Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two busiest shopping days of the year. It’s a great opportunity for businesses to gain new customers and increase sales. There’s a lot of planning that goes into Black Friday and Cyber Monday to pull it off with success. Businesses often forget some pieces of the puzzle that would not only help to double their revenue, but also help to keep a cohesive marketing message across their online channels . I’m going to dive into the top 6 Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing tips that I often see overlooked by businesses after managing hundreds of clients’ accounts and overseeing millions of dollars in ad spent over the years as an agency owner. Make sure to pull out your pen and pad and take notes, because these digital marketing tips are guaranteed to help increase your holiday sales revenue this year.

Tip 1: Make Sure To Change Your Hero Image On Your Website

The hero image is the main image that everyone sees when they go to your homepage. It is the top image there that really drives a lot of traffic. Usually, we suggest focusing on your top-selling product image but when Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale starts, we definitely want you to change the messaging and promotion all-around your Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale because it’s the biggest sale you will have for the year. It is important to keep a consistent message across your website. Make sure to:

• ✔️  Plan ahead.
• ✔️  Get a hero image.
• ✔️  Create a hero image that promotes the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale.

My suggestion is to overlay some text and great imagery to really make the image pop and draw attention to your Black Friday promotion.

If you have a Black Friday or Cyber Monday collection or if you have a certain product, you can direct them to that specific collection by adding a Shop Now button on your hero image in order for them to take advantage of your Black Friday or Cyber Monday offers.

Tip 2: Customize All Your Website Pop-ups To Promote Your Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sale

Image © Shiko Beauty Home Page Hero Image

It’s really important for website visitors to know right away that you are having a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale. Oftentimes, business owners tend to forget that their website pop-up to join their newsletter is showing on the website when the message in that newsletter letter option is not congruent with the sale.

I would suggest taking down your regular pop up or pausing it during that Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale period and replace it with a website pop up that does not require an email address option to promote your sale. Again, use very consistent imagery from your hero image, from your emails that you are sending out that promotes the sale and if you have set up a very specific Black Friday collection or Cyber Monday collection, make sure to add a Shop Now button that will link directly to the collection to take advantage of the sale.

The reason why you can get rid of your lead generation pop-up on your website during your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale is, oftentimes, the offer you are presenting for Black Friday is always better than the offer that you are presenting to your newsletter pop-up and lead magnets. You will want to focus all your energy and all your marketing around the one message of Black Friday and Cyber Monday–and if that is a good email offer, people are still going to opt-in and purchase, so, there’s no need to have a lead magnet at that time. If you have that lead magnet for the newsletter that is going to be automated email flow–emails on automation–you are going to get a lot of missed messages and mismatching messaging through email marketing that is inconsistent with your Black Friday promotion.

Certainly, there are scenarios that you would not want to happen while running your Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotions. So, if someone is abandoning their cart during Black Friday and they opted in your newsletter and then they are getting your Black Friday Abandon Cart email flow, they are going to get mis-messaging. If you haven’t turned on certain features in your email CRM to limit the number of emails that people receive, they are going to get too many emails. You also don’t want someone to use a coupon code that is offered in your newsletter pop-up on your Black Friday sale if those items are already discounted, you don’t want to give them an additional discount. These are often overlooked, so, make sure to turn off your regular website pop-ups and replace those with promotional pop-ups for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

Tip 3: Change Your Abandoned Cart and Browse Abandonment Email Flows

Image shows example of Klaviyo ‘Abandoned Cart’ automation workflow

Often overlooked by business owners, it’s important to change out your abandoned cart and browse abandonment email flows in preparation for Black Friday. If you have Klaviyo, you can easily do this.

It is important to duplicate those email flows and simply replace some of the messaging and images promoting your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. This will help prevent mismatching messaging around promotions that are going out in your email marketing flows. Oftentimes, businesses will add a coupon cart to their abandoned cart and their browse abandonment email sequences and we don’t want this to be different than what we are promoting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so a simple workaround is to:

• ✔️  Duplicate your email flows for abandoned cart and browse abandonment.
• ✔️  Turn off your regular email flows during that sale period.
• ✔️  Turn on your Black Friday and Cyber Monday abandoned cart and browse abandonment email flows.

Tip 4: Make Sure To Change Your Website Banner To Reflect Your Black Friday or Cyber Monday Sale

Image © Henna Sooq Banner

Many business owners don’t take advantage of their website banner for pushing out promotions. I often see website banners used to promote the name of their business or for branding purposes or use as a tagline, but this is not how you use the banner. The website banner should always reflect the best promotion that you have going on. If your promotion for Black Friday and Cyber Monday does free shipping, write that on your banner. If your Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotion offers a “Buy 1, Get 1 50% OFF” promotion, write that on your banner. If your Black Friday promotion is offering 50% off sitewide, put that on the banner. If you are also going to offer a coupon code, the best way to write that on your website banner is to start it with something like:

Black Friday Sale!

Save 50% Sitewide Through 11:59 PM EST on Monday

Use Code 50OFF

Tip 5: Preplan Your Email Campaign For Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Preplanning often alleviates a lot of stress that comes along with the busy holiday sales period. Make sure to preplan sending out emails for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotion. Oftentimes, businesses are actually sending out too few emails. It’s a good rule of thumb to always send out an email on the first day of your sale (or earlier if you are doing early bird access to your Black Friday sale to a certain segment of your email list). Make sure to have that planned out and send an email every day throughout the sale.

A tip to not make it too salesy and spammy is to incorporate blog posts throughout your sales period and then suggest the Black Friday sale below the blog post introduction in your email so that you are just continuing to add value during that sales period.

On the day before the sale ends, send out an email that says something like:

“Only one day left! Hurry! Our sale ends soon.”
Then on the final day of the sale, we recommend sending out two emails:
    1. An email in the morning that says something like:

“Final Day! Take advantage of our Black Friday Sale!”
    1. Another one in the afternoon that says something like:

“A few hours left make sure to check out our Black Friday Sale!”

As an expert tip, make sure you are excluding purchasers over the sales period from receiving those emails. Segment your email list so that you are not over sending emails to contacts who may not want to receive them.

Tip 6: Post Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale on Social Media

Take advantage of organic Instagram and Facebook marketing during your sales period. A tip you can use is to do a sneak peek into the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale before the actual sale starts. This will get people excited about it and increase their interest by putting it on your stories and feed on Instagram

If you preschedule a Facebook post, you can actually ask your ad agency to schedule that post in an ad in advance. That way, those ads are ready to go as soon as the sale starts. Once all your pre-planning is all good, you don’t really have to worry about doing any actual marketing during the sale thanks to all the work you did ahead of time.

I hope you enjoyed my top 6 Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing tips that most business owners forget. Make sure to take advantage of this busy holiday sales period. Don’t forget it is unlike any other time of the year where you have a unique opportunity to bring new customers into your business and ecosystem with whom you can build long-term relationships with as you introduce them to your brand. Your mindset around Black Friday and Cyber Monday should not solely focus on the revenue or profit you are going to make, but rather the unique opportunity to get new customers into your brand ecosystem at the lowest cost possible all year.

I hope these tips are helpful. If you found them helpful, make sure to share this post online and follow me on Instagram at @toccarakarizma for more expert marketing tips designed to help you quickly grow and scale your business online. Comment with your questions below and I’ll make sure to get back to you soon!