Black Friday and Cyber Monday make up the super sales weekend at the end of November, after the North American Thanksgiving. This year Black Friday starts the weekend on the 23rd of November and Cyber Monday falls on the 26th. Nowadays sales are made online more often than in brick-and-mortar shops and many stores stretch the discounts to last for a week. 

Since this hyper shopping period is right before the Christmas season, there has been discussion about the need to have a similar sales boost for Spring. In the United States this development has already been kicked off and big chains have started to advertise with "Spring Black Friday".

Big companies such as Home Depot and eBay, for instance, have already used Spring Black Friday marketing.

The biggest online stores have invested in Black Friday marketing by having permanent sites for the campaign. The sites are updated year-round in order to appear in the top spots on search engines. The campaign products, however, can only be viewed at zero hour.

For eCommerce, this long campaign weekend means excellent sales or at least the possibility for that. It doesn't require massive efforts to have a good-looking campaign for your online store.

1. Create a landing page

Building the eCommerce campaign starts with creating a themed landing page. The products to the landing page are chosen and priced and set to be displayed to customers when the campaign starts.

Customers are directed straight to the campaign site with the landing page instead of taking them to the front page. If for some reason the customer ends up on the front page, they must easily find their way to the landing page. Make note that the URL must clearly indicate the campaign. The address can be, for example, yourecommerce.com/blackfriday.

You don't need to have a discount for everything in your online store. Drive customers in with discount products and upsell with your other selection. Don't forget to include product reviews and customer stories on your landing page – they are effective in your campaign marketing.

2. Stand out with campaign visuals

It's easy to add background images or other suitable visual elements to an eCommerce campaign theme. In addition to banners, you can utilize countdown timers that tell how much time there is left until the offers are available or how much time customers have to purchase the discounted products.

A landing page can include a timer that counts down to either Black Friday offers starting or ending.

A sense of urgency can be enhanced by highlighting bestseller products or those products that a customer still has time to buy at a discount price. Sites that have really high traffic might benefit from hourly offers, such as banner ads that are updated every hour. 

3. Create timely content

Create content to your landing page actively throughout the year. This way it will better show up on search engine results. You can, for example, create competitions linked to social media that end on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Don't forget that you could promote Spring Black Friday which has already been adopted by many big players in the United States.

A simple way to keep the landing page alive year-round is to start a countdown for next year's Black Friday immediately after the previous one.

4. Do marketing before and after

Your fancy campaign doesn't deserve to stay in the shadows. So remember to market it on every available channel. Use newsletters, SMS and social media marketing to inform your customers and followers. Link all your campaign marketing straight to the landing page instead of your website or online store.

A paid advertising campaign is also an outstanding way to get traffic to your landing page. You can manage paid advertisements from the same user interface with the integrations that are provided in today's modern tools.

Utilize the power of social media when spreading the word about your campaign. Share and link your landing page on social media, use hashtags and listen to your customers. Be in the frontline of Cyber Monday campaigns as well.

Part of your marketing is excellent customer service at the time of purchase. Don't let the customer slip away just because they can't find what they're looking for in your online store or because they're unsure of something. Interactive customer service is possible with a live chat.

Provide a seamless customer experience for your customers that fluently move from channel to channel. Online and offline experiences can be combined in many different ways, like allowing pick-up from a store for online purchases and keeping communications coherent through all channels. 

5. Delight your customers

Don't forget to inform your current customers about the campaign. Send them a personalized newsletter and think of other personal offers for a particular customer. You have a lot of customer data in your online store that could be utilized for marketing automation.

Automation enables you to implement drip campaigns that send an automated message to customers three days, one day and four hours before the campaign starts. 

You can delight your customers with a discount coupon or free delivery, for example. Or you can give those customers that make a purchase a discount coupon to your next campaign or give out a coupon in return for a product review. This way you can turn a one-time purchase into a loyal customer.

Remember to check with your service provider that your online store can handle Black Friday traffic. Also, test how mobile-friendly it is – half of Black Friday sales in the UK were made on mobile or tablet in 2017.

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