Make the most of your Black Friday marketing

Intro

Well, black Friday and cyber Monday ey? 2 dates fixed in the minds of consumers on the run-up to the big one… Christmas! You’ll see adverts of slashing prices, and companies saying they’re barely making a profit. But what can you do to maximise your profits? Putting a sale on is necessary, after all, that’s what the consumers expect! But you only need a big discount when you’re marketing isn’t up to scratch.

Common Strategies

Most companies will employ the basics, a countdown on the website and a sale section, but there’s so much more you can do. Black Friday gives us the opportunity to flex our mysterious muscles, now’s the time to drive up a sense of intrigue that ultimately ends with the consumer on our website on the big day. Give them teasers through email campaigns and look to tie this in with your social media or content strategy, ensure that it’s clear something is going to happen.

Think about starting early, slowly build up to the event throughout November and don’t reveal what it is you’re going to be offering. Make that intrigue, get people thinking and imprint yourself in their mind ahead of the big day, and I can guarantee you’ll be one of the first stops on the day.

What many retailers will do at this event, is to try to create a sense of urgency, make you believe that if you don’t act now you’ll miss out forever. Great examples of this are ‘deal of the hour’ or Amazon’s infamous missed section, where the deals you’ve already missed out on are on display. The success of this comes from the ability to affect consumer behaviour, by showing what others have got it creates an ‘in’ group that looks admirable from the outside, whereas in reality, it’s just someone showing off that their marketing is working.

The percentages and timers used here on Amazon look to incite the consumer to take an action, and give them a choice to make. Do they purchase now while there’s some still left? Or do they risk it and wait until later after they’ve deliberated? With the latter, the doubt is instilled in their mind that it might not be available, so the whole process is accelerated and effectively it drives the consumer to act on impulse.

The channels that are most effective are digital as the ability to personalise and add moving, animated features are more prevalent. These features allow a better user experience and at a time of heightened activity, help you to stand out.

Takeaway

Look at what plans you have in place, what content you have scheduled and think, what does that elicit from the consumer. When there is a period of heightened marketing activity, creating an emotional response from the consumer, dual-encodes the memory in their long-term memory and increases the chances of you being recalled in future.

Conclusion

The opportunities with Black Friday are vast, but making sure you’re the one who capitalises is a tricky task. It takes planning, strategy and solid implementation to achieve any sort of results.