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Black Friday is a crucial time for online businesses, and making marketing mistakes during this period can be costly. It’s an outstanding opportunity for online business owners to expand and increase their outcomes.
That’s why it requires extensive preparations before being part of this opportunity. If you lose this opportunity, you might be losing loyal customers and potential customers. In this preplan, you have to take precautions, you have to avoid certain marketing mistakes to reach your target goals from this Black Friday period.
To help you focus more on the expected mistakes that might occur and hinder your benefit, I will be proposing some leakages that might exist to avoid wasting your money and time. Let me guide you.
Interested to be one step ahead in your Black Friday marketing plan? Then read this article to get to know more about some of the Marketing mistakes you can avoid.
Here we go!
Top 10 Black Friday Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid in 2023
- Focus on discounts only
- Allowing Vacant Carts
- Not updating your website
- Copying others
- Ignore analysis
- Focus solely on Black Friday week
- Ignore Black Friday post-purchase engagement
- Inadequate inventory management
- Neglecting your competitors
- Overlooking Emerging Trends
1- Focus on discounts only
Attracting and retaining your customers requires diversifying your promotions and offers. There are other value-added strategies you can include to make customers save more money.
How to solve it? You can also provide the following in place of or in addition to discounts such as:
- Giveaways: when you buy similar to a BOGO offer, a complimentary gift might lure clients by suggesting they would get more than what they paid for. This extra gift can be a complementary prize to the original product or something related to it. This can assist you in persuading customers to buy something they might not have otherwise to prevent losing out on a present.
- BOGO Offers: Sales of "buy one get one," or BOGOs, are an excellent method to entice consumers who are looking to save as much money as possible. Just make sure the products you're selling are ones that people will want to buy in bulk.
- Referral codes: Provide your existing customers with exclusive referral codes that offer them and their referred friends extra discounts on Black Friday purchases. This incentive can motivate your loyal customers to refer others.
2- Allowing Vacant Carts
One of the main causes of sales on Black Friday not reaching their maximum potential is cart abandonment. Ignoring those dollars is a big mistake, whether shoppers are second-guessing themselves, looking for better offers to compare, or have just forgotten their cart.
How to solve: Utilizing customer data, you can ask customers who have abandoned their carts to come back and finish the transaction by sending them emails or even texts as a reminder.
This can help you better understand potential sales by reminding customers of their purchases or, at the very least, getting them to empty their carts.
3- Not updating your website
You have to be ready to display your marketing ON your website as more and more consumers choose to shop online rather than in physical stores. Your website is often the central hub where customers land to learn about your deals, make purchases, and engage with your brand.
This is essential for your promotion visibility, to get an improved user experience, as well as with the increasing use of mobile devices for online shopping. Having an outdated website is a huge marketing mistake that obstacles having a responsive website with no seamless experience on smartphones and tablets.
How to solve:
- Do consistent Branding: Your website is an extension of your brand. Ensure that the design, color schemes, and messaging align with your brand identity and Black Friday promotions to create a consistent customer experience.
- SEO Optimization: Optimize your website for relevant Black Friday keywords to improve your search engine visibility. Update meta tags, titles, and descriptions to help potential customers find your site when searching for Black Friday deals.
- Always show your new offerings: with the new discounts, BOGO offers, and mix between offers on the old and new collections for extra motivation.
- Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Update your CTAs to direct visitors to Black Friday deals, shopping carts, or other conversion points. Make these CTAs prominent and enticing.
4- Copying others
You need to be different. You would commit a mistake if you do not distinguish the way you talk to your target audience. As an online business owner, you need to think wisely while preparing your marketing strategy and how to address your customers differently. This is a hidden mistake that is sometimes not considered while planning for your Black Friday Marketing strategy. FOCUS on small details.
How to solve: It's possible to announce a Black Friday sale in many ways without actually saying "BLACK FRIDAY SALE!" Don't let your copy fail to make an impression, ruining all the effort you've put into a marketing campaign.
Saying "Black Friday sale" doesn't have to be said in this way:
- "Keep your inbox refreshed for some specials this Black Friday!"
- Did you hear what happened? This Black Friday, everything you see is 30% off!"
- "Thank goodness it's Black Friday!" Check out our incredible savings."
- "We've got something special just for you this Black Friday!"
Use a unique language to SHINE!
5- Ignore analysis
Missed opportunities to improve your Black Friday marketing efforts can result from failing to track and analyze the data. To evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns and make informed decisions, use analytics tools. Analyzing the performance of your Black Friday marketing strategy in 2023 is essential for making data-driven decisions and improving your approach for future holiday seasons.
How to solve:
- Monitor the number of visitors to your website during the Black Friday period.
- Analyze user behavior, such as which pages are the most visited, time spent on the site, and bounce rates.
- Measure the success of your calls-to-action (CTAs) and landing pages in converting visitors into customers.
- Track the number of abandoned carts during the Black Friday sales and work on strategies to recover some of these potential sales.
- Monitor your competitors' Black Friday strategies and promotions to identify opportunities and threats in the market.
- Segment your data to understand where your customers are located and their demographic characteristics. This can help you tailor your marketing efforts.
- Monitor the engagement metrics on your social media channels, such as likes, shares, comments, and follower growth.
Take care you should not only focus on your current marketing performance but also your performance of previous years. Be mindful of your previous performance. Analyze data from past years to determine what succeeded and what failed, then apply that knowledge to guide your plans for this year.
Analyze previous data and statistics to predict the reactions of your target audience. To make sure that campaigns are thoroughly tested before their official launch, create campaigns for A/B testing. You can examine customer lifetime value, average order value, and conversion rates.
6- Focus your marketing efforts on Black Friday week only
Centering your marketing budget on Black Friday week only instead of developing a promotional plan for your online store to boost sales for several weeks. It also involves improving your brand, particularly in terms of client retention. All of your efforts will probably be lost in the deluge of discount messaging if you concentrate on just one week.
How to solve: Launch now better than later. Your overall branding and sales objectives should be aligned with your BFCM strategy. Develop comprehensive campaigns that enable you to reap benefits well beyond the Christmas season. Three stages would make up an ideal strategy:
- Pre-Black Friday
- Black Friday weekend
- Post-Black Friday
7- Ignore Black Friday post-purchase engagement
as I mentioned previously, it is important to have a Post Black Friday stage; it means that you as a marketer have to continue engaging with your customers through email marketing, surveys, and other post-purchase activities to build lasting relationships that will help to benefit you beyond this season with loyal customers to get back to you all along the year to buy your offerings.
How to solve: Prompt and helpful post-purchase support is a critical element of customer satisfaction. Addressing any post-sale issues swiftly and professionally can turn potentially negative experiences into positive ones and encourage repeat business.
Adding to this, sending personalized content, recommendations, and exclusive offers post-purchase can keep customers engaged and interested in your products. This level of personalization demonstrates that you value their business.
8- Inadequate inventory management
Image source: omniaccounts
One of the biggest Black Friday mistakes can be running out of popular items. This is a critical challenge for e-commerce businesses. You should avoid this mistake to prevent significant losses and disappointed customers. Hence, Inadequate inventory management can lead to situations where coveted products disappear from the digital shelves, leaving customers frustrated and potentially turning to competitors who can fulfill their needs.
How to solve: Implement real-time inventory tracking systems to keep an eye on stock levels. These systems should automatically update your website to reflect available quantities and prevent overselling. You can also set up automated alerts for low-stock items and reorder points. This ensures that you are proactive in restocking essential items.
It is important to shed light on inventory segmentation. This means that you should Categorize your inventory into different segments based on demand patterns and sales velocity. This allows you to allocate resources more efficiently to high-demand products.
9- Neglecting competitors
Failing to keep an eye on your competitors' Black Friday strategies can lead to missed opportunities or being outperformed in the market. Yes, you should focus on yourself, but not solely; you should always stay ahead of the competition.
How to solve: To be aware of what your competitors do, you should always take a look at market insights into market trends, consumer preferences, and popular product offerings. You can understand your competitor's pricing strategy, which allows you to adjust your own pricing strategy to remain competitive while maintaining profitability.
And most importantly, Keeping track of competitors' online reputation and customer reviews can provide insights into areas for improvement in your own customer feedback and review management.
10- Overlooking Emerging Trends
This is linked to your competitive advantage; you risk losing out on business opportunities if you don't keep up with the latest trends in marketing to avoid limiting your competitiveness. Always check the trends your competitor is part of and outperform them.
How to solve: take into consideration influencer marketing and chatbots powered by AI, and you can definitely utilize AR experiences to allow customers to virtually try on products, enhancing the online shopping experience.
** know more about Black Friday trends in 2023 and embrace the trend early before your competitors!
Final Thoughts:
Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year and the official start of the holiday season.
But in the absence of a plan, marketers risk making costly errors on Black Friday that have a detrimental impact on their revenue. Understanding and addressing the top five marketing mistakes in your Black Friday strategy for 2023 is crucial for a successful holiday season.
To fortify your approach and minimize these pitfalls, we highly recommend incorporating an automated system into your e-commerce marketing platforms as Converted in.
This automated system is your vigilant ally, continuously monitoring and analyzing your marketing campaign's performance. By harnessing its capabilities, you can swiftly detect and rectify any deviations from your strategy, ensuring that you stay on course throughout the Black Friday mayhem.
Moreover, the automated system becomes your reliable assistant in tackling the common issue of abandoned carts. Automatically sending follow-up emails to potential customers who left without completing their purchase significantly increases the chances of reclaiming lost sales and maximizing your conversion rates.
As the e-commerce landscape becomes increasingly competitive, a dependable automated system becomes your indispensable partner in crafting a resilient Black Friday strategy. With its assistance, you can not only navigate these marketing challenges but also stay ahead of the game, ensuring a prosperous holiday season for your online business.
