Your business is thriving. Your sales are up. Your annual projections are high. This is going to be your year.
Enter 2020.
2020 Bingo Cards have become a newsworthy hit and not in a fun game-night kind of way. Sales are down in the wake of COVID-19 as consumer needs and behaviors have shifted.
Just as we think things are on the up and up, we’re seeing COVID-positive numbers hit a new record high. And the holiday season and after-thanksgiving sales are quickly approaching – a time when restaurants and small-business sales typically bulk up before heading into the post-holiday shopping slump.
If reliving this year feels anxiety inducing, take a breath. We have some good news.
There is still time to boost your end-of-year sales with these Black Friday marketing ideas
Black Friday Goes Online
Last year, TechCrunch reported a record-shattering $7.4 Billion in online sales during the four-day, post-Thanksgiving sales event.
This year, with rising COVID-19 cases and some states under stay-at-home orders, we can only expect that digital Black Friday Sales in 2020 will eclipse last year’s sales. With all of these expected online orders, it’s frankly past time to ask if your business’s digital environment is set up to capture your share of these online sales.
Sales and Marketing Strategy: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday Deals
With Black Friday less than a week away, there are still some actionable sales strategies and marketing techniques you can implement to boost your post-Thanksgiving sales strategy.
Sneak Peak: Black Friday Deals
If you want customers to visit your site during this year’s post-Thanksgiving sale, the most important thing you can do is tease your deals. After all, if a customer doesn’t know that you’re offering any deals or discounts, why would they visit your store?
While this may seem like a no-brainer, it’s one of the biggest mistakes a business can make. You need to get your deals out to all of your potential customers — AKA cross-promotion. Using a coordinated combination of emails, social posts, SEO, and potentially even mailers, you can promote your special sales while conveying the value of your business.
Offer a Unique Experience
Get creative with this one. Take a note from Barnes and Noble’s strategy to offer autographed copies of best selling books. You can also donate a percentage of your proceeds to a cause that is important to your customers. Every online order could correspond to exclusive access to a limited edition product or service that isn’t otherwise available for purchase.
No matter what your business sells, there is a way to offer a unique experience for your customers. And if you do it right, you’ll be able to set yourself apart from other online retailers — adding consumer value to your loyal customers.
Team Up With Other Businesses
Local businesses of all types have been especially harmed by COVID-19. You may have found a community of like-minded local businesses owners who are going through similar struggles. It can be helpful to talk to other people who can relate to you, but what if there was a way you could band together to help one another?
You have the opportunity to expand your own sales while helping fellow business owners in your community through coordinated efforts to sell bundle packages. As an added bonus, you can split the costs of advertising when you work together. This allows you to boost posts and reach more people without overspending — talk about a win win.
Email Marketing Magic + Landing Pages
Now is the perfect time to put that dusty email marketing list to use. With 39 billion daily email users, a Hubspot 2020 study found that email marketing is one of the best channels for generating an astoundingly high return on investment — coming in at 3,800% ROI. In this study, 59% of respondents say marketing emails “influence their purchase decisions.” Those are good odds. And if you already have an email marketing system, what do you have to lose?
Email segmenting and list building empowers you to quickly target new or previous purchasers and advertise your top-selling items. Just ensure that your products are clickable and lead to the individual product pages — this will increase sales.
#Hashtag Wisely
Outside of the regular hashtags you may associate with your brand, be sure to pick up the Black Friday and other sales-related hashtags that are running. These hashtags will vary depending on the platform and the year. You may want to analyze these hashtags up until the day you actually make your social media posts, as different hashtags will be trending on different days.
If you are using the post to drive traffic to your website and online sales, make sure that the post is correctly linked. Because customers who travel to your website via hashtags are typically new customers, you need to create the most positive user experience to increase the likelihood that this user will make a purchase with you.
Extended Sales
Most businesses have adapted the original Black Friday holiday and morphed it into a 3-4 day event including early-bird Thanksgiving day specials, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. While this may not feel like a novel idea, you should consider expanding your sale to cover the full four days so you can increase your potential sale window.
In the past, many businesses have stuck to their designated day — for instance small businesses only offering sales on Saturday. However, this year has shown us, more than ever, the importance of being flexible, offering services online, and creating products that appeal to and help the consumer.
Trust the Expert Marketers at Brand Mark Digital to Boost Your Black Friday Sales
As your business makes these and other last-minute tweaks to your Black Friday marketing and sales strategy, you may realize that there is a lot more that goes into developing a coordinated digital campaign to boost your sales. The most successful campaigns feature multi-faceted content plans and amplification strategies that have been months in the making.
You’re probably not going to turn around a nice branded video before the end of the Black Friday weekend. But that doesn’t mean you can’t employ some new campaigns to boost your annual sales before the end of 2020.
Outside of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, there is still a month-worth of digital marketing your business can engage in leading up to the December holidays. And the team at Brand Mark Digital is here to help.
Stay tuned for our Holiday Marketing Guide coming soon, and reach out in the meantime if you’re ready to ramp up your marketing ROI!
