Black Friday has become more and more popular over the past few years and the sales that occur on this day have skyrocketed! The term ‘Black Friday’ originally came about when police officers used the phrase to describe the chaos that resulted when large numbers of suburban tourists came into the city to begin their holiday shopping in the early 1960s. However, almost 60 years later it is used to describe the time that businesses run big sales on their products giving us, the consumer, the chance to get some bargains before Christmas! Black Friday sales not only take place in physical stores anymore, but they also run on the internet.
As a business owner it is really important that you do everything you can to make sure that you run attractive sales, but you also need to be sure that your website can be found on Black Friday. There are a number of different ways that you can try and get your website found, and we have spoken to our expert team to give you a more detailed insight.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Recommendations
Here at YOMA we have an expert team that has ran many successful campaigns for Black Friday. We spoke with our PPC manager, Nancy, to get her input on what you should be doing before Black Friday, she said the following, “I would recommend that you increase your campaign budget 7 days leading up to Black Friday in order to increase visibility and in order to keep up with the increase in search demand. Target Black Friday specific keywords as part of your keyword based search campaigns. For the shopping campaign we would recommend setting up a Black Friday related Merchant Centre promotion offering a money off or percentage discount for purchases made on Black Friday and displaying that it is for a limited time only.”
As Nancy rightfully says, it is really important that you increase your campaign budget a few days before Black Friday. We would recommend that you do this because if you leave it any longer than a week before then it can be very hard for people to see your adverts as it does seem to get very competitive during this time.
Another thing that we should mention from Nancy’s quote is that it is vitally important that you target specific brand Black Friday keywords. By making sure that you are using specific Black Friday keywords you can be sure that your traffic is looking to buy in the Black Friday deals. It is crucial that you look at keywords with high volume with transactional intent. Transactional intent is used to describe someone that is looking to make a purchase, these are likely to be high quality traffic.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Recommendations
Not only do we have a top quality team of PPC specialists here at YOMA, but we also have a great team of SEO professionals. I caught up with our PPC manager, Jonathan, to get an understanding of how you should run your SEO to be sure that you have a successful Black Friday. Jon said “When it comes to the Black Friday sale, the key is to remember that it happens every year. Ensure you’re producing an evergreen Black Friday & Cyber Monday landing page which can be reused. The last thing you want to do is create a new Black Friday page every year as essentially you’ll be starting from scratch from an SEO and organic perspective. Keep the URL nice and generic, but still tailored to your main product range. Remember to keep dates and time sensitive details away from the URL. More specific details such as the date can be included in the on-page content. Having just one Black Friday landing page means that any external backlinks you earn that point to it are not wasted, and authority will build over time.”
As you can see this quote is quite different from the quote given by Nancy and this is because PPC is something that you can work on and see results in the near future, however it can often take a long time to see results from SEO and this can often put people off or demotivate people doing it.
I personally found the quote from Jon really insightful and useful, especially where he says “Ensure you’re producing an evergreen Black Friday & Cyber Monday landing page which can be reused every year”. I think this is something that a lot of businesses & business owners do not think about as they think they need to create brand new, top quality content each year however this is not the case. By keeping a page live all year round then it can help the page gather authority and it gives it a better chance of ranking each year. As touched on earlier, SEO can take a long time to gather results so if you feel like you’ve missed your chance this year look on to next year! Take this time and opportunity to come up with a really clear plan for next year and look at getting some authority behind your Black Friday page.
Email Marketing Recommendations
Email marketing is one of the best ways for you to display your products and services without spending an absolute fortune! Whilst it is a very useful marketing tool you do also need to accept that you will get a lot of people that either do not open or will not get back to you. Here at YOMA our team conduct email marketing for a number of our clients, and when I caught up with them for some tips on how to have a successful Black Friday, this is what they said, “First and foremost it is vital that people actually know that your company will be running a Black Friday sale, to make sure you achieve this send out emails a couple weeks in advance announcing some of the sales you will be running. Secondly, make your emails eye-catching! Make sure that you have a snappy subject line like ‘10% off everything!’ so people are enticed by your email and will want to see more. Finally, it is a good idea to look at what your competitors are doing. Whilst we do not recommend completely ripping off your competition, it is a good idea to keep an eye on what they’re doing and take some ideas off them if you think they’ll work for your business.”
This is an interesting and useful point because although this information does not seem too complex, it is information that people don’t take advantage of and these things are not done by a lot of businesses. Something that I have never really considered is the amount of businesses that will not correctly promote their Black Friday sale. As our team of experts said, you need to send out an email a week or two before the sale to really get people excited about it, if your business does not do this then you are just banking on people finding your website from other channels (PPC, SEO, Social Media etc.), the less channels you have for this campaign, the less likely you are to experience a successful Black Friday.
Touching on another point from the quote above, it is really important that your email subjects are snappy, interesting and grabs peoples attention. According to ‘Templafly’ the average office worker gets around 121 emails a day! With this in mind, you need to make sure that your email stands out and this has to be done with subject line of the email. Make sure you get straight to the point and display something that people will be interested in, for example for Black Friday your headline could be ‘20% off all products this Black Friday!’ something like this will grab the recipients attention and you have a good chance that they’ll open your email.
Social Media Marketing Recommendations
Social media has grown massively over the past 10 years and while we enter the ‘metaverse’ it is likely that social media is only going to carry on growing. You may have ran some social media campaigns for Black Friday before, but there are some new things that you need to consider. I caught up with the head of our social media for more information about what you should be doing for Black Friday this year. “Social Media is such a wide spectrum at the moment and depending on what platform you are promoting your sale on, you may have to change your strategy. To prevent spending lots of time on your strategy for all the different platforms I would recommend being more direct. Look at your data and understand who your audience is, if your audience is males between the ages 15-24 then it would be good to promote your sale on Instagram and Twitter, as these are platforms that people in this age bracket use the most. However, if your target audience is parents between 35-44 then Facebook should be where you are promoting your sale.”
Something which is interesting from this quote is the idea that you shouldn’t spend lots of time (and money) creating a strategy for all platforms, you should be more direct in your approach. By reviewing data insights regarding your target audience you can get a good idea of what social media platforms you should be targeting. While a lot of people may have the opinion that you should be promoting your sale on all platforms because then you are likely to have more traffic, you must remember that this will not be quality traffic and this will therefore affect your conversion rate.
What Do Our Clients Think?
Here at YOMA we have lots of different clients that conduct business in many different industries. As we have such a wide range of clients their thoughts and opinions on strategies often differ, however, they could all agree that Black Friday is a massive opportunity to increase your profits. We spoke to Giovanna from George Hill Timber, a successful timer merchant, and she said the following “Black Friday is an opportunity to connect with potential customers and consolidate business relationships with existing clients. During this time, it’s particularly crucial for businesses to learn how to communicate effectively and empathise with the end-users. Black Friday should aim to target the customers’ requirements at that time of year with good quality offers and effective communication in order to meet the real needs of the customers and maximise profit.”
We completely agree with Giovanna’s quote and we think that it raises some good points. Not only is Black Friday about appealing to new customers but it also gives you the opportunity to strike up a strong relationship with existing customers, which you should always look to do.
Our Take on Black Friday
It is likely that Black Friday is going to be different this year because of external factors, like the cost of living, so we can’t be 100% on how consumers are going to act this year. To get a better understanding of our what we think Black Friday will be like this year I caught up with our Marketing Director, Paul. Paul said “Black Friday will create a mixed reaction from both consumers and retailers every year, but this time around it’s set to create a bigger challenge than ever. Consumers will be torn by the concept of saving, only spending when needing to and the opportunity to get more for their money. Advertisers need to protect their squeezed margins on their low stock holdings but won’t want to miss any spikes in trading at a time of year that is so crucial.
This year will be time for advertisers to be definitive. Really look at the offers and strategies they can undertake and make a judgement if they will stand out. Consumers are fatigued by perceived deals that aren’t genuine value so will be cautious. On this basis, targeting a big new audience with a weak offer could be detrimental. I expect to see more brand actively not engaging in Black Friday for these reasons.
Advertisers shouldn’t overlook their existing or prior customers. Use Black Friday to bring customers back may be more cost effective than challenging for a new audience. Rewarding loyalty will be returned.”
This quote from Paul really helped solidify my understanding of Black Friday this year and what we should expect. I think that one of the most important and poignant things from Pauls quote is the idea that a lot of consumers nowadays feel like the sales aren’t genuine. When promoting your product you should keep this in mind and consider what you and your business can do to increase the likelihood of people converting. By promoting your unique selling points (USPs), like free timed shipping, it will encourage customers to by from your business as they feel like they are getting a great deal.
If you need a help with your Black Friday marketing this year please get in touch with a member of our team and allow YOMA to take the stress out of your hands!
