How e-Commerce Brands Can Prepare for Black Friday

It’s no doubt it’s been one hectic year. Despite COVID, rising Unemployment, and a whole bunch of terrible things, no catastrophe, pandemic — NOTHING will stop Americans from indulging in the most insane shopping experience of the year:

Black Friday / Cyber Monday

With many restrictions still taken into effect with public gatherings, many brick & mortar / retail businesses will have to limit the amount of people coming in and out & will miss out on the most important day for their top-line and overall company. As for e-Commerce businesses, this is one year to never ever forget.

According to TechCrunch, e-Commerce grew nearly 25% this year, projecting nearly 5 years ahead of it’s growth, with regular department stores declining over -60%.

It’s safe to say, more people than ever will be shopping online this year, so here’s some ways to make sure your brand is ready at the forefront:

Deals, Deals, and more Deals

Nothing quite says Black Friday more than a good deal! BOGO, price-matching, QR codes, now’s the time for brands to initiate & promote customers to visit their websites. Walmart stores this year are having what they call, “Deals for Days” a three-week online/in-store promotional event. For each event, electronics, toys, and other various home products will be on sale, with each event having different categories of on sale items. This is a genius strategy opposed to normal Black Friday sales, this strategy help section & divide in-store traffic to ensure customers can shop safely.

Smaller retail /e-commerce brands can adopt this same deal — strategy. For example, Shoes & Apparel brands like Footlocker, DTLR, and Finish Line could host online/in-store events for limited amount of time to drive as much possible (yet safe) foot traffic in store (no pun intended) and maximize online sales. Perhaps Day 1, from 8am-3pm all Nike products could be 50% off for all in-store / online purchases over $75, Day 2 could be all Jordan products Buy One Get One 25% off, etc.

Deals are phenomenal during Black Friday, create more urgency and thrill for consumers to participate, and help stand out from competition. If your store / website can develop the reputation for being the go-to spot for a specific item/ deal on Black Friday, will do wonders for your top-line & brand.

Social Media + Creative Ads = Successful Black Friday

As a creative myself, this step is especially crucial in determining Black Friday success. Amazon’s corny but somewhat hilarious Black Friday commercial (a cardboard man triumphantly running towards the camera in slo-motion) is the direction most brands should strive for, you always pay close attention to what the “big dawgs” do, then reverse engineer.

No matter if you sell rugs, instruments, cleaning services, it doesn’t matter, now is the time to get super creative with your advertising. Take a look at your brand from your customers POV and ask yourself, “What would get me excited about my business? What would draw me to shop with myself this Black Friday?” once you position yourself as a customer, you put yourself in the proper position to know what to place in front of your customers during this month.

For instance, a potential client of mine for VivoMedia owned a start-up cellphone carrier service and wanted to know how to properly position their brand for the holidays. Family plans are extremely popular with carriers around the holidays, so we immediately thought of TikTok & Instagram micro influencers to be the ideal campaign; short, funny videos with the whole family (along with the phones / tagged business accounts) is golden for this time of year, and despite how corny it sounds, it’s what people wanna see.

Becoming the Black Friday / Cyber Monday brand has unimaginable long term benefits. Just like BestBuy, Amazon, Walmart etc., you KNOW when you see a holiday/ seasonal commercial or advertisement from them and that signal goes off in your brain. If smaller brands can produce creative around the holidays that indistinguishably makes them stand out and BE Black Friday, they will win — win BIG with their end users, because they will attach their brand with “saving money’’ and “cheaper prices” two paramount terms for the holiday season that your brand must be associated with in a marketplace filled with anxious buyers & kids with disposable income.

Thank you for reading ! if you ❤’d this article, let me know on Twitter.