Specifically, Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending in the UK in 2018 was over £7 billion, while stateside the figures hit $717.5 billion for Black Friday alone, with individual consumers spending on average over $1,000. Money is being spent and brands are cashing in.
So, as an e-commerce business, how do you make the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and continue to reap the benefits for the end of the year?
The weeks around Black Friday and Cyber Monday are crucial, with deals running for longer and longer each year. It’s never just the day!
With that in mind, it’s critical to ensure you do the following to get your business set up for the big push:
Your planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday should begin well in advance, with your first customer communications at the beginning of October. That means your email campaigns need to be ready to go from the start of the month.
It’s time to get your customers thinking about the event and your potential deals, ensuring they’re primed to spend their money.
But when it comes to customer research, we know that as many as 82% of consumers do little or no pre-planning with regards to the products that they’ll be purchasing on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This indicates that consumers are ready to wait an see what offers are on and which retailers most capture their imagination and incentivise them to purchase.
It’s therefore all about the deals you push out on the days of the event and your approach to attracting new customers and re-engaging with existing customers.
Things shouldn’t end with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While it’s a fantastic opportunity to boost sales, it’s just the beginning of the holiday season and the start of your opportunity to impact your end of year profits.
Your real opportunity now comes with Retargeting.
During the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush, your website will have enjoyed increased levels of traffic (if you marketed your deals well). Customers will have viewed categories of products and individual products. They may have bought from you, or they may have left products abandoned in their basket.
All of this creates a huge opportunity and a pool of potential customers to retarget as soon as the main event finishes. Let’s call it Retargeting Tuesday.
These essential tips will help you make the most of the opportunity:
Simply blanket Retargeting all your users with the same message is a waste of the valuable work you’ve done over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Depending on the activity your users undertook on your website during the main event, you’ll understand their intent. For example, users than landed on your category pages but didn’t purchase, may have been interested in that category of products but didn’t feel the deals were enough. Retarget them with that same category, with an incentive to get them over the line.
Those that purchased products may benefit from a more generalised message about your upcoming deals for the rest of the holiday season. An abandoned basket may suggest an interest in that product but that it simply wasn’t the right option or price during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. That doesn’t mean the interest is lost; re-ignite it with the right Retargeting message.
How are you going to incentivise your potential customers following the slashed prices of the main event? Are you offering new deals and discounts in the run up to Christmas? Are you planning on offering deals on products that weren’t available over Black Friday?
Your approach post-event will depend on what you were able to sell over Black Friday Cyber Monday and what your business priorities are for the end of the year.
Create a compelling incentive for your customers and they’ll still be willing to part with their cash, even after the main event.
Your inventory will likely have fluctuated much over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period with products selling out or close to. Deals and offers will no doubt have changed multiple times.
It will be hard to keep track of during and after the event. But that mustn’t affect your Retargeting ads. You simply can’t afford to advertise products that are out of stock or with incorrect pricing. You may secure click-throughs, but customers won’t convert amid the frustration. In-Feed ads will solve this issue.
If you keep showing the same ad to the same users repeatedly without them taking any action, this will become frustrating for the user and impact their sentiment towards your brand. It will also waste your budget.
To avoid this, set a frequency cap on your ads so you don’t show the same ad over and over again to the same users. This will also help you conserve your budget and trim any wastage from your campaigns.
To learn more about Retargeting with Fluid Ads, contact us today and request a demo or understand how Fluid Ads can help you boost your sales before the end of the year.