Black Friday & Cyber Monday Selling Guide
UPDATED: August 22, 2019
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two most important days of the year for an e-commerce seller like yourself.
The battlefield of e-commerce business gets more competitive each year.
In order to compete with the constant change, you should implement a few of these tactics to your marketing strategy.
Buckle up and let’s get started.
Get Organized
Seasoned e-commerce sellers start preparing for Cyber Monday as soon as the previous one is over.
According to BigCommerce survey, 39% of brands that start planning for their holiday campaigns in January make more than $1,000,000 in annual revenue. Talk about goals!
Create a Timeline
Have a plan in place.
This year Cyber Monday falls on December 2nd, start your marketing at the very least the Monday before Cyber Monday if not earlier.
RetailMeNot found that 70% of retailers start promoting Black Friday offers before Thanksgiving, and the average duration of the offers were 10 days.
According to National Retail Federation, 40% of holiday shoppers start buying before Halloween.
Holiday Marketing Tactics
Countdown & Awareness-building Campaigns – get people excited to shop this holiday season.
Sneak Peaks – add brand new designs or products.
Post-Cyber Monday Bargains – keep shoppers buying up until Christmas.
Events & Holidays
Halloween – October 31st is as popular as Cyber Monday in the e-commerce world.
Thanksgiving – November 28nd is not just about family and turkey, with the increase of mobile we are seeing an increase in shopping pre or post-turkey feasts.
Black Friday – November 29th, in 2017, more than $1,000,000 in sales went through the platform per minute at the peak, beating last year’s high of $555,716,” said Shopify in a news announcement covering Black Friday sales numbers.
Cyber Monday – December 2nd, According to Adobe’s 2017 online shopping data, last year Cyber Monday hit a new record as the largest online sales day in U.S. history with $6.59 billion.
Green Monday (Cyber Monday 2.0) – December 9th, it is a popular time to get Christmas shopping out of the way to avoid last minute shopping that comes with higher shipping cost. According to lifewire, online retail sales from Green Monday were calculated at $1.621 billion.
Remember, not everyone shops on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, some enjoy the time with their families and leave all the shopping for the month of December – have something up your sleeve for that too.
Customer Support
According to livechatinc.com, e-commerce businesses offer customer service for an extra hour on Black Friday (6h 54min) and an extra one and a half hours on Cyber Monday (7h 26min).
60
min
Black Friday
Customer service works 60 minutes longer on Black Friday.
90
min
Cyber Monday
Customer service works 90 minutes longer on Cyber Monday.
How can you ensure that your staff is properly trained and ready to rock & roll? Hire in advance, it can take weeks to hire and train new support agents.
By now you should have your staff picked and ready to go.
In case you haven’t started, here are a few tips you can implement to make sure you are on top of the game.
- Create templates that have basic and advanced information for your staff to answer questions correctly
- Reach out to temp staffing agencies specifically concentrated in the e-commerce industry
- Set a firm schedule that coordinates with staff getting time off to spend some quality time with the family
- Communicate important dates and deadlines
- Ask experienced e-commerce sellers for an advice of how to tackle busy holiday season
Segmented Targeting
Segmented targeting is a grouping of your customers based on certain criteria.
According to BigCommerce, these states have spent the most online over Cyber Week for the past 2 consecutive years.
The only difference in this list between 2017 & 2016, is that Georgia and New Jersey have switched places.
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Virginia
- Ohio
- Georgia
- New Jersey
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing and social media promotion go hand-in-hand. Take the time to make your product images stand out. The amount of effort you put into presenting your products will have a direct correlation on your sales.
Simple Background Product Image
- Find a room that has the most natural light and set up shop in there
- Use tripod or stack of books
- Cheap DIY Set Up – wood planks, baking sheets, suitcases, and vintage furniture
- Use white object that acts as a reflector to shine a light on your product
- Take photos
- Avoid post processing, try to get it right straight from the camera
- When posting on social media, specifically Instagram – use all the space you got, crop your photos to 4 x 5 to fill the space
Lifestyle Product Images
Incorporate people, show the product being used in its intended environment such as someone enjoying a coffee mug on the back of their porch.
Lifestyle shots tell a story that are heavily used on social media and rarely we see only products being shown in social media nowadays.
We recommend ordering samples and use them to create unique shots of your products.
Here’s an example, grab 10 tees and a model, drive down to the nearest city and simply explore the city to produce on-the-go images.
Testing
There are a variety of test sites to make sure your site performs by today’s standards. Test your website with loadimpact.com.
Abonnement Cart Strategies
According to the Baymard Institute, customers abandon as many as 70% of shopping carts.
Follow up makes difference. If you have an advanced Shopify account you are in for a treat.
Send the person who abandoned their cart a personal email asking why they haven’t completed the purchase. This process is automated. To enable this feature, professional or unlimited plan is required.
Effective Communication
Maintaining positive relationships with clients is nowadays more important than ever.
Establish clear expectations, whether that is Facebook or email marketing.
Provide clear information about shipping and any other areas that you as a business owner believe are important to maintain strong relationships with customers.
Use industry jargon and don’t introduce new shipping methods. Keep it simple to avoid last-minute confusion.
Do your best to answer all customer questions, however, if the customer has multiple questions send them over to your blog so you can assist others.
Timer Apps
Time apps can be used to tackle impulse buyers. Time apps give your shoppers countdown reminders on promotions.
Gift Guide
Some customers shop just to save money. We all are guilty of this habit.
It’s called the power of persuasion!
Gift guide is a weapon of choice against non-shoppers. Use it to your advantage.
Monitor Sales
Systems help to analyze your sales.
They help with identifying what strategies are successful and not successful.
Systems help to avoid making the same mistakes year after year.
Systems help you grow!
Use insights to tweak your site to perform better than ever.
PERSONALIZATION AVAILABLE
Featured Resource
