Holiday shopping begins for people all the way back in September<\/a>! So there’s a wide window of opportunity to reach customers who are in the shopping mood.<\/p>\n According to the National Retail Federation,<\/a> the average shopper is planning to spend $1,047 this holiday season, which is a four percent increase from last year.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Overall, sales in November and December are expected to rise between 3-to-4 percent, reaching more than $725 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s a huge amount of spending.\u00a0We\u2019ll get into some ways to best position your products and promotions during this spending season. But first, we wanted to start with a couple of outside-the-box campaigns to get you feeling inspired.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outdoor apparel retailer REI has taken a rather unique approach to its Black Friday marketing. For the past four years, REI has chosen simply to not participate at all.\u00a0They close their stores and send their employees home. Even the website has a giant takeover message. They want you to feel empowered to opt out of Black Friday and spend time outside. The hashtag campaign \u201cOpt Outside\u201d has been a hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n And this year, they\u2019re taking it one step further<\/a> by not only encouraging people to opt out of shopping but also asking folks to spend their time cleaning up the environments around them of trash and waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a really powerful message to send, and it\u2019s been very effective for REI\u2019s brand.<\/p>\n For another example of Black Friday creative campaigns, there\u2019s this amusing one from the New York Public Library. The library put together some simple content to share on social, advertising a 100% off sale on all its books.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, the joke here is that the New York Public Library is a .. well, library. All of its books are free to check out all the time anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nevertheless, it proved to be a very memorable campaign.<\/p>\n So with these fun examples in mind, let\u2019s jump into some of the specific strategies and tactics you can take with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing. <\/p>\n When researching this episode, we came across a really interesting case study of HostGator, <\/a>a web hosting service, and how they approached Black Friday \/ Cyber Monday.\u00a0Essentially, HostGator put together a spreadsheet<\/a> with multiple sales at multiple different hours of multiple different days. It was fascinating!<\/p>\n Yes, their sales typically lasted one hour with some steep savings of 60 to 70 percent. And each hourly sale had its own coupon code so they could track the results.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a really interesting strategy, especially when you think of how you can use it on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s right. Think of all the possibilities for Stories content and social posts if you have multiple sales during the shopping weekend.\u00a0Especially with Stories, you have things like countdown timers and reminder stickers that you can use to great effect. Each new sale gives you another chance to reach out to your audience in multiple ways \u2014 getting attention before the sale starts, holding attention during the sale, and teasing the next one.\u00a0<\/p>\n HostGator\u2019s plan included sales for Early Access Black Friday as well as Small Business Saturday, and it\u2019s a trend that many other businesses are emulating.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Black Friday weekend is almost a four day affair, if not more. We have Gray Thursday, which is U.S. Thanksgiving Day, then there\u2019s Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, which some companies extend for the whole next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re thinking of using multiple days for your marketing plans, you can consider some fo the unique behaviors of your audience on these days. For instance, on Black Friday, you might tie some of your marketing into some Buy Online \/ Pickup In Store specials (commonly referred to as BOPIS) and on Cyber Monday, you can of course focus on online sales. Shoppers spent $7.9 billion<\/a> online for Cyber Monday last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related to this, it\u2019s also worthwhile to start, really, any time between now and the holiday weekend, if you haven\u2019t already. Around 40% of consumers<\/a> start their holiday shopping before Halloween. So shopping is definitely top of mind for your audience, even before Black Friday hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019ve probably seen this with many of the brands you love. All their designs, photos, and graphics match the season we\u2019re in. This might mean harvest colors in October and early November, short and catchy ads around Black Friday, and then holiday themes in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re able to align all these creative assets across all platforms \u2014 Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, even your display ads \u2014 it can create a very powerful and memorable brand experience, which often ends up tying back to ad performance and sales!In fact, according to Twitter Business, ad recall is 60 percent higher<\/a> if a brand does something as simple as placing the logo in a consistent spot. These little things – logo placement, color, font, hashtags \u2014 they make a difference!\u00a0<\/p>\n There are some really big opportunities out there for messaging platforms around the holidays.\u00a0<\/p>\n The website Retail Dive<\/a> touched on a bit of this in a recent blog post explaining the virtue of SMS and text messaging. Get this: During Black Friday 2018, there were reports of brands getting 2000% ROI from using SMS campaigns during the Black Friday<\/a> weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s an incredible number!So probably your mind goes next to, well how can I get this set up for my brand?\u00a0<\/p>\n You can definitely go the SMS route. We think it can be almost just as effective if you think of applying this strategy to Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp as well. Either way, the workflow looks a little like this:\u00a0 This can happen at signup or with a special one-off campaign to collect contact info with the promise of special deals coming soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, you can apply some messaging strategies to the data. Send a discount code to subscribers. Follow up with an email with the same discount and more product offerings. For those who don\u2019t purchase right away, send a reminder nudge.\u00a0<\/p>\n You can even tie this into the hourly flash sales we talked about earlier. Just be careful not to overuse this messaging channel \u2014 you want to always uphold first and foremost a solid, genuine relationship with the person. Sending too many messages can be a turn-off.<\/p>\n You probably have a lot of content to create around these busy holiday dates, so it can be quite a relief to get some help from your community by re-sharing the content that they\u2019re already making.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n This can take a lot of different forms like photos of your brand and product, or positive user reviews. It\u2019s especially easy on Instagram Stories where you can reshare someone else\u2019s post to your Stories with just a couple taps.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some companies go the extra mile and create programs to incentivize users to create and share content about the brand. You can tie giveaways into this strategy \u2014 offer prizes to random winners who have used a certain hashtag or commented on a post. We recently added a Giveaways feature to our social engagement product, Buffer Reply, if you want to check it out at buffer.com\/reply.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some simple ideas for creating UGC contests, we quite like this list by G2 Crowd.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n For last year\u2019s Black Friday \/ Cyber Monday shopping, Adobe Analytics found that mobile devices sent 58 percent of traffic to websites, which represented a 20 percent increase from the year before.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n That means that more than half of your website visitors are likely coming from mobile. Is your website prepared?\u00a0<\/p>\n it\u2019s worth considering this type of user flow when you\u2019re putting together your social media campaigns. Be sure that whatever you\u2019re linking to \u2014 whether it\u2019s from your social ads, from the Swipe Up in your Stories \u2014 that the page is well-optimized for mobile. It\u2019s going to make a big difference with user experience and with conversions.\u00a0<\/p>\n People often turn to social media to get in touch with brands for product questions. You can expect that volume to be especially high around the shopping weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yeah, we thought this stat was really interesting: projections say that 77% of consumers expect to return some of the presents they get this year. And almost 20 percent of consumers say they<\/a>\u2019ll return more than half of their gifts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Knowing this in advance, you can put together some workflows and some docs to help prepare your social media teams to handle these types of requests and this volume.\u00a0<\/p>\n As has been the case in past years, Stories on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat continue to be more and more important for showcasing what your company sells.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Facebook\u2019s holiday marketing guide, Stories have become a hugely popular place to window shop.\u00a0Last year, 63 percent of shoppers either watched or posted videos on Stories and more than a third of shoppers claim that videos were influential in choosing what to buy.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n So whatever you do with your content plans this Black Friday and Cyber Monday, be sure that you\u2019ve allocated plenty to Stories!\u00a0<\/p>\nInspiring examples of Black Friday \/ Cyber Monday marketing<\/h3>\n
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\n1. Conduct hourly flash sales<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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<\/figure>\n2. Think beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday<\/strong><\/h1>\n
3. Update your design assets for each of the holidays<\/strong><\/h1>\n
4. Make the most of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Step One: collect the contact information and the person\u2019s opt-in consent. <\/p>\n5. Focus on user-generated content<\/strong> (UGC)<\/h1>\n
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6. Craft a well-designed mobile experience, from social to your website.<\/strong><\/h1>\n
7. Prepare for product returns<\/strong><\/h1>\n
8. Stories, Stories, Stories<\/h1>\n
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<\/figure>\nAbout the Show:<\/h2>\n