Introduction

Every merchant knows that Black Friday is a golden opportunity to rocket their sales. But it’s also a frantic time for merchants since there are so many things on the plate: upping stock levels, crafting Black Friday marketing strategy, optimizing checkout process and so on. Hence, there are bound to be errors along the way.

Fortunately, things don’t have to be that way if you are well aware of common marketing mistakes to avoid and employ the right methodology for your brand.

Below, we’ve rounded up the 5 most frequent marketing mistakes during Black Friday and Cyber Monday season. Keep scrolling down!

#1 Targeting The Wrong Audience

To choose the right audience means to find prospects who will be your most active buyers. You can have a brilliant Black Friday marketing strategy, creative copy and funnel. However, the right eye needs to see it. Otherwise, all your precious time, hard work and money get flushed down the drain.

Bear in mind that inaccuracy and misunderstanding of your customers’ preferences can result in serious consequences: from loss of revenue to worsening your brand’s image.

Surveys and questionnaires are some of the most popular methods to stay connected with your clients. Politely ask for their feedback about purchasing experience, interests, needs and encourage them to share about some points they think you can improve. In return, you can give them a discount code or a freebie as a thank you gift for their sharings.

#2 Not Optimizing for Mobile Devices

As number never lies, let’s first take a look at some stats we’ve collected:

• 50,3% of eCommerce traffic comes from mobile
• 80,9% people who shop on tablets end up buying
• 38% of consumers will not return to a retail website if it’s not mobile-friendly

With this in mind, it’s of utmost importance to optimize for mobile when it comes to eCommerce website, checkout page, Black Friday email, etc.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet on how to optimize for mobile:

• Choose an adaptive website template
• Replace long links with CTA buttons
• Avoid large-size images

We recommend you use PageSpeed Insights to have your site analyzed for speed and other optimization factors.

#3 Focusing On Only One Marketing Channel

Using only one marketing channel is cost-saving but it limits your potential customer reach and the creativity of your Black Friday marketing campaign as well.

We acknowledge that every business needs to balance between Black Friday marketing strategies and marketing budget. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of marketing strategies you can apply in Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021 without adding up too much to your budget.

For instance, you can boost Black Friday sales via SMS, email marketing and social media. While SMS is the traditional method to let your customers know about your deals, email and social media are the ideal stages for your creativity to shine.

#4 Minimizing Marketing Efforts After Black Friday week

If you’re limiting your Black Friday marketing strategy to the Black Friday week only, it’s time you rethought that stance as you’re likely to miss out on lots of sales.

In recent years, many brands tend to run their sales a little bit later – the week after Black Friday is over. It’s when other competitors have just ended their deals, many customers run behind Black Friday schedule and haven’t got themselves the items on their wishlists. Thus, you can make the very last attempt to convert this special clientele – late shoppers.

Even when you have no intention of extending your sales, post-Black Friday is still an ideal time to strengthen your brand-customer relationship. We love the idea of sending your customers an email or a well-handwritten note to sincerely thank them for sticking with you through such a difficult year and wish them a happy new year.

#5 Having Your WebSite Crashed In The Middle of Black Friday Traffic Surge

In preparation for Black Friday sales, you might have made several logistical changes to make sure you are ready for the influx of orders that could hit your store. Maybe you’ve hired more staff, made your packaging system watertight, increased your stock level. But have you ever thought about performing regular system maintenance? 

Well, even some of the biggest sites go through website crash problems. On October 4th, 2021 Facebook and its subsidiaries like Messenger, Instagram went down for hours. But when it comes to Black Friday bonanza, website downtime can cost you thousands of sales!

Therefore, we recommend you build up your online store on powerful yet stable platforms like Shopify, Wix or WordPress. Also, pay attention to your system upgrade. It might be a bit of a bother at first. But it comes with bug fixes and substantial enhancements to security that will prevent your site from crashing even during the peak time.

Bottom Line

Are you making any of these marketing mistakes? Don’t worry if you’re. There is still time to turn things around. 

But don’t put yourself under too much pressure. Let’s think of Black Friday 2021 as a learning opportunity rather than just simply earning revenue! Stay motivated and enjoy every lesson along the way. 

Author Bio: Ginny Tran is a forward-thinking and meticulous marketing executive at LitExtension – the world #1 shopping cart migration expert. She has a good command of the eCommerce industry and she keeps updating herself with innovations in this field.