Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the busiest shopping times of the year in the US. In 2023, due to inflation, people will consider more before deciding to purchase. However, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are events where people are willing to buy more because of deep discounts from brands.
To reach more potential customers and boost sales, here are some suggestions and tips for having a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale season.
Plan Your Marketing & Promotions Early
Timeline is the most important factor affecting a plan. You must be prepared because 44% of shoppers stated they would start shopping earlier last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
Let’s plan your marketing and promotions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Sales should start as soon as summer’s over. Many online stores will start their promotions as early as October due to increased competition and consumer promises to begin holiday shopping early.
Start making Black Friday and Cyber Monday plans as soon as you can to improve your website, customer service, and marketing tactics. This means organizing all of your marketing campaigns, upgrading the appearance of your website, defining policies, making sure the checkout process runs without any problems, etc.
Prepare To Improve Your Website
To highlight your product promotion in the Shopify store, add product badges. Product badges are also known as product labels or product stickers. We suggest that you try the ShineTrust app, an easy and simple app to use to add product badges to your Shopify online store.
You can apply a product badge by choosing pre-designed labels, customizing some text with multiple shape badges, or uploading your unique design labels. For example, you can add a product badge with the text “20% Off” and change the color of the design to match your website theme.
Besides product badges, you can add a countdown timer to run a Black Friday and Cyber Monday flash sale and highlight it on the homepage.
Flash sales are a great way to boost sales by making people feel rushed and shopping in a limited amount of time. With ShineTrust support, you can also add a custom countdown timer quickly after a few steps.
Refer to how to add a product badge and countdown timer with the ShineTrust app.
Checking Your Policies
Setting the right standards for customers with your return policy is important because it is the first step in the return process. Setting up a clear return policy will help you limit returns or change them into exchanges while reducing customer friction during the popular Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions.
Some tips for setting the return policies:
- Make it clear right away what items are returnable and which are not.
- Include a range of flexible exchange choices in your return policy.
- Give specific instructions on how to submit a return request.
Next, the second policy you need to focus on is the return policy. Exchanges should take place over other types of returns to save your store time and money.
When a customer asks for a refund, you often lose the customer with the sale. Try to make an exchange in its place. You keep both the sale and the customer when a customer exchanges a product for a different size, color, or item entirely.
So that your consumers can get the products they need as quickly as possible, provide quick and simple product exchanges.
To reduce returns and increase profits, keep your exchange process as easy as you can.
Ensure The Checkout are Working
Your checkout process is where you make your money, especially around the holidays. Test your checkout process at least 30 days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday to make sure everything is working.
Make sure to test:
- Place a test order to look for mistakes with ordering, inventory, shipping, and tax calculation.
- Processing payments – An error-filled payment processing experience can lead to cart abandonment, revenue losses, and negative publicity for your business.
- Test all payment-related operations, including adding or removing cards and changing billing and delivery information, to guarantee suitable payment processing.
Once testing is complete, you are prepared to launch.
Offer Promotion For Black Friday And Cyber Monday
The demand for and interest of customers in free shipping. Shipping for free is a great deal for a lot of customers, especially during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping seasons, whether you include shipping costs in the pricing. Also, prepare your customer support team to inform customers of any expected shipping delays so they may make the necessary preparations.
On the other hand, you can offer to buy online and pick up in-store as a promotion. Customers expect a simple transition from online shopping to the physical store if they have an offline shop. Especially since this is a customer’s first time with your business, both experiences must be great.
Additionally, you can also offer personalized deals and promotions. For example, if a customer often purchases sportswear, you could offer them a special discount on the newest running shoes or an invitation to an exclusive pre-sale event for gym supplies.
Besides, offer early-bird discounts for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to customers who have already shown interest in popular products. To be even more specific, you can provide sneak peeks of doorbuster offers or specialized bundles made exclusively for customers based on their browsing behavior.
Keep in mind that you should only offer such deals for a short period and avoid pushing the discounts too much over Cyber Monday to maintain a sense of urgency and exclusivity.
Running Email Marketing Campaigns
A targeted email marketing campaign is one of the most popular strategies for telling customers in advance about your Black Friday and Cyber Monday specials and promotions. To get customers to read and interact with your emails, use engaging subject lines and eye-catching email designs.
Promote on Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool to promote your marketing campaign and gain more potential customers for shopping in your online store. To increase the chances of converting your followers into customers and generating sales, when writing your social media post captions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, make sure to include phrases like:
- Limited availability
- While stocks last
- Available for a limited time only
Additionally, as Cyber Monday is already a 24-hour event, you can make a few countdowns all day long with different time-limited promotions. This amazing method will keep your audience interested all the time.
Then, using hashtags to expand your reach on social media has been around for a while. They can also be used successfully on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, which is good for social media strategists.
Use hashtags in your brand’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday social media work for a variety of additional reasons. For example, hashtags can help your brand become more recognizable and draw in new followers to your social media platforms.
Moreover, in case you have a wide-range budget for marketing, you can spend some on running advertising to make your social media posts stand out from competitors.
In Conclusion
Each campaign should be planned ahead of time, carefully evaluated, and automated if possible.
Make this the most successful shopping season in your company’s history by using the above Black Friday and Cyber Monday suggestions.
