Black Friday & Cyber Monday: 6 Marketing Ideas To Do A Profitable Holiday Season

6 Marketing Ideas For Black Friday And Cyber Monday

Do A Black Friday Email Campaign

Black Friday is a crowded place—every brand you know might be putting out some sought of  deals or exciting offers to entice customers. So in order to stand out and do decent sales, you need to create an email marketing campaign.

For creating a successful Cyber Week campaign, the first thing you need to do is to analyse your email list.

Pro Tip: If you're someone who doesn’t have an email list, don't worry. You can start collecting contacts immediately by joining a popular community like Buffer or by running Facebook ads. A rule of thumb when it comes to attracting new subscribers is by giving them something for free or letting them know about exclusive deals before anyone else.

Coming back to the email list, the next step is to segment your subscribers.

Segmentation is important as each subscriber is unique, and a little personalisation can go a long way in making your emails the ones they actually look forward to opening.

You can segment your list into targeted groups like:

• Demographics: age, location, and income level.
• Engagement rate: highly active subscribers, occasional clickers, and inactive subscribers.
• Preferences: product categories, preferred communication channels, and shopping frequency.

When it comes to scheduling your emails, the timing is entirely up to you. That said, most industry leaders tend to start about two weeks before the sale. During this time, they send emails like:

• Teaser email: Build customer's excitement by dropping hints into upcoming offers.
• Announcement: Introduce deals and offers with a calendar link as CTA to save the date.
• Launch: Notify subscribers as the offers go live and encourage them to shop before it’s gone.
• Last chance: Sent just before the sale ends to create a sense of urgency to make a purchase
• Extended Period: The offer gets extended by a day or two, and the customers are notified they can still grab the deal.

Actively Promote The Deal Across Social Media

One of the easiest ways to drum up your Black Friday deals and inspire some sales is to do a social media campaign.

For creating one, start by identifying your target audience and goals. Your goals can be something like increasing brand awareness, attracting more website visitors, raising the number of followers, or growing your email list subscribers.

Next, based on your goals, create social media content.  

When it comes to creating content, don't just post images of your product; instead, promote your deals in a way that is natural, has consistent styling, and is creative.

Here are some ideas to show your contents in the best light:

• Your customers love to show off their new purchases on social media. Reshare those posts and reviews to make your customers day as well as to keep your content fresh and relevant.
• Take your content to the next level by partnering up with influencers. They’ve got that special bond with their followers—which means when they promote your product, a large audience is compelled to make a purchase.
• Facebook ads are the perfect way to spread the word and make landing pages relevant to the campaign. Simply link your Black Friday landing page when creating the ad; this way every click will take shoppers straight to your site.

Now that you have a good idea of all your content, it's time to schedule them.

Your scheduling strategy depends entirely up to you, but keeping a regular posting routine can do wonders for your social media visibility.

Plus, pay close attention to posting hours. The audience’s location and time zones are key in making sure your message reaches at the right time.

Make your site mobile-friendly

According to Adobe, Cyber Week 2023 was all about mobile shopping, with 51.8% of sales coming from mobile devices. That’s up from 2022’s 49.9%, and experts are confident that the numbers are going to rise even higher this year. As a result, a valuable idea is to optimise your website for mobile devices.

A good first step in optimising websites is to make sure your website theme has responsive design.

Check your website on multiple devices and verify whether the images are loadable, texts are readable, menus are easy to navigate, and buttons are properly placed—all in all gives a smooth experience.

Then, if you notice something is loading slowly or is not looking great (e.g., a pop-up ad), make a call to your designers and developers to take a look.

Install A Chatbot On Your Website

AI has dramatically influenced every industry and workflow, and holiday sales are no different.

According to Salesforce, AI in the 2023 holiday season has influenced a whopping 51% in global sales through target offers, personalised recommendations, and generative AI chat services. So if you're looking for another Black Friday marketing idea, consider installing a chatbot on your website.

There are a wide range of chatbots available, but typically they are categorised into either rule-based or powered by artificial intelligence. These days, AI-powered or conversational chatbots are the most popular, as they can handle conversations beyond predefined decision flow.

Another thing is training your chatbot. The basis of training your chatbot used to be highly technical but modern conversational chatbot like Mevrik comes with no-code functionality. This means you can easily add your information source and the algorithm will train on it.

Chatbot provides plenty of advantages for business, holiday season or not, including:

• The chatbot can work beyond the company's business hours. Customers can raise questions any time of the day, and they will easily get answers.

• With improved workflows, chatbots can analyse real-time texts and recommend better products and deals that meet customers needs.

• Chatbots allow you to answer customer questions in multiple languages, which means you can connect with a large pool of customers and boost revenue.

Quick Tip: You can easily create a chatbot using Mevrik CX AI, and right now—during our Black Friday sale—it is available at 75% off. Just give your bot a name, upload your info, and vóila—it will start answering every customer question without missing a beat.

Give Customers More Time With An Extended Black Friday Sale

Some people on your customer base might only discover your deals at the last minute, while others may want to return for more. Whatever the case is, it's a good idea to extend your Black Friday rush by a day or two.

By extending your Black Friday offers, you give all your customers an equal opportunity to enjoy great discounts.

Plus it’s a smart move if you have excess inventory. That way, you can sell more products and reduce the need for heavy post-holiday clearance sales.

Make The Checkout Process Simple

As customers reach the end of their shopping spree, doubts might start to creep into their minds about whether to make a purchase. And if the checkout process is not easy, they may decide to just leave the entire thing behind.

Thus, it is important to have an efficient and transparent checkout process— so the customer doesn't face any obstacle when making a purchase.

Here are some key ways to make the checkout process easy:

• Order summary: Do your customer a favour and display as much relevant information as possible upfront, including subtotals, applied taxes, shipping fees, and the final total. This will minimise any surprises for them and increase their trust in your service.

• Coupon Code Box: Add a coupon code box directly above the total price. Make the box easy to find by labelling it clearly as 'Enter Promo Code' —so customers can apply any discounts before completing their purchase.

• Guest Checkout: Allow the customers to make a purchase without signing up for your website. Simply create a checkout form that asks all the essential information to record a purchase and make a delivery.

• Multiple payment methods: Include popular payment options like debit/credit card, PayPal, gPay, Apple Pay, and even Payoneer if your audience prefers.

• One-click payments: Give your customers the option to save their payment details after the first purchase. This way, they can easily retrieve it for any future transactions

Final Thoughts 

While the holiday season is meant to be for relaxing, it often comes with a good deal of stress, particularly around gift shopping and budgeting. That’s why many customers look forward to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to make things easier.

As a business, this is your perfect opportunity to draw in new customers with exclusive discounts. Use the ideas shared in this blog to market your offers and drive your biggest sales till date.  

Here’s to a successful holiday season 🎄🎅🏼