Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Hi everybody! As you may know, Black Friday is already upon us and Cyber Monday is very soon to follow. This sales frenzy is beneficial to not only the customers, but to the businesses that get a unique chance to increase turnover, get new clients and win back the old ones, and generally bring their ecommerce business to a new level. So today I want to remind you about the core marketing measures that will get your webstore ready to special day marketing.

Why is Black Friday and Cyber Monday important for your e-commerce business?

Black Friday dates back to 1966, long before online stores even existed. Only in 2000s it took first tentative steps into ecommerce and brought Cyber Monday with itself. Not only did these marketing activities assimilated into online stores, but they also stole a fair share of physical store customers. Nowadays a typical visitor of retail stores on BFCM days is a young person under the age of 25 who has free time to spend it on shopping. As a rule, they still live with their parents, have an average level of income and are hunting for large discounts. Compared to them, Internet shoppers have a larger average check and volume of purchases. The reason is that customers with high income value their time, and online shops allow them not to spend it in crowds and long queues. Therefore, wasting such a great opportunity as Black Friday and Cyber Monday for an online store will be a great mistake.

Now let's have a look at the main aspects of getting your online store ready for BFCM:

Visual preparation

To prepare visual component of the online store, you'll need to create:

• thematic design for festive atmosphere.
• special catalogs of goods on sale so that visitors can quickly find it.
• thematic slides and banners to offer discounts and additional offers (two-for-one discount or free shipping within an hour).
• popup messages to offer coupons and promo codes. If you are short of time or ideas to create your own promotional messages, simply use the ready-made free modules (here are the Free Promo PopUp for Magento 2 and Free Promo PopUp for PrestaShop 1.7 buttons)

To learn more about an online store preparation, follow the link to our article Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing Strategy.

Technical aspect

If you expect an influx of visitors, you need your web site to work like a clock, without interruptions and breakdowns; otherwise customers will leave you for competitors. Make sure that your site is ready not only visually, but also technically. You may need to enable autoscalling for your hosting account or boost your hosting plan. It is crucial that your online store meets the following parameters:

• stability,
• functionality
• high download speed
• working cache
• high search speed
• simple ordering and payment process

It's better to take care of these aspects in advance in order to test them out through and through.

Free shipping + a bonus. Free shipping is one of the key factors of a successful sale - just don't forget to advertise it as much as the goods themselves. However, free shipping is one of the most popular marketing trick, so you won't be the only one offering it. What can you do in this situation? Raise the stakes and add a special bonus to the free delivery- for example, an extra fast delivery for the customers from your city or a small gift. Don't forget you take care about technical side of this - hire more couriers for the sales and stock up a sufficient number of gifts.

Targeted advertisement on social media

This activity is great for bringing new customers and reminding the old ones about your business. The peculiarity of targeted advertising is that it shows only to the audience with certain interests and characteristics, and it is your responsibility to configure it right. We hope you have studied your potential customers well enough, because for targeting ads you will need to know at least these basic characteristics:

Demographic: gender, age

Geographical: language and locations

Social: marital status, children, education, personal interests and hobbies.

All this information will prove useful for the further marketing activities. When you know what you're aiming at, it's easier to hit the target.

The best place for targeted advertising is social media. First of all, they allow to gather the most complete and reliable information about potential customers. Second, social media allows to create advertisement in many forms: text, media or multimedia. Third, it is a good value for money, since it doesn't cost much and gives you valuable information about the traffic.

The benefits of targeted advertisement are numerous, and the main one is the absence of negative effect of your ads, since you offer your products to the audience who are interested in it. Also, targeted advertising is easy to manage and track - you can always adjust the advertising company if necessary. Another huge advantage is that targeting advertising creates a positive image of your site in search engines. Remember, the more target audience will come to your landing pages and interact with it, the higher the ranking of your online store in search engines will be.

Active work with existing customers

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales is time to not only attract new clients, but also to prove to your old customers they were right to choose you. The best way to remind them about yourself is through email marketing tools. Send them a letter offering personal bonuses like:

• special offers
• discount coupons
• gift cards
• promo codes
• additional loyalty discounts, etc.

We have already dedicated many articles to holiday email marketing; you can find one of them here. There's just one important thing to keep in mind: when creating email messages, make sure to personalize them. Show your client he or she is unique and valid for you, that you care for them and know their preferences. People like to be special, and they will return to your online store to get this feeling again.

I hope these tips will prove useful for your online shop. You can use them as a guide to get ready for any holiday marketing activity - just don't be afraid to experiment!

If you have questions or suggestions, you are welcome to leave them in the comments!

Have a nice day and successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

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