How to make your Black Friday strategy as profitable as possible

Whether you’re using one of the solutions mentioned above, or the whole Whisbi platform, you still need to come up with unique ideas on how to promote your business. Here are some suggestions on how to do just that:

Be social media savvy

Every single social media platform provides a unique opportunity to engage with your audience. It allows you to show your brands’ voice, display user-generated content, and upgrade your social network. 

• Engage, engage and engage a little more with your audience. Respond to social media posts, comments, and messages related to your brand. This way, you generate more followers and those go a long way.
• Post frequently. No, customers don’t want an overkill about how amazing your brand is – but they do want to see content where they can relate with. Make a detailed social media calendar and try different approaches to see what really works for your brand.
• Include relevant hashtags. Search for the most popular Black Friday hashtags for your Instagram campaigns and include them in each of your posts.
• User-generated content. Encourage your shoppers to post user-generated content and tag your brand, so you can repost those again. 
• All the options above are methods to grow your social media presence organically, but of course you can also try paid advertising. Target your segmented target audience and create powerful content to connect with them.
• Try influencer marketing. If you agree on a partnership with someone who has a large online audience with many followers, that will definitely boost your brand awareness. Send products to the influencer so he or she can start promoting them on their platform. 

Set up email campaigns

One study has found that email marketing generates around $42 for every dollar spent, which is why email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for e-Commerce businesses. In fact, 59% of marketers say their most significant source of ROI (return of interest) is email marketing. This is how you make a start:

• Use pop-ups and CTA buttons all over your website for people to easily subscribe to your newsletter
• If customers don’t have an account yet and use the guest checkout, ask them for their email address. That’s how they will receive the order confirmation and you can also use this information to update your mailing list. But: always communicate. Make it clear that you’re offering a newsletter subscription.
• Segment your customer base. The way to do this is to follow their behavior on your website. These are the different types of customers:
  – One-time customers: who bought an item from your store once and never purchased again
  – Cart abandoners are visitors that simply browse and place items in the cart but never go through the checkout process
  – Loyal customers are people who use and regularly shop at your store

Segmentation will help you personalize your email campaigns and indicate that every segment gets the right information. Also, if you’re unveiling new products, special events or VIP invites you can direct your users to a landing page with a Whisbi livestream to create extra engagement. Start working on this at least a few weeks before Black Friday arrives and make sure your content is super accurate. 49% of consumers said they look forward to receiving emails from their favorite brands. So take the opportunity to effectively increase your sales!

Choose the right solution

As mentioned in the previous chapter, it’s extremely important to be visible to your audience. Start by using the right solution which can really ramp up your sales. Whenever it’s implementing Live Broadcasting, Live Video Shopping, or a chatbot, you should consider being there for your customers 24/7 – especially when it’s about Black Friday.

Create a sense of urgency

How do you get your audience into the actual purchasing process? If you show them they don’t have a lot of time to get your product. It’s a well-known marketing tactic to increase sales because it simply works. Your customers rush to get the best Black Friday deals for the Christmas season. So, how should you act on it?

Bottom line: you want your customers to know that the specific offer you’re providing at the current moment isn’t going to be available for long. And the products they offer might not be either. This sense of urgency will make customers buy if they’re genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

Provide mobile-only discounts

The holiday seasons are becoming more mobile focussed than ever. It’s especially huge for mobile commerce, with US-based e-Commerce companies seeing a 13% year-over-year increase in sales numbers. You’re giving out a sense of exclusivity when you’re providing mobile-only discounts. With Whisbi’s Engage solution, you can invite your entire customer base to join your livestream via SMS. Bulk notify your customer database to reactivate leads ahead of and during a broadcast. Also, it allows you to easily track how many of your customers came to your site through the push notification. Win-win!

Increase your average order value

This strategy does not necessarily focus on attracting more customers to your website, it works in a persuasive way. The end goal is to get customers that are already there to spend more. So it’s handy to find out how to generate more sales with the same web traffic. You can test this with our ROI calculator. This way, you will discover how our Live Engagement platform can change your customer experience and help you sell more. Calculate your additional website revenue here. 

Also, see what other customers achieved, like how the world’s biggest technology firm achieved a 5X increase in sales from broadcast viewers. Because they’re using our Live Broadcasting solution, they saw amazing results and an increase in their average order value. By using Whisbi’s solution within the retail industry, we’ve seen an average of 1.7 products sold per transaction. Globally in retail, the average order value is $130. So with Whisbi, you can get that number up to $221 per order. 

Optimize your e-Commerce experience

Your website is your storefront. Therefore, your website should be super optimized, especially when many customers are entering at the same time with Black Friday. You don’t want your website to be loading forever when people want to buy your products. Add technology that improves the customer experience, like Live Video Shopping, but doesn’t affect the loading time of your website. Whisbi’s solutions are designed to inspire, educate and entertain customers in a format that allows real-time brand interactions. What else can you do to optimize your e-Commerce experience? We’ve made a list:

• Be conversational and personal: get to know your customers and interact with them wherever possible. Make it easy for them to give feedback and share information.
• Test and tweak: to make sure your site is as user friendly and easy to navigate as it can be, you need to test it constantly. 
• Optimize your site for mobile: we’ve said it before, but we’re saying it again: it’s absolutely crucial for your e-Commerce site to be optimized for mobile users, or you risk missing out on a huge amount of potential traffic. 
• Do content right: content is the soul of your website, breathing personality and uniqueness into your brand. So, make sure its accurate and suits your company’s needs.
• Make the buying process easy: use video broadcasts and chatbots to provide visitors with all the information they need to make a purchase and guide them gently towards the buy button.