Black Friday as a Long-Term Marketing Strategy for Brand Building

 

Do your advertising and marketing campaigns always come out as short-lived and fade away with the instant excitement of targeted moments? They shouldn't! Black Friday advertising and marketing campaigns are overwhelming for most marketers. It demands planning. Yet it is short-lived. So, as a marketer, that can be discouraging and disheartening in meeting your conversion target and ROI. However, there is a smart way around it. Think long-term in your planning and preparations for any instant targeted shopping moment.

 Black Friday Advertising Campaigns

Have you ever wondered why it is Black Friday? Most retail brands in the ‘red’ that symbolizes losses finally moved into the ‘black’ to signify profits in the positive mood of using it as a marketing strategy to boost brand awareness for the long-time and busy festive season shopping mood. So, it is finally and loudly here with Christmas bells in the air after a long process of putting everything into place as preparations for this busy festive shopping season.

Black Friday advertising and marketing campaigns are overwhelming for marketers and need long-term planning. Marketing factors and logistics should be in place before you open doors for people to fight for bargains. Whether offline or online. However, as an online marketer and business owner or entrepreneur, those preparations you have already made should automatically uplift and boost your brand presence and influence throughout the whole festive shopping fever. 

So, it is a worthwhile effort and investment to consolidate your brand-building strategies. Here is the thing. In a turbulent AI-dominated digital marketing landscape, thinking long-term in planning and preparing marketing campaigns for festive shopping would promote long-term brand awareness in your brand-building journey even after the festive busy days. So, think long-term for long-term brand awareness to sustain your brand-building efforts.

Think Long Term Value

Though our blog covers online campaigns for digital brands, the way you prepare your brick-and-mortar store is more or less the same as how you should prepare your e-commerce store with the website as the storefront of your brand offers. Like the shelves and counter in your shop, order, and organization is the strong selling point that will make your prospects not get lost in their shopping sprees and surfing the internet for bargains. Here are the most important landmarks that will direct your store visitors online to boost conversion rate.

Think long term and don’t lose heart when Black Friday does not register heavy traffic of scrolls down and across your product pages that end at the checkout point. Let’s dig in and see where you might need to double-check whether everything is streamlined and seamlessly integrated for ease of use and friction-free action for the long-term and longtime brand marketing efforts in brand building.

The Home Page

The home page is the welcome reception desk of your online business that sets the mood for your visitors to feel like scrolling down and across your business website. Whether it is an e-commerce store or a service platform, it is the front page and hub for your business site that leads visitors to navigate freely to other essential sections of the website without getting lost and confused about the purpose and value of your brand in the market. That will make your visitors grasp the essence and meaning of your brand offers. Your homepage should lead and direct your site visitors to boost brand identity, presence, and awareness in the digital marketplace.

So, in Black Friday preparations with a long-term and evergreen approach mentality, you should not overlook this part of your website. Make sure it tells visitors who you are and what you do with a captivating broad overview of everything you offer. It must link and direct the visitors to explore your brand products and services with relevant information on every page to highlight your brand vibe, voice, and authority.

 Remember, it is all about marketing through visual and text communication. Communication is the driving force in expressing and clarifying the value and benefit of your offers in the market. So, make sure your visuals and text on your homepage are compelling enough to capture your visitors’ hearts and souls to explore deeper into your offers. Make the whole navigation user-friendly and enhance customer experience on your website. That will make your visitors feel like it is a tour of your brand empire, ready to convert into faithful customers.  

The Landing Page

If the homepage leads and directs visitors around your site for brand awareness, a Landing page calls them to action in specific marketing and advertising campaigns. A landing page is like an enticing invitation for visitors to feel convinced they are at the right place and time for appropriate bargains after clicking through from an email, advertisement, or any other location on the internet web like Google, YouTube, Meta, or X. and similar platforms on the web. I have seen some businesses making it too comprehensive. It shouldn’t be long but catchy to entice and captivate visitors to take the expected action in the marketing and advertising campaigns.

Remember, online shopping should keep your prospects excited. So, its design details should enhance what your brand proclaims and reflect the essence and meaning of your brand through a well-expressed and clarified unique value proposition. That will entice visitors to be curious and driven to take immediate action, knowing that it is the right product or service they are dying to have for their desire and a solution to their problem.

 No one gets excited by reading a landing page that reads like a manual. Your landing page is an advertising signatory and must maintain interest and focus on enticing the visitors to feel wowed by your offers and their value and benefit. Make this catchy and captivating. Remember, it is marketing. And not workshopping. Neither is it an online brochure.

Product Listing Page

Product layout in digital spaces can be a challenge. But it shouldn’t be with a creative and innovative mindset of seeing it as a long-term investment for boosting your brand identity, presence, and positioning in the marketplace. If you can’t do it as a small business entrepreneur, invest in a graphic designer to lay out your products or services in a minimalistic, simple, enticing, and captivating way.

You must make your product listings make visitors feel free to explore the alleys and the inventory images of your product listings and descriptions with no distraction and confusion about what to look and not look at. Product images and text must be catchy and compelling to the eyes and emotions of your visitors without getting mixed up on what to look at and what not to look at due to mixed-up categorization. That is why branding is a concept that enhances categorization and presence online.

 Have specialized categories well identified and clarified on the listings. That way, your visitors will stay on the pages without frustrations and confusion about what they are looking for and other items that might optimize their interest in your brand products. Here are a few examples of brands you can find inspiring for making your product listings enticing and captivating for your visitors to lose themselves in your product listings. In the fashion category, check Lightinthebox. In the beauty category, check African Extracts. In the technology category, check Intel or Apple. Be clear with your categorization for stress-free tagging and keyword generation.

Checkout Point

That is the most sensitive page to consolidate the trust your website visitors might have developed in their purchasing journey and experience with the purpose and value of your brand products or services online. That is where they make final decisions to complete the order and the payment details for long-term relationships with your brand. Make it simple, with easy-to-follow form instructions for fast and natural flow in completion with no stress in deciding whether they are doing the right thing on the form. Any negative feeling at this point of the buyer journey might promote cart abandonment. That is costly to all the effort you might have put into your festive promotional campaigns.

 Remember, it is just like being at the counter of a physical shop where the till operator looks unfriendly and confused with an unorganized till area to deliver the awaited attention. You can always feel like abandoning the shopping basket and going to the next shop that is more organized and well-informed in handling and attending to customers.  Online shopping is even worse and deadly due to a lack of direct human interaction. However, some people are becoming more used and finding it interesting to purchase stuff online with limited human-to-human interaction. Make it friction-free with clarity on all the billing, shipping options, and payment methods. That can be a one-page or multiple-page checkout.

You can use chatbots wherever possible, especially during this busy festive shopping. You must make support readily available and consolidate credibility with trust elements like return policies and using well-reputed checkout facilities. You can opt for well-established ones like PayPal Checkout, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, or Apple Pay. You must also provide guest checkout capabilities that allow shoppers to make an online purchase without creating an account by entering their name, shipping, and billing details to complete their transactions. That reduces fear, second-guessing, and friction in signups and reduces cart abandonment, which is a common feature due to checkout points complications.

Leverage Chatbots

Chatbots are one of the most popular types of marketing automation for online stores. They boost customer experience, especially this time of the year when your shop and e-commerce store will have traffic with enthusiastic buyers who are most likely to need fast and quick help that will limit cart abandonment. You know what it is like during the festive season shopping that also comes with domestic stresses. Most shoppers easily snap when you don't attend to them to assist in their decision to purchase and if they are unattended to immediately along in the purchasing process.

Though they lack the emotions to express the mood of Festive shopping, they are essential for online shopping queries and immediate remote responses. Especially during busy festive shopping happening during this time of the year when most staff might be off for holiday making. Chatbots can readily provide information and drive sales. And they provide direct and interactive engagement with your customers. So, you can consider using them during this busy shopping season. That would even help you to make informed choices to incorporate them into your long-time marketing and advertising campaigns even after the busy festive days.

They can help at checkout points by nudging customers to complete purchases. And also assist customers to understand shipping costs and the checkout process. That way, it reduces incidents of abandoned shopping carts. Remember, the checkout point is one of the essential conversion indicators of your marketing and advertising campaigns that boost revenue in your brand-building efforts.