Ok, so Black Friday 2021 is next week…
You must have missed our 4 Incredible Tips to Help you Prepare for Black Friday 2021 article back in September. 👀
Not to worry! Although being prepared early is a great way to smash your sales goals during the Black Friday weekend, all hope is not lost.
We’ve prepared a list of last-minute optimization tips to quickly get you back up to speed, and in with a fighting chance of making this your biggest year yet!
Get ready, we’re jumping right in, there’s no time to lose!
Download your free whitepaper today!
The 2021 Black Friday Toolkit
8 Last-Minute Black Friday Optimization Tips
The 30-Second Rundown
- Make a quick Black Friday plan
- Maximize website performance
- Eliminate checkout friction
- Use holiday themes, but stay true to your brand
- Increase your Black Friday PPC advertising
- Increase your AOV with time-limited offers
- Use promotion extensions to highlight deals
- Send cart abandonment emails this Black Friday
Tip #1 - Make a Quick Black Friday Plan
Although Black Friday is so soon, you still need to make a strategic plan for your business. Taking a few hours now to plan will make the day much more manageable and profitable.
Some things that you should think about are:
- What do you want to offer your customers?
- What discounts will you be providing?
- What’s your budget?
- What are your current stock levels?
- Are there any products you need to be gone by the end of the year?
This isn’t the time to start coming up with elaborate new ideas. Stick to what you know works from previous years and run with that. If this is your first year in business, focus on providing what your customer wants at price that are competitive for both you and your customer.
Tip #2 - Maximize Website Performance
Black Friday 2020 brought in $14.13 billion in online sales. That’s a 19% increase since 2019.
This shows that each Black Friday is likely to be even busier than the one before it. With more customers visiting your website, you need to be sure that it can handle the volume of Black Friday traffic.
The top things that you should look out for are:
- Slow loading speeds
- Crashes due to traffic overload
- Mobile incompatibility
Consider using tools such as Google’s PageSpeed to identify areas that you can improve on.
A slow website is bad, but a crashed website during a sale is devastating!
Tip #3 - Eliminate Checkout Friction
Friction at the point of checkout can cost your business sales and money.
The easiest and quicker that you can make the checkout process the better. Analyze the process before the big day to see if there are any changes you can make.
Expert Tip: Allowing multiple payment options such as credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc. makes it easier for customers to pay you!
Tip #4 - Use Holiday Themes, but Stay True to your Brand
Everyone loves making the most of the holiday season. I’m sure the Christmas lights are already up in every store in your town. However, as an eCommerce business, you shouldn’t get caught up in the Black Friday creative hype.
Staying true to your identity and your working formula for creatives will help you to maximize the impact of your brand awareness.
A great example to follow is Estée Lauder, seen above. They are able to stay true to their own unique aesthetic, while still making the ad seasonal.
Make sure the ad looks like your ad, while still getting creative!
Tip #5 - Increase your Black Friday PPC Advertising
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is your go-to advertising format this Black Friday.
You want your business to show up when people are searching for Black Friday deals on products that you have to offer. The best way to do this is to increase your budget for PPC advertising for the entire weekend, and possibly the week leading up to the 26th of November too.
To learn more about PPC advertising, read this article Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads 2020.
Tip #6 - Increase your AOV with Time-Limited Offers
Increase your customers’ Average Order Value (AOV) by incentivizing them to spend more. Upselling, cross-selling, and bundling are a great way to do this.
This can be done by having time-sensitive discounts which disappear after a set period of time. This creates a sense of urgency for the customer.
Tip #7 - Use Promotion Extensions to Highlight Deals
Promotion extensions on Google Ads have been running for four years now. Their aim is to make your deals stand out even more and be at the top of the search page.
They’ve replaced the structured holiday snippets and allow advertisers to highlight specific aspects of their deals – leading to an average click-through rate of nearly 10%, according to WordStream research!
These ads also show up under Google’s “Black Friday Deals” category at the very top of the search results page.
Tip #8 - Send Cart Abandonment Emails this Black Friday
On Black Friday, consumers shop around to multiple stores creating baskets here, there, and everywhere of things they like.
However, by being smart about it and obtaining marketing permission from your customers, you can use this opportunity to follow up via email.
By sending an email to recover abandoned carts, you can save products that may have gone unsold.
Conclusion
It’s true, Black Friday 2021 is fast approaching, however, by implementing these quick tips you’ll be able to increase your returns over the big weekend!
Yes, for next year, I’m going to encourage you to get prepared earlier so that you can take advantage of even bigger opportunities. But by spending the time to incorporate these expert tactics into your 2021 plan, you’ll ensure you’re in a strong place.
In 2020, Thanksgiving weekend drew 186.4 million U.S. shoppers… let’s see how many of them we can get to your store with these tips!
