Welcome back to our series on mastering Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) for your eCommerce business. In this crucial second instalment, we’ll delve deep into the strategic preparations necessary in the immediate week(s) prior to BFCM. These preparations are the linchpin to a successful BFCM period, ensuring you navigate the surge of sales and customer demands with finesse and precision.
1) Planning: Building a Strong Foundation
In the prelude to BFCM, meticulous planning is your cornerstone:
- Prepare all your marketing assets – banners, ads, product shots, and email visuals.
- Thoroughly brief your Customer Support team – their prompt and personalised responses can turn potential issues into customer loyalty.
- Have contingency plans ready for products that might sell out due to high demand. Implement strategies to capture customer email addresses if items are out of stock, ensuring no future sales slip away.
- Understand your numbers inside out! Evaluate your margins critically and establish a firm acceptable Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) to maintain profitability. This financial groundwork ensures you’re not only maximising sales but also your bottom line.
2) Campaigns: Executing your irresistible offers
Strategic campaign scheduling is pivotal to ensure a smooth BFCM period:
- Plan your marketing initiatives meticulously, avoiding last-minute rushes.
- Think about initiating your email and SMS campaigns early – teaser emails sent 1-2 weeks before BFCM can build anticipation and prime your audience for what’s to come. Consider offering early-bird discounts, enticing your customers to engage before the official BFCM kickoff.
- Personalisation is key. Tailor your communications to individual customer segments, enhancing the sense of exclusivity and connection.
- Don’t necessarily end campaigns on Cyber Monday. Consider extending your offers if this will increase revenue with impacting sales in the holiday season.
- If your product has a gifting element, create a curated holiday gift guide, providing solutions for Christmas shoppers.
3) Marketing: Amplifying Your Reach
Flexibility and focus will help ensure your marketing efforts are as effective as possible:
- Focus your efforts on your top-performing sales channels, whether that’s Meta, Google, or others.
- Develop a comprehensive marketing plan that spans the entire sales funnel – whether that’s acquiring new customers, retargeting past visitors or reactivating your VIPs.
- Be flexible with your budgets, allocating more resources to campaigns that yield the best results. Analyse real-time performance data and adjust your strategies accordingly. The ability to pivot swiftly based on data insights can significantly enhance your ROI.
4) Site Optimisation: Ensuring your website is working for you.
A seamless website experience is a non-negotiable for customers during a busy sales period:
- Assess your site for speed, capacity, and responsiveness.
- With mobile devices accounting for 75% of eCommerce sales, optimising for mobile is paramount.
- Evaluate your website loading time; a fraction of a second can make the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart. Ensure your hosting and server capabilities can handle potential increased traffic.
- Optimise your checkout page for higher conversion rates. Streamline the process, making it intuitive and efficient. Highlight additional payment solutions such as Shop Pay and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). Diverse payment options cater to varied customer preferences, increasing the likelihood of successful transactions.
5) Check, Check, and Check Again!
In these final weeks before BFCM, meticulous attention to detail is your secret weapon. Double and triple-check every element of your campaigns, website, and customer service protocols. Every link must work, every image should load seamlessly, and every customer query deserves a swift, accurate response. A small oversight can have significant consequences during this high-stakes period.
Conclusion: Prepare for Success
As the countdown to BFCM accelerates, the preparations you undertake now will be the linchpin of your success. By meticulously planning, crafting compelling campaigns, maximising your marketing reach, optimising your site, and maintaining a keen eye for detail, your eCommerce business will be poised for triumph.
Stay tuned for our next instalment, where we’ll explore the crucial steps to take during the actual BFCM weekend itself. Gear up, stay focused, and get ready to seize the sales opportunities coming your way! Remember if you’re looking for a funding partner ahead of BFCM then consider partnering with Velocity Juice. We offer flexible, scalable credit options tailored to your business’s needs. Don’t let funding be a hurdle in your journey to success in Q4.
