November 17, 2017
One week until Black Friday, and businesses all want to run a wow factor Social campaign to entice customers. The question is: Are you equipped with your strongest Black Friday strategies yet? If you think about it, just like you, almost every other business wants to make the most of this intense shopping event to help their traditional marketing efforts, making it a noisy time.
“Use Social media they said” they said. Tweet about your discounts and don’t forget the to use a hashtag. If only it were that easy! Surely you know there is a lot more required to truly nail holiday and event based campaigns? Here are a few things to consider. if you haven’t already, good luck next year
Planning:
What do you want to achieve from this year’s campaign? Of course, everyone wants to bring in the money, but how will you measure success? What do you need to reach the right audience, with the right messages? Are they socially-conscious? Will you be donating a percentage of sales to a partner charity and how will you make that visible? How will you make it personal? Everyone will be doing it, so how will your customer experience differ from the likes of your competitors?
Communication
This is key. Let your customers know what you are planning to do in advance. This can be done by regular updates, or by running an email campaign perhaps. Don’t shock them a day before, and remember, you don’t have to tell them everything. For example, everyone knows they will find a deal on Amazon on Black Friday. They just don’t know the details. There is excitement in curiosity and it keeps the customers interested…
Timeliness
What time will you start? Are you up with the social birds in the early hours? Or will you wait until midday? Are you offering free shipping on the day? How long will deliveries take? Delivery times can be a differentiating factor, so, if you know your customer well, you will know what suits them best.
The right channel
Most businesses want to be on every channel and this can become overwhelming. Use your data to figure out which channel has performed the best in the past, compare with businesses similar to yourself. Which channel has the largest reach and the most involved community? Does this match up with revenue brought in? Here lies a huge opportunity for differentiation. Use data to truly identify your customers and then use it to deliver with delight.
Consistency through customer journey
This isn’t something new. What your customers see in any collateral should be consistent, be it an email, landing page or social campaign. So, you have some key decisions to make and if are you working on BF creative, apply it to all your customer touch points and match them up for an improved conversion rate.
Extend your BF campaign
This one is the real winner. If you do run a social media campaign using Paid Ads, utilise the tracking, retargeting tools. Install a pixel on all of your dedicated landing pages and wait until you’re halfway into your campaign. Before it ends, retarget customers who engaged with your Ads, showed an interest in your products, purchased your products or almost purchased something. The data can also create ‘lookalike’ audiences using Facebook pixel data which will help you reach a bigger audience.
If some or all of these aren’t in place yet, good luck as the countdown timers are ticking fast, but bear it in mind for next year. Good luck and let us know how you get on.