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How to Prepare for Black Friday

Remember the time when Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were days that were only relevant for the American market? Well, those days are over. This specific e-commerce weekend is pretty much relevant for all retailers worldwide. In this blog we give you four tips to help you succeed on one of the most important days of the year: Black Friday,  24 November 2017.

How to prepare for Black Friday 2017

Remember the time when Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were days that were only relevant for the American market? Well, those days are over. This specific e-commerce weekend is pretty much relevant for all retailers worldwide. In fact, this weekend belongs now to the most hectic weekends of the year. In about a month, people will start looking for Black Friday deals. This is why now is the perfect moment to get prepared and shape up your advertising strategy for Black Friday. In this blog we give you four tips to help you succeed on one of the most important days of the year: Black Friday,  24 November 2017.

1 Prepare a Black-Friday advertising campaign plan

Usually, the last quarter of the year is not the best time to make crucial changes in your organisation. You might run the risk of making last minute changes that can have a huge impact on your profit. Therefore, it is even more important to have an advertising campaign plan ready way before Black Friday and Christmas. Having an advertising plan ready can help you to implement your campaign(s) step by step, starting from today until Black Friday. This way, it will also be easier to reach your campaign goals. All you got to do is set up a calendar with dates and times of when you want to publish certain ads, when you want to kick off your (email) campaigns and when you want to start with the rest of your marketing efforts. You can use the beginning of this month to experiment with Google Adwords and advertising optimising platforms (like ours) to get your campaigns optimised automatically.

2 Base your price strategy on analyses and trustworthy data

As an online retailer it is fairly easy to gather data from visitors and sales. You just need to make use of the Facebook Pixel and use the insights you gained to set up a good pricing strategy for Black Friday. For example, if an online shopper is browsing through your webshop, you can measure every interaction, find out if it is a new prospect, how this prospect found your online shop, via which device and much more. By analysing this relevant data on time (such as popular items, purchase intentions and profit margins) you can align your strategy with consumer behaviours both before and after Black Friday. Read our previous blog to find out more about the Facebook Pixel .

3 Keep an overview of your stock and delivery

Imagine you run a successful advertising campaign but run out of stock during the busiest sales period of the year. If you want people to buy your products then you need to give them what they want. Make sure you have enough products in stock for the period between Black Friday and January. Also make sure to have a backup plan for when one of your products is running out of stock and is sold out and how you are going to communicate that to your prospects. This can help to prevent any frustrations from your (potential) customers.

4 Create a Black Friday Team

Finally, one of the most important parts of a successful advertising campaign is having a dedicated team. In the most busy time of the year, it could be helpful to have a designated ‘Black Friday Team’ that is ready to take on the challenge of managing the workload during the the most crucial days of the year. These days are going to be long, considering the fact that most sales already start on Friday at midnight. Those hectic times will go on until just after Christmas. So think about setting up a committed team that starts planning and working on time and is ready to work for long hours during those days.

r advertising campaigns? Check out our recent blog on why campaigns fail and what you can do about it and check out Marketingfacts for more inspiration.