As the holiday season approaches, eCommerce and retail businesses need to gear up for one of the biggest shopping events of the year – Black Friday. With millions of consumers scouring the internet and brick-and-mortar stores for the best deals, it's crucial for brands to be well-prepared. In this article, we explore three essential strategies to help businesses thrive during high-stakes sales events. Let’s dive into consumer preferences, channel marketing strategies and influencer marketing…
1. Enhance Channel Marketing Strategies to Engage Audiences and Drive Conversions
To stand out on Black Friday, brands must maximise their presence across a wide mix of channels (within reason – don’t stretch your resources or budgets too thin). Before we get into each channel, here’s an example of why this is important.
Much like trying to sell a vacuum to someone who's never heard of your brand, you can't simply offer a discounted vacuum to all your new prospects just because it's on sale. This is especially true when every other vacuum in the market is also discounted.
To maximise your sales potential, it's crucial to establish a relationship with new users before launching a sale. By doing so, your top-of-funnel audience is already well-informed, intrigued, and receptive when the sale begins.
Here are key elements to get right in your channel marketing strategy.
Website Optimisation
Ensure your website is user-friendly and mobile-responsive . Speed up loading times, streamline the checkout process, and prominently display Black Friday promotions.
Social Media Marketing
To be great at social media, you need to create great content . But there’s also a lot of planning involved. Create your content calendar early and be prepared for Black Friday to start building anticipation early. Use engaging visuals and videos to showcase your deals and generate excitement.
Email Marketing
Build an email list of interested customers and send out teaser emails leading up to Black Friday. Include sneak peeks of deals and exclusive offers for subscribers.
Paid Advertising
Invest in paid advertising on platforms like Google Ads and social media. Target your ads to reach your ideal customers based on demographics, interests, and behaviour.
Conversion Optimisation
Driving traffic to your website and stores is only part of the equation. Conversion rate optimisation is equally important to maximise Black Friday sales.
A/B Testing
A/B testing doesn’t stand for ‘Always Be Testing’, but maybe it should? Anyway, it means testing 2 variations of the same element to determine a winner. Continuously test elements like product descriptions, images, and calls-to-action to determine what drives the most conversions.
2. Monitor Evolving Consumer Preferences to Develop Your Marketing Communications
To succeed on Black Friday, your business needs to understand, adapt to, and meet the ever-evolving preferences of your customers. Keeping a finger on the pulse and leveraging the power of data-driven insights, allows brands to create compelling promotional resources and collateral that resonate with their target audience. Here's how to do it:
Data Analytics
Utilise analytics tools like to collect and analyse data on customer behaviour. Look at historical sales data, website traffic (set up your Google Analytics 4 yet?) and social media engagement to identify trends and preferences, and to understand what audiences and marketing campaigns helped drive new users and conversions in the past. Then leverage these insights in your strategy moving into sale periods.
Customer Surveys and Feedback
Engage with your customers through surveys and feedback forms. Ask about their preferences, shopping habits, and what products they're most interested in buying, including during sale periods like Black Friday.
Competitor Analysis
Study your competitors. What promotions or strategies are they using? Are there any gaps in the market that your brand can fill?
Leverage your competitor analysis to understand why your most loyal customers favour your brand over the competition, and ensure you’re able to protect your position against competitors. This might be something unique about your product or brand that your competitors haven't nailed. Leverage this in key messaging and content to warm up your audience, pulling in your most favoured and most likely to convert prospects.
Create Tailored Promotions
Armed with insights, brands can craft promotions and resources that cater specifically to their audience's preferences. Whether it's discounts, exclusive bundles, or early access deals, tailor your offerings to what your customers want.
You can also leverage your 1st party data to create highly personalised offers. For e.g, use customers' purchase history and preferences to only recommend products they're likely to be interested in.
Limited-Time Offers
This one’s a no-brainer. Black Friday is all about time-sensitive deals. Create a sense of urgency by promoting limited-time offers that encourage immediate action. If you regularly have 20% off sales, do something different for important sale periods.
3. Leverage Influencers to Drive Brand Awareness, Sales and Social Proof
Influencer marketing has become a powerful tool for brands looking to expand their reach and connect with new audiences. Consider these steps:
Identify Relevant Influencers
Find influencers whose niche aligns with your products. Their followers should match your target demographic.
Collaborate and Create
Partner with influencers to create authentic content that showcases your Black Friday deals. This content can be in the form of reviews, unboxing videos, or lifestyle posts.
Track and Measure
Use tracking links and analytics to measure the impact of influencer campaigns. Are you seeing an increase in website traffic and sales attributed to these collaborations?
Engage Beyond Black Friday
Don't limit influencer collaborations to just Black Friday. Building long-term relationships with influencers can help sustain your brand's growth.
Speak to our Brand, Marketing and Digital Experts to Maximise Your Black Friday Sales
Whether it’s Black Friday, Boxing Day or any other sale period, success in retail and eCommerce requires well-crafted content, meticulous planning and a deep understanding of your customer’s preferences. But having the resources, skills or tools within your business to unearth insights, enhance channel marketing strategies, reach out to influencers, or do any of this well, is certainly no mean feat.
That’s where BlueRock comes in. Our Tech & Experience team is like a CX agency, eCommerce agency and UX agency rolled into one awesome and helpful package. While our Brand & Marketing team can provide social media marketing agency services, growth marketing, paid ad consulting and so much more. If you’d like to improve or implement any of the topics we’ve covered in this article, get in touch with our experts today.
