EPISODE 104 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: DON’T BE A WALLY THIS BLACK FRIDAY

Sonya:

It's hard to believe that just a few years ago, Black Friday wasn't really a thing here in Australia. We'd see news footage of crowds rushing into department stores over in the US and we'd be scratching our heads wondering what on earth those Americans were doing and whether discounted sneakers were really worth tussling with total strangers over. Fast forward to 2022, and even though the stats in the past few months have been a little wobbly on the e-commerce front, we're still expecting our client to achieve record breaking results this year on Black Friday. Why? Because we've been laying the groundwork for months now. And if you're willing to start putting a few things in place now, you could see a nice pre-Christmas boost your sales too. If you leave it to the last minute, your ads will probably stand out about as much as Wally in the Where's Wally books. And if there's one thing I know, it's this. When it comes to big shopping days, you don't want to get lost in the crowd.

Welcome to The Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

A quick note before I launch into this episode. This episode is speaking mainly to e-commerce businesses, but if you're a traditional retailer or service-based business, there is no reason why you can't be thinking about opportunities to participate in Black Friday also. And if you're an e-commerce retailer, make sure you stay to the end. I've saved the best tip till last, and you don't want to miss it. So let's dive in.

For those who are not familiar with the concept, Black Friday refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It's one of, if not the biggest event in the US retail calendar. And as with many things related to American culture, the phenomenon has spread worldwide. And while traditionalists will tell you that Black Friday is a one-off 24-hour event, in recent years we've seen it take on a life of its own. Cyber Monday has emerged in recent years as the e-commerce equivalent to what used to be an in-store only event. And last year we not only saw an entire cyber weekend sale happening, there was also an increase in sales in the weeks leading up to the event too.

Now, that may not make much sense to you when you first hear it, but when you consider just how much advertising costs go up in the days before and during Black Friday sales, it makes good business sense to get in early. In 2021, consumers spent over $3 billion, yep, billion with a B, on the Shopify platform alone and somewhere in the vicinity of $9 billion worldwide. So all in all, it's probably a good idea for you to participate in the event. While it can be a great way to boost sales for your business, a good Black Friday sale doesn't happen by accident. Here's how we prepare our clients for a Black Friday sale.

Step number one, warm up your audience. You know that friend who only gets in contact when they need a favor? Nobody likes that friend. They know they're using you. You know they're using you. And when you see their name pop up on your phone, you can't help but roll your eyes. When you only reach out to your email list or followers when you have a sale or promotion on, you come across just like that friend. Start providing value now so you don't look desperate, or worse, later. The smartest way to do this is with a giveaway. This is a fantastic way to hit the triple whammy.

Firstly, you're being generous, which regular podcast listeners will know is one of my top marketing strategies. Secondly, you are growing your email list, which will help reduce your ad spend when Black Friday rolls around. Plus, when someone signs up to your email list, you own that information. This isn't the case when you rely solely on social media platforms. Thirdly, if you run a giveaway of your products or services, you're pre-advertising the services you're going to be selling on Black Friday. And if your ideal customer liked your giveaway enough to enter, they're more likely to want to buy what you're offering when it comes around again at a discounted price or as part of a special offer.

Step number two, get clear on your offer. In 2021, I saw an e-commerce business try to do three or four different offers every day between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It was kind of like a 12 days of Christmas condensed over a long weekend. Now, you might think great, more to choose from, fantastic. But here's where they went wrong. Nobody knew that Friday's offer expired until they tried to purchase it on Saturday. The offers were inconsistent. 15% off one brand, 25% off another, and a buy one get one free on yet another brand. Their website had it set up so each customer could only get one offer per order. So if they wanted to take advantage of multiple offers, they had to put in multiple separate orders and then contact the business to ask for a shipping refund on their second or third or fourth order. All in all, it was just a mess.

If you want to stagger your offers, decide early what you're going to do. Promote those offers early. I mean, who doesn't love an exclusive email list sneak peek? And don't make it hard for people to buy from you. People want to spend money on the Black Friday weekend. They wait for it all month if not longer. And a lot of people take advantage of the special offers to do their Christmas shopping early. Don't miss out on sales because your offer is unclear. I said it last year and I'll say it again. The best promotion is the one that will entice people to buy, offer great value, and benefit your business at the same time. If you're going to run a sale, it needs to be pretty impressive in order to cut through the noise.

Which brings me to step three, get creative. This is where I see a lot of businesses are total wallies on Black Friday. They run the same ads they do year round and they just get lost in the noise. If you want to stand out, you'll need to create ads that stand out. I'm talking bold fonts, block colors, animations, videos, trending audio. Your Black Friday ads aren't something you want to throw together last minute. You have literally milliseconds to catch people's attention, particularly when they're being hit with ads from every direction. So if you want to secure those sales, you may need to call in the professionals. And I get it, Canva has everyone thinking they're a graphic designer these days, but some of the ads and social tiles I've seen small businesses create lately have, look, I'm just going to say it, they've been a little bit crap.

Canva can help you nail your brand colors and fonts, absolutely. But what about the spacing between your margins and your texts, your logo styles, and the concept itself? Loads of small business owners think they can whack together something in 20 minutes using a Canva template, and that'll do it. And I hate to tell you this, but if your ads look unprofessional, potential clients will think your business is too. And just a quick side note on this as well. With Black Friday, we often see that the cost of reaching people goes through the roof because the amount of competition. So all ads work on an auction system. The more people that want to get in front of your audience, the more it's going to cost you. So if your ad creative is not quite hitting the mark, then you're wasting a lot more money than what you normally would be.

Step number four, get your customers excited early. So don't be surprised if you see retailers start their Black Friday sales a week or even two weeks before the day itself. If you know what you're looking for, you'll see retailers running competitions, teasing new products and posting countdowns to the day on their stories. If you let your followers know ahead of time that you'll be participating in the event, they're more likely to remember you on the day. If you don't, well, don't be surprised if your day of emails get lost in the noise, because trust me, everyone's inboxes are going to be flooded.

One of my favorite ways to get Black Friday on the radar of potential customers is through the use of polls in stories. Ask your followers if they prefer a discount or bundle offer, if they're excited to save some cash, and what they most want to purchase on the day. This doesn't just get your followers engaging with you, which means you're more likely to show up on their feed later, it can also provide you with some valuable market research. Let's say you've assumed people go nuts over your bundles but the majority of your followers vote for a discount. That's important information for you to have. And if you start polling your followers now, you'll have time to change your plan if you want to.

Which brings me to step five and one of my favorite phrases, have a plan Stan. Google and Facebook Ad prices, as I mentioned just before, spike significantly across the Black Friday weekend. This is because they operate on an auction system. And to avoid those astronomical costs on the day, you'll want to do a few of the steps I've listed above to build your email list and build up your followers and that warm audience. This is going to help you keep your costs down. And often we find that our clients have the most success and the highest conversion rate off emails, because that audience already knows, likes, and trusts them.

You also want a good run up to the event. Facebook Ads have this thing called the learning phase, and often it can take up to 14 days, depending on your budget, to see what works in terms of ads. So if you leave your ad set up to a few days before the event, and don't even talk to me if you're setting them up the morning of, your ads will be in the learning phase over the cyber weekend. Which means that instead of landing in front of your ideal customer, they'll be landing in front of everybody. Trust me, the earlier you set your ads up, the better off you'll be.

And this just brings me to a note as well, is a lot of clients and a lot of people that I talk to that I do consulting with on Facebook Ads, they think that they only need to be running ads when they're really trying to push those sales. Right? But we find that people get the best results when they're advertising consistently, and even if that is just to build an email list or build up that warm audience. Because when it does come to crunch time, they want to do the remarketing, they want to push that sale, they have an audience that already knows them and have been thinking about them. So you're going to find that your conversions are a whole lot cheaper if you're doing that brand work and that brand awareness up front.

Step number six, get your website right. And I just got to say, there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a client do all the work to set up a sale only to stumble at the final hurdle. I'm referring to discount codes that don't work, broken links to products, or the old discount applied at checkout not feeding through properly. I recommend that you add a sale price to your website rather than relying on discount codes. There are a few reasons for this.

So number one, human error. Either through people entering the wrong code or codes just not working, mean that you could spend all weekend fielding customer service calls when you should be getting a head start on packing those orders. There's also a concept called barriers to purchase. In short, you want as few of them as possible. If someone has to go back to an email to find a discount code, then go back to your website to enter the code, it can become too much effort just for a few dollars off. There's a third reason to actually add the sales price rather than have a discount code as well. And that is, if you're running dynamic ads, it's going to pull in that sales price rather than having the original price. So people won't see the sales price if you have a discount code, and this applies for both Meta and dynamic shopping ads as well.

Set up your discounts early and set them up so that when the clock strikes 12, your website is ready to go. Oh, and one more thing. Every year, more and more shoppers are buying on mobile devices. In 2021, there was a 300% increased spend on Klarna. So you can only imagine the stats for Afterpay and some of the more commonly used buy now, pay later providers. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile, because nothing turns shoppers off like a difficult to navigate website.

So there you have it. Running a Black Friday sale does take a bit of preparation and planning, but if you can pull it off, your sales could go through the roof.