Last Minute Lifts – How to Increase Traffic on Black Friday.

You’ve most likely been working all year to prepare for Black Friday, with fingers crossed that it will all pay off. It is finally upon us, and here are some last minute ideas and tips to make sure your Black Friday is successful and goes off without a hitch.

Be Socially Prepared

Most marketers have already spent their budget on search ads in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. A popular strategy is to bid on competitor brands, but are you applying that same strategy on social? Your social team should be primed and ready to take advantage of real-time situations occurring on social networks. A day of frenzied shopping and consuming is likely to produce a few angry tweets, product unavailability, or lack of inventory, from you or your competitors. Your team can prepare in advance by brainstorming potential situations and preparing responses, discussing what types of opportunities to look for, and how to handle negative interactions. This preparation makes an “in the moment” response easier to execute. Finally, have a social team member ready to engage with people who check-in online to your location, or work on having discounts for people who check in. Black Friday is a prime opportunity to engage with a large audience and real-time marketing is an important way to capture opportunities and create memorable, engaging moments with your customers and potential customers.

Set Up Triggered Campaigns

Consumers exhibit so many behaviors during Black Friday and you’ll want to make sure you capture all of the interesting ones and take advantage of them. For example- How many people purchased goods? How many people clicked through on your emails? How many people came from mobile? Capturing all this information will be beneficial in helping you remarket to people. Create triggered campaigns ahead of time such as abandoned cart emails, or reminders for people who opened certain coupons. If people are sharing your coupons or emails, create triggered campaigns that create additional incentives or thank them for sharing with an additional discount.

Make Your Mobile Magic

Although it is too late to create a mobile app, you can still do a couple things to up your game on mobile. The most important thing you can do is make sure your website is mobile ready and responsive. The worst experience is when you are at a store, need to search something and the website is impossible to navigate on a mobile phone. Make sure you give your potential customers a good experience regardless of where they find you.  You can also send reminders to people of coupons they have engaged with. Finally, remember that not everyone goes into stores so test your website and make sure it is ready for the increased traffic.
And finally, it is important to not just think about Black Friday as a single day of marketing. Make your successful Black Friday have a bigger impact by having a plan in place for post-Black Friday engagement. Make sure your plan answers: How are you going to engage with your customers and potential customers in a relevant and ongoing way?
Do you have any tips to add to this list? Share your thoughts in the comments below.