Making the most of Black Friday and Cyber Weekend

Sales. Sales. Sales.

They are everywhere. Especially during the holiday sales period, it is difficult to walk anywhere beyond the front door of your house without seeing a bright red sale sign. As many people have encountered in recent years, the sales are now creeping closer to home, as Black Friday often equals a bombardment of digital marketing emails from e-commerce businesses.

Every year, Black Friday bargains get more intense, and businesses are starting to feel the anxiety months before it all begins. The pressure on both physical retail stores and e-commerce stores to deliver unbeatable discounts is immense.

Many of our clients are often subject to the stress of Australia’s biggest retail weekend. As it is now approaching the end of October, we suggest you start thinking about your Black Friday and Cyber Weekend as soon as possible. If you are yet to begin the planning, this is something you should look into immediately.

It is true that holiday sale periods an opportunity not to be missed, but they also produce a sense of panic where brands can overreact in a haste and make poor business decisions.

What is Black Friday and Cyber Weekend?
First of all, we should address what these occasions actually are.

In 2019, Black Friday is set to take place on Friday 29^th November. The Cyber Weekend will run from this day up until Monday 2^nd December. Some businesses, however, will decide to start their sales earlier or continue them beyond these dates.

The sales holidays are predominantly celebrated by retail businesses, where discounts of up to 75% are sometimes offered entice eager customers into buying.

What digital marketing should you do for Black Friday and Cyber Weekend?
Regardless of whether you have an e-commerce store or a physical shop, a strong digital marketing plan is crucial in the lead up to the holiday sales period. Once you have decided upon what items you will be discounting, and how much you will be discounting them by, you need to establish a plan for marketing these sales.

To put it simply, your customers will not know about your bargains unless you advertise to them. In order to get a return on Cyber Weekend, you need to put in a little effort to begin with. Some marketing tactics you may like to consider include:

• Professional website redesign for the weekend and week leading up.
• Email marketing campaigns.
• Search engine optimisation strategy.
• Google Adwords campaign.
• Social media marketing campaigns.
• Content marketing

The most important focus for your Cyber Weekend sales should be having a reliable, high-performing website that will manage the influx of customers with ease. There would be nothing more disappointing than discovering your website has crashed, and you cannot obtain any sales at all. Most businesses find that it is beneficial to engage with a reputable local marketing company that specialises in e-commerce stores. With professionals on your side, you should be able to achieve anything.

Our golden tip for deciding upon your Cyber Weekend discounts.
With so many businesses heavily reducing their prices over the sales weekend, you are likely to feel the pressure to do so too. Every business wants to be providing the lowest bargains, as they believe that it is the only way to secure customers in the competitive market.

Having worked with various industries in the marketing space, we know that drastically lowering your prices will not achieve anything positive for your business in the long-term. Although it may secure a few extra customers over the weekend, it will not necessarily do any favours for your brand.

Our piece of advice is: do not get involved with the war on discounts.
It is a never-ending spiral downwards (and that is obviously not where you want your business heading).

As a business, you should be able to stabilise or raise your prices as your consumers come to terms with your quality, and your brand awareness and popularity grows. Set your focus on the uphill, rather than the downhill.

Ultimately, reducing your prices too far can result in various negative outcomes for your brand. If you drop your prices too far, you may suffer the following consequences:

• Your brand appears ‘cheap’ in the public’s eyes.
• Your customers will always expect low prices moving forward.
• In future, your customers will wait for more exorbitant sales before purchasing anything.
• You will not be making enough profit from each individual item.
• There is still a good chance that your competitors will drop their prices lower than yours.
• The ‘price hunting’ customers that you attract from sales are not reliable or idealistic customers. Instead, you should be seeking high-paying, quality-focused consumers.

Providing some form of discount during Cyber Weekend is important for drawing some attention and excitement to your brand. However, the prices should not be desperately low.

If you need assistance establishing a strategic marketing plan for Cyber Weekend, you can get in touch with an expert from our specialised marketing team. Generate Your Audience has much experience in the e-commerce space, and we have guided various businesses to sales period success.