Over the years, several international Black Friday marketing strategies and promotions have piqued our attention. As a business owner/marketing strategist, are you looking for unique digital marketing tips to promote your goods this Black Friday?

The Black Friday shopping tradition started in 2010 when Amazon began offering discounts for its customers in Ireland and the UK.

In subsequent years, retailers have attracted mobs into their store using flash sales and discounts. According to a survey conducted by PWC Ireland in 2018, 98% were aware of Black Friday shopping sales.

However, the Black Friday shopping in 2020 will not be synonymous to buzzing crowds and shopping frenzied mobs. As a result of social distancing norms, stores are expected to have lesser crowds.

Despite instore restrictions, retailers will continue to take advantage of the Black Friday shopping ritual using e-commerce or marry their physical stores to the websites. Moreover, many businesses will spread their sales and discounts starting from the Monday, leading to Black Friday.

It’s wise to plan ahead. Let us tell you why.

Why is a Black Friday Marketing Strategy Important?

Approaching Black Friday without an exclusive marketing strategy is like losing the war even before fighting a single battle.

Shopper behaviours on the Black Friday are way different from other days.

John Dillon, leader of  PwC Ireland retail and consumer practice, rightly remarked, “Understanding shopping behaviour is key to winning the sale”.

To begin with, each Irish customer is expected to spend €300 while in the UK an average customer is expected to spend €315. According to a 2018 PWC report, 15% of shoppers revealed that they’d complete shopping for Christmas on Black Friday and 5% shall do the same on Cyber Monday.

Let’s look at more shopping behaviours in detail.

Uncommon Shopping Behaviours On Black Friday

Shoppers love inspiration– 34% of shoppers believe that stumbling across gift ideas and products are the most delightful aspects of the shopping marathon.

Shopping is like the Hunger Games– Minus the dystopia, of course.  52% like the thrills that run down their spines as they hunt down the best deals for Black Friday.

Instant gratification is the only constant shopping behaviour- Time is the most valuable asset; while shopping and otherwise. 57% of shoppers will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Optimising for user experience and elements that contribute to a seamless checkout increases conversion rates by 35%.

The guilt after the guilty pleasure sets in– As the shopping frenzy doubles down after Cyber Monday, shoppers return items they bought. This may be due to the impulse purchases they made during Black Friday sales. Research also states that 32% spend on impulse purchases.

47% of shoppers buy from retailers who have a good return policy. More people browse through returns pages before purchase on Black Friday than other days.

Drawing a Black Friday marketing strategy helps you explicitly plan for these behaviours. Your marketing ideas can revolve around

• Promoting content on new products
• Gift suggestions
• Optimising for keywords such as “best deals”, “best discounts”
• Creating Black Friday landing pages
• Optimising posts with hashtags

Particularly for e-commerce, Black Friday brings in shopping behaviours such as normally unrecognised category pages receiving large traffic.

Hopefully, due to the pandemic, shoppers shall turn their attention to what keeps them indoors, productive and mindful. Your Black Friday e-commerce strategy can internalise this behaviour and prioritise stocks and tactics accordingly.

Top Black Friday Shopping Stats 2020

• In 2019, Black Friday sales In Ireland saw over €250 million online sales.
• 1 in 6 shoppers begins thinking about Black Friday sales since mid-October.
• Online sales on Black Friday are expected to grow by 61% in 2020 worldwide.
• In 2019, more than half of e-commerce sales happened on mobile.
• 1 in 3 Irish consumers is ready to purchase over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday Weekend.
• 62% of Irish consumers are expected to buy online.
• 91% of shoppers in the UK are planning to avoid shopping in-store this year.
• UK shoppers are expected to spend £5.6 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year.
• Retail giants plan to start their respective Black Friday Sales early; Amazon plans to begin its flagship sale “Amazon Prime 2020” in early October.
• Before buying a product instore 75% of online shoppers compare prices, 72% compare products and 71% conduct product research.
• In 2019, Adobe Analytics saw a 20% rise in search for the term “gifts” in the days leading to Black Friday.

Digital Marketing Tips for Black Friday 2020

This year bustling footsteps, tsunami crowds and pedestrian traffic shall all shy away on Black Friday.

Considering the insights above and the pandemic, we expect shoppers to go on an online shopping spree.

The digital marketing tips for Black Friday we have enlisted below shall amp your online channels and rake in revenue.

1. Prepare Your Site

We suggest this before all the digital marketing tips for Black Friday as it can make or wreck your brand (and website).

Preparing your site should happen on two fronts:

• Testing website load
• Improving user experience

Test And Increase The Load Your Website Can Handle

Who said only instore shoppers can cause mayhem?

The influx of online shoppers into your website on Black Friday can predispose your servers to overload and crumble your website.

In 2019, Costco’s website crashed costing it $11 million and bringing the retail giant down on its knees for 16 hours. Costco extended its sale over the weekend owing to this incident.

Moreover, frustrated customers could take to social media to ridicule your brand.

Negative publicity isn’t good PR. However, you’d be losing website visitors over to your competition who’d keep your frustrated customers for themselves. Remember, it’s 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an old one.

Black Friday, particularly, is not when you want to be spilling your customers over to your competition.

Improving User Experience

Online shopping has become intuitive for most shoppers around the world. They know a cart means adding items, reviews are testimonials and the checkout button buys them the product. Thus a seamless online user experience is vital for merely existing on the web.

To enhance UX, begin with an SEO audit for your entire site. You can hire a digital marketing agency to alleviate this workload.

With digital natives joining the working class, it’s the right time to mark them as your VIP targets. Exceed their e-commerce expectations by using chatbots, integrating more wallets, cross-selling, freebies, retargeting etc. Do anything that motivates their impulsive buying tendencies and resultantly sells your product.

Besides, consumers browse mobile phones even when in-store. They look for information, compare prices, find deals etc. Make sure your web pages are loaded with content to solve their queries. FAQs and product information pages can help them here.

You can go omnichannel by using geographic data. You can send offers through text messages and push notifications when they are in the vicinity of your store.

Actionable digital marketing tips for Black Friday:

• Look into the previous year’s data. Identify behaviours like page visits, navigational behaviour, payment behaviour, product categories. Upgrade their experiences here.
• Free tools such as Pingdom and Google Pagespeed insights can gauge your website speed and suggest improvements.
• Spread your Black Friday deals over several days to avoid website overload. You can also start promoting your discounts in advance.
• Compress your product images and background images.
• Use chatbots to enhance conversations with your brand.

2. Deals and Coupon Marketing

One of the oldest and consistently performing digital marketing tips for Black Friday is promoting your deals and coupons.

A glance at Google Trends data reveals the number of hits for “deals” transcend the normal on the 4th week of November.

Consider all your marketing touchpoints- website, social media,  affiliates, physical stores.

Identify who shops what and where. Promote appropriate deals and discounts here. Advertise your coupons at the checkout. Promote your discounts on other coupon websites as well.

Actionable digital marketing tips for Black Friday:

• Use your email list to promote your coupons in advance.
• Remarket coupons to the shoppers who have visited your site on Black Friday.
• Change the text on your websites with words such as “Black Friday Deals” to portray your sites.
• Go full-on with PPC and Facebook ads to promote your deals.

3. Content Marketing: Interest Shoppers With New Products & Gift Ideas

Another Black Friday promotion idea is inspiring buyers with new products to shop for. Crafty marketing is realising your customers’ need early and implanting the idea of your product in their minds.

Content marketing can help you here. Using content marketing techniques you can create and promote personalised content to specific audience segments.

However, for content marketing to work, you must plan in prior.

You have to segment your existing customers based on interests and preferences.

To attract new customers identify segmentation patterns in your existing customer base. Then, promote your content through Facebook advertising to get their emails and later warm them up using more content.

Educate your prospects and current customers using gift ideas. You can email blast them with blog posts, gift bundles, how-to guides, etc. Similarly, promote referrals to grow your customer base using your existing email lists.

Actionable digital marketing tips for Black Friday:

• Create pre-sale word-of-mouth. You can tease your audience using product bundles before going into the big shopping day.
• You can create content on “top gifts for <their profession> friend”.
• Send an email blast to your current customers about new content.
• Curate content from other websites and send them to your readers.
• Use Facebook ads to build your email lists.
• Make use product availability notifications, pre-order options, etc, in your landing pages to increase your subscriber list.

4. Social Media Marketing

Over the past few years, the use of social media to find shopping ideas and gift ideas have surged. In 2019, Instagram and Pinterest saw traffic rise by 73% and 45% respectively.

People are inevitably going to spend more time on mobile this year owing to lockdowns, social distancing norms and travel becoming a taboo. This gives online marketers to leverage content on social media to interest users.

Consumer trends denote that, people expect a brand to take a stance on ethical and moral issues. They also expect brands to support environmental causes. Your social media posts and newsletters can become increasingly tilted towards supporting environmental concerns and mental health.

If you are a B2B business, you can support your users with freemiums this Black Friday.

Gotta Hash(tag) ’em all!

A hashtag strategy is an inescapable digital marketing tip for Blackfriday, now that Instagram allows users to follow hashtags.

For growing your audience using hashtags, you have to start several weeks prior. Post relevant content and use appropriate hashtags for them to promote your content.

There are several Black Friday specific hashtags that you can use. Use insights from Instagram analytics to gauge the number of views from your hashtags.

Test different combinations of hashtags until you get the right one.

Tell and Sell via Stories

Last year, 1 out of 3 users were influenced by other shoppers posting stories on Instagram and Snapchat. They claim this helped their buying decisions.

Promoting B2C products on Instagram stories can raise brand awareness before the big day. Stories work because they blend themselves easily in your shopper’s browsing spree.

You can also promote your deals and discounts through stories as well. Instagram, being the visual medium it is, offers a lot of scope for advertisers to persuade and influence consumers.

Actionable digital marketing tips for Black Friday:

• There has been a 60% rise in content consumption over this pandemic. Use content to gain the attention of your user and grow your retargeting list and lookalike audience list.
• Create 15-30 second engaging stories in your ads that can connect with the shopper on an emotional level.
• Use environmental, collectivist themes in your Black Friday posts as it is when such spirits are high.
• In Ireland, going local is a killer marketing move. If you are a local business, you could ride the local wave in your marketing campaigns.

5. To Black Friday and Beyond

Black Friday shopping is not limited to one single day.

Thankfully, retailers have manipulated the mob into a being in a week-long shopping mania using deals and discounts. Shoppers continue to look for discounts on the days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

However, there will always be customers left out of these deals. Some may have even missed out because of technical issues, not finding the right deals etc.

Some will want to return the products they brought and buy new ones.

For the left-out and returning customers, spread out your deals by spilling your offers over the next week as well. You can infuse Christmas shopping spirit in your posts and ads. Use cross-selling to sell different products when they appear for returning items.

Conclusion

Customers in Ireland and the UK may not have adopted the turkey dinner and annual family get together to celebrate the Black Friday weekend. However, the shopping craze has caught on in both Ireland and the UK.

In 2019, PwC Ireland reported that 8/10 of its respondents were interested in shopping over the Black Friday – Cyber Monday weekend. Now that shoppers are locked indoors in most places its time to get creative with your content and best exploit your email lists.

Use these Black Friday marketing stats and tips to plan lucrative discounts and fix loopholes in your existing digital touchpoints.

How ORH Marketing Can Help You With Your Black Friday Sales?

ORH Marketing has pioneered marketing and e-commerce strategies for Black Friday for several companies. We craft attention-grabbing marketing and purchasing experiences for your brand to boost sales.

Now, it’s a child guess that digital marketing shall be the cornerstone of a company’s sales and revenue this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Contacts us if you need help with your digital marketing strategy for the shopping weekend.