Black Friday is fast approaching, and businesses are actively planning how to handle customers’ physical and digital rush. A critical part of this process is sales preparation.
Whereas there are numerous ways to showcase your products to encourage purchase, picking the right options for Black Friday sales can be quite tricky. Thankfully, in this post, GoMarketing experts have compiled simple and actionable Black Friday campaign ideas that will distinguish you from the pack of competitors aggressively vying for customers’ attention. Sounds interesting? Let us dive in.
Following 9 Black Friday Marketing Ideas [+Examples]
- Run Daily or Hourly Flash Sales
- Create a Discount Wheel
- Publish Black Friday Gift Guides
- Create a Customer Referral Program
- Offer Mystery Boxes or Product Bundles
- Capitalize on Gift Card offers
- Cross-Sell with a Discount
- Give Your Loyal Fans a Royal Treat
- Social Media Contests and Giveaways
Business Lead Widget 1
Run Daily or Hourly Flash Sales
Harness the potential for flash sales to increase the rate of impulse purchases, encouraging consumers to buy your products on the spot.
Flash sales can improve your transactions by at least 40% when done right. More so, you enjoy better results when you incorporate email marketing in this campaign. Flash sale emails sent late afternoon tend to generate better results than lunch-time or midday flash sales.
The campaign can run for three to six hours, but hourly flash sales implemented by stores like HauteLook are sure to create more urgency, especially if you want to clear unpopular items in your stock.
Understandably, you want to sell virtually everything on Black Friday, but be careful to limit your product offerings and time wisely to maintain this strategy’s profitability.
Create a Discount Wheel
Add some element of gamification and mystery to your Black Friday Sales with a discount wheel. Here, you set up a spinning wheel on your site, which customers can “spin” to win various temporary discounts/coupons. It is a surefire way to bring some sense of fun and increase engagement, improving the likelihood of customers buying your products, especially when they feel they have won a reward available for a short time. Check out how UbiSoft practices this concept.
Publish Black Friday Gift Guides
Gift guides are a timely solution to your target customers, helping them pick the right gifts for their friends and family seamlessly. Most importantly, gift guides are a creative way to present your products to your targets without coming off as being salesy. They also direct buyers to purchase the gifts in your store, becoming an excellent tool for navigating your product pages. Check out how Amazon capitalizes on this trend on their website.
Strive to make your gift guides stand out from the pack to generate those Black Friday sales you desire. Make them specific to a certain group of people, for example, fashionistas, kids, women, men, foodies, etc. And ensure the titles grab the visitors’ attention. But do not overwhelm buyers with too many options. A good rule of thumb is to feature a maximum of 30 products in your gifts.
Create a Customer Referral Program
Referrals rank among the most trusted marketing forms because customers often rely on other people’s opinions when deciding on a purchase. A referral program is a cost-effective method for short-term and long-term gains. You can leverage the program to drive more sales on Black Friday and still use the new customers to drive more customers to your business.
PlushBeds referral program offers customers a $50 Amazon gift for every referred customer that purchases a mattress from the retailer using a referral link.
Learn what interests your customers the most to create an irresistible referral program while maintaining your profitability. And instill a sense of urgency by indicating the reward’s expiration.
Business Lead Widget 2
Offer Mystery Boxes or Product Bundles
Incorporate some suspense and fun in your Black Friday Campaign with mystery boxes. A mystery box is a bundle of gifts whose combined retail value is higher than the offer price. The best part is that the customer does not know the package’s constituents-it could be a premium gadget like iPad Pro or some other useful items. All in all, the customer gets value for their money. Still, the gambling nature associated with mystery boxes can entice customers to buy several boxes.
For customers looking for offers on several items but not ready to risk gambling on a mystery box, you can entice them with bundle products-a set of pre-bundled items sold at a discount. For instance, you can bundle certain groceries such as cornstarch, rice, green grams, and cooking oil and sell the whole bundle at a 25% discount off the total price. This McDonald’s Happy Meal is an excellent example of a bundle product.
Capitalize on Gift Card offers
Businesses often concentrate too much on product promotion that they forget that customers love buying gift cards too. Promoting your gift cards on Black Friday is a clever way of planning for your company’s future. One way is selling your gift cards at a reduced price. For instance, you can sell a $60 gift card at $50. Note that the card’s value remains at $60, only that customers can access them more affordably on the sales day. Down the road, the card recipients will buy your products and possibly become loyal customers.
Another way to promote gift cards is by offering a bonus on each card purchase. An ideal example of this is Taco Bells, which offered customers a free $5 eGift card for every $15 eGift card purchase.
Cross-Sell with a Discount
Cross-selling is an excellent way to take full advantage of making more sales to a current customer who is already on your website. It involves selling combos of 2-4 products that complement each other at a particular discount on the total. Complementary products are often displayed on a pop-up screen that allows customers to reject or accept the offers.
Take, for example, a customer buying a $49 striped dress from an online store. Products that can go well with the dress can be a $48 embroidered bag and $89 heels. Cross-selling comes in when the store offers to sell the 3-product combo at $166 rather than the total retail price of $186, giving the customer a $20 discount.
To crack cross-selling, ensure the copy message delivers true value to the customer. Secondly, create a sense of scarcity or urgency by stating that the offer is only valid for a certain duration or you have very few stock items.
Business Lead Widget 3
Give Your Loyal Fans a Royal Treat
If you have a loyalty program, email blast your loyal fans about exclusive offers you have in store for them ahead of the Black Friday marketing influx. This can help generate a buzz around your business when your competitors are still figuring what to do on the sales day.
Treat your loyal customers to some perks uniquely tailored to them. An excellent example of this is the Target Circle loyalty program. It gained over 20m members in the first two weeks after launch, becoming the country’s fastest-growing loyalty program. Besides earning 1% cashback on each purchase, Target Circle members received early access to 2019 Black Friday exclusive deals. The program saw Target customers spend 2-5% more on each visit.
Social Media Contests and Giveaways
Take customer engagement to the next level by hosting competitions and giveaways on your social media pages throughout Black Friday. A customer only needs to share, comment, or like a particular post on your page to participate. The effort on the user’s end may be minimal, but the prize is fantastic to you and them. They get a chance to win a gift, and you generate more traffic and possibly sales from increased post visibility. Derive some inspiration from these brands to create engaging and fun-filled social media posts that will boost your Black Friday goals.
Need Help with Your Creative Black Friday Ideas?
There you have them, creative ways to intensify your Black Friday Campaigns. Execute as many as you can, but wisely to sustain their profitability.
If you need a hand implementing these strategies, GoMarketing can help you build Black Friday campaigns that drive and exceed your desired results. Message us online today or call us at 805-413-7893 to initiate a conversation around your marketing needs.
