Start Planning
If you want to take advantage of Black Friday ideas for small businesses and increase your sales significantly, you need to plan your marketing strategy early.
By planning early, you’ll have enough time to go over your ideas, make slight changes, and get rid of bottlenecks before it’s too late. If you don’t know where to start, these few questions might give you an idea:
- What product and service do you plan to offer?
- Will I offer both online and in-store deals?
- How and where will I advertise my special deals?
- When will my marketing campaign begin and end?
Grow Your Black Friday Email List
By now you know the proficiency of email marketing in driving sales. However, if you want a fruitful Black Friday email marketing strategy, you need to build your email list with leads that encompass your upcoming deals. A few weeks before the shopping begins, design an on-site marketing campaign that targets prospective Black Friday shoppers captivated by Black Friday offers. And when Black Friday approaches, you’ll get the opportunity to tease the event and thank your subscribers with early access codes and extra discounts. If you don’t desire to reduce the price of your products and services any further, try offering your customers freebies along with their Black Friday purchases.Send out an email campaign with your deals and promotions
Another great Black Friday ideas for small business is to send out an email campaign with your deals and promotion to current and potential customers before the influx of marketing from your competitors.
Sure, social media marketing is thriving, but email marketing is still the best platform to promote your deals. It’s a time-tested strategy that helps business owners expand their customer base as well as sales.
About 25.1% of Black Friday sales originate from email marketing, making it one of the biggest drivers for Black Friday trades.
To make this tactic smarter, do the following:
- Use a catchy subject line: An email subject is an important component of any campaign success. It’s the first thing that the targeted audience usually reads. You want to make your email subject attractive to capture your reader’s attention. Ensure you’re transparent and not deceiving.
- Segment your users: Not everyone is created equally. Design different email campaigns for your past and potential customer. You can also categorize the emails based on your audience's demographics, location, and what product they brought from you in the past. You can make your segmenting job much simpler by asking them to fill up a sign-up form to get more information. Also, you can use Smart Apps like Mailbot.
- Personalize your emails: Most wishes for holidays sent by marketers sound so generic. Be a bit different and approach your shopper using their name like “Happy Holiday, Samson”. Or you greet them “Hi Samson”, instead of just saying “Hi”.
- CTA: In all your emails, include a call to action so your customer can save the date on their calendar. This way their phone will remind them of your Black Friday deals.
- Timing is crucial: Consider scheduling your emails based on timer-zone.
Introduce Massive Discounts for Black Friday Promotions
One of the simplest Black Friday ideas is cutting down prices, but retaining the quality of your products or services. You can start with 50% off, then go all the way up to 70% off the original price. Don’t fear reducing your product prices. It’s normal for expensive products to fall to half price or even less during Black Friday. The good thing you can always upsell later. Make use of a beautiful template to design an amazing discount zone that will not only attract the audience to your site but also convert them.Provide Your Digital Customers Limited In-store Black Friday Promotions
Offer your digital customers in-store promotions. Exclusivity is the most efficient conversion tool and the best way to boost store visits and sales. You can adapt your promotion in several forms, including free-gift wrappings, coupons, discounted delivery, bonus giveaways, or anything you can up with to enthuse your shoppers and create interest. Ensure you create unique promotions, deals, or discounts that attract the interest of your audience. They should also plainly communicate when the promotion will run - don’t waste your client’s time during a busy shopping season. Be specific and incentivize your customers to visit your store on a specific week, day, or weekend. As a result, you’ll create the engagement needed to increase your traffic as well as sales.Host Events
Inform shoppers about upcoming in-store holiday parties or events through various channels, including SMS, email, and social media.
Try to frequently remind them when the events are approaching. This will raise awareness among your current customers and will also encourage your customer to share the event with their friends and families in their network.
Include social media profile push buttons on your website and emails to give visitors and subscribers a simpler way to follow your business for the latest info about your in-store events.
Create Mystery Campaigns
Attract shoppers to your store on Black Friday by offering each shopper a mystery gift. For instance, if a customer spends over $30 on Black Friday he or she will go home with a mystery gift like Hogwarts socks or a scarf or even a $5 gift card to be used later in your store. Use social media, email, and text to promote the campaign. You can also email your customers Black Friday scratch-off coupons, or make use of great tools like Scratch-it to design and share mystery discounts with customers. The customers can digitally scratch the coupons to reveal the discounts.Offer Loyal Customers Deals and Sneak Peeks
Every small business needs a loyalty program that tracks customer behavior and allows sending or email, text messages, and texts. This way you can gain and keep loyal customers and also send special messages regarding Black Friday deals and rewards. The messages and rewards are a way of you showing your appreciation for their loyalty. Black Friday messages targeted to loyal customers should include insights into available products available for sale and the ability to book the products ahead of time. You can also include additional discounts or early bird shopping. Make the in-store and online advertisement about Black Friday promotion and the loyalty program attractive. So you can capture the interest of those who haven’t joined the program.Find Your Hook
When designing your local business Black Friday marketing campaigns, think unique and specific. What can your small business offer shoppers that are much better than that of your competition? If your store stocks handmade, local or limited edition items, focus your marketing strategy around those. Whatever you select to be your promotion focus, get the word out via SMS, social media, and email.Team Up With Other Small Business
It’s hard for small businesses to be heard over the advertising blitzkrieg of corporate chains around holiday events.
Although some business owners might be against it, it’s wise for small businesses in one locality to partner up and focus on a common goal: attracting customers. This can cover everything from planning a joint shopping event to dividing the cost of a marketing campaign.
The higher the number of participating small businesses, the more enticing the promotion will be to shoppers.
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