Disruptions to global and local supply chains, microchip and other shortages, panic buying, increased prices and an all-time high competition across digital channels are some of the factors that will affect the performance of ecommerce stores on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and throughout the upcoming festive season. While most industries will face certain disruption and obstacles, the great news is that ecommerce and online shopping are expected to soar in the upcoming years and ecommerce businesses have an even greater opportunity for growth, especially around the holiday season.
According to Statista, "Revenue in the eCommerce market is projected to reach £91,412m in 2021. Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2021-2025) of 3.46%, resulting in a projected market volume of £104,747m by 2025"
Shoppers can once again roam high street shops, however virtual browsing and online shopping are here to stay and pandemic-induced changes in shopping behaviour have permanently altered consumers and businesses.
Due to lockdowns and panic buying, nearly a third of shoppers say they will start their holiday shopping earlier compared to last year, so if you haven't started planning your digital marketing strategy for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas & Boxing day sales, now is the best time to start. Whether you’re looking to optimise your existing marketing efforts or create a game plan for the upcoming festive season, this blog post has you covered. We are going to talk you through how your brand can connect with customers, reach your ideal target audience and achieve optimal results in 5 simple steps. We’ve collected the most useful tools, channel recommendations, and consumer insights to help you achieve your business and marketing objectives.
Analyse historical trends and past performance. The first step to making sure your performance is better than any previous Black Friday is by analysing historical trends is your own social media and PPC accounts. Look beyond the cost per sale metrics and revenue:
analyse what creative generated the best and worst engagement stats across social media and Google Ads. This can help you create effective ad copy and visual creatives
analyse how much your CPM or CPC increased compared to the weeks before and after the festive season
check if Google search volume for your specific products and within your industry have increased or decreased during the holiday season
create a plan about how much traffic you are anticipating, expected conversion rate, cost per sale and total revenue
Starting with the points mentioned above will help you determine which products would bring the highest return on ad spend, what type of promotions and visuals to use and how much stock and staff your business would need to meet customer demand.
Google's keyword planner and Google trends are an excellent way to start when planning your digital marketing strategy for Black Friday and the festive period. These tools provide excellent data on historical and expected costs, reach and ROAS. However no matter what industry, online businesses should expect to pay even higher digital marketing costs than last year, due to higher platform competition leading to CPC and CPM inflation.
Research your competitors and market trends. Most shoppers are a click away from a better deal and they know it. Having a competitive offer, great website and excellent insights on your competitors' strategy is essential. We have previously talked about how you can spy on your competitors, so make sure you check out our post here. One of the easiest ways to keep tabs on your competitors is to subscribe to their email list and to study the campaigns they're testing. Follow them on social media and see how they target and remarket to you.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day shopping are all about bagging a bargain, businesses must make sure their prices and service are competitive.
To make sure you've identified new competitors on the market, check your Google Auction reports and don't forget to keep an eye on giants like Amazon - while you might feel like your small business can't compete with them, they are certainly looking for ways to go after your clients.
While most small businesses can't afford to compete with extremely low prices and prime deliveries, they can certainly emphasise on personal touches and win their customers' loyalty by offering high quality products and simply being better to their staff, local communities and environment.
Don't forget about Small Business Saturday - it's a campaign which highlights small business success and encourages consumers to 'shop local' and support small businesses in their communities. The campaign has been growing in popularity as an alternative to Black Friday sales.
Create an omnichannel approach to your advertising. Omnichannel isn’t just the future, it’s the present, so it needs to be integrated into your digital marketing strategy when preparing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and any other shopping event. All offers, branding, messaging and communication must be seamless, whether users shop on desktop, mobile or in-store. 86% of shoppers regularly channel-hop across two channels - this could mean that users find your website while browsing on Google and then go to social media to check reviews and brand reputation, before checking out from the IG shop instead of the retailer's online store.
When shopping in physical stores, 69% people still use their mobile phones to check customer reviews before making a purchase, 58% of people compare the product to similar products online and 53% are looking for discounts on the products they are about to purchase. Create a customer journey map and think about how you can segment users by behaviour patterns and personalise their journey, to provide them with a seamless, customized experience. Consistency and regularly meeting the same high standards and user experience is essential to increasing client retention and improving customer lifetime value.
Make the most of remarketing. Black Friday and winter holidays are the busiest time of the year for most retailers and this applies to their marketing and advertising campaigns. During those peak times, competition between retailers skyrockets on social media and across search engines, which leads to increased cost per click and much higher CPM, with multiple companies targeting the same audiences and bidding to get users' attention. In the meantime, users are bombarded with different ads with similar messaging across all channels. Adverts and offers need to be more creative, personalised and tempting - this is where remarketing kicks in.
Whether ecommerce businesses choose a simple Google Ads display remarketing or a more complex, omnichannel approach, remarketing is an essential part of staying present in the clients' minds while they are researching and considering their future purchases.
Some of the most successful remarketing tools include abandoned cart emails, especially when combined with discounts or free shipping. Other ways to re-engage users who visited your website include social media and GDN remarketing, promotional SMS messages and direct mail.
Provide excellent user experience. Users have high expectations when it comes to online shopping. Checkout pages, website design and speed and product photography play a huge role in ecommerce success. Make sure your promo codes are visible to users at all times, after all you'd want them to be able to use the promo when purchasing. Or even easier, apply discounts with smart, URL coupons. URL coupons are available on most major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce and enables businesses to easily create user discounts and dynamic pricing. Tools like Google Analytics, Shopify reports, Heatmaps and user satisfaction surveys are crucial to a successful Black Friday digital marketing campaign.
User experience goes beyond good advertising - it's also about peace of mind when shopping. It's about genuine customer reviews and testimonials, no-hassle returns and rewards for loyal, returning shoppers. Customer support should be easily accessible and available across social media, email and live chat at the very least. Chatbots and conversational landing pages are an excellent choice for small retailers who don't have the resources to offer human customer support around the clock. Bottom line. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the best time for ecommerce businesses to earn record profits. When executed correctly, your festive digital marketing strategy should lead to improved client retention, better sales and business growth in the upcoming year, so make sure to take advantage of data and marketing tools available.