The North American phenomenon has made its way across the pond, drumming up high purchase intent among shoppers in Western Europe. Post-pandemic, more people are buying online than before, so we can only expect that this year’s Black Friday will be dominated by online shopping too.
In trying to win this traffic, it's easy to overspend on irrelevant clicks, or underspend and miss traffic altogether. Read our checklist to prepare for the big weekend.
Your Black Friday checklist
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
During the Black Friday period, competition is hotter than ever - everyone's trying to win business, increasing the bids for their ads to get them in front of ready-to-buy shoppers. But with all the added competition, how can you do this?
Make sure the promotional campaigns around your key products are prepared. You may be able to leverage influencers as long as they resonate with your target audience. For instance, beauty retailers utilise lifestyle, beauty and makeup influencers to advertise beauty advent calendars at this time of year in preparation for the product release date. Pair with email marketing to really drive the buzz, whether it’s smaller discounts or spot buys on the lead up to Black Friday.
Test and test again
Can your website handle a surge in traffic? There’s nothing more stressful than a site going down. You can test your site speed using tools like k6 cloud and if your store is on Shopify, they have their own online store speed report.
Multi-Channel selling
If you’re not already, you’ll want to start selling on multiple channels. Identify which channels have brought you the most success and double down on those. Ensure there's consistency in your promotions across the channels, and look to promote touchpoints throughout. For instance use social ads, email marketing, and Shopping ads.
Prepare for the worst
Following the global pandemic and other crises on the international stage, ensure your supply chain is stable and prepared for an influx in orders. Planning ahead now will reduce the stress on the inevitably busy weekend of sales.
Inventory decisions
Choosing which products to promote should be done as early as possible, so you can make sure your suppliers have plenty of stock. Can't decide what you should stock more of? Consider the following:
- What are your top-performing products?
- Which of your products see most competition on Google Shopping?
- What are the most popular products in your industry?
Don't have access to this data? Our technology helps our clients choose which products to stock more of based on their own performance data - and weekly calls with their account manager provide human insight too.
Organise your upcoming promotions
Review your margins and inventory to find suitable discounts, and plan the exact promotions you'd like to hold to hit the sweet spot of profitability at a competitive price. Prepare these promotions across your different channels for ultimate effect.
Order and fulfilment workflows
A surge in sales in a short period can make it harder to fulfil and get orders to customers on time. Below are a few things you can do to ensure a smooth, functioning fulfilment workflow.
Organise your fulfilment area – If you’re using a warehouse or an office to ship orders, you want to make sure that your best-sellers are accessible for quicker picking and packing,
Hire additional staff – With Black Friday comes an influx of high purchase intent, and if your Shopping ads are already optimised, you'll be expecting a tidal wave of sales. To match this demand, you may need a pair of extra hands to make sure your customer gets their products on time.
Communicate – Bidnamic will be on hand to assist you with any Google Shopping needs during the Black Friday weekend. It won’t hurt to keep in regular contact with your fulfilment
and delivery staff to avoid any errors and save your time.
Retarget past visitors and customers
By using retargeting lists you’ll reach people who might have forgotten about you! Your existing customers should be generally easier to reach than brand new customers, and they’ll be more receptive to your latest promotions.
Mobile-first
Alibaba reported that on Single’s day 2019, over 90% of sales were on mobile. You should make sure your site is fully optimised for mobile. Don’t forget about the checkout process too, especially on mobile, you can lose conversions if the consumer has to fill out too many fields. Options like Shop Pay or Google Pay can provide the extra boost needed to make those conversions.
Data, data, data!
Knowledge is power and understanding your customers’ journey is crucial. Our Client Success Managers schedule weekly calls with clients to provide performance feedback, advice, and work together to prepare the client's account for Black Friday. Each client has access to their own dashboard available 24/7: Our dashboards show you exactly what your customers are looking for so you can push for that extra traffic.
To learn more about how we can optimise your Black Friday sales, book a demo with one of our Google Shopping Specialists.
