Are you ready for Black Friday?—Better yet, is your business ready? A strong Black Friday marketing plan could make a difference in how your business does on November 24th, as well as on Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday shopping season.

In this post, we’ll look at three areas we advise our clients to pay special attention to email marketing, local SEO, and content marketing.

Black Friday Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the best marketing channels available — email is more than 40 times as effective for customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter. Thus email should be a big part of your Black Friday plan.

1. Start Early

Of course, your campaign should start well before the sales day itself. Search trends indicate that consumers are thinking about Black Friday deals and gift purchases early today than they did even just a few years ago.

2. Drip Marketing

Plan for a series of messages spread out over the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday. Avoid a sudden barrage the week of Thanksgiving. And warm your prospects up with entertaining and useful content — interesting visuals, how-to guides, gift guides, and the like — before turning to more sales-focused messaging later on.

3. Originality and Value

When the holiday is upon you, your emailing should focus on originality and value to ensure more prospects open your messages. Boring, predictable, and impersonal subject lines could get lost in the shuffle. Sales messaging that doesn’t offer valuable discounts, or desirable products is likely to have less of an impact on Black Friday shoppers.

Local SEO for Black Friday

With each passing year, SEO matters more and more for Black Friday businesses. According to Fortune, 108.5 million Americans shopped online over the Thanksgiving through Sunday holiday weekend. A further 99.1 million still ventured out to local stores, making local SEO, specifically, another smart investment.

1. Google My Business

Hopefully, you already have your Google My Business listing claimed, fully filled out, and full of five-star customer reviews for each of your storefronts, service areas, or online shops. But if you don’t, now’s the time to act. Eighty percent of shoppers check online before heading out to a store — for hours, directions, websites, and deals. Use the new Posts feature to add special holiday deal announcements, and remember to update your hours if they’re extended.

2. Yext

Like Google My Business, Yext’s local marketing solutions make it easier for consumers to connect with your business across the web. Yext allows businesses to manage their directory information listing across more than 100 publisher sites, from Google to Facebook and more. As a Yext Certified Agency Partner, we appreciate being able to sync updated store hours, promotions, and review data across numerous platforms, which makes sure search users have all your correct details.

3. Mobile Friendliness  

Many shoppers this holiday season will be opening your email on their mobile device. They’ll be checking hours and specials on their phone after Thanksgiving dinner or on their way to the mall. So it goes without saying that your site, emails, landing pages, and so on, should prioritize mobile friendliness. Google also prioritizes mobile-friendly search results for mobile users, which could help your bottom line this season.

4. Holiday-Specific Keywords

For shoppers, many business interactions will start with a holiday-related keyword Google search. Be sure to target Black Friday-specific keywords for the best results. Google Suggest can get you started, then take a look at related searches. Experts also recommend adding a superlative like “best” as well as targeting complete long-tail keyword phrases.

Black Friday Content Marketing

As for content marketing — no Black Friday campaign would be complete in this day and age without it. Content is the “bait” that starts the whole process, getting customers to your website or in the store. Many of your regular content marketing strategies can be tweaked to target your target audience during Black Friday sales.

1. Dedicated Landing Pages

Use dedicated landing pages for your sales fliers, coupons, announcements, top products, or even as a custom storefront for the day. Make sure the content on your landing page(s) targets important keywords, and point email and social media CTAs directly to the landing page. For better ranking, consider leaving an indexable landing page up in the offseason and updating it as needed.

2. Gift Guides and How-Tos

Another high-value content option is to produce customer gift guides or how-to guides for your shoppers. Many shoppers are looking for holiday gifts for family and friends. A guide that recommends products from your catalog for dads, gifts under $30, guides on how to use one of your products, etc., can be great.

3. Reviews and Testimonials

Finally, consider featuring customer reviews and testimonials more prominently on your site during your marketing campaign. Social proof continues to be a key factor in buying decisions for customers. So if it comes down to your site with testimonials and a competitor without, such reviews will help push you over the top.

Final Thoughts

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend with Black Friday and Cyber Monday continues to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year. If you have a customer-facing business, it’s an event too big to ignore. By planning for your marketing strategy, you can ensure your business stands apart from the crowd through your email marketing, prominent search results, and great content marketing.

Still, have questions about digital marketing? Call 313-338-9515 or email hello@kaleidico.com to learn how our full-service digital marketing agency can help you reach your content marketing goals.