10 tips to boost your pre-Christmas sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021
In the last few years, increasing amount of customers have realised that Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer the most attractive deals for their favorite brands. Many are patiently waiting for these days to buy Christmas presents for friends and family, while bargain hunters look out for the best deals for themselves. As a merchant, it is important for you to understand the significance of these days in order to take advantage of the pre-holiday period to boost your online sales. Find out below what these days are and how you can best prepare for their arrival.
In the last few yours, increasing amount of customers have realised that Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer the most attractive deals for their favorite brands. Many are patiently waiting for these days to buy Christmas presents for friends and family, while bargain hunters look out for the best deals for themselves. As a merchant, it is important for you to understand the significance of these days in order to take advantage of the pre-holiday period to boost your online sales. Find out below what these days are and how you can best prepare for their arrival.
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is traditionally known in the United States as the kick-off of the holiday shopping season. It is the day when stores offer the best discounts and deals of the year becoming one of the largest shopping days in the US. Black Friday this year falls on November 26th.
The name Black Friday originated in 1961 in Philadelphia to describe the state of collapse caused on the roads the day after Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday marked the point at which shops began to turn a profit and move from red to black numbers after the low months occurred throughout the year. The campaign first arrived in the UK some years ago when Amazon thought it would a good idea to bring the shopping sensation to a new market by offering some Black Friday discounts.
The name Cyber Monday was created in America in 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled “Cyber Monday quickly becoming one of the biggest shopping days of the year.” According to the release, 77% of marketers substantially increased online sales that at that time, many Americans were turning back to work where they had high speed internet connections and could buy what they liked. Cyber Monday 2021 will take place on Monday, November 29th.
In the last years, more British retailers adopted a Black Friday campaign and offered massively discounted prices to encourage shopper to start their Christmas sales.
How to prepare your shop for Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2021
Anticipation and planning are undoubtedly the keys to success. Here are some ideas how you can prepare your shop for the upcoming special days.
- Determine the bestsellers that you would like to offer on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Consider products that are current top sellers and products that are potential gifts. Don’t forget to also add the bestsellers of the last Holiday season.
- Make room in your storage by selling off products that remained in the shelves for a longer time. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the perfect opportunity to get rid of them.
- Refresh your home page so visitors can see instantly that you have offers for these special dates. Here you should present an updated image at the top that works as a link to your promotional products and also clearly visible information about the delivery methods, duration of discounts and your return policy.
- Prepare your stock and those products that will have a special offer. Nothing is worse than disappointing your customers. Therefore, make sure that the stock level you entered in the administration area for each product is correct.
- Inform your existing and potential customers on additional channels about the promotions in your shop. You can plan an email marketing campaign and spread your promotions throughout social networks. Consider sending newsletters and posting on social networks in advance so that your customers already anticipate your offers.
- Show the original price on product pages. This way the customers immediately see how much money they can save.
- Create a countdown in your shop counting the days until Black Friday/Cyber Monday – for instance on your shop’s home page. This allows you to create further anticipation and excitement among your customers.
- Publishing a dedicated page in your online shop with all the promotional products will help you organise the structure of your site and also assist your visitors with finding the promoted products.
- Announce your offers on coupon websites. Even though this is not essential to join the trend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it can help to gain visitors. These pages are very common among online customers during sales seasons or special promotions like Black Friday/Cyber Monday to get even more interesting offers.
- How did your campaign perform? Use tracking tools to measure the success of your marketing activities. For instance, integrate the Facebook Pixel directly into your shop to see page and button clicks. Read more about the tool and the integration in our blog article.
What is a discount worth?
In recent years there has been a “Greta-effect” in retail; a growing number of consumers are questioning where products come from and what impact they are having on society and the environment. They are consciously searching for and buying from brands that are aligned with their own values. Therefore, businesses should revisit their brand values in shaping their Black Friday & Cyber Monday offers. Sustainable brands can have their own approach to Black Friday, by for example taking a stance against consumerism. One example is the “Super Smart Weeks” and the “Circular Monday” of the Swedish online supermarket of Motatos, which rescues food during the discount weeks, while offering its customers a 10 percent discount at the same time. Some others combine a discount with donation actions.
Meanwhile, other brands are taking bold steps: Picture Organic Clothing, for example, built their entire fashion brand around sustainability. They do an annual online shop campaign discouraging their customers to shop on Black Friday. For that, they even shut down their online shop to kick-off their “Green Friday”:
Der “Green Friday” bei Picture Organic Clothing 2019
This article was updated in October 2021.
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