For many online businesses, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are one of the year's busiest days, with plenty of opportunities to achieve higher sales revenue than the rest of the year combined. However, it can also be one of the most challenging shopping seasons to prepare for.
This article will discuss how online businesses of all sizes may prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We will focus on businesses that sell digital products such as digital downloads (ebooks, art, etc), online courses, coaching, and memberships.
What is Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving in the US, unofficially heralds the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Cyber Monday occurs on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, customers worldwide expect steep deals and promotions from their favorite businesses as they are ready to spend!
In recent years, online spending via desktop devices surged during Cyber Monday in the United States, reaching nearly $6 billion in 2020. This figure represents an increase of almost 30% compared to the previous year. In the 2020 edition, Black Friday desktop spending was about $4.3 billion and Thanksgiving spending was about $2.7 billion.
Now that we have that basic information out of the way, it’s time for you to prepare your online store for the biggest shopping season of the year. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry! We’ve mapped out the necessary (free) tools and strategies that you can try to supercharge your digital product sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year.
10 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing Strategies to Try in 2024
1. Offer Limited Time Price Reduction
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are of rare moments when you can offer massive reductions to your product prices without losing your brand identity. The most common limited-time promotions that online businesses can provide are:
· Coupon codes for a percentage off of customers’ purchases. You can also offer exclusive coupon code for your most loyal customers to acknowledge their contribution to your business and increase brand loyalty
· Free gifts with purchase also create a sense of goodwill that can help customers keep coming back to your store. Make sure that you’re giving your customers what they really want, i.e., complementary products to what they intend to purchase.
2. Launch Limited Edition Products
Releasing limited-edition products usually involves putting a unique spin on your best-selling products. For example, if you sell digital wall art, you can release a limited-edition personalized wall art where your customers can input their names or their loved ones’ photos.
This provides an opportunity for you to test the water on new product ideas, and if this goes well, you can potentially create new best-selling products through this activity. These limited-edition product launches draw attention to your online business and brand. This extra exposure can increase customers and sales for your existing and new products.
3. Cross-sell Complementary Products
Cross-selling involves offering your customers product(s) that complement their original purchase. Cross-selling is an effective way to increase the purchase size of your new and returning customers who might otherwise be leaving some items behind from your store simply because they didn’t get a chance to see other products they might like.
Say one of your customers bought an ebook on “Beginner Level Vegan Recipes”. Recommend they check out your “Advanced Level Vegan Recipe” and offer a discount if they purchase both of them at the same time. Use engaging phrases like “You may also like this”, and “Others have bought” to entice your customers.
4. Bundle Multiple Products
You can encourage your customers to increase the size of their purchases by bundling multiple products into a single product listing. Payhip’s product bundle feature allows you to bundle an online course product with a digital download product. A great example of how this is used is if you’re selling an online course on How to Budget for Your Business, you can bundle it with a printable budgeting template PDF, which is also a valuable resource for your customers taking your online course.
To add an interesting twist to this strategy, you can also make this bundle a limited-time-only product listing to evoke a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in your customers and urge them to purchase before the product goes away.
Affiliate Marketing is a process where affiliate partners can earn a commission by promoting products from your online store. In return for any successful sale that the affiliate partners manage to bring to you, you will reward them with a percentage of commission every month.
Selling your product via affiliates is a great way to multiply your sales and promotion efforts, allowing your network to promote your products. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great times to work with content creators, bloggers, and other influential figures to promote your products and share your revenue with them through affiliate commissions. You can even offer an increased commission during this biggest shopping season to incentivize them to promote your products more.
6. Launch a Referral System
Unlike affiliate marketing, a referral system does not involve distributing commissions. Referral System – sometimes known as word-of-mouth marketing – is a marketing strategy that encourages your customers to promote your products to their friends or social network. In return for a successful sale, your customer and their referral will get discount codes for their purchases.
This is a powerful marketing strategy because your customers’ friends and family will receive recommendations from their trusted networks, making it more likely that you will successfully land multiple sales on your online store.
7. Run a Giveaway
Running a giveaway on your social media channels is a great way to encourage real engagement from your target audience. Offer a chance to win prizes after they have accomplished certain tasks e.g. following your social media accounts, sharing your products on social media, etc. This is a great way to build your social media presence while delighting your existing and new potential customers.
8. Launch pre-sale or pre-order items
By definition, a pre-order or pre-sale is an order placed for an item that hasn’t been released. Selling pre-sale or pre-order items during BlackFriday allows you to gauge the level of interest that your customers have in your upcoming products. In addition, pre-orders give your customer a reason to be excited about coming back to your online store and generate sales for your other items as well.
9. Provide Upgrade Discount
Remember that the shopping season does not end with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Christmas is also one of the biggest shopping seasons of the year. Providing upgrade discounts to your customers will incentivize them to return to your store later to purchase additional items at a discounted price.
10. Offer Social Discount
One of the best ways to encourage customers to share your products with their social media network is to offer them an incentive, perhaps a social discount. Payhip’s social discount feature allows you to automatically discount customers on their purchases by sharing the product on Facebook and more. This is a powerful way to tap into your customers’ network, which might become your future customers and increase your brand exposure.