With Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner it's time to start planning.
We typically make sure our clients are planned from an SEO and PPC perspective to ensure that their customers are aware of the deals and discounts way ahead of time.
I think of this as the "hype before the storm". I advise our clients to get their products and services ready for sale, promotions clearly defined, keywords targeted, and landing pages created.
You know how July hits and retail stores already have Halloween decorations and you're like "what the hell.. it's only July.. Halloween is months away.
That's how I think about Black Friday and Cyber Monday... if you're not already planned by at least September or October then you're already falling behind.
Usually planning your content and campaigns ideally should be around August, September, and October so you have enough time to market your products and configure your landing pages.
I've put together a checklist that you can reference this holiday season to get you ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Black Friday & Cyber Monday Checklist
1. Offers: Do you have your products or services offers clearly defined for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Are they "offers you can't refuse"? How does it differentiate from your competitors? What makes the offers unique or a "purple cow" (amazing book by the way)?
2. Keyword Research: Have you done keyword research to to determine which keywords, globally and locally, people are searching for high volume, low-to-medium competition for Organic SEO and Google Ads?
Here are some useful keywords to consider and target:
Macro-level:
Based on 2022 data the keyword search peak for "black friday" and "cyber monday" usually happens the week before. However, the momentum starts typically the week of Oct 23 - 29 according to Google Trends.
Micro-level:
As you can see the following keywords for black friday and cyber monday are VERY high volume:
Black Friday
black friday <year> (e.g., black friday 2023)
black friday deals
blackfridaydeals
black friday deals <year> (e.g., black friday deals 2023)
<brand> black friday (e.g., best buy black friday, walmart black friday)
Cyber Monday
cyber monday deals
cybermonday deals
cyber monday <year>
Why is this important? Based on the high volume of these keywords you want to account for the different keywords on your dedicated pages.
3. Landing Page Optimization: Are your landing pages optimized for high conversion? What's the use if you're driving traffic to the pages and they're not converting. The last thing you want to do is start driving traffic to a page that doesn't convert. In general, Ecommerce conversions average are 2-3%. So determine what your conversions are first:
Example Conversions:
Phone calls
Website page views
Appointment bookings
Purchases
Leads Generated
4. Dedicated Pages: Does your website have a dedicated page for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Make sure your Page Title and Meta Description contain the correct keywords that customers are searching for. Also, do these pages have the current year in the page title.
5. Hype: Are you warming up your audience for your offers weeks before? I've found that by making exciting announcements about your products or services ahead of time helps build the "hype". We like to create several touch points each week leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday to remind people of our deals. Between early October and Black Friday there are 7-8 weeks that we see as opportunities to make sure you're communicating and "building hype" for your customers. Every week we like to make sure our clients are communicating in some way with their audience, if they're working with us from a Fractional CMO, consulting, or Omnichannel service perspective.
6. Warm Database Reactivation: Have you imported your "warm list" to be retargeted for both Google Ads AND Meta Ads? As customers come to your landing pages or interact with your accounts you'll want to retarget them with multiple creatives to keep things fresh. Your previous customers are more likely to buy from you. Plus, you already captured their information. This is a major opportunity to tap into this list and provide "an offer they can't refuse" for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
7. Organic Distribution: Have you prepared the posts on your Google Business Listing, Email List, and Social Media profiles for organic traffic? During this time of year we tell our clients to try to "be everywhere". When you talk to others you're hoping they mention "hey I see you guys everywhere". This is a great indicator of your organic distribution efforts being successful. More importantly, you need to distribute your content on at least 3-4 days a week to keep reminding customers of your amazing deals. If you can't do it this frequently then once a week could work.
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