Optimise Your Social Commerce Strategy for Black Friday
November means the busiest shopping days for retail and eCommerce businesses are right around the corner. Last year, festive retail sales were bright, ‘growing over 14% to 2020.’ This increase in sales ‘correlated with an increase in social messages’ (Sprout Social). Active engagement with consumers has always been vital for social commerce strategy. But this year, while budgets are tight, consumers will have to make stricter choices on who they buy from. For this reason, responsive, helpful and thoughtful engagement has never been more necessary.
High inflation rates mean retailers must create a solid social commerce strategy to stand out. An abundance of Black Friday sales content isn’t enough to convince people to buy. Retailers must also deliver strong customer service to build consumer rapport and trust to generate sales.
It may sound all doom and gloom, but research suggests many consumers will take advantage of Black Friday deals to save money. ‘UK consumers are going to prioritise value for money and thoughtful giving, while being generally more organised, this festive season’ (eBay Ads UK). Black Friday is a great way to save on festive purchases–which everyone wants to do right now. That’s why we’ve listed the best ways to optimise your social commerce strategy for the biggest sales weekend of the year.
The Best Ways To Optimise Your Social Commerce Strategy:
1) Collate Data To Plan Your Strategy
Social platforms produce resourceful metrics such as engagement, impressions, click-through rate, traffic and conversion rate that can help you plan what type of content converts. You should model your Black Friday content on posts with the highest engagement and click-through rates.
Social platforms can also highlight the best times of the day for interacting with your followers. Post at these times in the build-up to the big weekend.
We also suggest auditing your Facebook Ads Campaign in time for Black Friday. Ads will boom during this time, so there’s more competition to reach users. Focus on retargeting and re-engagement audiences because they’ve already shown interest in your business, so they are likely to convert. Other examples would be those from your email list, post engagers and video viewers.
2) Schedule Your Content Well In Advanced
Creating a successful Black Friday campaign is all about early planning and organisation. That’s why we wrote these handy tips well in advance for you to start implementing them as soon as possible. We suggest drip-feeding Black Friday content into your profile early so followers know you’re participating.
You can plan, create, and schedule your content early with content planning software. Content planning is essential for Instagram, as it allows you to visualise how all the campaign content works together ahead of time. You’ll want to avoid panic posting during the busiest weekend of the year. Get your content ready so you can spend more time directly engaging with consumer queries instead.
3) Mix Up Your Content
Refrain from bombarding your followers with sales content. On Black Friday, all retailers will be posting sales content, which can quickly fill up people’s feeds. Mix up the sales with valuable content, such as reviews or testimonials.
4) Stay Consistent Across All Platforms
Keep the Black Friday branding and offers consistent across all platforms. When scheduling content, refrain from publishing some offers on one profile and forgetting about the others. With this in mind, you should still adapt your content for each platform, such as Facebook stories, Instagram reels and social shopping feeds.
5) Make Use Of Social Shopping Features
On Black Friday, increased website traffic can make websites slower and even crash—you don’t want this to happen. Instagram shopping can filter traffic from the website, generating sales directly through the app. Setting up an Instagram shopping page is time-consuming, so this needs to be created early to ensure it’s functioning for the day.
6) Thoughtfully Engage With Customers
As we said, consumers will be more selective of where they spend their money this year. Retailers who were successful last Black Friday saw the value in connecting with consumers on the weekend. In sum, ensure you reply to comments and messages quickly, accurately and thoughtfully. A chatbot on your website can also help with this.
Before the weekend, set up a Q&A on your stories for consumers to ask any burning questions they have about your products or brand. This type of engagement can increase their confidence in buying a product from you and generate sales.
7) Build Anticipation
Black Friday is all about creating anticipation, excitement and a sense of urgency. Include a countdown to the weekend in your email marketing. You can also create image countdowns on your social feeds with sneak peeks or clues about the items that will be discounted.
8) Use Hashtags To Increase Audience Reach
Hashtags, such as #blackfriday and #blackfridaydeals, should be added to your content to target people who are in the mood to shop for Black Friday.
9) Time-Sensitive Offers
Consumers are more likely to buy a product if they believe it is limited stock or a time-sensitive offer. Consider including a timer under the price of the special offers on your website to emphasise this.
Your social media posts should also have time-sensitive phrases. Captions such as ‘get it before it’s gone’, ‘act fast’ and ‘limited stock’ prompt consumers to complete a purchase rather than leave it in their baskets.
Staggering or ‘dropping’ discounted items or services throughout the day is better than posting them in one go. This way, you can control incoming traffic and improve engagement.
Final Thoughts:
Black Friday is a massive opportunity to generate sales and gain new customers. By optimising your social commerce strategy, we can be sure that you’re in for a good one. Alongside these tips, we also recommend auditing your website performance for loading speeds and retargeting potential customers through email marketing.
