results when utilized properly for black Friday sales.
For visual items like clothing, furniture, home goods etc, Often incorporating new high-quality photos into the ads will improve ad performance.
Video content in ad campaigns is another great resource that many retailers are turning to as a means to decrease the cost of acquisition and increase CTR. Video ads are innately more engaging and drive more consumer interaction vs static ads. With A/B testing and proper analytics, you will easily be able to compare static ad vs video ad performance. Video content can also be used to show off new products, testimonials, unboxing style videos etc, as a way to create more content for both paid and organic marketing channels.
Is your website ready for Black Friday?
It’s always a good idea to test and re-test your online store on mobile, tablet and desktop just to be 100% sure that everything is working and looking as it should.
A buggy website is a quick way to turn a potential customer to a competitor if they have issues buying on your store. Make sure each user path through your website is functioning great and loads fast.
Black Friday Video Production
Video content should be utilized for black Friday sales in several ways. The first would be video ads which can be run on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and youtube. These can promote special pricing on popular items or mention free shipping etc. These ads should be 15-30 seconds long.
Other types of black Friday video content can include item promos, or explainer-style videos going through certain items or product lines.
Don’t forget that testimonials and case studies are effective. Having quick videos of prior customer reviews or zoom style 20-40 second testimonials can be a great way to encourage new customers to make a purchase. The larger the magnitude of the purchase the more research customers will typically do, this is especially true for purchases that will result in a long-term relationship with the seller for customer support or service. In these situations, an emphasis on customer service should be focused on in testimonials and review style content.
Black Friday Auto Dealership Marketing
We regularly work with numerous automotive brands and dealerships, black Friday style month long sales are always a success. Even in the current climate of reduced inventory, broadcast, social media and digital marketing should utilize black Friday style creative and deals.
A focus on trade-in offers, warranty items, popular lease deals or even inventory numbers in this current automotive climate are all valid promotion offers that can drive real traffic to your dealership and sales.
Volan Media is a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production and marketing agency with years of experience working on a range of projects, everything from 1800s steam railway locomotives to the most cutting edge cancer treatments. If you turn on the tv in East Tennessee, chances are you’ll see one of our ads! We are a top Knoxville, Tennessee video production firm, with projects commonly being used for explainer videos, broadcast/cable tv ads, digital ads, recruitment. Volan Media also is a top Knoxville Tennessee virtual Reality video production firm, having made a large number of 360 videos and VR productions across a range of industries, including various tradeshow VR 360 videos, treatment and branding VR videos, and VR experiences.
