Your Ultimate Black Friday Checklist: 10 Tips for Ecommerce Success This Year
The first Friday and Monday after Thanksgiving are crucial opportunities to acquire new customers for ecommerce brands.
New customers are more likely to buy from you on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than at any other time of year. They’re hunting for great deals and are open to purchasing from unfamiliar brands. Make sure you play the game.
Design your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to get your product in as many hands as possible. You may or may not turn a profit in the short term, but the new customers you acquire will be lucrative over time.
Use the Black Friday checklist below to take advantage of these shopping holidays and dramatically boost your customer base.
Your Ultimate Black Friday Checklist
1. Treat Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a season, not as single-day events.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday mark the beginning of the holiday season. They’re not one-day events where you can throw up a blanket discount and expect great results. Getting Black Friday and Cyber Monday right means raising awareness of your special offers in advance and promoting your brand throughout the gifting season.
You may not make a profit on every discounted item, but if customers feel like they’re getting a great deal, they’re much more likely to buy from you again and again.
2. Prioritize email as your most powerful marketing channel.
There’s a lot of noise during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Most brands are fighting for customer attention by promoting special offers. Stand out by promoting your deals to customers directly through email.
3. Invest in PPC marketing, even though costs will increase.
Email marketing is a great way to promote your offers to existing customers, but it won’t get you new buyers. That’s why pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is an essential item on the Black Friday checklist, especially for social media.
Social media channels will be crowded with advertisements, so the price of PPC campaigns will skyrocket. But unlike at other times of the year, PPC campaigns become much more effective at converting to purchases around Black Friday.
We usually use social media for awareness rather than direct offers, but all that changes during the holiday season. Advertise your sales there, loud and proud.
4. Don’t be intimidated by big competitors.
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, big and small businesses compete on an even playing field. So, get creative. Come up with a compelling offer that customers can’t refuse and spend the money to get it in front of them alongside the giants.
5. Optimize everything for mobile.
Mobile purchases continue to grow year over year. So, if you want your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions to go well, you need mobile optimization on your Black Friday checklist.
This applies not only to your ecommerce store itself but also to your paid advertising. Make the most of the holiday season by optimizing for mobile across all channels.
6. Generate anticipation with a pre-sale launch email list.
Create an effective sale by building anticipation with a core group of highly engaged customers. Segment your list, find your most engaged customers, and use an ecommerce email platform like Klaviyo to sign them up for a pre-launch list, where you can give them early access to your sale.
7. Prepare for increased website traffic.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday mean huge spikes in traffic to your website.
If you’re on a cloud-hosted platform like Shopify Plus, you don’t have to worry about scale or security on hectic days like these. But if you’re on a self-hosted platform, make sure website prep is on your Black Friday checklist. You need to be sure your site can handle the extra traffic and strain.
8. Budget for increased ad spend.
As mentioned, advertising rates skyrocket during the holiday season, especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Be prepared to spend five to 10 times your normal monthly ad spend during November and December.
9. Focus on providing real value, not gimmicks.
A great Black Friday offer can propel your business forward, setting you up for a great new year. But the opposite is also true. If you have a poor offer, the negative reviews and feedback can lead you to lose a lot of momentum and customer trust, which hurts you far past the holiday season.
10. Make sure it fits your brand.
It may seem like every brand is buzzing about their Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, but you don’t have to run a promotion if it won’t benefit your brand.
You may not want the massive increase in traffic, sales, or customers this promotional craziness can bring, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make sense to throw up a blanket discount because you feel obligated — at that point, you’re just giving money away.
Either develop a strategy and special promotions around these days and advertise them aggressively, or opt out. Your sales will spike during the holiday season either way.
Need Help With Your Black Friday Checklist?
Need help putting your Black Friday checklist into practice? Our ecommerce growth team is here to assist. We’ve helped hundreds of brands just like yours grow their ecommerce revenue and enjoy a successful holiday season.
The goal of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to grow your customer base. We’ll craft a promotion strategy to help you achieve this goal and create a great follow-up plan to turn those holiday purchasers into lifelong brand ambassadors.
Interested? Contact us today.
