How to Create a Black Friday Ecommerce Marketing Strategy 2023

Geared up for the Black Friday frenzy?

The holiday season is just around the corner, and the Black Friday sale is the only thing fuelling the retailer’s brain.

Although originated in the US, Black Friday celebrations and shopping sprees have taken over the United Kingdom and the country’s entire ecommerce ecosystem in the last decade. With a 37 million online traffic surge during the event in 2022, the UK is not far behind in the Black Friday shopping madness.

Black Friday is celebrated on the fourth Friday of November, the day following Thanksgiving. This year, 2023, Black Friday is on November 24 – An opportune moment for ecommerce businesses to implement effective digital marketing strategies, achieve massive sales, and boost revenue in this last financial quarter.

With record-breaking shopping stats every year, retail brands look forward to the massive sales surge this year. Most brands generate 30% more revenue during this event compared to non-holidays.

While Black Friday is just a day, the ecommerce sale trends start as early as November. Impressive marketing ideas take over the internet, wooing as many customers as possible – Buy 1 Get 1, Discount codes, Hourly offers, Bundle products, Upsell, Cross-sell, and so much more.

The sale streak does not end here as brands gear up for another event called the ‘Cyber Monday’. This too, originated from the US and marks the first Monday post-Thanksgiving. The convergence of ecommerce development strategies and digital marketing tactics continues to shape and redefine the landscape of these annual shopping extravaganzas.

Seems like the competition’s going to be tough for Black Friday 2023.

The solution? Implementing effective marketing tactics to attract a massive customer base.

To ensure your brand does not get lost amidst the spree, we are here to help you build an effective ecommerce Black Friday marketing strategy for 2023.

What is Black Friday?

The term Black Friday was first coined in 1989 in the United States to highlight a massive financial crisis. Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, two Wall Street bankers, decided to capture and control the gold market in the United States. They bought massive amounts of the precious metal, hoping to increase the wholesale price of it and make a profit.

Unfortunately, on a Friday, September 24, 1989, the US gold market crashed leading them and their clients to complete bankruptcy. The day then became ‘Black Friday’.

It was several years later that the term was associated with positive retail sales. In the 1960s, Philadelphia police used the term ‘Black Friday’ to signify the chaos created by suburban tourists who came into the city for holiday shopping.

Although the Philadelphia shoppers found the name to be grim and tried changing it a few times, the term stayed in the retail industry. In the later 1980s, Black Friday was being used nationwide to explain red-to-black retail profit; red meant a dip in sales and black meant profit.

Over the last few years, especially post-pandemic, retailers have come up with impressive marketing ideas to make the most of the Black Friday Sale. The following had the most impact in terms of conversion –

• Personalized emails for Black Friday and Cyber Monday appealed to 72% of the customers.
• Facebook Ads for Black Friday had a positive impact of 9.21%.
• Flash Sales skyrocketed sales by 332%.

Post-pandemic, the manner of online retail shopping has taken a new form. Users now have reduced attention spans that last only 8 seconds. Hence, among several ecommerce trends, keeping the website page speed top-notch is of the highest importance.

Understanding the UK Ecommerce Market

The United Kingdom holds third place with the largest ecommerce market in the world, after China and the United States. The revenue growth rate is at 12.6% and is projected to reach 223.9 billion GPB by the year 2025. The value of retail sales in the year 2022 was 106 billion GBP (Source: Trade Gov).

So far, the biggest ecommerce mammoths in the UK market are Amazon and Sainsbury’s, followed by Tesco.

There are almost 60 million ecommerce users in the country, and they continue to enjoy shopping online. It is now the natural mode of shopping for fashion, healthcare, home and garden, electronics and travel. However, one rising trend in the UK is going to the stores, checking the product physically and later placing an order online.

Most ecommerce purchases are made with mobiles and about 2/3rd of the total sales.

Black Friday Sale despite being a US ecommerce trend, has taken up an integral place in the UK digital landscape. Previously, this was just a Friday before Christmas meant for office parties. In 2010, when Amazon launched Black Friday deals, this event received a commercial colour in the United Kingdom.

The sale still encircled offline mode back then and received massive backlash from consumers for failing to manage the influx of shoppers. The UK retailers restructured the management plans and ticketing systems to keep sale days under control. However, the rise of online Black Friday sales in the UK was readily embraced by the people as it became devoid of chaos.

Despite being positively embraced, in 2022, the ecommerce Black Friday Sales experienced an engagement drop of 15% and an 8% increase in negative comments from consumers (source: Statista). Reasons noted are lack of authentic discounts and offers.

To tackle the setback the retailers are likely to bring up innovative marketing strategies this 2023, and so should you. Both retailers and buyers will have to find a middle ground that benefits them since Black Friday is a significant sales event in the UK calendar.

How Massive is the Global Ecommerce Landscape?

Global ecommerce is a multi-faceted business form now that we are going to hit 2024. However, it is no longer a commercial option to take or leave; every business needs to turn into an online one to stay afloat.

The global ecommerce market is estimated to reach 5.6 trillion GBP by the end of 2023. And by 2024, 21% of the total retail sales will happen via ecommerce.

If you are running a brick-and-mortar store, now is the perfect moment to get into ecommerce. And if you already own one, the idea is to curate innovative marketing strategies to boost revenue.

Take Black Friday Sale growth for instance the United States and Canada are two of the biggest ecommerce players during this event. The yearly growth rate of US Black Friday sales is 24.7%, and the customer engagement rate in Canada was 65% in 2021. Followed by the UK, which is just a little behind, with 73% of the entire population going on a shopping spree during Black Friday. India in this Black Friday Sale list has impressive numbers – 37.4% CAGR growth of the event market.

Although this year’s Black Friday Sale market looks highly competitive, 79% of customers concluded, that UGC or User-generated content on social media during the early weeks of November will have a significant influence.

With so many online businesses revamping their marketing strategies, the battle is not going to be easy. In this blog, we have come up with the trendiest and high-converting marketing idea to start prepping your Ecommerce business for the Black Friday Sale.

Black Friday Sale – Ecommerce Marketing Strategy for 2023

There is no one-size-fits-all marketing handbook to help you make the most of massive events like Black Friday. The idea is to understand your customer base and customise your marketing needs. We have listed down tried and tested, stellar marketing techniques that perform. The objective is to provide you with ideas on effectively optimising your website for the event traffic rush and developing a promising marketing plan to keep the traffic coming and converting.

By the end of this read, you will be armed to meet and rule the Black Friday sale event with confidence.

1. Start by Defining your Marketing Goals

It is important to set clear and specific goals when chalking out a Black Friday Strategy. These ensure measured success and avoid maddening distractions –

• What are your sales targets for the event? – It could be a specific number, like 30% more than the previous year or similar.
• Are you looking forward to attracting a new customer base? – It could be done through ads, social media promotion and more, and would require a budget.
• When will you start with brand visibility? – Black Friday preparations should start months before the event. Brand visibility campaigns excite and warm up your customer base.
• Have you planned out your inventory? – Deciding which products to focus on and which collection to put up for a clearance sale.
• What engagement channels do you wish to explore? – There are multiple ways to engage your customers – through social media, email campaigns, website ads, or organic.
• Who are your customers to attract? – Identifying the typical customers of your brand, their age group, location, gender, etc.

The Need for Competitor Analysis

While focusing on your marketing strategies is highly essential, gaining insights from your competitors is vital to maximize your efforts. Competitor analysis allows you to pinpoint what other similar businesses are doing differently and the same. Here are four things to focus on when performing a competitor business audit –

The pricing structure: Understanding the optimal pricing for the products like yours, and how to strike a balance between a profitable price and a competitive margin.

The promotions: Analysing the successful promotional campaigns and understanding what’s working best in the industry.

The Targeting: Decoding your competitors’ customer base and what appeals to the segment, to adjust marketing strategies.

The engagement: Leveraging competitors’ engagement insights; what medium and tactics they are utilizing and the engagement rate.

Having these details helps you refine your marketing approach and stay ahead of your rivals in the market.

Market Research and Inventory Management

Apart from competitor audits during the Black Friday sale, market research is unavoidable. Effective market research is linked to multiple important factors, most importantly, inventory management since it directly affects sales.

Inventory management refers to overseeing the inventory levels of a business to ensure the right products are in stock and are capable of meeting customer demands during a sale event.

Marketing research helps analyze customer needs and preferences and what types of products are trending in the present. For instance, social media insights help analyze the hyped-up products and what needs more restocking.

During a rush event like Black Friday, businesses can face a few inventory and supply chain issues – Inaccurate inventory data, fulfilment issues, out-of-stock issues and more. Smartly strategising inventory management backed by market research helps in developing a strong supply chain for a business.

Here are a few tips to keep handy during the Black Friday Sale:

• Use your inventory’s historical data of Black Friday as a reference
• Collate your marketing tactics with forecasting
• Make sure your suppliers are ready
• Do not rely on a sole supplier
• Study seasonal demands with an analytical approach
• Have an emergency inventory plan

2. Optimising your Online Store for Black Friday

The goal for the Black Friday Sale is to win it big hence, the need for website optimisation is paramount.

Starting with user experience to ensuring that the website is smooth to the T and free from technical glitches. Here are all the performable tasks –

• Website Deck Up – Make sure the website is decked up for Black Friday, highlighting the deals. Your customers must immediately know your offers for the month. You can use popups and banners to highlight Black Friday Deals.
• Website Speed – As HubSpot highlights, with page speed declining by a second, the conversion rates can drop by 4.42%.

Google Page Speed Insights and GTMetrix are helpful tools for analysing delays in your website. While optimising your homepage for speed, do not miss out on your product and collection pages.

• Hosting Plan – Ensure your hosting plan can support the traffic surge during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Dedicated hosting is known for handling high traffic volume.
• Responsiveness – The website needs to be responsive to a variety of electronic platforms, mostly mobile since 75% of your customers use mobile devices to make a purchase.
• Streamlining Checkout – The goal is to make the checkout as quick as possible to avoid cart abandonment. A lot can be implemented for so – one-page checkout, multiple payment options, one-tap payment, guest checkout options and more.
• Updated Policy – A customised policy during the sale days can have added benefits, such as free shipping and easy returns for Black Friday week. Clearly state the policies for a sense of trust among customers.
• SEO – Optimize the website content with desired keywords during Black Friday to make sure your website pops up organically in the search engine results. While SEO may not show immediate results, some quick changes can add up to enhancing organic traffic. Focus on product titles, URLs, descriptions, body content, and so on.
• Badges and Reviews – Make sure trust badges, safe payments and customer reviews are highlighted on the essential sections of the website. Customer reviews are social proof and heavily influence decision-making.
• Navigability – The website navigations need to be smooth, quick and understandable to both, users and search engines.
• Appealing Visuals – As Stanford University research claims, 46.1% of your visitors consider website design to ensure brand credibility. Revamp the website to make it visually appealing, less clustered and highly converting.

Optimizing a website for heavy traffic events is all about A/B testing. Play around with the landing pages and split-test a variety of optimisation tactics to ensure what works best for you.

3. Marketing and Promotion for Black Friday

Ecommerce businesses of multiple sizes and genres participate in a Black Friday Sale; hence, marketing is a necessary medium to compete, and crafting an effective strategy is indispensable.

We have already discussed the vitality of website optimisation. Let us explore the marketing techniques to make the most of this event –

• Email Marketing Campaigns

Your basic yearly email marketing techniques will not cut for the Black Friday Weekend, so here is an upgraded plan.

– Start by building an email list for Black Friday – this could be an amalgamation of new customers and returning; inform them of your rising deals and discounts. Gone are the days of sending generic newsletters to thousands; this is the time to leverage personalised emails.

Personalised emails are of various patterns – they can have customer names highlighted on the subject or the email body. So instead of mailing, ‘Hello There!’ try sending ‘Hello Amy!’ this Black Friday. 72% of customers are likely to open a personalised email for its credibility.

– Apart from emails, another tactic to implement is offering incentives for an action performed. Such as – ‘Fill this form and get 15% off all products’… ‘Spin the wheel and get a chance to win a FREE coupon’. These actions help you grow your email list for sale season and attract a huge number of visitors through email campaigns.

– Create a sense of urgency, or in other words, FOMO Email Campaigns. FOMO or Fear of Missing Out are time-bound deals and create a sense of last-minute shopping spree. Sentences like Sale Ends Tomorrow, only 3 Left, and last-chance to grab are all FOMO marketing lines and have a higher click-through rate.

– Send more than one personalised email to see the magic happen. 84% of successful email marketing campaigns involve sending two emails every week (Source: Mailjet). Your potential customer receives Black Friday emails from your competitors as well, so make sure your mail does not go missing in the madness.

• Social Media Strategy

Email marketing is undeniably the most fruitful marketing platform; however, you cannot miss out on social media. The UK has 57.1 million social media users, and countless brands are making it big during Black Friday with social media strategies.

The type of content you choose plays a crucial role in social media strategies. Here are trending tips to create a buzz on social media during Black Friday Sales –

• Start by prepping up your social media presence for the Black Friday Sale. Put up banners, posts and images to let your audiences know that the sale is up and running.
• Maintain a content calendar to keep your social media posts scheduled and ready to avoid the rush-time struggle. Utilise all forms of content – videos, status, Instagram reels, countdowns, stories and more.
• Your visuals and content need to be compelling. Social media is all about quick and catchy lines that entice readers to check your products. Use clear and appealing visuals paired up with impressive content.
• Partner up with famous influencers during the Black Friday season. Influencer marketing has a massive visibility potential and has positively impacted several brands.
• Try Urgency sales to encourage social media action. Offer limited-time deals and exclusive access to specific products to encourage audiences to take action.
• Explore hashtags to reach newer audiences. For instance, use hashtags like #blackfridaydiscount or #blackfridaydeals to reach people looking for an offer.
• If budget supports, run social media ads for higher traffic influx. Targeted Facebook ads and Instagram ads are a great way to bring in instant traffic.
• Do a live session on your social media channel to communicate with your audience. Nothing adds a sense of personal touch like communication does. Discuss your deals and discounts, most sold products and why anyone should buy them.
• Run contests on social media. For instance, ‘Follow us on all social media channels, comment on the last five of our posts, share our page on your stories, ask two of your friends to follow, and win a discount coupon instantly.’ Sounds familiar? Several brands run such contests to engage audiences and convert them into customers.

• Content Marketing Strategy

Quality and genuine content adds value proposition to your brand and products offered. Although content can be of any format, it tells your customers about your products and how they can benefit from them. So, here is an amplified content marketing strategy to promote products for the upcoming Black Friday Sale –

• Videos – They are the most successful content forms to leverage in 2023 (Source: SEMrush). This could be a video podcast for your brand, or unboxing of products, or a new product launch.
• Blogs and Articles – Create valuable content in the form of blogs and articles. Write about the Black Friday sale and how it came to be, Black Friday gifting guides and more.
• Social Media Posts – Create engaging posts as well as interactive ones to keep your audience interested during the event days.
• Website Content – Rework your product descriptions and add FAQs to answer possible customer queries.
• UGCs – The content created by your customers is called UGC or User Generated Content. These include reviews, testimonials, comments, and social media posts. UGC content is a remarkable medium to rank in Google and improve traffic. Engage with your customers and ask them to drop review images and videos.

Email, social media and content come together to open innovative marketing mediums to reach potential customers. The mentioned strategies are tried and tested to perform well this 2023.

4. Pricing Strategies for Black Friday

Slashing your product prices during a sale event works; only not as good as a carefully curated pricing strategy.

Set up a goal for the pricing strategy – Is it meant to focus on categories or specific products? What are the stakes and the budget? Retailers must revolve around their sales goal and finance landscape and then move to discounts and promotions to meet customer expectations.

Once decided upon goals, the idea is to implement innovative pricing (keeping sales target in mind) that encourages people to hit the buy now button. Here are some pricing strategies to maximise sales during Black Friday –

1. Hourly Deals – Flat 50% off on all products: Ends in 1 hour

Builds a sense of FOMO, or urgency, and forces customers to decide quickly. Added to that, they keep coming looking out for similar deals.

2. Mystery discount wheel – For your customers to avail of any discounts

Adds an element of chance, and if a discount is received, they immediately use it in fear of losing the offer.

3. Gifts on orders above £100.

Everyone loves a gift or a free sample product, even if they must spend a higher value.

4. Build Your Bundle – Add 3 products of your choice and get it at £100.

Your customers get to pick what they want in the bundle, and it gives them a sense of cost-effectiveness.

5. B1G1 or B2G2 (Buy One Get One)

This tactic has worked for years and can be implemented in the same product categories.

6. Countdown Timers – Free Shipping Ends at 12:00

No one likes paying a hefty amount for shipping; this strategy works wonders. This does the same trick as Hourly deals and adds a sense of urgency.

7. Upselling and Cross-selling – Shop X and Y and get Z free

Increasing the average order value by offering special deals with specific product bundles.

While these are the most trending pricing techniques to utilise in the upcoming Black Friday sales, another strategy to implement is ‘Competitive Pricing’.

Structuring one’s pricing strategy based on competitor analysis – selecting the prices based on competitors’ pricing, rather than production cost or traffic margin.

These are the three competitive pricing techniques –

• Offering a lower price than your competitors. This technique is implemented by newcomers in a saturated niche. Though not an immediately profitable strategy, it drives in huge customers.
• Offering a higher price than your competitors. This is implemented by businesses with a good name and the products offer greater features compared to competitors.
• Equal Price. Businesses that offer a Unique Value Proposition implement equal pricing to stand out. UVPs may include sustainability, no animal testing, eco-friendly, etc.

Benefits of Competitive Pricing and How to Implement it –

Simplicity – Competitive pricing is simple to implement and requires studying the market and competitors at a surface level. Retailers do not need to dive deep into production cost, profit margin etc.

Low Pricing Risk – Since the pricing structure has prevailed earlier among competitors and in the market, it is less likely to fail or go wrong.

Greater Profit Margin – Competitive pricing boosts profit when implemented properly and functions great if maintained dynamically with the market and competitors.

Customer satisfaction – In a saturated market, customers are familiar with specific price points and having a lower price than competitors immediately attracts them to your brand.

To implement competitive pricing, begin by –

• Analysing competitors – the pricing they are offering, their strategy, the product features and values provided, and the discounts they are offering.
• Analysing the products – whether the quality matches yours, or the features and where it stands in comparison.
• Analysing their customers – how much they are willing to pay, what benefits are they looking for at that price point.
• Conducting market research – comparing similar products in terms of features and qualities.
• Manually monitoring competitor’s prices and offering dynamic pricing structure to clients.

5. Logistics and Fulfilment During the Black Friday Sale

Black Friday Sale can be pure madness for some brands. However, the core to ensuring all the madness and online shopping spree goes right is logistics. This framework ensures the ordered product is safely delivered from the supplier to the customers on time.

Ecommerce brands constantly update their inventories to meet customers’ demands during these heavy sale days. However, with millions of users trying to ‘Buy Now’ at the same time, the ongoing pressure on the logistics can lead to multiple challenges, and the fulfilment of orders can be overwhelming.

Here are some Logistics and Fulfilment tips for Black Friday –

• Pay extra attention to Inventory Management – Analyze your past data, perform market research, connect with your suppliers and start planning your inventory months ago.
• Once your sale is live, perform real-time stock monitoring and automate stocking after certain numbers to ensure you never run out.
• Be transparent to your customers about delivery ETA and offer order tracking. Be mindful of delivery times, as shipping takes longer during delivery season.

Prepare for reverse logistics as return rates increase during holiday seasons. Provide an accessible and easy return policy to your customers.

• Added tip: Offer store credit to avoid extra time in processing returns.
• If you are outsourcing logistics, ensure they are reliable and provide robust services since you will be needing them for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• Offer impeccable customer service during these events that do not just resolve problems, but rather make shopping from your brand a satisfaction.

Strategising from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

Another exciting shopping event, now popular in the UK is Cyber Monday, which is a bona fide continuation of Black Friday. This year’s Cyber Monday is on November 27, 2023.

Cyber Monday started during the mid-2000s to inspire customers to buy digital goods from online stores.

As a retailer, this is your chance to extend the marketing momentum from Black Friday to Cyber Monday and take advantage of the events. The goal is to tickle your customer’s shopping spree with enticing offers that are already up and running.

• Use social media to highlight that the exciting offers are not over and there is more to explore this Cyber Monday.
• Make use of personalised emails and offer digital product recommendations to your loyal customer list.
• Offer a coupon code to all those customers who had shopped during Black Friday and ask them to purchase on Cyber Monday.
• Offer a last-minute Black Friday Clearance sale on Cyber Monday.
• Reach out to your customers who have missed the Black Friday Sale but now can enjoy the Cyber Monday one.
• Come LIVE on social media to speak to your customers. Announce an hour before that you will reveal a coupon code during the LIVE session.

The Importance of Post-Event Analysis

A great ecommerce strategy is a well-thought-out one. It involves market research, knowledge of the industry and the customers, a strong understanding of products and brands, curating and implementing ideas, and testing them for more ideas. However, not all strategies perform the same or deliver the same results.

Post Event Analysis is an analytical process of reviewing marketing strategies and planning for betterment. There are sections you will outperform and will help you plan further for the next event. The underperforming strategies will need revamping and reimplementing in the future.

Ecommerce marketing strategies demand several A/B tests to ensure a KPI boost. Here are a few of several common A/B testing areas –

• Homepage and product page layout
• Social media posts
• Products descriptions
• Pops ups and CTAs
• Pricing tactics
• Checkout process
• Deals and discounts

Before getting into A/B testing, ensure you have the analytics of the current performance to plan accordingly.

Black Friday Ecommerce Strategies: The Key Takeaways

So, Black Friday is just around the corner. Ensure that you set up your marketing goals for the Black Friday Sale 2023 and strategies accordingly. It is crucial to keep in mind, that your website plays an important role in marketing, keep it optimised to offer the best user experience to your customers. Be transparent to them about discounts, offers, stocks and delivery time to create a loyal customer base.

The digital platform is constantly changing, and as a retailer, you must be open to rethinking your ecommerce digital marketing strategies for events to come.

At Webskitters, you can get in touch with the top digital marketers for an improved Black Friday ecommerce strategy that adds to your brand success. We can help you navigate the digital realm at ease and achieve greater marketing success.