If you’ve not yet started your marketing push toward the holiday shopping season, now is the time to start planning.

According to the National Retail Federation Holiday Planning Playbook, consumers have the holiday season in mind long before Black Friday or Cyber Monday. That’s because they know it’s the best time to find irresistible deals.

In fact, more than half of consumers start to research and plan their purchases and gifts in October or earlier.

They create personal shopping lists, add products to their favourite shops’ wishlists and subscribe to their email lists, all to ensure they don’t miss out on the biggest discounts of the year.

So, no matter what business you’re in, if you sell anything online, make sure you take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as they provide you with the perfect platform for generous sales.

In this post we’ll share a few tips and advice on what you should do to promote your business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and make this holiday shopping season your best (and most profitable) yet.

Create holiday-specific content

Decided on the irresistible offers you want to promote for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Planned how you’ll spruce up your site’s design to create that emotional desire to buy?

Great. Now’s the time to think about what you’re going to do to build some hype around your business and upcoming promotions.

One of the most effective methods is to create relevant, holiday-themed content that attracts interested prospects to your site.

Since this task is also the most time-consuming of all, it’s important to start preparing early. This ensure that people who are already looking for great deals, gift ideas, or information on specific products can quickly find you at the top of the search engine results.

In addition to increasing your visibility in the search engine results, creating holiday-specific content also helps to build brand awareness and attract prospects to your site who might not even know you exist.

So, put some time aside to create your holiday-themed content. Here are some ideas on what to write about and publish on your own site and blog and, why not, on other blogs that accept guest blogging:

• Holiday guides: Create guides with top ten gift ideas for children, partners, friends, parents, etc. that also include your products. Or share useful tips that can help your target audience in some way during the holiday season, such as tips to find the best deals quickly, how to make sure they’re buying a quality product, or creative ideas to wrap gifts. Just make sure that any piece of content you create is also relevant to your business.
• How-to guides and articles: Promote the products you’re planning to discount by explaining how to use them and giving advice on how to make the most of them.
• Case studies: Showcase how customers are using your products to be more productive, healthier, happier, wealthier.
• Testimonials and reviews: Add the most recent and compelling customer testimonials and reviews to your website in a prominent place where prospects can’t miss them.
• Coming soon landing pages: Create dedicated pages for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to build anticipation. Get a countdown timer on the page so users know exactly when they can start taking advantage of your special offers.

Also add a sign up form on the page and encourage visitors to subscribe to your mailing list so they’re notified the moment your incredible offer goes live.

By planning ahead and preparing your content now, you’ll have more time to take care of your prospects and offer the customer care they want and expect. You’ll have time to answer their questions and concerns, assist them in choosing the right products for their needs, or simply engage with them on social media.

Spread the word on social media

You may not be offering discounts just yet, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get your social media audience thinking about them and putting your products at the top of their holiday wishlist.

So, how can you use social media to promote your business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Here are three tactics you can use to create some buzz around your promotion:

1. Create exclusive social media discounts

A good way to build up hype for your business and promotion is to create a discount code and share it exclusively on your social media accounts. You can even share a different discount every few hours to keep your audience engaged and coming back to your social media page to check out the new discount.

2. Run a contest or a giveaway

People love free stuff. We know it, and so do you. So why not use this tactic to draw attention to your business and the sales you’re running for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Offer your fans and followers the chance to win something great, maybe even one of your most popular products, in exchange for likes, retweets, comments, and shares.

3. Invest in a paid ads campaign

Whether you’re on Facebook or Instagram, a good way to promote your business during Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to advertise on social media.

It’s not just because your audience is already spending lots of time on social media. But it’s also because it’s where they look for inspiration for their holidays shopping and gifts.

Need help? Check out these two resources to learn how to:

• Get started with social media advertising
• Set up your first Instagram advertising campaign

Boost sales with email marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective channels to promote your business all year round.

In addition to being cost-effective, when used right, it also produces great results. In fact, research from the Data Marketing Association found that brands can expect an average return of £32 from every £1 spent on email marketing.

So how can you use email marketing to promote your business this Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Announce your promotion

If you have an email list, make sure you use it to let subscribers know you’re running a promotion this Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Your email should include all the details about the promotion, including when it starts and ends, the products on sale and the discounts they can take advantage of.

Don’t forget to also include a strong call-to-action to entice subscribers to take action now so they don’t miss out on your amazing offer.

Here’s an example from Code School:

Source

Use abandoned cart emails to bring shoppers back

It happens all the time: a shopper adds one or more products to their cart, goes to the checkout page and then close the page without finalising the purchase.

Fortunately, there’s an effective way to help get those shoppers back. You can use automated abandoned cart emails to remind shoppers what they left in their cart and entice them to complete their purchase.

Make sure to also remind them that your offer will only last for another X hours or that the stock is limited or running low.

Here’s a good example:

Source

In this post you can learn everything you need to know about automated abandoned cart emails and how to create yours to bring shoppers back and boost sales.

Want more ideas? Here are nine more holiday email marketing tips to boost your sales.

Final tips

Black Friday and Cyber Monday give you the fantastic opportunity to promote your business and boost revenue. But in order to get great results, you need to start planning now. This includes preparing your website and blog content, your social media posts and ads, and your email marketing campaign.

In addition to that, you also need to make sure that your site is up to speed. There’s nothing worse than creating a killer holiday promotion and campaign, and attracting lots of prospects to your site, only to discover that they’re leaving because your web pages are taking forever to load.

So, make sure you use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to run a speed test and see whether there’s any issue with your site’s speed that you need to fix now.