Successful marketing and advertising plans require planning ahead of time. This involves guaranteeing you have everything in order before rolling out a campaign intended to improve engagement and drive sales conversions. Yet sometimes your business can fall behind when it comes to planning when you don’t realize how far away an important date is.
As of now, Cyber Monday is a few months away. Is your business prepared for it? If not, you should begin developing the ways you can garner consumer attention leading up to the sales holiday, whether it’s an affiliate marketing plan or a series of deals sent out by email. Here’s how your business can get ahead of the curve and prepare before it’s too late.
Begin Planning Now.
There are a lot of questions you’ll have to ask yourself before drafting your business’s marketing plan. Are there any specials you want to promote most of all? Where are you most interested in promoting these specials? Will these deals be online-only or will some be offered in-store? When will your campaign start and end? These will be the guiding principles that will help narrow down all future choices you make when creating your holiday marketing plan.
Generate Interest in the Month and Weeks Leading Up to the Holidays.
When it comes to implementing a marketing plan, you don’t want to wait until the last minute—you shouldn’t be putting out your first Black Friday and Cyber Monday content days right before Thanksgiving. A simple way to get some traction in the month leading up to Cyber Monday includes the use of Instagram Stories.
Instagram Stories advertisements provide your business with the means to promote product-related messaging. And it doesn’t have to be a story notifying consumers about upcoming sales; rather, you can create content that shows consumers how your products are made or what the average workday looks like at your business. Simple stories that show the human side of your brand will help develop a connection with your base, making it easier for you to hold their attention later when you want to inform them of a sale or promotion.
Get Exclusive and Utilize Your Email List.
Some customers come and go. Maybe they shopped with you in the past but haven’t been active in months; other customers may have filled up their digital cart and walked away without making a purchase. In both cases, you might have ended up with their email. Rather than letting this personal information go to waste, you can put it to use with an email retargeting campaign.
Retargeting customers is the idea of getting in touch with them to bring them back into the fold, so they go from being a one-time visitor to a true sales conversion. An easy way to retarget potential customers during the start of the holiday season is with information related to sales and promotions to be seen on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If the deal is good enough and tailored to their interests, they are bound to come back to your website on those days to make a holiday purchase with you.
Use Affiliates To Your Advantage.
One of the best things you can do in advance of the holidays is to utilize fellow brands to promote your own. This approach, known as an affiliate marketing strategy, can even be implemented in a collaborative way, where you and another business promote one another’s products, services, and messaging. A common tactic used around the holidays is the development of a promotional package—where you both sell a bundle that contains the other business’s product or where you’re given a coupon to an affiliate business when you shop with one partner. This cooperative process can help promote the two of you during the holiday season, bringing in new customers for Cyber Monday and for the coming year.
Create Gift Guides.
While solo shoppers do their own fair share of shopping on Cyber Monday, people are still hunting for decent discounts for those perfect holiday gifts. In many cases, these people might be shopping for a coworker, friend, or loved one, all while not knowing what to purchase.
A gift guide is a simple way to capture this person’s attention, as it provides them with ideas for that special someone. All of the gifts featured can be from your own company, or you could go cross-business and consider implementing some affiliate marketing techniques, creating a gift guide that can be shared between businesses that are all promoting each other during the holiday season.
Promote Irresistible Offers.
Sometimes all you need to do to convince a customer to shop with you is to offer them a deal they can’t refuse. Maybe that’s 25% off all purchases, buy three items and get one free, or 50%-plus discounts on specific clearance items. Make these offers exclusive, available only by email, and you have consumers ready to line up to make purchases with you once Cyber Monday arrives.
Know Your Niche.
What is it that your audience wants to see on Cyber Monday? Is it nothing more than spectacular deals, or could it be more than that? Social responsibility is becoming more important to consumers, and there are ways you can work to promote positivity worldwide, especially in the face of an ongoing pandemic and economic recession.
This Cyber Monday, consider partnering with a charity. Consumers might feel more compelled to shop with your business if they know that a percentage of their sale is being donated to a charity aiming to help those in need during the holiday season. Moreover, it will reflect well on your business, allowing you to firmly stand behind your ethics while setting an example for other businesses in your industry.
Plan Now for Holiday Sales
Attracting customers to your business on Cyber Monday requires some forethought and work, but it’s well worth the time. Start planning before it’s too late, to guarantee you have your audience’s attention once Thanksgiving comes around.