Black Friday is the most important shopping event. If you have an online store, it’s your chance to end the year with a bang!
Due to Covid-19, this year, Black Friday will likely be even bigger than usual because social distancing has encouraged people to shop online rather than go to their local stores. So, if you’re in dropshipping, this is your time to shine!
When is Black Friday in 2020?
First, let’s get down with the basics. Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year, Black Friday is going to happen on November 27th. It’s also more than a one-day event.
Black Friday goes together with Cyber Monday, another sales day that happens on the Monday after Thanksgiving. You may have already seen such an abbreviation: BFCM – it stands for “Black Friday Cyber Monday.”
Below are the most important days to remember when getting ready for your 2020 Black Friday campaign.
Thanksgiving: November 26
Black Friday: November 27
Cyber Monday: November 30
To give you a head start, we gathered 4 tips on how to get ready for Black Friday and attract as many customers as possible. Let’s dig in!
1. Review your most important product pages
If you’re going to put a lot of effort into bringing traffic to your store, make sure your shop’s visitors are happy with what they see. So, before you even start planning your Black Friday advertising strategy, you need to review your most important product pages. To do that, you should put yourself into your potential customer’s shoes.
Ask yourself these questions when evaluating your product pages:
- Are my product pages easy to navigate?
- Is it quick to find more information about the items I’m selling?
- Is my internal site search optimized?
- Are my call-to-action buttons (“buy here”, “add to cart”) visible and clear?
- Are my product descriptions interesting and catchy? Do they convince my potential buyers that the products in question will make their lives better?
- Do my product photos look professional and nice?
- Do I have any negative product reviews I should take care of?
Images of your products and their descriptions are the key elements of your product page. Here are a few extra tips on how to improve them.
Improve your product images
Not always do the images of the products your dropshipping suppliers provide look great. Also, your competitors may dropship the same or very similar items. So, if you want to beat your competitors during Black Friday and convince shoppers to buy from you, you need to stand out with the way you present the products you’re selling.
The best thing to do is take professional photos of the products yourself. This way, you can show your product in action, in a real environment. You can even have a thematic Black Friday photoshoot for your product bundles.
However, if you don’t have enough time to take real photos of your most sold items, try to make the best with the images you already have. For example, you could hire a freelancer to edit your product photos with a photo editor like Photoshop for the best look.
Resource: find more information on how to make your product images generate sales here.
3 tips on writing great product descriptions
Black Friday shoppers tend to be impulse buyers. They may not be looking for something, but if they catch an enticing headline, they’ll probably be interested. So, review your product descriptions to see if they “sell.”
- Speak to a person
You’re probably not selling to everyone. Your different products have different types of customers. Think of who would benefit the most from your product, why they should buy from you instead of your competitor.
- Sell a dream
Instead of describing the amazing features of the product you want to sell, focus on what can be achieved with it. In other words, don’t just sell a watch, sell the idea of never being late to important meetings again. A good idea would be to adapt to the new lifestyle we all live in (“Never be late to a Zoom meeting again”).
- Cause urgency
Use phrases like limited time only, sold out soon, in high demand to urge shoppers to press the “add to cart” button. It’s a classic move, yet it still works!
Once you have your main product pages polished, it’s time to move on to your Black Friday advertising plans.
TIP: If you want to go the extra mile and rank on Google for your Black Friday campaign, 1) look at what people are searching for with Google’s Keyword Planner, and 2) optimize your product descriptions for the main keywords you want to be found for.
2. Invest more in your best-selling channels
Don’t just straight up jump into doubling your spending on Facebook ads just because everyone is doing so during Black Friday. Before you get your wallet out, first check which channels bring you the most value for your dropshipping business.
Research by sixads of more than 60,000 stores has shown that website traffic and revenue sources are not the same among different store categories. What works for apparel & accessories store owners may not necessarily work for merchants who are selling pet supplies.
First, we advise you to check which channels (Facebook, Google, email, or other) bring the most traffic and customers in your product category. Then, compare the findings with what you see in your store. For example, if you have a Shopify store, you can see where you get your money from in your Shopify analytics.
Another way to check how you’re doing is to look at your Google Analytics. If you don’t have this tool installed yet, we strongly recommend you do so. It can help you to see in detail where your customers come from, what actions they take on your online store, how much time they spend looking at your products, where they drop out, and so on.
Once you find the channels that give you the most value, you can be confident about doubling your ad spend on them for your Black Friday campaign. If your Google ads perform well on a regular day, they sure will on Black Friday!
3. Monitor your competitors
You don’t want to copy-paste everything your competitors do. But it’s a good idea to know what they’re up to so you could make sure you’re not left behind (and get some inspiration for your own Black Friday campaign).
Below are some tips on how to keep an eye on your competitors.
Subscribe to their newsletters
Businesses tend to start warming up their customers to an upcoming Black Friday campaign beforehand. By being on your competitors’ email list, you’ll be one of the first to know what they are planning to do and when.
Check their social media
Gather the list of your main competitors’ social media handles and add them to a social media planning and monitoring tool like Hootsuite (they have a free plan available). This way, you won’t have to manually scroll through your competitors’ social media to see what they’re up to. Instead, you’ll see their feeds in one place and be able to see how they promote their Black Friday deals.
Track their ads
It’s also a good idea to be aware of what kind of ads your competitors are running. You will have a clear idea of how they advertise their Black Friday campaign. This information will help you to build even better campaigns for your products. There are plenty of tools that can help you check what kind of ads your competitors are running. One of such tools is BigSpy (there’s a free plan available).
4. Warm-up your customers
Don’t just start your Black Friday campaign on the actual Black Friday. The key to success is to get people excited about the upcoming discounts for your products upfront. Here are some ideas on how to warm-up your customers for your Black Friday campaign.
Set a countdown timer on your store
Countdown timers are a great way to add urgency when you have a big sale coming. They are also very visual, and animation makes them even more effective.
Image source: yourcountdown.to
Use SMS marketing to boost your subscribers’ list
SMS marketing is a great channel to increase the number of potential buyers in your database before your Black Friday campaign. For example, you can use an SMS marketing keyword campaign. It’s a very straightforward approach, and that’s the beauty of it. Simply decide on your keyword, e.g. BlackFriday2020, and spread the word across your channels about an exclusive opportunity to receive special Black Friday deals. Ask people to text you that keyword to your business number, and you’ll start gathering contact info of a warmed-up audience.
Send Black Friday email campaigns early
Emails are a great way to build buzz around your upcoming Black Friday campaign. It’s a good idea to start sending them a few weeks before the start of your Black Friday sale. It’s also a good channel to send exclusive offers. For example, you could make your email subscribers feel special by letting them know that they’ll be the first ones to be able to use your special discounts before everyone else can. Chances are, they will do just that!
Resource: Want to up your game with email campaigns? Check this blog post and learn how to dominate email marketing.
Retarget your store’s visitors
If you have a Facebook pixel set up on your dropshipping store, you can use it to inform your past visitors or customers about the upcoming Black Friday campaign. If someone has bought from you already or thought of buying, they’re likely to return for a big discount if you remind them of yourself.
To wrap it up
Though it may seem a lot at first, preparing for a Black Friday campaign boils down to these four simple steps:
- Know what you want to sell and present those products nicely.
- Find the channels that drive you the biggest profit and use them.
- Keep an eye on your competitors so they wouldn’t leave you behind.
- Let your customers know of your upcoming Black Friday campaign in advance so they would be waiting for it.
In the end, it’s all pretty easy to achieve as long as you divide those four steps into smaller tasks. Most important of them being – make sure your store looks trustworthy and your products are well-presented. Otherwise, what’s the point of driving all that traffic with your Black Friday advertising campaign if your visitors don’t make a purchase? Take care of your customer experience, and you’ll be just fine!
