Businesses are gearing up for one of the most frenetic shopping seasons of the year, starting with Black Friday, which presents a golden opportunity for marketing and advertising agencies to demonstrate their prowess in helping clients stand out amid a cacophony of competitors’ deals and discounts. From crafting a compelling ad campaign to optimizing a company’s online presence, agencies can play a central role in guiding businesses through the holiday sales frenzy.
Below, members of Forbes Agency Council explore strategies agencies can employ to ensure their clients not only survive, but actually thrive during this pivotal time period. Leveraging these tactics can help make the holiday season a resounding success for any brand.
1. Plan Email Campaigns Early
Start planning your email marketing strategy early. Organizing your plans in September gives you and your clients enough time to create engaging email campaigns, complete with personalized messages catered to your client’s different customer segments. Think about including exclusive deals such as free shipping or a bonus gift in your emails to entice customers to engage with the product. – Lisa Montenegro, Digital Marketing Experts – DMX Marketing
2. Prepare Clients’ Teams With Training And Insight
The retail landscape has changed dramatically over the past five years. Shoppers spend more time online, and if they choose to shop in a brick-and-mortar location, the odds are that they will show up better educated than ever regarding what they’re looking for. To that end, we help our retail clients prepare their teams with training and insight so that they are well-prepared to serve their customers’ needs. – Robert MacDonald, Impact Communications
3. Deploy Real-Time Analytics Dashboards
By starting our joint planning sessions early—ideally, three months in advance—we give ourselves the runway we need to tailor the right strategies for our diverse clients. We focus on personalized creatives, messaging and offers as key drivers to increase sales. Additionally, deploying real-time analytics dashboards helps immensely with fine-tuning the right changes required to drive better return on ad spend. – Saif Jarad, CHAIN REACTION
4. Use Attribution Tracking To Evaluate ROAS
A critical factor in a successful Black Friday campaign is strong attribution tracking in order to evaluate return on ad spend by product category, shopper demographic, and more. When ROAS-driven campaign expansion is employed, our retail clients can confidently increase ad spending for Black Friday while minimizing wastage and holding to profitability targets. – Justin Cook, 9thCO Inc.
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5. Create Organic News Stories For Clients
As we head into Black Friday, creating organic news stories for clients is a great investment. With advertising on social media always at an all-time high around this time of year, publicity allows our clients to reach a massive audience, in a credible way, without having to compete with all the other ads running on social media. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR
6. Structure A Complete Campaign Around Black Friday
One way our agency helps clients gear up for Black Friday is by structuring a complete campaign around that particular weekend. This includes the full ad campaign, email marketing and social media marketing. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
7. Introduce ‘Pre-Sale VIP Access’
One strategy our agency emphasizes for Black Friday preparation is “pre-sale VIP access.” We segment the client’s email list to identify loyal customers and offer them exclusive early access to Black Friday deals. This not only rewards and retains loyal customers, but also spreads out the sales rush, ensuring the website and customer service teams aren’t overwhelmed on the actual day. – Carlos Trillo, Evinex Corporation
8. Audit The Technical Setup Of All Platforms
Many companies put a significant budget toward marketing campaigns during the holiday season. By auditing the technical setup of the client’s Google Analytics, Search Ads 360, Campaign Manager 360 and Display & Video 360 ahead of the busy season, we ensure our clients are collecting the right data and that the platforms are deployed optimally, so clients can maximize the value of their investments. – Alicia Arnold, Fifty Five
9. Create A Smart Cadence Of Top-Quality Content
One of our key strategies involves a smart cadence of top-quality content. We start with go-live dates that align with consumer interest and then employ paid amplification to maintain momentum through Black Friday and beyond. Additionally, we take the time to find the right influencers for the job, ensuring that the brand message resonates with the target audience for maximum impact. – Danielle Wiley, Sway Group
10. Align Promotions With Inventory Planning
While planning ahead and having the right promotional strategy are crucial, you cannot sell what you do not have. We emphasize to our clients that promotions need to be aligned with inventory planning. During the height of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we monitor real-time data to gain insights from a brand’s customer behavior and inventory levels, then decide if changes to the marketing strategy need to be made. – Revecka Jallad, DIVISA
11. Build In Enough Time To Test The Strategy
Planning everything early for the busiest sales days, such as Black Friday, provides sufficient time to craft a comprehensive marketing plan that ensures all the strategies are aligned and working harmoniously to boost sales. Also, after creating the plan, we have time to test and find areas of improvement, which helps to avoid the disarray and losses that our clients may face during the season. – Ajay Prasad, GMR Web Team
12. Customize Interactive Online Experiences
We help our clients prepare for Black Friday by creating customized, interactive online experiences. Using tools such as product recommendation engines, games and calculators not only enhances the user experience, but also drives engagement and boosts conversion rates. This strategy helps our clients stand out in the competitive Black Friday marketplace and maximize their sales potential. – Adam Binder, Creative Click Media
13. Create Timelines To Move Inventory And Time Sales
To help clients gear up for Black Friday, we make sure to initiate plans and create timelines for when to move large amounts of inventory and properly time sales. It may be beneficial to run promotions beyond Black Friday, so factoring that into planning is important as well. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne Advertising
14. Remind Your Clients About SEO Months In Advance
SEO doesn’t move fast; it’s like turning a battleship around. We help our clients by reminding them that we need to know several months in advance if they want their Black Friday deals found in organic search. Businesses that get this wrong are forced to rely on paid ads to drive traffic. It’s both sad and comical to watch some companies’ Black Friday deals appear in organic search two to three months late. – Michael Chagala, Rank Harvest SEO
15. Send Mobile Text Reminders About Sales
Start with awareness! You must start generating a buzz early and ensure that you are the top-of-mind brand your customers and prospects want to shop for. Also, you want to send a mobile text reminder just before the sale starts and one just before it ends. This is easy to do with tools that ensure the customer has easy access to your storefront (online or physical) the moment your sale starts. – Mike Gunderson, Gunderson Direct Inc.
16. Leverage Behavioral Drivers
It’s no secret that holiday sales start earlier than ever, and yet people love to procrastinate. We help our clients gear up with behavioral drivers, such as urgency, exclusivity and social proof. One way to capture early demand is by using personalized offers that guarantee product availability before a specific date, paired with social proof such as reviews and testimonials from influencers. – Eric Gilbertsen, REQ
17. Change Daily Ad Spend Budgets Based On Metrics
Plan early, test and optimize. Change daily ad spend budgets based on day-unique purchase sales numbers, and forecast e-commerce sales with media mix modeling and business intelligence. – Benjamin Kepner, Global Social Media Marketing
18. Initiate A Gradual And Sustained Approach
Our agency assists clients in gearing up for the bustling Black Friday season by initiating a gradual approach. We begin early, and by steadily reminding the audience about upcoming Black Friday deals, we simultaneously build and expand our client’s customer base. This ensures a strategic and sustained approach to prepare for one of the busiest shopping times of the year. – Denis Sinelnikov, Media Components – Digital Marketing Agency
19. Focus On UX And Distribution First
We work on PR campaigns, product launches, gift guides and digital funnel campaigns like everyone else, but we first focus on user experience and distribution. The best campaign in the world is moot if the customer can’t make a purchase or gets frustrated with your site or if the product doesn’t arrive on time. So we pour a solid foundation first, then build the Black Friday promotional house on top of it. – Dan Kahn, Kahn Media, Inc.
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