10 Black Friday Marketing Tips For a Booming Event.

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Black Friday is the day everyone loves and loves to hate. In the past, it was the perfect sales drive for the pre-Christmas gift grab in physical retail stores. However, now it has grown to encompass online stores and services. Check out your local gym if you don’t believe me. That’s one service that has managed to corner the market on Black Friday, capitalising on the people who swear they will “go to the gym more” in the new year and snagging them with a fantastic deal at the end of November. I know. I have done it. And I’ve been the person who gave that gym a year’s membership for a pretty consistent January and February.

But you must follow some pretty rigorous steps to ensure a successful Black Friday Event. You don’t just want to give away a lot of great deals to your existing clientele; you want to engage more people and steal them away from your competition. You want your clients to think you are an excellent option for a gift or even a great way to treat themselves (primarily if they have just hosted Thanksgiving or will be hosting Christmas – that can be super stressful and deserving of a treat).

Black Friday marketing demands some preparation and some structuring, depending on the kind of business and service you provide. You can’t just jump in and expect people to come flocking just because you posted a Black Friday social a few days beforehand.

Let’s get excited about getting people excited!

1. Build excitement and anticipation for your offers

At this point in the game, you have to get excited and exciting quickly. Build the hype!

Make sure that you have a series of multiple social posts and email marketing shots ready to go. If you aren’t excited about your Black Friday deals, your clientele certainly won’t be.

Don’t be afraid to “big-up” the hype and create a certain amount of urgency for your amazing deals.

2. Put social media listening to work before Black Friday

What is everyone else doing? You don’t want to duplicate competitor offers, but listening to the digital grapevine can show you what is gaining traction and excitement.

More than anything, you can check out different regions and locations that aren’t competing for your Black Friday clients. However, you can also see what is getting customers and clients excited, what is getting the most shares, and how businesses leverage social interaction.

This will help you determine what offers will serve your business best and who is trying to do the same in your region and business niche. While you might want to beat out your local competition, don’t try and make it a race to the lowest price, that’s a sure way to lose in the Black Friday profit game.

3. Do a virtual walkthrough of your website and booking process

Walk through the process of your Black Friday Deals. If your regular clients have an additional discount code to increase their savings (or value), show them how. Moreover, if you have people who have never used your booking site before, they will find it helpful too.

Make sure your newbies can make quick navigation through your system with no barriers to making bookings or purchases. Black Friday is a game of making people feel the urgency.

4. Offer a preview to your loyal customers

Nothing is guaranteed to make your loyal customers grumpy than finding out that new clients get the best deals. If you are going “all-in” to attract new clients over Black Friday, make sure your loyal and regular clientele get a preview and a little advance warning. Maybe you could provide a Black Friday Discount Voucher valid for five days on either side of the Black Friday Event. Giving them that extra that new clients won’t know about.

5. Make sure your offers are unique and valuable

Remember, don’t try to copy your competitors; emulate and do it better. While people who shop Black Friday deals have become very savvy about price reductions (keeping an eye on prices up to three months before the event), they are not quite as sceptical about the added value you can bring to services without creating a significant loss to your business.

This is where you can be genuinely unique in your offers and deals because no other business offers precisely the same products and service extras that you do. You can combine and complement your different services with unique bonuses and package bundles that no one else has thought of.

Added value has become a bigger attraction than heavy reductions because people know how the retail market works.

As my father-in-law has often said, “If they can sell it at 50% off it was 50% too expensive to start with.”

6. Check your resource levels

If you are expecting a significantly increased number of clients, you need to ensure you have more of the necessary resources to accommodate them.

Moreover, if you have decided to add extra services to your list, you will also want to ensure you are well-stocked for all the new people who want to try it out. Think optimistically about your expected numbers and plan accordingly. There is nothing worse than drawing tonnes of new clients and not being able to accommodate them.

It will make you look unprepared and your business poorly managed

7. Pre-plan social media posts for Black Friday

No one has time to stay on top of a frantic social schedule when they have maybe three or four times the number of clients or purchases.

This kind of marketing demands a social media calendar and automation software like Hootsuite or Buffer. You can’t afford to spend all your time posting social posts to all the different channels when you should be prepping for the event or looking after existing clients.

The one thing it is advisable to do is to keep an eye on social messaging. People asking questions and the responses you give will improve your visibility and engagement metrics – so more people will see your posts.

8. Encourage clients to share on social media

Don’t just encourage it; make it easy too! Let your client create a social link from their confirmation email or telegram notification. Create a memorable #hashtag and get your customers to post it. Even if all they have done is schedule their usual booking.

You could make it a random draw and offer a prize after the holidays. What’s better than getting a great deal AND the chance of a freebie just from posting your purchases (or at least the location)? Admittedly, you might not want to give away your gift ideas to everyone on your follower lists.

9. Don’t be disheartened if you feel you’ve missed the opportunity

It’s not the end of the world, I promise. If you’ve missed the Black Friday crowd, how about targeting the “Last Pay Day Before Christmas” crowd instead? Go against the herd and win the love and appreciation of every client who didn’t get paid before Black Friday.

Black Friday might be a significant selling period, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the only one. Moreover, if you miss Black Friday, you have fewer companies to compete with for clients who missed out.

10. Follow up with customers after Black Friday

Just because Black Friday might be over, don’t let your would-be clients forget about you the minute it’s done. Depending on how your business operates, you could qualify for “Small Business Saturday” and “Cyber Monday” (any company with an online presence, online purchasing, or online booking qualifies as “Cyber”).

Even if you don’t want to extend your sales period, you can always contact your purchasers to ensure they book in with you to avoid having to wait. You can even make suggestions about additional products to purchase and complimentary services. No one says you have to stop selling as soon as Black Friday is done.