The Don’ts of Launching Your Black Friday Marketing Campaign
Introduction
Every merchant knows that Black Friday is a golden opportunity to rocket their sales. But it’s also a frantic time for merchants since there are so many things on the plate: upping stock levels, crafting Black Friday marketing strategy, optimizing checkout process and so on. Hence, there are bound to be errors along the way.
Fortunately, things don’t have to be that way if you are well aware of common marketing mistakes to avoid and employ the right methodology for your brand.
Below, we’ve rounded up the 5 most frequent marketing mistakes during Black Friday and Cyber Monday season. Keep scrolling down!
#1 Targeting The Wrong Audience
To choose the right audience means to find prospects who will be your most active buyers. You can have a brilliant Black Friday marketing strategy, creative copy and funnel. However, the right eye needs to see it. Otherwise, all your precious time, hard work and money get flushed down the drain.
Bear in mind that inaccuracy and misunderstanding of your customers’ preferences can result in serious consequences: from loss of revenue to worsening your brand’s image.
Surveys and questionnaires are some of the most popular methods to stay connected with your clients. Politely ask for their feedback about purchasing experience, interests, needs and encourage them to share about some points they think you can improve. In return, you can give them a discount code or a freebie as a thank you gift for their sharings.
#2 Not Optimizing for Mobile Devices
As number never lies, let’s first take a look at some stats we’ve collected:
- 50,3% of eCommerce traffic comes from mobile
- 80,9% people who shop on tablets end up buying
- 38% of consumers will not return to a retail website if it’s not mobile-friendly
With this in mind, it’s of utmost importance to optimize for mobile when it comes to eCommerce website, checkout page, Black Friday email, etc.
Here’s a quick cheat sheet on how to optimize for mobile:
- Choose an adaptive website template
- Replace long links with CTA buttons
- Avoid large-size images
We recommend you use PageSpeed Insights to have your site analyzed for speed and other optimization factors.
#3 Focusing On Only One Marketing Channel
Using only one marketing channel is cost-saving but it limits your potential customer reach and the creativity of your Black Friday marketing campaign as well.
We acknowledge that every business needs to balance between Black Friday marketing strategies and marketing budget. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of marketing strategies you can apply in Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021 without adding up too much to your budget.
For instance, you can boost Black Friday sales via SMS, email marketing and social media. While SMS is the traditional method to let your customers know about your deals, email and social media are the ideal stages for your creativity to shine.
#4 Minimizing Marketing Efforts After Black Friday week
If you’re limiting your Black Friday marketing strategy to the Black Friday week only, it’s time you rethought that stance as you’re likely to miss out on lots of sales.
In recent years, many brands tend to run their sales a little bit later - the week after Black Friday is over. It’s when other competitors have just ended their deals, many customers run behind Black Friday schedule and haven’t got themselves the items on their wishlists. Thus, you can make the very last attempt to convert this special clientele - late shoppers.
Even when you have no intention of extending your sales, post-Black Friday is still an ideal time to strengthen your brand-customer relationship. We love the idea of sending your customers an email or a well-handwritten note to sincerely thank them for sticking with you through such a difficult year and wish them a happy new year.
#5 Having Your WebSite Crashed In The Middle of Black Friday Traffic Surge
In preparation for Black Friday sales, you might have made several logistical changes to make sure you are ready for the influx of orders that could hit your store. Maybe you’ve hired more staff, made your packaging system watertight, increased your stock level. But have you ever thought about performing regular system maintenance?
Well, even some of the biggest sites go through website crash problems. On October 4th, 2021 Facebook and its subsidiaries like Messenger, Instagram went down for hours. But when it comes to Black Friday bonanza, website downtime can cost you thousands of sales!
Therefore, we recommend you build up your online store on powerful yet stable platforms like Shopify, Wix or WordPress. Also, pay attention to your system upgrade. It might be a bit of a bother at first. But it comes with bug fixes and substantial enhancements to security that will prevent your site from crashing even during the peak time.
Bottom Line
Are you making any of these marketing mistakes? Don’t worry if you’re. There is still time to turn things around.
But don't put yourself under too much pressure. Let’s think of Black Friday 2021 as a learning opportunity rather than just simply earning revenue! Stay motivated and enjoy every lesson along the way.
Author Bio: Ginny Tran is a forward-thinking and meticulous marketing executive at LitExtension - the world #1 shopping cart migration expert. She has a good command of the eCommerce industry and she keeps updating herself with innovations in this field.
Modern Marketing Mishaps to Avoid
Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small business, you’re going to make some mistakes in your marketing. Fortunately, mistakes and mishaps are tremendous learning opportunities. When studied intently, your mistakes can be the foundations for marketing magic.
Suppose you want conversions, growth, and business longevity. In that case, you must look at the modern marketing mistakes that have been made and do your best to implement techniques to prevent them from happening in your marketing campaigns. Here are four marketing mistakes and how they can be avoided.
Overlooking the Importance of Protecting Consumer Data
Intelligent marketers are all about collecting data on their current and potential customers. Without data collection and analytics, marketing campaigns just wouldn’t be as impactful as they are. But with all of that consumer data comes the responsibility of adequately protecting it.
Overlooking the importance of protecting consumer data is detrimental not only to your marketing efforts but also to your overall business reputation. One website, social media, or tech tool hack could result in loads of stolen consumer data. And once you share the bad news with your customers, they’ll be less likely to visit your online platforms and give you their personal information.
Solid cybersecurity tools can help you collect consumer data safely, protect it, and continue producing targeted marketing campaigns because of it. An internet search for cybersecurity tools is just a first step. Reach out to other business owners in your industry and find out how they protect their consumer data.
Then, narrow your search down to the top two choices, chat with representatives from each, and make your final choice. Don’t feel like you have to implement everything at once. Instead, try out your cybersecurity tools in phases to manage them better.
The next modern marketing mishap to avoid is not growing with your target audience.
Not Growing With Your Target Audience
We all understand the importance of knowing as many details about your target audience as possible in marketing. But, unfortunately, many marketers don’t keep up with their target audience research.
Your marketing efforts become outdated when you don’t keep up with the changing nature of your target audience. For instance, let’s say your target audience was using primarily Facebook, but they’ve started to engage mostly on Instagram in the last year. If you don’t transition your focus to Instagram, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to grow with your audience and continue connecting with them in the future on social media.
Spend time each month learning about the changing needs and behaviors of your target audience. For example, are they continuing to shop mostly online now that we’re rebuilding from the pandemic? Or do you need to ramp up your physical marketing because they’re flooding the stores again?
Also, as you continue learning about your target audience, personalization becomes more and more appealing, but don’t go overboard with it.
Personalization That Crosses Boundaries
We can’t seem to read anything about marketing without a mention of personalization. We’re long past the days of sending each person on our mailing list the same email. Good marketing content requires some level of personalization if you want the best chance at engagement.
At the same time, there are too many marketers out there going overboard with their use of personalization. From retargeting ads that follow visitors across the web to using customer information without their consent, personalization tactics like this can make things creepy.
Don’t turn customers off to personalization by overusing or irresponsibly using their personal data. First, always ask customers for permission to collect their personal information and provide a way to opt out should they change their minds later. Then, gradually implement your personalization techniques so your customers feel safe. Also, ensure you’re collecting the most accurate and relevant data so you can provide them with content that makes sense.
Another marketing mistake to avoid is not taking the time to polish your content.
Unpolished Content
The success of your marketing efforts is hugely dependent on the quality of your content.
For instance, let’s say you’ve learned about your target audience and draw them to a piece of content. If it’s ridden with grammatical errors, isn’t cohesive, and the subject doesn’t match the title, visitors aren’t going to stay. And that means they’ll never get to the CTA at the bottom that has the solution to their problem and aren’t likely to engage with your brand again.
Creating a quality standard for your content is the best way to go. You want to ensure the content is relevant first. Then, ensure each piece of content is cohesive and points readers toward a specific action at the end of it. Finally, run them through a strict editing process that includes proofreading it thoroughly.
Lastly, do not oversimplify SEO. It’s beyond keywords and phrases. Optimize all visual content, meet accessibility standards, secure your site, and constantly refresh your content to leverage SEO effectively.
When you’re ready to publish your content, ensure, it won’t break any digital copyright, marketing, and advertising laws. Ensure your marketing content is created with best legal practices at the forefront. Educating yourself in marketing and advertising laws also guarantees your techniques are ethical and won’t result in harmful implications like taking content down or causing mistrust in your brand.
Conclusion
Making mistakes in your marketing is inevitable, but it’s crucial you learn from them and make adjustments to drive conversions and lasting customer relationships. Study the above four modern marketing mishaps and implement the tips to avoid them.