5 Key Strategies To Boost Your Black Friday Sales

Black Friday, which kicks off the retail holiday shopping season every year, is among the biggest days for online businesses. While most brick-and-mortars were forced to shut down because of lockdowns, Black Friday sales in digital stores and e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay soared.

In 2020 alone, the holiday smashed records and breached online sales’ $9 billion threshold. The milestone marked a significant shift in the e-commerce landscape. The competition has become fiercer, and the industry becoming harder to penetrate.

How can your business compete? 

Read more: Engage These 5 Consumer Types With E-commerce Outsourcing

Black Friday, the busiest, most stressful, and yet most rewarding day for online businesses, is just around the corner. Whether you’re a little late on your holiday sale preps or just here to check if you’ve missed anything, here are five key strategies to boost your Black Friday sales.

Black Friday shoppers start scouting deals well ahead of November 25th. The sooner you get the word out, the bigger the payoff for your company is. 

You can start by revisiting data and trends from past holiday sales to give you insight into which items to put on sale. Once you’ve mapped out your Black Friday deals, you can outline a checklist of all the things you’re going to need. 

Create a Gantt chart that covers everything from marketing to inventory. Schedule regular brainstorming sessions and progress meetings where you can iron out issues with all departments involved. 

About a month before the event, you can begin rolling out Black Friday promotions on your e-commerce platform. Whether you’re using sites like Amazon or you have your app, make sure it’s optimized for quick navigation. All items should be easily accessible, especially your top-sellers. 

However, remember that getting orders is just one part of your Black Friday success.  

To avoid bottlenecks and delays, you must back up your order management system with a solid logistical system. Always check in with your suppliers, vendors, and delivery partners to ensure that they can also keep pace with the holiday demand. 

2. Optimize all your systems from end to end. 

Did you know that a complicated and time-consuming checkout is one of the top reasons for cart abandonment? With Black Friday cart abandonment reaching a staggering 77.4%, a few simple tweaks on your site can make all the difference to your bottom line. 

Run A/B testing across your entire site – from the landing page to the checkout – to find ways of simplifying your customer’s buying experience. For one thing, you can skip the mandatory registration to your site and offer more payment options. 

All your optimizations must be mobile-friendly since most (74.17%) Black Friday online traffic comes from mobile devices. To ensure a consistent buyer experience, standardize your user experience (UX) design across all devices. You can also speed up site loading time to gain an edge over your competition. 

Indeed, the Black Friday online traffic surge is excellent for business, but it also has downsides. The high volume of site visits can cause your site to crash if your infrastructure weakens. You can keep this from happening by setting up backup servers during peak times (12:00mn and 9:00 pm). 

Another thing you have to watch out for is cyberattacks. Hackers and other malicious entities may use the shopping frenzy to phish sensitive information such as your customers’ bank details, passwords, and addresses. Steer clear of cyber attacks by beefing up your security measures for Black Friday. 

3. Go big on marketing. 

In a sea of doorbuster sales, killer Black Friday marketing ideas are all it will take to set you apart from your competition. 

First, you can tap into the deep pool of early shoppers by creating online buzz weeks before the big day. Reel them in with discount vouchers, gift cards, and product bundles they can collect on your platform.  

Double down your social media game with interactive contests encouraging shoppers to share your posts, use your official hashtags, and tag their friends. You can even open up socials as an e-commerce platform to reach out directly to your target market. Doing so will boost your conversion rates and strengthen your marketing as more satisfied customers will review your products on social media. 

You can maximize your reach by targeting your ads and scheduling your posting on social media primetime. Similarly, you can optimize your website for shoppers hunting Black Friday promotions on Google. 

The search engine is packed to the brim with e-commerce sites and online shops vying for a spot on its front page. To get ahead of the curve, you can search for the items you’re selling, then update product names and descriptions to incorporate them.  

Now that you have successfully planned a marketing strategy for the weeks leading up to Black Friday, you can focus on the day before, which often sees the most significant spike in online traffic. You can make the most of this with special discounts they can only avail on the eve of Black Friday. 

Add a countdown timer on your site to heighten the stakes and create a sense of urgency for your customers. Expect a flood of orders as soon as that timer hits 00:00. 

Read more: Top 8 Must-Know Digital Content Marketing Strategies To Help Fuel Brand Awareness and Growth in 2022 

4. Ramp up your customer service.

As frontliners, customer service agents significantly impact your bottom line. They drive your satisfaction rates, carry your reputation, and reflect your service brand. They are critical to your Black Friday success. 

However, the demand for customer service typically skyrockets during the end-of-year holiday sales, posing the need to reinforce your in-house team. You can turn to customer service outsourcing through a BPO to keep pace with the high volume of transactions and inquiries. 

BPO offers two things that consumers want from customer service: speed and access. The combined time zones of outsourced customer service teams from across the globe make 24/7 support possible. With agents available round-the-clock, your customers will immediately respond. Additionally, BPO firms utilize the latest tech to build omnichannel platforms for a smooth and seamless customer experience.

Read more: The Importance of Customer Response Time (and How E-Commerce Outsourcing Can Help Improve Your CRT) 

5. Consider e-commerce outsourcing. 

It’s down to the wire for your big Black Friday blast. All hands are already on deck. You’ve even brought in part-time employees to help ease the load, but there’s still so much that needs to be done. There may need to be more than your in-house team, and it’s time to bring out the big guns. 

E-commerce outsourcing can scale up and level up your business for the Black Friday rush with these services: 

Read more: 7 E-Commerce Outsourcing Services That Empower Businesses 

• Content Writing 

Partnering with an outsourcing firm will give you access to a team of seasoned writers who can help you churn out engaging and compelling content guaranteed to gain leads. 

Since outsourced writers are solely dedicated to creating content, you can expect a quicker turnaround time. They leverage their expertise and knowledge to create fresh content and copies that will fuel your marketing. 

Read more: What Role Does Content Writing Play in Your E-commerce Sales Funnel? 

• Digital Marketing 

When you’re running an online business, time is a critical resource. Unfortunately, marketing often takes up a lot of it.

Delegate this crucial but time-intensive task to marketing experts. One of the best parts about e-commerce outsourcing is getting a pool of highly-trained digital marketers. They combine deep SEO and social media expertise with cutting-edge marketing tech to broaden your online reach.   

• Data Entry and Inventory Management

All online businesses have an inventory data management system to keep tabs on their orders and supplies. Because of the amount of data involved, this system is highly prone to error. 

Outsourcing is a great strategy to avoid these costly mistakes. When you outsource data entry and inventory management, you tap into a pool of expert data encoders and analysts who can significantly reduce the risk of data entry errors. Outsourced data specialists also provide your company with actionable insights to guide all your business decisions. 

Read more: Top 10 Sectors That Should Outsource Data Entry in 2022 

• Accounting and Bookkeeping

Black Friday often signals that it’s almost time to close the books for the year. But as you rake in record holiday sales, your in-house accounting team may struggle to stay on top of the books. 

Get the help you need with outsourcing. Your outsourcing partner works with tech-savvy certified accountants and bookkeepers. Leveraging expertise and innovative accounting software, they deliver efficiency, accuracy, and deep insight to manage your financial assets and maximize your growth potential.  

Read more: An Essential Guide to Accounting Outsourcing Services

Partner With SuperStaff To Get Ahead of the Curve This Black Friday

The competition among online businesses in a free-for-all market is already cutthroat, but major retail holidays up the ante further. Fortunately, the right outsourcing company can guarantee your success, no matter the stakes. 

SuperStaff, a one-stop shop for e-commerce outsourcing, can provide all your Black Friday needs. Take advantage of our end-to-end outsourcing solutions designed to elevate your brand and give your customers the best online retail experience.

Contact us today to take the next step in your e-commerce success journey!