Studying the market trends is a part of the job for online eCommerce businesses. The year 2020 has proved to be a turning point in the eCommerce industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The eCommerce platforms dominated traditional offline shopping all over the world due to the restrictions. Now, the same trend is expected to be continued in the 2021 holiday season as well.
What is Black Friday & Why is it Important?
Black Friday refers to the day right after the Thanksgiving holiday that witnesses heavy sales. It is considered as the starting day of the holiday shopping season that continues with some of the significant days such as Cyber Monday, Single’s Day, etc.
Black Friday Sales are the most awaited days for online shoppers. Most of the eCommerce platforms experience spikes in sales on Black Friday. It is crucial for eCommerce business owners to evaluate the expected market trends to amplify their sales during the holiday season. November and December are considered the hottest seasons for online shopping and thus provide eCommerce platforms with plenty of sales opportunities. Hence, preparing online stores for the holiday season is inevitable!
Studying Black Friday 2021 trends predictions will help the online store owners to benefit from this golden sales opportunity and leverage the traffic for revenue.
Black Friday 2021 Predictions and Marketing Strategies
Here are the Black Friday 2021 marketing strategies as per the predictions that you must consider for your online store to boost your sales.
Improve Your Store
As per the reports, the eCommerce marketplace is expected to continue its dominance over the offline market during the 2021 sales season as well. Therefore, online marketers are advised to stay well prepared for the upcoming spike in the sales graph.
Site Experience: Make sure that your store is ready to provide dozens of reasons to make a purchase. Ensure that your store is equipped with a flawless smooth navigation interface and performance, making it easy and trustworthy for the visitors to place orders.
SEO Optimization: Do an SEO audit of your store and make sure that your store is ready to rank during the sales season.
Spread Awareness
Shoppers are expected to place early orders to avoid delays in delivery due to Covid-19 restrictions. Therefore, a spike in the eCommerce platform sales is expected for a couple of weeks during Black Friday.
Online store owners must plan to run ad campaigns to brand awareness much before the holiday season to warm up their audience and re-target them during the Black Friday season.
Social Media: Social Media is one of the most profitable marketing tactics during holiday sales. People enjoying their leisure time scrolling on social media are more likely to get interested in shopping.
Re-targeting: You can prepare a list of your customers’ email addresses and can target them during the sales season with heavy discounts, offers, and deals. One clever way to retarget customers is to distribute coupons and discount codes that can be used during holiday sales.
Win Customers’ Reviews
Customers’ Reviews can play a vital role in winning visitors’ trust to make a purchase on your store. According to one survey, 85% of online shoppers consider reading tens of reviews about the product before making any purchase.
Product reviews and feedback in your store will also help confused customers to make choices between multiple similar items in your store. It will add a sense of trust to the products and will make it easier for the customers to trust the legitimacy of the product or service that you are selling. . Ask for Reviews: You can try asking for honest reviews and feedback from your existing customers. This will help you to provide visitors with honest reviews about your product or service that will boost your sales by 4-5%.
Don’t Spam 5-Star Reviews: Spamming 5-star reviews on your store to get customers’ attention over the product is not a good idea. Ironically, it may go against your sales and may make the visitors doubt the legitimacy of your store.
Flash Sales
You can win customers by offering deals or discounts for a specific period of time during the flash sale and can create a sense of excitement. Flash sale is one of the most successful sales strategies used by many of the renowned eCommerce platforms during the sales season.
Limited Time Offer: Offer deals and discounts for a limited period of time in your store. You can try adding deals and offers with a counter like “Hurry! Offer ends in xx:xx Hours” to convince the visitors that the deal is limited and worth making a transaction.
Offer Freebies: You can try offering freebies such as free delivery services, free installation service, free extended warranty, etc. along with your products to persuade your visitors to make a transaction on your store.
Give Financial Freedom
Price is one of the foremost deciding factors for making any purchase online. Providing financial freedom to your customers can help you to win customers by providing them financial flexibility.
Buy Now, Pay Later: You can partner with finance companies or banking organizations to provide the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ facility in your store. This will help your customers purchase the products by paying a specific upfront payment and dividing the rest into monthly instalments as per their convenience.
Multiple Payment Options: Looking at the diversified payment options available, it is important to support most of the payment options on your eCommerce store for your customer’s convenience.
Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Net Banking, E-Wallets, Mobile wallets and Partial Payments are some of the must-have payment options for your eCommerce site to maximize payment convenience.
Conclusion
Black Friday is coming soon with its golden sales opportunity for online stores to achieve new heights of success. Online store owners must follow a proper marketing strategy to make the most out of this holiday season.