If you’re a business owner or in charge of marketing for your company, Black Friday is the busiest day of the year (especially if you’re an eCommerce business or sell digital products).
And if you sell electronics, gadgets, appliances, and other items that get discounted on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (which is the Monday after), it’s even more important to have some creative marketing campaign ideas in place.
What is Black Friday?
For those of you who don’t know what Black Friday is, it’s the busiest shopping day of the year.
It takes place at the very end of November (the 23rd) and marks the beginning of holiday sales for most retailers in America, Europe, and Australia.
If your business sells anything online, this is an important time to have a killer marketing campaign.
You will have to compete with all the big box retailers and online stores, so you must try to be creative.
What is Cyber Monday?
Following Black Friday is Cyber Monday, which takes place on the first Monday after Thanksgiving.
This day was created to encourage people to shop online instead of in stores (because most retailers have huge sales and discounts for their customers).
Huge eCommerce companies like Amazon will offer great deals and discounts just before Christmas, so you want your business to be included in the list of stores that people visit on Cyber Monday.
If you don’t have a creative marketing campaign going into this shopping holiday, your sales could suffer dramatically and it could hurt your business’s revenue for months after Black Friday/Cyber Monday ends.
The history of Black Friday
Just a quick history lesson – the term ‘Black Friday’ was coined by the Philadelphia Police about the massive traffic and number of accidents that happened on this day.
It didn’t become a national shopping event until 2005 when it became more popular with shoppers as retailers pushed out deals earlier than ever before.
Since then Black Friday has evolved into a huge shopping event…and the most important day for marketing your products and services.
So now that you’re aware of what Black Friday is, let’s move on to how we can take advantage of this opportunity to market our business and sell more stuff 😉
Why it’s important to have a marketing campaign for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
On the day after Thanksgiving, consumers spent $9 billion online, up 21.6% year over year according to Adobe Analytics data.
That’s why you must have some sort of marketing campaign for this holiday shopping season.
I recommend checking out my article on creative online marketing campaign ideas.
But if you don’t want to go through the hassle, here are five ideas that will help your business sell more products on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Online Marketing Campaign Ideas For Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales
So without further ado…here are some ideas on how we can make the most out of this day:
1. Harness The Power of Crowd Through Affiliate Marketing
Crowdsourcing is a great way to get your content in front of people and it’s cheap when you do things like create an affiliate program.
This means that bloggers, social media influencers, and other webmasters will help promote your product or service for free.
If done correctly this can bring big results with very little cost.
You can offer a cash reward or simply give them free products in exchange for their help.
You can find some great marketing opportunities by signing up for the right affiliate programs and networks (more on this below).
If you don’t know how an affiliate program works, here’s a simple explanation:
An affiliate program allows you to get your products in front of webmasters and bloggers that will help promote them for a small commission.
This works like any other business transaction – the seller gives a product or service to their customer, who then makes money by referring it to others.
Affiliate marketing is especially good when you have a new product or service that you want to test out because it doesn’t cost much.
This is also an excellent way to build your email list because every time the affiliate sends over a customer, they will be added to your database.
The main thing you have to remember when setting up an affiliate program is to make it easy for people.
You need to give webmasters and bloggers everything they will need so that all they have to do is copy-and-paste a few things on their website or blog, such as your product image and links.
Don’t go overboard with the ‘rules’ because you won’t get any affiliates if you make it too complicated.
Online sales reach $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday, the biggest U.S. e-commerce day ever, Adobe says
2. Retarget Website Visitors with Special Promos and Bundle Offers
You know when you visit a website, they’ll show ads for that site the next time you open up your browser?
Well, there’s no reason why we can’t do this with our products or offers.
If someone visits your product page and leaves without buying anything, it makes sense to target them again, especially for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns.
On social media, you can easily do this through a service like AdRoll, Facebook Pixel, or similar ones that will allow you to show people your ads and offer them the chance to purchase something.
Suggested Reading: 7 Machine Learning Tools To Improve Your Social Media Marketing
But don’t just limit your retargeting to social media alone. Also, make use of those abandoned carts/leads.
For example, if someone left your website without buying anything in the last 180 days, you might send them an email saying:
“Hey! You’re not going to leave our amazing offer of 20% off your purchase for Black Friday behind are you?”
You can also send this out to people who have been on the product page as well, just make sure it’s relevant.
This is a great opportunity to test different offers and use something like A/B testing (more on that later) so you can see what works best.
You can even use this tactic to upsell customers by offering them a product that is more expensive but still related in some way if they purchased your original offer.
For example, let’s say someone buys an iPhone case from you for $40 bucks – the next email could be something like: “Hey, I noticed you bought our iPhone case. If you are looking for something a little more heavy-duty, I’d like to offer our iPhone cover instead. Get 30% off if you place your order today!”
This is a great way to use retargeting website visitors for Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns.
3. Use People’s Desire for Early Bird Deals
This is a big one because people get excited about early bird deals.
They want to be the first ones among their friends and family members to find out that something new has launched, or they can snag an amazing discount if they’re willing to wait until later in the day/weekend.
This is why Black Friday and Cyber Monday are such great times to launch a new product or service – you can remind people over and over again that they’ll get access to it first if they wait.
You might even want to create some sort of prelaunch campaign for your website visitors, email list members, etc., so when the time comes, you have a nice audience ready to buy.
This is what Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about – getting people excited so they feel like it’s Christmas in November or December (depending on when your campaigns usually fall).
Suggested Reading: 5 Online Advertising Strategy Examples for Small Businesses
You can also use this tactic to boost sales for other promotions that are not necessarily tied to the holidays by giving people an incentive to wait.
For example, if you know it will take a few weeks for your product to ship from the manufacturer and be available on Amazon or other retailers, tell website visitors this in advance so they don’t feel like they have missed out.
You can even make it seem more exclusive by saying something like “only 50 available at this discounted price” or “we only have enough stock for the first 20 orders.”
This will make people feel like they’re part of an exclusive club and it might encourage them to act fast before it’s too late.
4. Collaborate with Influencers
One of the best ways to boost your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales is by collaborating with influencers.
This includes industry leaders, bloggers, YouTubers, etc., who have a large following on social networks like Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube (don’t underestimate TikTok though).
You could team up with them for a product launch (or promotion) which would give you access to their huge audience in exchange for a share of the sales or some sort of giveaway.
This is a great way to boost your holiday shopping campaigns, especially if you have an eCommerce website and don’t want to bother with creating ads for Black Friday or Cyber Monday (which can get expensive).
Influencer marketing might even be more effective than traditional advertisements because people like seeing content from real people and it’s a great way to establish trust.
You might even want to reach out to influencers who have already purchased your products in the past because this will create excitement, especially if the influencer has been vocal about how much they love what you sell.
This could make people feel more comfortable about buying your products and might even encourage them to purchase multiple items at once.
When you partner with influencers for Black Friday, it’s important to have a plan in place so they know when the promotion will be live (and what their role is).
You also need to create standard creative assets that can be used across all social networks (and/or websites) so you don’t appear unprofessional.
That way, the influencer can simply copy and paste a link to their post or video before they publish it without having to worry about anything else.
Suggested Reading: 8 Free AI Tools For Small Business Social Media Marketing
Conclusion:
Tracking your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns’ effectiveness and ROI is essential.
This is why you need to create tracking links that can be used across all social networks and the web, as well as assign unique coupon codes for each influencer so sales are tracked correctly.
You should also consider using a tool like Google Analytics or Oribi because this will allow you to see which traffic sources were most effective at driving sales.
When you’re ready to start your holiday shopping campaigns, make sure your website is up and running by testing the end-to-end customer journey (just in case there are any problems).
Good luck with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing campaigns, I hope you’ve found these tips useful! If not, just let me know what you would like to see more of in the comments below.
Ali is a digital marketing blogger and author who uses the power of words to inspire and impact others. He has written for leading publications like Business2Community, Inc. Magazine, and Marketing Profs. When not writing, he enjoys spending time with his family.