Quick Tip Episode – How To Start Preparing For Black Friday / Cyber Monday in 2020
In the podcast:
00:30 – Episode Overview
01:13 – Why You Need to Prepare Early
02:11 – Think About What Your Offer is Going to Be
03:34 – Create a Buzz Building Campaign
04:35 – Narrow Your Google Ad Campaigns
05:15 – Segment Your Audiences & Treat Your VIPs Very Well
06:39 – Re-engaged with Past Customers
07:20 – Have a Strong Abandoned Cart Email Sequence
Episode Overview
Ilana:
This particular episode is a quick tip episode and I’m going to be talking to you all about what you can do to prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which is coming up on the 27th of November.
At the time of this recording, we are in October. And let me tell you from experience, people are preparing now with you know, five to six weeks out from when Black Friday is coming.
They’re starting to prepare now. And in this episode, I’m going to talk to you about a bunch of strategies that you can do now in preparation for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So let’s get stuck right in.
Why You Need to Prepare Early
So firstly, before I start giving my tips on what you can do now, you might be wondering, why would you need to start now?
Why do you need to start so far out preparing for an event that’s like at the end of November? Why do you need five or six weeks in preparation?
And the answer is because if you wait till the last minute, then what you’re gonna find is that advertising costs are super, super expensive because everyone is advertising in that particular time period.
So many savvy business owners start preparing now. So they don’t need to rely on all their outreach, advertising campaigns during the most expensive time. So you can make preparations now.
So that you know at the time of when Black Friday and Cyber Monday is really coming up, you can pretty much only run your very nicely seasoned retargeting campaigns and your advertising costs are way lower than what they would be if you didn’t prepare.
Think About What Your Offer is Going to Be
Okay, so the first thing you gotta do is now you need to start thinking about what your offer is going to be.
That is assuming you are going to run it off and start creating your Black Friday, Cyber Monday landing pages now. Okay, what I actually like to do for the landing pages now is start, like, you know, developing, as I said, what your offer is, but also some kind of email capture form for people to register their interest in what will be your offer, you don’t necessarily have to give the specifics of the offer.
I’ve seen people run advertising campaigns saying, Hey guys, we’re gonna want the most awesome offer during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all you gotta do is click on this link and register your interest. And we’ll notify you when it becomes available.
So they didn’t even say what the offer was going to be. But they teased the fact that there was going to be an offer, and for people to put in their email address to register for it, which then obviously, there’ll be emailed about, but then they’ve got the discretion to choose whether they think it’s a good deal or not.
Okay, really start thinking about your offer now. And even if you’re not sure what it is, start creating your landing pages now teasing the fact that an offer might be coming with an email capture form, and I would start promoting that right now on social media. Okay, so that’s step one.
Create a Buzz Building Campaign
And this kind of relates to step two, which is to create a buzz-building campaign. So like I said, they need to register for interest.
And so what you want to do ideally is on social media people to be sharing that. And you’re sort of advertising this now before you really need to rely on the expensive time to be advertising.
You also want to have a very coordinated buzz-building campaign across multiple platforms. So please don’t just do it on Instagram or Facebook.
I also like to do it on Google Display, and also YouTube.
And the idea here, as I said, is to build up a really good retargeting list, and an email list that you only really need to run during the most expensive time which is a few days prior, and also during Black Friday, Cyber Monday because as you say, you know, Friday to Monday right, you’ve got three days there.
So, your goal is to build up a nicely-being and seasoned retargeting list, okay?
Narrow Your Google Ad Campaigns
The next tip I have is to also, you know, keep retargeting during this period as well. Make sure that you’re also narrowing your Google ad campaigns as you get closer to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and really only purchase very high intent keywords.
This is a super expensive time to be advertising just before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So really, you’re just going for the low low hanging fruit, the high purchase intent, keywords to make sure that you’re not really wasting, very expensive ad spend. Okay?
Segment Your Audiences & Treat Your VIPs Very Well
The other tip I have is to also treat your VIPs very well. So segment your audience, both in your email marketing software and also within your retargeting lists, and you want to segment them to show them your best offer, perhaps you’re going to create some kind of bundle or something which is a really, really good deal for people.
Remember, this is the biggest event of the year, and many, many businesses go kind of all out with their offers, you know, a 10% discount, I believe, during Black Friday is not really a massive discount for people, especially when you’re competing against other businesses who are doing very, very big discounts.
Now, this is also to say you don’t actually have to discount as a way of doing an offer, I’m actually a big fan of not discounting and just offering extras as a value add so that there’s a high perceived value, and incorporating bonuses as a form of your offer, rather than cutting the cost.
So it doesn’t always have to be you know, 40 to 50% discount and sort of a cut in that revenue, you can increase the average order value by including bonuses for it.
So I just wanted to say that as well.
Re-engaged with Past Customers
The other tip I have is to start re-engaging lapsed customers who perhaps have not purchased for a while.
And this obviously does relate to eCommerce, but not just eCommerce even leads that may have lapsed or past customers to try and win them back. And possibly some kind of offer, which is relevant for them as well.
You need to make sure that your website is very mobile optimized. And I know people who make sure that their website has the capacity for an influx of traffic so that it loads extra fast. So possibly it’s worth exploring that with your hosting company.
Have a Strong Abandoned Cart Email Sequence
And the last tip I have is to make sure that you also have a strong abandoned cart email sequence with ads in conjunction with that to follow up.
So for example, say someone adds something to their cart and does not buy. Obviously an email marketing campaign kicks in to win them back.
But also, you’ve created a retargeting campaign for that shopping cart abandonment. So you would include the audience of the people who add the item to their cart and exclude the people who have purchased and make sure you show ads to those people as well.
That is low hanging fruit for you. And just because somebody abandons their shopping cart, does not necessarily mean that they don’t want to buy the product, perhaps life kind of got in the way, etc.
So those are my tips in preparation for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I’m a big fan of this time of year because it’s just a huge online event. I also often snap up a whole bunch of deals.
And Yep, so hop on the bandwagon and make sure you start preparing Now, while we are the time of this recording five, that five to six weeks out.
So thanks for listening, we’re going to create some show notes of this episode. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, and you like this podcast, I would also be very, very grateful.
If you would, please leave me an iTunes review. It would mean the world to me. And thank you so much for listening, and I’ll talk to you on other episodes.