Black Friday has become the shopping event of the year. Last year for many retailers it overtook Christmas and 2016 looks like the year that Black Friday sale revenues over take Christmas.

To put it into perspective the UK economy growth was at 1% but year on year, Black Friday has seen compound growth of 23% year on year. Black Friday is predicted to be 25% busier than last year.
No Internet business can afford to ignore Black Friday marketing.

There is undoubtedly only a few marketing channels that will empower your business to grab a huge slice of this internet boom. Pay per Click on AdWords, Bing & Facebook are the channels to position your business for the greatest success.

Marketing to your existing email list is just good business and one of the lowest cost routes, but it alone will not be enough. Your past customers and prospects are going to be bombarded with promotions left, right and centre. In all this noise you have to get your message in front of customers.

To help marketers I have put together the essential 2016 Black Friday Marketing Plan.

1. Don’t leave your promotions to the last minute – waiting until you see competitors running ads on AdWords isn’t the time to start thinking ‘perhaps we should do something’. Black Friday will merge two events – Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Expect to see Black Friday start the week of Black Friday and end two weeks later at the close of Cyber Monday Week. Press coverage and hype will fuel Black Friday frenzy even more this year.

2. Create a list of promotion ideas and offers to use during Black Friday. Don’t get too hung up on discounts or sales. Only a few loss leaders or sale items are needed. So often customer forget about the sale offer once on site. Modify your returns policy – many of our clients are extending their returns policy into mid January. It provides peace of mind that if their gift isn’t ideal, it can be sent back. In truth too many are too lazy to ever return the item.

3. Create a marketing calendar for your promotions. This could be as simple as running a countdown promotion to the start of Black Friday and another promotion with ‘X Days Left’ until Black Friday Ends.

4. A multi pronged approach will be required using AdWords Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads and Email.

5. Create your AdWords and Bing ads in advance for search text ads and image ads. Use your marketing calendar as the basis for the ads

6. Create remarketing ads to support multiple audiences. I would suggest you have a generic sets of ads based around your promotions for those you have visited your site prior to Black Friday, your uploaded email database audiences and dynamic ads for those that visit during the Black Friday promotion. Don’t forget to set up dynamic AdWords remarketing tracking for products.

7. Ensure you have a Facebook ads campaign. This will involve some pretty complex tracking code change to your website, so you may need expert help.

8. Run dynamic ads on Adwords and Facebook. Effectively you are going to show site visitors ads for the products they viewed on your site as they travel around the Internet and Facebook. It is not uncommon to see ROI of 1:50 on Facebook on highly tuned accounts.

9. Brand washing, re targeting or remarketing will be vital to your success with Black Friday. Customers will have to have your brand at the forefront of their mind if you are to grab those Black Friday sales. Customer will consult up to 14 different sources before making a purchase so ensuring your website is remembered is vital.

10. Use Remarketing Lists For Search Audiences (RLSA) to ensure that your ads show above competitors once they have visited your site. RLSA dramatically increase your return on investment and should be part of all internet marketing tool kits. PS. Don’t forget to upload your email list to AdWords and Facebook – they make awesome audiences that are highly responsive.

11 – It’s a bonus – Egg fried rice – What??? Too many internet marketing professionals fall into the trap of organic marketing. Black Friday is a tight time frame event and if you haven’t got the listings now, organic isn’t going to help you at this late phrase. If you want egg fried rice tonight you either buy it from a Supermarket or your favourite takeaway. You don’t think, let’s grow some rice. After all who knows how to grow rice and what happens if the rice crop fails? Just buy the traffic, it’s guaranteed, it’s controllable and scalable.

I hope the above has inspired you to take action. Personally I would recommend you let Click Convert help you with your Adwords, Bing and Facebook advertising prior to Black Friday. Give myself or ian a call on 01244 470067 to find out how we can help you.