Black Friday is big source of e-commerce income around the world. Businesses understand the money to be made by joining in on the Black Friday season, even those based in countries without a November Thanksgiving holiday, like most African countries including Uganda.
Naturally, small business owners everywhere should be doing their best to get in on the action. But it is surprising how many business wait until the last moment to make last minute ads, let alone fail to take advantage of this season.
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What is Black Friday marketing?
Black Friday marketing is a term used to describe business marketing strategies that are specifically designed around the Black Friday holiday. Because Black Friday is known as one of the world’s biggest shopping holidays, business owners have an opportunity to ramp up marketing efforts to drive a massive amount of sales and increase profits during this time.
Every Black Friday marketing strategy is different, but the basic ideas are the same. Customers want absolutely unbeatable deals on Black Friday and businesses want to maximize sales, and/or profits, so this is a good time to bring out the big guns in terms of sales and promotions. Even though you’re selling your products at a lower price, Black Friday marketing can help with customer care and engagement down the road.
Is your online business ready for a successful Black Friday sale? Check these key tasks off your list to make sure.
Checklist of things to prepare your business for Black Friday
1. Get the word out early
The official date for Black Friday this year is 28th November (last friday of November), but the hype for that day should start earlier.
Get the word about your Black Friday deals out to your customers as early in the season as you can by planning ahead. The sooner they know about your offers, the better positioned they’ll be to take advantage of them, and the more revenue you’ll bring in.
You can create awareness for your Black Friday deals in the following ways;
- Send targeted emails to your existing customers with special coupon codes or discounts.
- Setup retargeting ads for people who visit your website to notify them of your Black Friday sale.
- Create a unique landing page with details of products on your offers
- Create a awareness through social media and blog posts
In short, take advantage of the marketing tools you have at your disposal to get in touch with your people directly and let them know about your deals.
2. Make sure your checkout process is smooth
A study by Baymard institute shows that 69% of customers abandon their carts before checking out. This is for many reasons including site speed, undisclosed additional fee etc. Do not let a bumpy checkout experience lead to cart abandonment, and people turning to your competition. There will be an abundance of deals out there, so make sure customers stick around for yours.
Your checkout page should be uncluttered and intuitive. Make sure buttons are highly visible and easy to find. Only include form fields that are necessary for the customer to make their purchase. Also make sure to include multiple payment options for customers at checkout.
3. Optimize your website to handle traffic spikes.
You’ll want to make sure your site is equipped to handle the increase in traffic as well. Talk to your hosting company or developer to see if they have what it takes to handle extra traffic. It would be unfortunate to leave money on the table because of an unresponsive/slow website.
3. Optimize your product descriptions for Black Friday shoppers
As the day approaches, their will be people searching their favorite products and brands with the term “Black Friday deal.” hoping to find the right deal. It would be great to be answer for such organic users.
Make sure your website copy is optimized to include the right keywords to raise you in the search ranks.
Consider going to Google Trends and doing some research into past Black Friday keyword trends, then finding ways to incorporate those keywords into your site.
5. Make sure your website is secure
In such cases where there is high traffic, not all users are genuinely looking for cool deals, some people are looking for vulnerabilities to exploit. Always make sure that your website ensures safety for your legitimate visitors so that they can trust you. If you are handling online payments, make sure that you have a valid SSL certificate, your payment gateways are tested and working fine and that you implement proper authentication and access control for your users.
You wouldn’t want Black Friday to be a “dark” one for your or your customers.
All in all, Black Friday is an opportunity for all brands; big and small, to give back to their customers, but also create awareness to new customers.