It’s only a few short weeks until millions of people across the country will camp put in front of stores and their computers to get the best holiday deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
According to statisticbrain.com, people will spend $67 billion on in-store spending and an additional almost $3 billion online. We’re sure that you’ve got your sales ready to go and are ready for the big influx of customers, but are they really coming?
Black Friday Is Almost Here
It sneaks up on us every year. It also doesn’t hurt that every year it feels like the holiday season creeps more and more into August. It also is a twist of the knife when you look around and see your competitor’s Black Friday marketing everywhere and they’re seeing great results.
With all the hustle and bustle of getting ready, did you forget to develop a content marketing strategy to bring people to your store or website? Don’t worry, there’s still time to put an aggressive content marketing campaign together and grab some record-breaking sales. These three strategies will make sure you get your share of the holiday spending pie.
1) Start Working on Your Email Campaign
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two biggest shopping days of the year. According to Hubspot, 85 percent of retailers will send an email to their customers, and you need to be one of them. Don’t just make this your regular newsletter, it needs to be something special. These are big shopping days and the recipients are your existing customers.
Create a special Black Friday and Cyber Monday themed template with information about your sales and special coupon codes or offers available only to your subscribers. People keep an eagle eye out for coupons and special offers to use on sales holidays. If you have a special landing page dedicated to holiday shopping that features your sales, then make sure to provide a link in the email.
If you have a physical store, then send out the email a few weeks from the date so people can make a plan to visit your store. If your deals are strictly online, then send it out closer to the date to stay fresh in everyone’s mind.
2) Beef Up Your Blog Posts
According to the National Retailers Foundation, sales this holiday season are expected to grow between 3.6 to 4 percent from last year. Use your blog posts to grab some of that. Beef up your blog post frequency in the weeks leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday and make sure to connect it to some of the sales you’ve got going on.
Blogs provide fresh content to your site and help with keyword rankings. The higher your site gets in the days preceded Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the better the chances of people visiting your site. Relevance suggests counting down your Black Friday sales in real time. Why not a blog post every day for a week leading up to the big shopping days.
While blogs are supposed to be light on sales talk, it’s ok to have a blog post all about your Black Friday sales. People don’t want to spend forever searching your site for those deals, so giving them a centralized location with links to your sales is a great idea. You might even want to have a banner on your homepage with a link to your Black Friday blog.
3) It’s Time to Get Social
According to Hubspot, 17.3 percent of shoppers will be monitoring retailer’s Facebook pages. Be active on your social media, including Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You don’t just have to talk about your sales either. Engage your customers with polls asking them what they’d like to see on a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale. Ask them what items they’re looking for this year. You can use that information in your sales.
Make sure to post your blog posts about Black Friday sales on social media. Do you have a sales flier? Make it a PDF or jpeg, and post it on Pinterest or Twitter. Engaging your customers in the days leading up to the sale keeps you in their mind.
If you want to reach more of your fans or followers, or even outside of your followers, then consider sponsored posts and tweets. You can pay to make sure your posts are seen by people and their friends, etc. The more people who see your posts, the more engagement it gets. If you want to make sure your posts are seen by more people, then make sure to include a photo or video to catch their eyes.
Many e-commerce retailers make a significant amount of their yearly profits from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Millions of people get most of their holiday shopping done over those two very important business days. Make sure you’re prepared by creating content marketing strategies that are engaging and exciting.
