15 Black Friday E-Commerce Marketing Tips
Black Friday isn’t just about brick and mortar stores anymore. Over the past few years, more people are staying in and doing their shopping from home while still being able to take advantage of amazing discounts and deals. If you have an E-Commerce store and you’re just waiting until Cyber Monday for shoppers to start buying, you are missing out HUGE on sales. While Cyber Monday can be reserved for super saving discounts you want to take advantage of the whole shopping weekend, even if you just have an online store. Whether you have attempted Black Friday sales in the past or want to give them a go this year, this guide will help provide you with some of the best marketing tips that will bring more customers and generate more buzz around your products and brand!
15 Black Friday E-Commerce Marketing Tips
1. Have a Strategy
Whether you are planning a marketing strategy or content strategy you need to know what and when you will begin promoting. You want to have a clear idea of the content you will be publishing leading up to Black Friday and the big shopping weekend. How are you going to get your followers interested in the secret deals you’ll be revealing. What images will you use along with your post? What call to action will you include? What products will you be focusing on? You want to have everything clearly planned and scheduled so that you not only reach your audience at optimal times but you keep them interested and checking back for more deals and info.
2. Push Deals Early
You should be revealing enticing deals a few weeks leading up to the big shopping weekend. Encourage new followers and audiences to sign up to your mailing list so they can get early access to some of the deals you’ll be offering. Send out email teaser and VIP deals to those on your mailing list. Use social media to generate more interest and send out sneak peeks of some of the products shoppers can get great discounts on. Add in a little contest as @ezra_and_eli did to not only encourage engagement but to bring in more shoppers.
3. Gift Guides
The easiest way to promote Black Friday deals and get people shopping is to help them think of ideas. Gift guides can help inspire others who are still trying to think of the perfect gift. Gift guides offer a number of options for specific people on a holiday shoppers list, like for men, women, the wine enthusiast, these gift guides can allow shoppers who are struggling to know what to buy someone an array of ideas and inspiration.
If you have a Shopify e-Commerce store you can take this tip one step further and actually create collections that fall into your gift guide categories. Shoppers will able to look through your gift guide collection and by straight from there. This makes it much easier for shoppers to browse through the guide and then purchase when they find something that wants.
4. Provide Informational Content
While Black Friday is all about the shopping deals one of the ways that you can stand out is if you offer something more to your audience. Give out some helpful holiday tips like how to pack for holiday travel, best holiday recipes, how to dress for holiday parties, and gift wrapping tips. You can also easily place products in these informative videos but during the holiday season, it isn’t all about buying the perfect gift. People are looking for the best way to enjoy the holidays with as little stress as possible. If you can create content that helps your audience out you will stand out among the many other influencer just pitching deals.
4. Swipe Ups and Other Shopping Features
If you are an influencer with over 10000 followers you can take advantage of Instagram’s Swipe Up feature. This feature allows you to add a link to your post and stories so that viewers and followers can simply swipe up to grab an item you are featuring. You can also include the shop now option on posts, so viewers can be quickly taken to the product page to make a purchase. Adding tags to the image like @sweetwaterdecor, allows follows to what exactly is featured in the picture.
6. Coupon Codes
Offering coupon codes is an ideal way to get more visitors to an e-commerce shop. If you are an influence this allows you to treat your followers with an exclusive code. While many will be watching for the deals you already know about, even more, will see you if you have a special coupon code. These codes can offer shoppers additional deals and discounts. If you don’t already have a coupon code lined up reach out to your brand to see if you can give your audience a special offer code. Then build up the intrigued with your followers by creating teaser stories before you reveal the code.
7. Unboxing and Try On’s.
Unboxings are popular because it allows your audience to experience what it would be like to receive the product. You can walk them through the step by step of unboxing a much-anticipated item and engage with them in a unique way. Since Instagram has added various features you can add in fun quizzes and chat live with your followers as you do the unboxing. Unboxings are great to boost e-commerce sales as it lets followers see exactly what they will get and what to expect when they receive their package. Unboxings are also a great way to show followers how to use a product easily. This can greatly increase interest and desire for many products.
Similar to an unboxing you can give followers a behind the scenes peek at what their shopping experience would be like if they were to participate in the Black Friday extravaganza. You can walk them through the online shopping experience and when your order arrives, you can let them see what accessories or outfits you choose. This not only lets them know what to expect when shopping online but it also lets them see some items they might be interested in purchasing.
@mamalifelondon Does this in a unique way by host a video try on. She lets her audience know how they can easily pair her brand with everyday wear and more. Think outside the box, with your unboxings, behind the scenes, and try on content. Present the information in a way that will really help your viewers see themselves; opening up the package, placing an order, or getting dressed for the day.
8. Reviews
When you know what deals are going to be offered you can do a special product review to increase interest and hype around that product. A successful product review is one that is genuine and engaging. You want to increase interest in the product so it should be positive but take into consideration that not everyone is going to enjoy the product and that is ok. @wreckxdteens does this perfectly as she promotes the Slipgriip phone accessory. She points out how other products don’t work for her and why the Slipgriip ones do. If you know the product is definitely not going to benefit some of your followers you want to disclose in a discreet way.
9. Tags
You know how important including hashtags are any day of the year but this is even truer when it comes to generating hype around Black Friday deals. You need to be thinking outside the box and really take your audience into consideration. Using the standard #blackfridaydeals, but get your post lost in a sea of advertisements and you want your post to stand out. Think carefully about how you will take your Black Friday deals and how your tags will bring in more viewers and potential customers.
10. Increase the content you post
In order to keep the excitement high and remind shoppers about the great deals they can find you will have to consider boosting how much you post, this also includes how many stories you post. Take a look at the top of @hellojennawood’s story screenshot.
Not only does the content appeal to every holiday shopper looking for the best deals, but all those dashed at the top of her story indicates how many she has posted in 24 hours! That is a lot of content in 24 hours and that is what you should be doing.
You want to give your followers more to consider buying. You still want to have an array of various content, don’t just fill your stories with product pictures and links to codes use this time to really show your followers how the products you are promoting will fit in with their lifestyle. You want to still be genuine but you will also need to post more to increase engagement and bring in more views.
11. Encourage Social Sharing
Don’t neglect other social networks and platforms! Instagram is a go-to platform for influencers to easily reach followers, but this shouldn’t be the only place you focus your marketing efforts. Each social site caters to a unique demographic, and this is the time you should use this to your advantage. Create a call to action to have your audience share content and connect with you on other platforms. This is also easily done if you have a blog or YouTube channel. You can easily ask your readers and subscribers to share the content on their own social media page. One way you can help entice viewers to share content is to have a little give away. Have the shared content tagged and then offer a prize to one or two lucky participants.
Include a call to action on posts and stories. Call to actions are an easy way to remind viewers to take action. One of the easiest ways you can get more views and engagement, especially if you are showing a specific product in your post is to ask audience members who they think would love it as a gift. Not only do you get people tagged and interested, but there is a greater chance that those people tag will also respond in the comments which boost your engagement.
12. Get Your Site Black Friday Ready.
The number one way businesses will lose out on sales is if their site and landing pages are too slow to load, their online store goes offline temporarily, or poor site performance. You want to ensure that your site is able to handle higher than expected traffic. This means your pages need to load faster, check out needs to be seamless, and if any questions, comments or requests need to be responded to within minutes. If someone needs to wait longer than a few seconds to see a closer image of the product they are interested in it is very likely they will turn their attention to a competitor.
13. What Makes the Brand Stand Out?
One of the best ways you can market your Black Friday deals is to simply stay true to what your brand stands for. What makes your products better than your competitors? What are your unique business values and goals that customers can relate to and connect with? When coming up with content to promote your deals you will stand out much more when you keep your brand in mind and draw attention not just for the discounts but for the whole experience you customer can expect when they make a purchase from your e-Commerce store.
14. Don’t Limit Yourself to Black Friday Deals!
While the Friday after Thanksgiving is known to be the busiest shopping day of the year, the shopping tends to continue throughout the weekend and doesn’t stop. While you want to promote bargain prices on Black Friday, you want to encourage shoppers to buy all weekend long. Offer different deals for each of the days following Thanksgiving, you can offer the best deal on Friday, but leave some specialty or popular items at a discount price over the weekend as well. This will allow those who are waiting for their Friday pay to go through to take advantage of the special offers as well.
15. Remember What the Holiday Season is All About!
Remember that most people taking advantage of the deals and discounts after thanksgiving are doing so with certain people on their holiday shopping list in mind. Promoting your holiday deals should also promote the holiday season that just got kicked off. Remind your audience that gratitude, kindness, family, friends, and giving is what all the sweet discounts are really about! Add in some holiday spirit to your marketing strategy, Glymbytes does this phenomenally by subtly letting viewers know what types of PJs her family is wearing. You don’t want to be just another e-commerce store or influencer looking to bring some extra revenue.
