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4 Black Friday Marketing Strategies for New Shopify Stores

4 Black Friday Marketing Strategies for New Shopify Stores

Since Black Friday is the biggest sales holiday, it’s crucial that upcoming Shopify stores plan their marketing right to bring more revenue and grow their business.

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With Black Friday just a few weeks away, online stores are pulling all the stops to ensure they get more visitors and even more sales.

For a new and upcoming store, Black Friday might not be a priority. When you’re new to e-commerce, building a brand takes time. In the initial stages of your business, you might find big events like BFCM a bit daunting. Your upcoming business demands a lot of time and energy so, it’s natural that hosting a Black Friday sale on your store turns into a back burner task. Even so, we hope you put some time aside to set up a Black Friday sale on your store.

Here’s why:

    1. It’ll put your store on the map as consumers hunt for great offers on products they need.
    1. Everyone is looking for deals so marketing your store will be easy.
  1. People spend a lot during this time and you do not want to sit out of this assured win.

Fact: Last Black Friday weekend, shoppers spent $19.63 billion online.

Have I convinced you that Black Friday events are worth the trouble?

Great!

Now, if you are putting up Black Friday sales on your store, it is likely that you’ll need to adopt a unique marketing strategy. Stores usually market their Black Friday through email and social media. This works for them because they have an existing audience to work with.

But, as a new business, your reach is small and adopting the same strategy as a large store might not help. What your upcoming online store needs is a dose of brand awareness. To ensure more visitors to your store and make your Black Friday sale a success, we’ve put together a few strategies.

Wait, we haven’t told you the best part yet.

Even if these strategies only generate one-time visitors, you can bring them back using push notifications. New audiences may visit your store out of curiosity or just to enter your sweepstakes but by enabling push notifications, you can later send campaigns about your latest sale and ensure you don’t lose them.

Let’s dive into these marketing ideas!

Note: Most of these points talk about target audiences. If you’re not sure about your target audience, here’s a crash course to help you define your audience.

1. Market your brand with influencers

Influencer marketing is when a brand works with celebrities and recognized individuals, like Youtubers and social media personalities to market their products and brand. Since influencers come with a large following, brands have easy access to their target audience. For instance, how can an apparel brand reach a new audience? One of the best ways would be to partner with a fashion blogger to promote their products.

The impact of a well-planned influencer marketing campaign is proven. On average, businesses generate $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing.

For upcoming businesses, this marketing plan is a sure way to increase awareness. This insight is backed by the famous watch company, Daniel Wellington and it’s skyrocketing growth. Pushing aside traditional advertising methods, Daniel Wellington focused on partnering with influencers across Instagram.

Audiences saw their favorite celebrities and Instagram accounts wearing these classic watches. This mass popularity made customers aspire to own the watches themselves. To track the impact, the company offered unique discount codes to each influencer. Read about how Daniel Wellington created a business empire by using influencers.

Get started:

    • Draw up a compensation plan. This could be in the form of free products or a paid contract.
    • Approach your potential influencer(s) with a polite message. Explain why you believe that the partnership will be great for both parties.
  • Once the partnership is confirmed, brainstorm and work with the influencer to plan out a campaign.

Further reading: This detailed guide by Hootsuite gives you a thorough look into influencer marketing.

2. Let an influencer take over your social media

Your social media accounts are a reflection of your business. So, it may be a bit difficult to hear us suggest that you let someone else take over your Facebook or Instagram. But, social media takeovers are a great way to build credibility. An influencer takes over your social media for a day, bringing their followers to your account and creating content on your platform.

Consumers see influencers as trustworthy sources of information. According to a research done by Twitter, almost 40% of Twitter users have purchased a product as a direct consequence of an influencer tweet. A social media takeover can compel the influencer’s audience as well as other people to visit your store, bringing more engagement. The Fit Atlanta partnered with a fitness and fashion influencer. The influencer had a smaller following than most influencers, but the takeover worked like a charm, with more people commenting and engaging with the brand’s Instagram.

Getting started:

    • Pick the ideal person to handle the takeover. This influencer has to appeal to your audience. If you own a sneaker brand, you’ll have more reach if you partner with a sports personality. They can use your Instagram to rave about your shoes, take a tour around your merchandising area, or play the sport on your Stories.
    • Once you’ve picked the right person, work with them on cross-platform ideas, giveaways, question sessions, and more.
    • Give access to your social accounts.
  • On the day of the takeover, work closely with the influencer to ensure a smooth-sailing campaign.

Further reading: SproutSocial has a step-by-step article on how you can plan and host a takeover.

3. Partner with a blogger

As social influencers become the top choice for brand partnerships, bloggers are taking a backseat. But the statistics show that customers prefer bloggers.

A study by CollectiveBias showed that 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger.

Bloggers write well-researched and opinionated posts and they have built a loyal audience through the years. Customers relate to them more than they relate to celebrity influencers. Due to this, people trust bloggers more when it comes to shopping recommendations.

One well-planned partnership was between TOMS and Liv Purvis, a fashion blogger. TOMS was launching its latest pair of shoes and partnered with Liv Purvis, a lifestyle blogger for the launch. With her 32,000 blog followers and 180K Instagram followers, Purvis dedicated a blog post to  TOMS shoes, and you can see how effective her words are in swaying the reader to get a closer look at the product.

Get started:

    • Research and make a list of bloggers who have an audience likely to be your customers.
    • Reach out to the blogger with your plan. This could be a request to feature your store on their blog with a box of goodies from your store or with a gift card for them to redeem.
  • Don’t leave it at one interaction. Build a good relationship with the blogger(s) and maintain it to allow you to host future partnerships.

Further reading: Here’s a straightforward read to answer some common questions about blogger partnerships.

4. Run enticing sweepstakes

Naturally, the more people know about your online store, the more likely it is that they will buy from you. Sweepstakes are a great way to increase conversation about your store. Sweepstakes, a lottery-like marketing tactic, is a great way to increase brand engagement and boost conversions for small stores. It helps brands draw attention to their product by running a contest that visitors can enter and have a chance to win attractive prizes.

You will be able to gain more followers during the period you are running sweepstakes. As a result of that, you will be able to increase various subscriber lists like emails, push, retargeting ads, social media following etc. This will help you during your Black Friday sale, as you will have a broader base to market your sale to.

According to Hubspot, such an incentivized campaign is proven to acquire 34% more fans for the business.

NASCAR is currently hosting an interactive sweepstakes.  When visitors vote on customizing NASCAR’s vehicles, they get a chance to win a Ford, Chevy or Toyota truck. The sweepstakes also gives away weekly prizes. The sweepstakes still in progress but it’s already made a buzz online.

Get started:

    • Run a sweepstakes contest a few weeks ahead of Black Friday to bring you more traffic to your online store. Decide how long it will run for and pick an enticing prize.
    • Set up a landing page capturing all the relevant details. You can ask entrants to fill in their email address or subscribe to your store’s notifications.
    • Consult a lawyer and draft a legal document to ensure your contest isn’t violating any laws.
  • Market your sweepstakes across online platforms. You can even consider running ads to increase entries.

Further reading: This simple guide is all you need to host and ace your sweepstakes contest.

You’re all set to put your marketing to work! Enable your Black Friday sale with these powerful brand awareness tactic and see your sale capture double the results you usually do.

Good luck for your Black Friday sale!

This is a guest contribution from Asiya. Asiya Nayeem is the Content Lead at PushOwl. When she isn’t talking marketing, she’s busy juggling too many story ideas in her head

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