This huge opportunity for sales is not to be missed, with sales records being broken each year. It’s fast becoming the most important event in ecommerce and retail. This is Black Friday and Cyber Monday, respectively.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are like the hyperactive twins of New Year’s sales. They have become a global phenomenon.
It’s also becoming increasingly competitive for savvy business marketers.
Black Friday marketing strategies could help you get ahead of your competition this year, or any year.
PPC has been discussed before for holiday shopping sales. There is another way to build anticipation and possibly get those scenes of stampeding customer (albeit digitally) into your business.
This is Black Friday marketing via social media.
People spend a lot of time on Instagram and Facebook. Americans spend an average of 58 minutes per day on the “Book” and 53 minutes on the “Gram.”
Facebook is visited by 1.8 billion people each day and 22 billion users each month. With around 23% of all Facebook visitors coming from the USA, America is the largest market.
Paid search is great for attracting potential customers on Cyber Monday and Black Friday, but building buzz requires social media.
A good social media campaign can help you gain new followers and subscribers, increase brand visibility, and even make presales (if that’s what you are into). How can social media be used to help you achieve your Black Friday sales goals
No matter what your Black Friday offer is, it’s a great way for you to gain more followers and possibly make more sales by revealing exclusive offers on social media.
This should be done around two weeks prior to Black Friday. You could use this strategy to run your Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales. However, social media followers could find out first. They could get special offers or extras (with discounts codes, etc.).
You can generate buzz and attract people interested in your product who are likely to make a purchase on Cyber Monday or Black Friday. These ‘unmissable deals’ can be promoted by running ads on Facebook and Instagram.
2. Timed offers are a good idea
You can offer a second level of ‘limited offers’, even though Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales are not available for a limited time. Even Black Friday sales are time-limited, but timing offers can trigger FOMO for buyers. If you inform potential customers in advance, you might see your products fly off your digital shelves.
Timing offers give you a feeling of urgency and the need to act quickly. The clock ticks, and the pressure is on for you to take the offer before it disappears.
These deals can also be drip fed during Black Friday or the holiday shopping weekend.
These offers can be promoted on social media before they are made public. You could receive early bird offers or access to these deals prior to the actual day.
Social media’s power can make the difference between a good Black Friday turnover and record-breaking sales.
Incentives to use a hashtag during the build up to the big day are one way to achieve this. Encourage your subscribers to use the branded hashtag in order to create buzz and increase your Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales.
How can you get people sharing your branded hashtag with others?
Promote your page and offer entry into a prize draw.
This type of branded hashtag requires you to include your brand name or similar.
ClickCease might use #ClickFriday2021, #CCBlackFriday2021, or other similar hashtags.
Again, it is possible to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign by paying for advertising before the event.
4. Create a Black Friday content strategy that is unique
You have the potential to make big sales on Black Friday weekend. A strategy can help you reach your goals.
You can schedule posts using social media posting software in the lead up to Christmas shopping season. Hootsuite is the best but there are many other options such as Twittimer or Sprout Social.
Understanding how to create buzz around your brand’s offers and products is also important. You can reap huge rewards with a few videos, punchy copy, and carousel photos.
Instagram offers Stories as an option.
You should also avoid overloading your feed with too many posts. This can cause potential customers to become disenchanted and may even lead to them not liking your offer.
It should not take more than two to three organic posts per day.
You can also boost certain ads through Facebook Ads to increase reach. Facebook can be used to promote the best posts or to create ads for promotion.
It can be difficult to link directly to product pages, especially on Black Friday. People often look at several sites in an effort to find the best deal. They don’t want be searching, filtering and navigating through a large number of offers and deals.
Make it easy for your customers to see the campaign you have created on social media.
Each landing page can be used to increase conversions and decrease abandoned carts.
These could be specific products or services, or general categories. You might offer a Black Friday discount on ski goggles, so a link to the ski goggles Black Friday sales page can help people make a decision.
You might also offer discounts on specific brands, such as North Face ski wear.
Black Friday Promotion for North Face Ski Wear: Make sure the customer clicks on the ad to see a selection of North Face skiwear at a discount.
6. Run ads leading up to the holiday weekend
Pay-per-click ads during Cyber Monday and Black Friday tend to go up. This can be avoided by targeting customers and building your following before the big event.
Tell customers that you have the best Black Friday deals and encourage them to follow your social media or sign up to your emails.
Shoppers start searching for bargains as early as October. Many shoppers will purchase their major Christmas and new year purchases in November. This is especially true for high-ticket items such as vacation packages or technology.
It is fine to run an October ad highlighting the fact that “Black Friday this year will be bigger than ever”
Social media allows your promotions to be shared widely and possibly go viral. Black Friday news is a hot topic in the press, so it’s a good idea to get some buzz early.
Tell them to get involved and sign up for your newsletter to receive exclusive offers and discounts. Make sure they are ready to go to your site on Cyber Monday or Black Friday to grab those amazing savings. Not Amazon ….
7. Pre-Black Friday deals
You can also offer a few additional sales if everyone else is offering Black Friday sales. You don’t have to make it your headline item. You could also save big deals on Cyber Monday by slashing the price of your Samsung smartphone stock.
Offer discounts on older models, lower-spec models, and accessories instead.
Show them your great deals and offer to buy more.
Social media is a great way to make these deals go viral.
Most importantly, your ads must be seen by the right people to make the most sales.
You have great control over who sees your ads on Facebook, including Instagram. You can target people by age, location, and interest. Optimizing your advertising targeting is key to success in Black Friday marketing.
This is best done by knowing your audience. Knowing your target audience will help you choose the best time to run ads, what settings to use, and even which language to use.
Even though this level of targeting is extremely precise, ads targeting non-genuine accounts still pose a problem. Many fake and duplicate accounts are created on Facebook and Instagram and used to fraudulently engage.
After you have set your targeting, a significant percentage of your ads are viewable by bots, people not in your geo-target, and automated accounts. To make matters worse, if your retargeting campaigns or remarketing campaigns are running, these accounts will end up being targeted multiple times, costing you even more.
ClickCease provides click fraud protection for Facebook Ads. This helps to reduce the impressions of these non-genuine characters.
Ask us about our Facebook Ads Protection.
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