Last year's Black Friday season, on Shopify e-commerce platform only, it grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. It is estimated that consumers spent billions of dollars during the event shopping at online shops. Therefore, business owners should not ignore this trending event, which is a great opportunity to make money. If you want to get into the biggest sales race this year-end, you need to start now to increase Black Friday sales.
Research for Black Friday campaign
At the majority of shopping events, businesses need to have unique incentive programs and promotions to create a mark for customers. It is best that shop owners should base themselves on consumer habits and behaviors in the shopping mentality of customers to create effective online business campaigns.
Discounts are of course always the preferred option. But also need to diversify forms of promotions to attract customers, do not reuse old posts or outdated tricks. Some popular retail promotions you can refer to are as follows:
- Direct discounts on products (usually Black Friday with 50% or more deep discounts)
- Giving included gifts
- Promotion of some certain best-seller products
- Discount when buying multiple products (create combos)
- Promotions based on customer loyalty cards,...
Note that there should be separate Black Friday and Christmas discount strategies. Because these two events are held quite close together, it is easy for customers to feel bored. At the same time, if they keep in mind that all events have the same discounts, they might think they do not have to buy on Black Friday right away, but will wait for the Christmas season.
Pick out key products to sell during Black Friday
Most of the time at the end of the year, the shopping needs of customers not only strongly increase, but there is always a similarity from year to year. Thus, business owners, shop owners can easily list which products are selling well this season in previous years. From there, choose the main products for promotions and discounts.
It is also possible to choose different sale products depending on the promotion type. If the promotion is in the form of accompanying gifts, the gift product may be out of date or difficult to sell or in stock. If the promotion is in the form of direct discounts on products, you should choose the best-seller of the store.
Make a plan for your Black Friday campaign
Once you have had your idea and chosen key products, you need to start planning your program. Review your margins and inventory to find the right discounts and rate promotions. This is a very important step, because the promotion rules will determine the profit-loss of your program.
In addition, to strictly charter the program, you should pay attention to the viral marketing nature of promotional rules. A complete plan will give you a simple outline of the work steps and the sequence of work. Also, estimate your upcoming expenses and sales for the Back Friday season.
Check your inventory correctly before running the Black Friday campaign
It's best to complete this step for the promotion to run smoothly. You need to thoroughly and accurately check your inventory figures, especially the products you plan to sell in the program. In addition, you should consider preparing a plan to import additional quantities of products if necessary to serve customers.
Doing so will avoid a sale disruption if your inventory sells out earlier than expected. It also helps to minimize the risk of customers complaining and dissatisfied when they cannot purchase promotional products.
Make sure your website can handle a spike in traffic
In today's technology age, customers have given up jostling, shoving and long queues at stores. Instead, they visit websites to make online purchases. Make sure your website is ready for massive traffic and spike to avoid losing website sales.
In fact, during this time, 1-second delay of your website can cause a decrease in sales of 2.8%. Customers are more likely to jump to a competitor's site if yours is slow or not loading. Check access speed, update software and hardware. Make sure that the security certificate on your website is valid and valid. Optimize your website to provide the best online shopping experience for your users.
Make sure your store can handle the increased demand
When Black Friday happens, even chaos is inevitable in your store. To fulfill all orders at that time, increasing the number of employees is a must. At this point, you need to adjust the number of employees to increase or decrease shifts depending on the number of orders during peak hours. You might also consider hiring part-time seasonal staff during the Black Friday season.
Run ads for Black Friday promotions
Promotions but the customer do not know, all your preparations are in vain. You should implement advertising on both online channels and in stores. The more information you advertise, the more visitors your promotion will attract, and will bring in high revenue. However, cost and return should be weighed in order to establish an appropriate advertising budget.
Just keep in mind that ad bids can be more expensive during the competitive holiday season, depending on your niche. You may need to increase your bid for specific keywords or for certain audiences. Doing so will increase your ad's visibility during that time. Anyway, you should also plan and prepare your advertising budget in advance to avoid a deficit in the process of running the campaign.
Build suspense and excitement around your Black Friday campaign
When promotions are held frantically, they attract more people's attention. Thereby, your store's impression will be bolder in the minds of buyers. By the time Black Friday starts, customers will think of you first, not elsewhere. Alternatively, you can entice your old customers by sending them email notifications or sharing information on social media to pique customer curiosity.
Operate the Black Friday campaign
If your discount program is attractive and has a reasonable advertising strategy, the number of orders will definitely increase dramatically compared to normal days. To turn this number of orders into a specific increase in sales, it is necessary to control orders and complete transactions fully, promptly and quickly. If customers find that the processing time is slow, they can cancel their order at any time and switch to buy from competitors.
Therefore, in order to meet the overwhelming number of customers these days, store operations and management need to be optimized and standardized to avoid unfortunate situations. Ideally, stores should be equipped with sales management and reporting software to facilitate business management. If not, the orders could be wasted, increasing sales would not be possible. Conversely, you also spend more advertising costs and employees on Black Friday without getting the desired profits.
