Summer is officially in the rearview, and holiday shopping is speeding toward us rapidly. While the kids go back to school and a breeze finally sets in, it’s the perfect time to start preparing your eCommerce business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). The four-day shopping event has notoriously made the days following Thanksgiving some of the most profitable of the year for eCommerce small businesses, but only if you’re prepared. To win this year’s holiday season and ensure that your BFCM revenue reaches an all time high, it’s important to plan ahead with a well-thought out BFCM marketing strategy–raising the question: is your business ready?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive into the history and importance of BFCM campaigns for eCommerce, strategic digital marketing practices, and more. We’ll also leave you with best practices for following up on the retail holiday to help you drive product reviews and keep online sales strong even after the BFCM period. Together we’ll ensure that you’re ready to win all the BFCM sales! Let’s dive in!
What is BFCM Weekend?
BFCM is an acronym for Black Friday & Cyber Monday, a four-day shopping event that offers unmatched sales and profits for eCommerce sellers. While Black Friday sales have been a long established retail shopping event, taking place on the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, the first Cyber Monday took place in 2005 offering exclusive discounts for online shopping. Over the past two decades sales have slowly stretched across the entire weekend to mark the onset of holiday shopping for consumers. For eCommerce businesses, especially those on Amazon and Shopify, BFCM is a prime opportunity to drive online sales, attract new customers, and reward loyal ones.
Planning for BFCM
If you’re an eCommerce seller looking to reach that next milestone in growing your business, BFCM is the perfect opportunity to help you smash your goals. However, if you’re hoping to take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity, it’s critical that you implement strong BFCM marketing, fulfillment, and supply-chain strategies well in advance. Start preparing a few months in advance for BFCM weekend with these strategies for holiday success:
Secure Inventory Early
Holiday season stockouts are an eCommerce seller’s worst nightmare–just thinking about all those missed sales makes our bank account ache. That’s why it’s of the utmost importance that you stock up on inventory early, especially for popular products. Not only will a stockout cause your BFCM sales to grind to a halt, they can also cause damage to your brand’s reputation or account health with new customers if you’re selling on Amazon.
By ordering inventory well in advance you can ensure that products are properly prepared for BFCM events. Many eCommerce sellers place their Q4 orders as early as summer months in order to avoid supply chain bottlenecks and secure space in fulfillment centers. The longer you wait to place inventory orders, the higher the chances of your business getting caught in the holiday rush. If at all possible, it’s wise to work closely with your suppliers on inventory timelines, quality control, and scheduling payments so that everyone benefits from advanced BFCM campaign planning.
Accurately Forecast Demand
While stockouts are a seller’s worst nightmare, realizing that you didn’t forecast demand properly and are now stuck with excess inventory is a close second. Not only does this leave working capital tied up in products that are sitting on shelves, it can also lead to increased storage fees. That’s why it’s vital to accurately forecast BFCM demand ahead of the holiday season, taking into consideration historical data, current trends, and consumer preferences to make well-informed decisions about order quantities.
Historical Data
If your eCommerce business has participated in a BFCM weekend before it’s wise to review and reflect on historical data. By taking data from previous years of BFCM revenue and marketing strategies into consideration, you can adjust sales year over year for increased success.
BFCM Fast Facts:
- Shoppers spent $9.8 billion online during Black Friday 2023.
- Cyber Monday 2023 also smashed records with 12.4 billion in online spending.
- Amazon alone accounted for 40% of all US sales during BFCM week in 2023.
Almost 200 million consumers shopped online and in store during BFCM week in 2022.
Optimize Your Website
Generate traffic and keep potential customers’ attention by putting your best foot forward during the holiday sales period by optimizing your brand’s website or digital storefront. Whether you’re selling primarily on Amazon, Shopify, or both, consumers have a short attention span and if your website fails to load or catch their eye, they’ll click away. This not only means updating your homepage design, photos, and copy, but also updating your site for mobile shopping.
In 2023, a record number of shoppers continued their BFCM online shopping from their mobile devices and that number is only expected to increase. Mobile commerce, as it’s called, is predicted to account for 62% of eCommerce by 2027–especially as brands integrate shopping experiences into social media. This makes it more important than ever before that your eCommerce brand is prepared for mobile shoppers in your BFCM campaigns. Double check your store or brand on a mobile device to make sure that it’s user friendly and working properly, especially during the BFCM sales period.
Creating Compelling BFCM Offers
There’s no denying that everyone loves a great deal, especially during the holiday shopping season. Even if customers aren’t planning on making a purchase, an unbeatable sale can compel them to add a product to their cart anyway–especially if they feel like they won’t see it for that price again. One of the best ways to capitalize on increased traffic during BFCM is running deals and offering coupons to help boost your sales on Amazon or Shopify, especially on top of a competitive pricing strategy. The better the offers, the more you’ll be able to set your business apart from the competition and attract new customers.
What makes a good deal for customers?
Crafting strong sales for BFCM means striking a balance between enticing customers and maintaining a healthy level of profitability for your business. A deep discount isn’t always key to grabbing attention; sometimes, bundled deals, free shipping, or exclusive products can be equally as compelling.
The key to crafting a compelling BFCM offer is capitalizing on what shoppers want while also creating a feeling of scarcity or exclusivity. While exclusivity alone can sometimes be enough to push shoppers into making a purchase, pairing that feeling of urgency with desire is a powerful psychological motivator. To do this, the best offers on BFCM will offer something that consumers want (for example: a trendy product or deep discount) but set clear limitations to it’s availability with a time-sensitive sale or limited inventory.
Types of Offers
Deals
This is your classic BFCM offer, offering a product or entire store’s inventory at a percentage or cash discount. To make deals even more enticing, many eCommerce businesses run “Limited Time” sales or, on Amazon, offer “Lightning Deals.” Keep in mind that depending on what eCommerce marketplace you’re utilizing there may be a fee associated with running certain types of deals.
Coupons
Some eCommerce marketplaces allow sellers to create “clippable” coupons or discount codes reminiscent of those used by brick-and-mortar stores. On Amazon these coupons are seen on product listings as a check box, allowing potential customers to understand immediately that they’ll receive a discount on your product compared to others.
However, Amazon and Shopify stores both also display a place at checkout where customers can manually enter coupon codes at checkout to receive another discount. You can choose to offer a percentage or price discount with product coupons, depending on what best fits your sale.
Rewards
Many brands capitalize on the desire for exclusivity during the holiday season by utilizing “reward” based offers. This is when customers are “rewarded” for their shopping practices, oftentimes with free shipping, an exclusive product, or oa limited-time deal. Many brands also use this as an opportunity to ramp up exclusive discounts and rewards for shoppers who participate in their customer loyalty program.
Remember, that the ability to offer certain deals hinges on what eCommerce marketplace that your business utilizes. The more personalization your platform offers, the more flexibility your business will have when setting offers for the BFCM sales period.
Update Product Pages
Regardless of your marketplace, it’s critical that your product listings are well optimized for holiday sales and potential consumers during BFCM. With so many brands offering sales at all once, it can be difficult for consumers to make a decision. Oftentimes the winning product is simply the one that a shopper sees first. That’s where keyword and conversion optimization for product listings come into play–especially for seasonal items. For your product listings to have the desired effect on holiday shoppers it’s important to include aesthetically pleasing and informational images, as well as listing all relevant details obviously in the product description.
To prepare your listings for BFCM and other holiday sales, consider:
- Updating images. Make sure that your product and branding images are high quality and highlight relevant aspects of your products, especially accurate coloring. If you’re selling or promoting seasonal products, consider adding some holiday or seasonally-themed images to your listings.
- Improving your product details by listing all relevant details. Include as much information on your listings, especially in the bullet points so that customers can easily find answers if they have questions. This will help shoppers feel confident and well-informed about their decision, ensuring that they make the right choice and don’t need to make returns later.
- Conducting keyword research. Ensure that you’re not missing any important search terms in your listings that could drive customers to your product. Tools like JungleScout’s Keyword Scout will show you search trends of each potential keyword for the last 30-90 days. Make sure that relevant keywords trending upwards are included in your listing to guarantee that your product is placed in front of potential buyers.
- Including holiday-related keywords. Remember to temporarily include seasonal keywords throughout your listing where it feels natural. Holiday keywords will help attract gift-giving customers, especially those who may not be looking for a specific product, by taking advantage of increased search volume.
Leverage Email & Text Marketing
Personalized and direct marketing tactics are still some of the most effective strategies to capture customer attention, especially ahead of massie retail events like BFCM. By preparing your email and text marketing strategies well in advance you can craft a strategy that resonates with your audience and drives massive sales.
The key to successful email and text marketing is to keep your content relevant, timely, and providing value. Remember, it’s important to personalize your email and text marketing campaigns for BFCM, especially if you hope to keep customers opted-in to your messaging. Consider starting with these strategies for personalization:
- Segmentation. Divide and segment your email marketing and text campaign lists based on purchase history, loyalty programs, engagement levels, and interests. This will allow you to better tailor your messages to specific audiences, increasing their relevance and, hopefully, conversion rates.
- Plan your content calendar. Decide ahead of time what themes and offers you’ll share in each message. Personalize content calendars based on engagement and interest, potentially even sharing exclusive discount codes with loyal customers or those that may require abandoned checkout recovery. This is especially important if you hope to start BFCM email marketing campaigns prior to the holiday. While this can be a great way to stir up buzz with pre-BFCM sales and exclusive early access, it also requires a well-planned and crafted strategy.
- Set up automations. This includes welcome sequences for new subscribers, abandoned cart reminders, and follow-ups for product reviews. Even after the BFCM period ends your automations can attract customers who were on the fence about a purchase with last-minute discounts, exclusive deals, and best buy tactics.
Once you’ve laid the groundwork with segmentation you can begin diving into more specific tactics, such as early sale access, price drop notifications, or more. According to Accenture, 8 out of 10 customers are more likely to purchase from brands that offer personalized experience–making relevant email and SMS marketing even more important during the holiday season.
While email marketing has been a longstanding vessel of personalization for brands, SMS marketing presents new and unique opportunities for relevant engagement. Your brand can personalize with behavior-triggered email marketing campaigns, SMS marketing with special deals for shoppers who have abandoned their cart, and more. It doesn’t have to be difficult– these days, you can take advantage of a number of tools to help personalize the customer experience with AI.
Pro Tip: Make sure that all communication remains in compliance with the rules and regulations of your eCommerce marketplace. While some eCommerce platforms encourage direct communication with customers, others (including Amazon) require correspondence to be heavily regulated.
Gain Some Influence with Social Media
Consumers love to feel like they’ve discovered a product totally organically, which is why influencers are a great way to widen your brand reputation and reach ahead of BFCM sales. By working closely with Amazon Influencers, leveraging user-generated content (UGC) from existing customers, and establishing a strong presence across social media you can create some serious buzz ahead of the shopping event. Social media is one of the biggest driving forces for lead generation, so it’s important to invest some real time and energy into thoughtful posting.
Hone in on PPC Campaigns
While upgrading your marketing strategy is a smart choice for any seller planning on participating in BFCM, this is especially important if your brand sells in a highly competitive category. Good marketing, especially from BFCM campaigns, will direct new and existing customers to your products–helping to increase conversion rates. However, if you’re hoping to maximize success with a PPC-based marketing strategy it’s critical that you set a healthy budget, especially during the holidays. As customer traffic increases throughout Q4, PPC ads become more competitive and require increased keyword bids.
To make the most of holiday marketing, you’ll want to increase brand awareness and recognition with new customers ahead of time, as well as alert existing customers to upcoming deals. Strong ad campaigns will also remind shoppers that the deals are temporary and, therefore, they need to act quickly. Depending on what platforms your eCommerce business operates on you can run PPC campaigns on Amazon, Google, and Meta platforms to target different audiences. Keep in mind that each search engine has different pros and cons associated with it’s advertising options, for example Google ads is often less expensive and attracts customers with clear intent, but that doesn’t guarantee they’re ready to make a purchase yet.
To make the most of these BFCM campaigns, make sure that you are:
- Testing different ad strategies.
- Increasing keyword bids.
- Continuously analyzing PPC performance and profitability.
- Targeting holiday or seasonal keywords.
Funding to Win BFCM
While BFCM is one of the most competitive retail holidays, it still holds immense potential for sellers looking to capitalize on a busy Q4. As consumers are looking to purchase gifts and high-value products at killer deals, BFCM campaigns can drive immense sales and customer acquisition. Plus, it’s the perfect time to crush those quarterly and yearly goals with amazing BFCM revenue numbers.
If you’re hoping to make BFCM merry and bright, funding is pivotal. By working with an eCommerce funding provider who understands the unique challenges of your online store, you can ensure that you have the resources to secure a merry and bright holiday shopping season. That’s where Viably comes in to help. Viably is a people-first banking and funding experience, designed to help eCommerce sellers, like you, grow their business to the best of their ability. With flexible funding, personalized to accommodate your business, you can have the working capital you need to invest in a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday in your business bank account as soon as tomorrow.
