How To Prepare Your Business For Black Friday [ 2020 Checklist ]
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are nearing!!
Undoubtedly, the Black Friday season will look completely different this year for many retailers. The traditional door-busting events will be set to a minimum and the online shopping doors will likely be at peak this time.
Black Friday season is days away and the small businesses are facing a hard time to bring an amazing and anticipating shopping experience to their store’s visitors.
Almost 115 million people flock to online stores to find the best deals between the months of November and December. The large influx of customers indulges in finding the best offers and discounts.
Just because you are a small or medium-scale business does not mean that you cannot take advantage of this Black Friday and Cyber Monday season. Though it seems a challenging part for the retailers, when planned right, the retailers can prepare their store ready high to meet the unexpected crowd in their store.
Let us dive in deeper to know how to prepare your business for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday season.
- Why prepare your business plan for Black Friday now?
- Three process pre-plan your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
- Promotional Campaigns
- A 10- point checklist for the upcoming Black Friday sales that works for your store
- Get stocked and staffed up
- Organize amazing delivery optionS
- Showcase your in-store stock in search engines
- Prepare your store to handle the extra traffic
- Stick towards providing intelligent discounts and coupons
- Design the store layout/landing page
- Create an online marketing strategy
- Provide attractive incentives to potential customers
- Turn your seasonal shoppers into year-round customers
- Ensure to give spontaneous responses
- Are you ready for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales?
Why prepare your business plan for Black Friday now?
Black Friday is not too far!! In that case, preparing your business now will help you to avoid the last-minute hassle. There are many reasons why businesses and eCommerce stores rush up in preparing their business days before the Black Friday season
- Many shoppers dwell in shopping even before the Black Friday season
- You will have more time to study your audience and provide offers accordingly
- You can also take advantage of the emotional triggers and other important days before the Black Friday season
- Attract a shopping crowd to your business through email campaigns
Across the years, every business has taken a huge hit, and thanks to the technologies that made it possible. On the contrary, the current pandemic has left many small business owners struggling to stay afloat.
In this locked up situation, starting things earlier will payback good deeds to the business. If you are a busy and occupied business owner, there are high chances of missing things, especially during the Black Friday season.
- Without any hassle, planning things accordingly particularly earlier will help you to add some essential features.
- Optimize your landing page for the Black Friday season accordingly
- Stick towards the experts’ opinions
- Ensure to give a tight competition to your opponents
Every business takes the loop of priority and deems them less important works. But, this is not going to happen in the upcoming Black Friday season. As we are going to prepare things early, you will enough time to run an AB testing to optimize your site accordingly after it. So, start your Black Friday preparations now!
Three process pre-plan your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales
Before initiating the Black Friday sales process, a pre-plan will save you at times. There are various ways to pre-plan your Black Friday sales. Yet, I am enlisting the top 3 most favorite and popular pre-plan strategies in the marketer’s world.
No secret, let us go into the three pre-plan processes to be an early bird in your realm.
Email Marketing
Email marketing, undoubtedly the most powerful marketing strategy, occupies the major priority. Email marketing will help a business owner to create engagement, traffic to your online shop, and consistently build your community too.
When you have a good list of potential customers, you can send them newsletters and make them work. Newsletters are a piece of delivery agent that delivers the particular information. So, curating it correctly with essential stuff means a lot to your business. Do not forget to include your offers, early-bird discounts, and other benefits for your customers in this Black Friday sales 2020.
To make it even clear, you can segment your customers and create different mails to attract customers under every category. For instance, in your email list, you can find customers ranging from daily visitors to rare visitors. So, focusing on the potential visitors and comforting them brings you increased sales at a possible ratio.
According to Hubspot, business owners who used segmented campaigns get around a 760% increase in revenue. So, why not try it on your own and experience the results?
Social Media
Email marketing and social media platforms weigh the same in the marketing world. If you already use a social media scheduler and are popular on the social media platforms, then gear up your presence even more than before. As Black Friday Season has been nearing, it is the right time to increase the expectation of your followers.
Try to conduct fun events, giveaways, and make them engaged on your page. Plan each and every session progressively and make sure it relates to your Black Friday deals too. For instance, if you are conducting an Instagram poll against Women’s accessories vs Men’s accessories, you might get an idea of how many of your followers wish to get discounts under women vs men’s accessories.
You can tune and optimize your discount and offer deals accordingly. You can also conduct polls against products or brands too. It will help you to know more about your audience and make your Black Friday sales fitty. When you pick to schedule Black Friday content on a particular day, include things like teasers for products, gift guides, etc.
Promotional Campaigns
Apart from your posts, email subject lines, and other efforts, promoting your deals and products seems far important. As Black Friday is a notable event for both online shoppers, promotional campaigns stay supportive to all the business owners. Here are some of the promotional campaign ideas to put forth in our Black Friday preparation.
- Try to go live on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc
- Use Charity as a powerful weapon
- Give a mystery offer through your emails
- Apart from cashback, try to give a unique offer to your customers
- Do not forget to use black Friday hashtags
Once you have a pre-plan to encounter the upcoming Black Friday sales, then it will be a cotton bunch that won’t trouble you much. When the days are nearer, help yourself and take back a seat and watch your plans executing on the right track as per your plan.
A 10- point checklist for the upcoming Black Friday sales that works for your store
Now, you are ready with a pre-plan to kickstart your Black Friday sales early. So, what do you do when the season is nearing? And, what makes you sure about your sales hit in Black Friday 2020?
Yes, you got it right. A checklist! A checklist is absolutely an essential factor before looping your mind into the Black Friday sales. This Black Friday 2020 will be a different season when compared to the previous ones. Every online business owner has been looking forward to increasing their sales to the peak. You may be a startup or a well-popular entrepreneur, every business needs a Black Friday checklist to withstand the current scenario and be prepared for the upcoming holiday season.
Without taking your time into my pocket, I am moving towards the checklist that will ensure and increase your confidence level. Keep your notes ready.
Get stocked and staffed up
Firstly, prepare your deals beforehand. If you are an eCommerce store owner, it is better to prepare it with extra eCommerce orders that you probably receive during the normal holiday shopping season. Or, you might have run short and lose out on sales.
Do your best to forecast the extra stock and make your online presence to meet the increased demand. If you are managing your inventory well, then it would become a fairly simple choice. If you are an eCommerce store owner, then have good communication with your supplier who may help you at any time when you run out of products.
Crosscheck your online chat support and other customer service platforms. It helps the customers to contact you if they are in need.
Organize amazing delivery options
Apart from sales, it is also important to focus on payment modes and delivery options. Make sure your customers receive your products intact and in time.
Plan your shipping partner and confirm the same before the season arrives. If you have already done it, review it and double-check about their service too. Make orders before the deadline for the delivery. It will help you clear your customers’ orders sooner.
When you are about to give discounts to your customers, you can probably discuss the shipping offers from the respective third-party. You could even tie with them and make extraordinary deals for your customers. It is also important to enquire them whether they can handle last-minute extra orders. Go along with the shipping provider who comforts you with their affordability and flexibility.
Showcase your in-store stock in search engines
In order to improve your search engine presence and ranking, make sure that you connect your catalog with the search engine. For instance, let us take Google as an example. Before the festive or holiday season starts, be sure to connect your product’s catalog with Google’s business profile. It helps the customers to reach out for your product when they browse through in-store inventory.
A search giant researcher found that around 90% of shoppers conduct an internet search before they indulge in buying a product. So, showcasing your product catalog in your business profile is a good way to increase your presence before the shoppers and encourage them to visit your website.
Prepare your store to handle the extra traffic
Every online retailer and business owners prepare their site to handle the spike in traffic and sales during the Black Friday season. You might have also come across many business consultants saying the same.
Having a continuous investment in scalable technology will help your online website to handle unexpected traffic. It has to be done months or few weeks before the Black Friday season rolls in. If you have not concentrated on that part, today is not too late.
Work on it better and make your website ready to handle any peak traffic. Also, focus on the site’s speed and performance. As per the industrial data, the second delay in page loading speed may have an impact of over a 7% reduction in conversions. It is better to find ways to cut down the loading time without compromising the quality.
Stick towards providing intelligent discounts and coupons
A Black Friday checklist is none without discussing the discounts. Promotions and offers are embedded in every single eye of the customers especially during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday season. So, providing discounts seems mandatory that insists on the customers to visit your website. Those customers may become your potential customers in the future when they are taken away from the uniqueness of your website.
And, make no mistakes as the thirst for the deals will be high this year. Do not stick towards constrained budgets and limited ability. Think differently and try to provide digital coupons that bring a massive response to your website.
Design the store layout/landing page
Now, it is time to dress up for success. Create a strategic plan for your landing page and keep your customers engaged in it. It is also wise to develop a game plan to display the areas with defined lanes and make the traffic smoother. It also helps you to deviate from the customers thereby managing the traffic effectively.
You can add something that triggers your customers to your product pages. For example, you can follow the enlisted strategies on your website too.
- Adding discounts and other offers to your homepage
- Placing the right CTAs
- Adding clear navigational bars and popups to attract your visitors
Black Friday sales do not need to be intimidating. Instead, you can make use of the online marketing channels and grab more visitors to your landing page.
Create an online marketing strategy
The dedicated Black Friday Shoppers would remember the previous year’s offers posted on your website. So, they camp up and discuss more when you reduce or increase the offered range. It is nothing but using the online marketing strategy wisely. You can also focus on the enlisted online marketing strategy.
- Do not forget to display sold products
- Know the strategies behind your brand or product promotion
- Analyze your competitors and fix up the mid-price
- Keep a close watch on the people or delivery services delivering your products
Provide attractive incentives to potential customers
No business owner wishes to lose its customers, particularly during the holiday season. A balance between the new, regular, and potential customers has to be maintained. Incentives are the only bridge that ties all categories of customers in a single thread. Make use of loyalty programs and referral programs effectively. It is a great way to keep your customers coming back to your website irrespective of their needs.
Allow your website visitors to accumulate points and earn incentives through it. You can provide them a cashback offer, early-bird discounts, or even digital vouchers for their next purchase. Added, you can provide them a free ebook or guide about your product/brand.
Turn your seasonal shoppers into year-round customers
Have you ever thought about why your relationship with your Black Friday customers ends when the season ends? Probably, you might have missed something here.
Instead of thinking about the mistakes, take steps to maintain and nurture your relationships with the customers visiting your website in the upcoming Black Friday 2020. Keep your customers engaged and informative irrespective of the holiday season alone. Stay active on social media. Try to bring your audience into your polls and make them feel special.
Pro Tip: If you are a business owner willing to promote your business on social media platforms like Instagram, make sure that you have a relevant audience base.
Through email marketing campaigns, you can make them think about your product through the newsletters. Retarget the customers in a scheduled manner.
Ensure to give spontaneous responses
The holiday season especially the Black Friday season seems a potentially hectic time to gain customer support. In order to provide a memorable experience to your visitors, you can provide instant responses to them. It makes them feel special and gives a sportive look to your product.
You can also start your support by stating a few standard phrases that make them more comfortable. Make your employees pre-plan the phrases and deliver a consistent and helpful service with minimal upfront effort. It is also wise to brush up on the mistakes or areas where your customer support has to be lifted a bit.
Are you ready for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales?
Plan, prepare and proceed.
Finally, we are in the bottom portion. Your Black Friday checklist is ready with all necessities to play an extraordinary game in the upcoming holiday season. It will help you to rock the holiday season with the utmost profit and reliable potential customers.
Though the situation does not seem to be well, online sales have caught up the fire and are increasing rapidly. Using the current scenario helps you have a drastic increase and changes in your business conversion. If this is your first Black Friday season, take it as a learning experience. Apply the checklist and see the difference in your sales.
