Black Friday is an event which began in the US and has grown into a global phenomenon. Retailers across the world started to take part in the annual Black Friday event and choose to offer a range of competitive deals and discounts to entice customers. Following on from Black Friday, Cyber Monday was formed which aimed to drive online sales and target those who prefer to shop online. As time has evolved, the weekend from Black Friday to Cyber Monday has become commonly referred to as cyber weekend. In a bid to out-do their competitors, some businesses even decide to run their deals for longer periods of time.
Wondering how you can possibly stand out in a sea of cyber weekend competition? We can help. Here at FUZE, we’re experts in helping brands stand out and get results. As a starting point, our team has prepared this Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2021 marketing guide.
Be Prepared: Get Your Website Ready for Black Friday 2021
With the demand for online shopping continuing to grow, especially since the global pandemic, it’s crucial to make sure you’re ready. If your website isn’t performing well, loading fast enough or the usability isn’t clear enough, then you’re likely to lose customers. With so much competition, customers are likely to rapidly lose interest. Here are some things to consider when working on your website in preparation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday…
Performance is Everything
It’s crucial to make sure that your website is performing to the best of its ability. Your customers will expect your website to load fast and be easy to navigate. It’s important that you ensure this is possible to allow them to quickly find the best deals and make purchases.
Product Pages
It’s likely that customers will spend most of their time on product pages, searching for desired items and making those all important purchases. This is why it’s important to optimise product pages to ensure a positive online shopping experience. It’s also important to ensure that you’ve stocked up on popular items and be clear about delivery times too.
Create Landing Pages
Creating specific landing pages for Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns can ensure that online shopping customers will be able to easily access the things that they’re looking for. It’s important to make sure that these landing pages are engaging, load quickly and showcase exactly what your customers are searching for. With so much choice available, it’s easy for a customer to leave your site and look elsewhere if they’re unable to quickly find what they’re looking for.
Require a little more information? Need help with your website performance? Here at FUZE, our skilled development team thrive on developing websites that are fast, scalable and secure. Get in touch to find out how we can help you.
Get Personal: Personalised Black Friday Sales & Marketing Emails
Email marketing involves targeting customers who have previously opted in and notifying them of your upcoming deals. Black Friday and Cyber Monday also provides the opportunity for you to increase your mailing list by promising exclusive deals and discounts for those who have signed up before the event.
Personalisation
There has been evidence to suggest that personalised emails can actually help to improve open and click-through rates. A personalised email is much more likely to stand out within an inbox and appear to be relevant, bespoke and simply more enticing.
Timing is Everything
It’s important to ensure that you’re sending your marketing emails out at the right time. You could try to send them ahead of time and stand out from your competitors. Make sure that you take the time to research into the best time to send your emails. It might be a good idea to look at old marketing emails and analyse the performance.
Capture Attention
A bold subject line and compelling CTAs are crucial components in the success of your email marketing campaign. Make sure they’re relevant, engaging and make it impossible for your customers to say no to!
Follow-up
Stay one step ahead of your competitors by coming up with a great follow-up campaign. It’s important to keep your audience engaged and interested in your brand, without overwhelming them.
Need a few pointers on email marketing? Here at FUZE, our marketing team are experts in getting brands noticed - for all the right reasons. Whether it's paid advertising, SEO, email or social media marketing, we make it our mission to get our customers outstanding results.
The Power of Social Media: Social Media Marketing for Black Friday 2021
Social media presents a huge opportunity for businesses to interact with their customers, increase brand awareness and engagement, and drive traffic to their website. The ever changing landscape of social media means that trends come and go rapidly, it’s important to stay alert and be ready to capitalise on any new and relevant opportunities. Your audience will expect you to mark important dates, discuss upcoming events and get involved in current trends.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the many key dates that online businesses should certainly consider talking about and getting involved in. Social media is an excellent way to promote your business and drive sales. By crafting compelling content and creative campaigns, you’ll be able to spark interest and create a buzz around your products and services. A combination of creative ads, intriguing posts, and utilising shopping features can spur your followers on to click through and make purchases.
Unsure how to make your social media account stand out on cyber weekend? Here are some Black Friday and Cyber Monday social media ideas…
Create Urgency
In the lead up, it’s a good idea to start building excitement around the campaigns and deals you have planned. It’s also important to create urgency and remind your followers that the deals are temporary. Encourage your audience to act fast before the deal, and stock, runs out!
Clever Campaigns
From games and guides to promising a new deal every hour, the options are endless. Get creative when planning your social media campaigns and make sure that your brand stands out. Countdowns, virtual prize wheels and interactive stories are all great ways to engage your audience.
Shopping Features
You’ll find that various social media platforms are introducing, or have introduced, shopping features. Instagram is currently one of the most popular social media platforms. Instagram Shopping is free, easy to use and lets followers make purchases without even leaving the app. It can take a little while for items to be approved so make sure you update your items in advance.
Gift Guide
Gift guides are a fantastic way of showcasing some of your most popular products and helping customers who need a little inspiration. As Black Friday and Cyber Monday fall at the end of November, you could even tie this in with some of the gift guides you create for Christmas. People often use Black Friday as an opportunity to get organised for the upcoming festive season and gift guides can be super useful.
Hashtags
Reach a wider audience and let everyone know about your deals by using hashtags. You might decide to use the popular #BlackFriday and create some of your own that your customers will recognise and use. It’s worth searching #BlackFriday and other relevant hashtags to find out what other retailers are doing too.
Make them Come Back For More
Cyber weekend is a great opportunity to gain new customers and followers. So, it’s important to think about customer retention and ensuring that any new customers return and new followers stick around. Announcing future promotions and deals could be a great way of achieving this!
Need support with your social media efforts? Here at FUZE, we have a team of social media marketing experts who can help you get noticed. We’ll devise a clear strategy to increase following, reach and engagement, create and upload compelling content and provide monthly reports.
Think Creatively: Creative Marketing Campaigns for Black Friday 2021
With the sheer amount of competition getting involved in the cyber weekend festivities, it’s a good idea to spend time working on your campaigns. You’ll need to ensure that your brand is as memorable as possible and your website is performing perfectly. It’s also important to try and create campaigns that will create a buzz and drive traffic to your website. Here are some things to consider when planning your marketing campaigns for the upcoming cyber weekend.
Think Outside the Box
It’s time to think outside the box and come up with strong marketing campaigns that set you apart from the competition. We always recommend being as imaginative as possible to find ways to entice your target audience. Creating exciting promo videos, bold graphics and images, and countdown timers are all great places to start.
Deals and Discounts
It’s time to start thinking about the impressive deals and discounts that you’re willing to provide. If you’ve decided to run a campaign for the whole weekend, then you might decide to run a different deal or discount on certain products each day. Or, you could make things even more exciting by releasing a new deal every few hours. If you prefer something a little more interactive, you could consider ideas that will get your customers more involved. This might be spinning a virtual wheel or interacting with customers via social media. All of these campaign ideas have the potential to generate excitement and spark intrigue.
Paid Advertising
If you’re planning on running some paid advertising campaigns, then it’s a good idea to make sure that you carefully select your keywords. Taking the time to consider what keywords you really want to target can ensure that you don’t overspend. You also might want to think about running ads before and after the cyber weekend and see if the competition and bid prices are lower.
Need a little more guidance? FUZE can help. We have a team of marketing specialists who can help you achieve fantastic results. From captivating campaigns and compelling content to PPC and social media management, we can help you with it all. Get in touch with our team today and find out how we can help you!
