The holidays are quickly approaching, and you know what that means – time to kick up your Black Friday marketing strategies! According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 180 million shoppers made purchases in stores and online during the 2021 holiday shopping season. Online sales were especially strong, with 88 million shoppers making purchases on Black Friday and 77 million on Cyber Monday. With such large masses ready to spend, it’s important to create appealing offers and spread the word quickly. Here are our 5 tips to boost your holiday marketing strategy.
Our 5 Essential Black friday marketing tips:
1. Mobilize your Brand Ambassadors
If you have a brand ambassador program, this is the perfect time to create new offers for them to share! By giving them special Black Friday referral codes to share, you can spread awareness quickly. Have some pre-built graphics with your promo ready for them to use to increase engagement. To further incentivize your ambassadors, consider offering limited-time-only holiday rewards. You can also create engaging holiday-themed activities for them to participate in. Here are some fun ideas:
- Create an engagement contest – For example, you could offer a holiday gift bundle to whoever gets the most engagement on a Black Friday post sharing your promotion.
- Have a video contest – We love this idea because videos receive more engagement across social channels, which means more brand awareness! If you sell tangible products, you could ask your brand ambassadors to share a holiday-themed video or a product review and reward the one that gets the most shares.
- Refer a friend bonuses – You can also encourage referral sales by inviting brand ambassadors to refer friends for special bonuses during the holidays. They could receive extra discounts or commissions on their referral sales during the holiday season.
Need help recruiting more brand ambassadors for your holiday campaigns? Check out our eBook, 25 Tactics to Recruit Ambassadors. We share our tips for turning employees and customers into ambassadors, and for creating content that will attract quality applicants.
2. Make it Big
Offering 20% off in a Black Friday marketing email just won’t do. This is a weekend for slashing prices as deeply as possible. Buyers are looking for half-off promotions, buy one get one deals, or anything else that seems hard to pass up! To keep margins profitable, here are a few tips:
- Offer deep promotions on select items or collections only
- Create discounts based on order value (ex. Save 40% on purchases over $100 and 50% on purchases over $200.)
- Offer a free gift with purchases. The value of the gift may be equivalent to a 20 – 30% discount of the original item, but “free gift” typically sounds more appealing to shoppers.
- Maximize your owned audiences, such as email subscriber lists and customer lists. These audiences are more likely to buy, and you won’t have to spend extra on advertising.
When creating Black Friday marketing strategies, don’t be afraid to try something new. You could partner with another brand to create complimentary holiday bundles or coupons for their products available at checkout. For example, If you sell vacation tours, why not partner with a luggage brand for added exposure?
3. Share Exclusive Deals With Your Best Customers
Your best customers are likely to buy from you again during the holiday shopping season, so why not offer them a pre-order option for early access to holiday savings? Show them how much you appreciate their business by offering a free gift or free shipping with their purchase. If you’re a service provider, you could offer them a free workshop or webinar that they would find beneficial. If you’re a retail brand, you might want to create a customer loyalty program. Taking this opportunity to offer exclusive deals to existing customers is a great way to build brand loyalty and increase customer retention.
4. Offer a Gift Guide
Not everyone loves to shop. By offering a gift guide, you can help take the guesswork out of holiday shopping for your lazier customers! You’ll want to design a great looking guide for Black Friday marketing. Consider using user-generated content from members of your community or your brand ambassadors for a personal touch. Here are some of the things that you can showcase:
- Gifts for her/ gifts for him
- Gifts for people who love to cook/ or some activity that fits your business
- Gifts featuring your best-selling products
- Bundled Packages with related products
We love including holiday bundles in gift guides because they’re an easy way to cross-sell to your customers. Be sure to share your guide early to create anticipation for upcoming Black Friday sales. Check out this post from Drip for more ideas for gift guides.
5. Give Back
Everyone wants to feel good around the holidays, and part of that is supporting charitable organizations. In fact, giving part of your profits to a good cause goes a long way in increasing brand loyalty. Research published by Harvard Business Review found that people are more likely to buy from companies that donate a higher percentage of their profits to charity. (In other words, a company that donates 5% of its profits to charity, regardless of what amount that is, is viewed as more charitable.) Consider donating a percentage of your profits to a good cause this year, and let your customers know that their purchases are making a difference.
Another way to give back around the holidays is to promote local businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Small Business Saturday saw strong foot traffic last year, and is expected to reach higher numbers this year as people report an increased desire to support small and local businesses. If your brand doesn’t have physical locations, you could give shout outs to small businesses in your community.
Final Thoughts
Remember, Black Friday isn’t an arbitrary shopping day created by retailers. Customers naturally shop in higher volumes around this time due to the holidays and time off work. By being creative with your Black Friday marketing strategies, you can grab the attention of customers who are ready to shop. Get your brand ambassadors excited with fun holiday activities to participate in that will organically extend your reach on social media. If you’re ready to expand your ambassador marketing efforts with a fun and easy to use platform that will save your marketing team tons of time, give us a shout!
