Black Friday Marketing Preparation

Below is the written transcript of the Black Friday Marketing Preparation.

Podcast Episode Introduction

“Hi, I’m Chartered Marketer, Tracy Heatley, and I thank you for listening to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast. This episode is all about preparing for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions.

Tracy Heatley in the studio recording the Preparing For Black Friday podcast episode

Usually, my podcast episodes are purposely full of generalised advice, so that anyone can listen to them, at any time, and they will bare relevance.   However, I’m getting asked a lot recently, by my marketing mentoring clients about when, how and what to prepare for Black Friday deals.

Tradition Of Black Friday

Traditionally, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were very much an American thing.  These days, though, as we all know, both have become an international phenomenon.   Also, what started as massively discounted products in stores, rapidly extended to online sales.  These days, we’re all at it.  There are promotions on pretty much everything. So, whether you’re a service provider or you are selling products, I’m sure this episode will be useful for you.

Who, What, Why When About Black Friday & Cyber Monday

I’m going to talk to you about the who, what, why, when what about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Who

Let’s start with Who!  This is an easy one! You! If you’re a business owner, then you ought to be thinking about your exclusive offers! It applies to all businesses, even service providers, like me!  I’ll be putting my own Black Friday marketing mentoring deals out there within the next few days!  Watch this space!

When

Now, let’s think about when.  As I record this episode, it’s the beginning of November.  Ideally, you should start a promotional pre-launch starting in October.  At the very least get started now. Don’t wait until a few days before Black Friday is here.  Start drip feeding your promotions and offers now.  I know some of you might be concerned about customers putting off purchasing full price products, in favour of waiting for the sales.  Some will and some won’t!  Either way, don’t hang around.  Get your Black Friday offers out there now.  You may have some customers who wait.  More importantly, you may get new customers who purchase in the sales but continue choosing your brand and your products or services, so crack on.   If you’ve not yet decided on what your offer is going to be, get to work on it now.

What

Next let’s focus on What to include in your promotions.   This will vary from one business to another, but I want to share some general principles that should apply to all businesses, including yours.   Firstly, it could be certain products that you’re putting in the sale.  If you’re products are seasonal or you’ve got old stock that you need to clear, Black Friday is great for that. Get rid of outdated stock and make room for new merchandise.  You may be holding excessive stock of certain items that you want to off load, so get them in the sale too.   If you’re still unsure, your accountant or Finance Director will be able to guide you on which products to clear in the sale.

For service providers, you could put promotions together for discounting existing service packages or use it to launch a new service.  Something like the first one hundred people to sign up get this Black Friday discount, for example.  If you’re doing this, be specific about the numbers and stick to it. Also, be specific about the timescales.  Don’t be tempted to add on a few extra days or weeks because someone has just missed the deadline cutoff date.  It’s a bit like when we say to our kids, if you do such and such, you’re not having this, that or the other.  You can’t back down because our kids will never believe that you’ll go through with what you’ve said.  It’s the same with promotions like this for service providers, so make sure that you’re specific with your offering, be disciplined and stick to it.

Why

Why offer Black Friday deals.   For one, if you’re an online business, it can open new regional or international markets.  It’s great for brand awareness and riding on the back of certain hashtags.  Even if people aren’t buying, they’re still seeing.  The fundamentals of marketing about constant exposure to our brands haven’t changed.  Your potential customers need to see and hear about your business repeatedly, before they finally decide to buy, so relish in the exposure.  As a small business owner, you may not have the massive marketing budget that bigger businesses have but you can still run a promotion on a budget.   I’ll give you a few tips on that too!

Marketing On A Shoe String Budget

In fact, now I’ve mentioned it, I’ll do that now.   This part is specifically for small businesses that are putting Black Friday deals together on a shoestring budget.

Social Media & Canva

First, get your social media posts designed.   If you haven’t yet got CANVA, get it now.  Canva is an amazing platform for designing your social media posts, as well as other stuff.  I’ve used this for both my businesses for years.  It’s extremely easy to use and you can create impactful designs. Plus, there’s a free version.   If you already have the free version and you’ve not yet upgraded to the paid for version. If it’s in budget to spend a small amount of money for massive creative impact, I’d advise on upgrading, if you can.  You can put your branding colours on, you get access to more photos and other images.   It’s fabulous! I love it!   If you’re unfamiliar with Canva, search for Canva – CANVA online and you’ll find it.

I did an earlier podcast specifically on the topic of drip feed marketing.  If you want to know more about this subject, it might be worth having a little listen.   Start drip feeding your promotions now.  Don’t’ wait!  Get it out there on your socials now! Even if you’ve not got something ready on your website, it will only take a couple of hours to get your socials planned, designed and pre-scheduled.  We can talk about the pros and cons of pre-scheduling social media posts another time.  In the instance, though, I’d pre-schedule them now and then add the offers as unique content on individual social media platforms too.  Do both!  Why not? Social media is more of a visual search, but it is great for search engine optimisation too, so use it to your advantage.

Landing Pages

The other cost-efficient thing you can do is to set up a unique landing page on your website, specifically for your Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday offers.   If you’ve got a WordPress website and you’re familiar with it, you can add it in yourself.  If not, it will be worth paying your web developer to add the page in.  The beauty of WordPress is that once the promotion has ended, you can change the live page back to a draft page, so it no longer shows on your website.  Then, you can alter the content and use it again it the future for other promotions.

Monitoring Your Marketing

If you’re a marketing mentoring client of mine or your listen to my podcasts regularly, you will know that I’m fan of monitoring your marketing activities. It’s vital that you know what’s working and what’s not.  Quick tip on this for your Black Friday and Cyber Promotions is reference them.  Put a unique reference on your promotional landing page and on all your socials.  If you’re doing to separate offers. That is, one for Black Friday and another for Cyber Monday, then use two different codes. You know what, even if the offer is identical for both days, I’d use different references anyway.  Buyer behaviour is fascinating, and it will be interesting to see if one promotion is more successful than the other.  Plus, having that information will be help massively when it comes to putting future promotions together.

Apply Discount Codes

Apply discount codes, too, and make sure that you use the right ones on your website.  I know this sounds obvious, but if you get it wrong, it could cost you a fortune, so check, check and double check everything.

Your Newsletters

Use your newsletters and email marketing to promote your offers in advance.  I read a report recently that determined that 25% of Black Friday sales start with email marketing, so grab the opportunity to reach out to your customers and connections.

Networking Contacts

Last, but by no means least, shout out to your network of contacts.   Tell your networking contacts what your promotions are going to be.  Get them to share the word with their connections.  Word-of-mouth is still king when it comes to marketing on a shoestring.  Even if your promotions are online human connections and word-of-mouth works.

Final Tip

Final tip:  Once you’ve made the sale, make sure that you capture customer details and remember to use the exposure and opportunity to up-sell too.  If you can, put automation in place so that customers automatically get follow up emails and messages.  Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday customers could become customers for life.

Podcast Episode Ending

Stay tuned to my socials Tracy Heatley UK for my up-and-coming announcements on my Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals too!  I’ll also be announcing them on my website next week too.   Find out more at www.tracyheatley.com. Exciting times!

I hope you’ve found this Black Friday Marketing Preparation episode useful.  For more top business, marketing and networking tips, check out my other episodes and make sure that you’ve subscribed too.  All my podcast episodes are available on all major podcast platforms, which include Apple, Spotify and Amazon Audible.

Be Better With Tracy Heatley Podcast Cover for the Preparing For Black Friday episodeMy name’s Tracy Heatley and I thank you for listening to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast”.

Better Business, Better You!