Author of this article：Marshall, Meiqia Overseas Research Institute

Introduction: Grasp the business opportunities of the Black Five and build the peak of sales

"Black Five”(Black Friday) As a world-renowned shopping carnival, it has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and is known as the overseas version of “Double Eleven”. The annual Black Friday is not only a shopping feast for consumers, but also a key battlefield for businesses to seize market share and increase annual sales. Data show that sales during the Black Friday period usually account for 30% or more of the total annual sales. For merchants, formulating an effective Black Five strategy and comprehensively improving the conversion rate is a must-win way to ensure performance breakthroughs!

How important is the Black Friday? Data reveals its business value that cannot be ignored

According to Adobe Analytics Data show that in the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday in 2023, 110 million consumers in the United States created 38.1 billion U.S. dollars Online sales, accounting for the online sales during the holiday season of the year 16.8%, Year-on-year growth in 2022 7.9%！

In addition，Salesforce The report pointed out that sales during the Global Black Friday period reached 298 billion U.S. dollars, Compared to 2022's 281 billion U.S. dollars growth 6%, Of which the increase in the United States reached 9%, The increase in Europe is 8%。

In the context of the global economic slowdown, such a growth rate is undoubtedly remarkable. More importantly, the Black Friday has become a weather vane for merchants' annual performance-data show that if they miss the Black Friday, merchants may lose money. More than 20% Annual sales. It can be said that winning the Black Friday is to control the pulse of business throughout the year. So, how to stand out in this fiercely competitive “Black Five Wars"? Through analysis, the growth during the Black Friday period over the years has exceeded 100% In the business case, we found that the secret of their success is inseparable from the following core points.

Formulate the rhythm of the Black Friday promotion: Master the three-stage layout

Every successful promotion can be divided into Warm-up period、Activity period and Waste heat period Three stages. Among them，Activity period It is undoubtedly the core link of the entire promotion plan, while the planning of the other two stages can often be inferred based on the time of the activity period. It should be noted that if you still think that the activity period of Black Friday is only one week or even one day, then you may be far behind the pace of the times.

Black Friday Activity Period

Black Friday originated in 2005, when it was only a one-day promotion. With the surge in consumer demand, major retailers have gradually extended their promotional periods-from a few days to a week, to the current month-long “shopping season.” The second largest discount retailer in the United States Target For example, they extended the Black Friday promotion cycle to one month many years ago. The significance of extending the activity period is not only to improve surface sales data, but also to tap deep-level marketing advantages, such as：

1. Lengthen the peak shopping period and balance passenger traffic

• The traditional Black Friday shopping frenzy is often concentrated in a short period of time, which may lead to crowded stores and logistics pressure. By extending the promotion time, Target disperses shopping peaks, enhances the customer experience, and reduces the burden on the supply chain and logistics.

2. Seize consumer shopping budget

• By starting promotions early, Target can attract consumers' attention before other retailers act and lock in their holiday shopping budgets in advance, especially for customers who plan to spend.

3. Attract early shoppers

• Many consumers want to complete their holiday shopping in advance to avoid last-minute haste. The one-month promotion catered to the needs of these people and attracted more early shoppers.

4. Increase brand exposure and loyalty

• Extend the promotion time, increase the dissemination cycle of promotional information, and increase the brand's exposure to consumers. Continuous promotional activities have also helped to enhance consumer loyalty to Target's brand.

5. Increase sales and average customer unit price

• With the extension of the promotion time, consumers may participate in shopping activities multiple times, increasing the repurchase rate. At the same time, long-term promotions are also more likely to promote the purchase of high-priced goods.

6. Enhance online and offline linkage

1. More than a month of promotional activities help to combine online and offline, and increase overall sales through multi-channel interactions (such as limited-time offers, online discount coupons, etc.).

Through this flexible promotional strategy, Target has not only improved customer satisfaction, but also occupied a place in the fierce retail market. Like Target, major e-commerce platforms have also begun to extend their promotional activities one after another.：

AmazonThe shortest duration is 12 days from November 21st to December 2nd. Followed byTikTok, November 14th to December 2nd, for a period of 18 days.WalmartAfter the success of the 2023 strategy, it will continue to be extended today, starting at 12 noon on November 11th and continuing until 5 pm on December 1st for a period of 21 days.TEMUFollowing the logic of Chinese e-commerce, it started as early as the end of October, from October 20th to December 4th, for 44 days!

So please keep in mind that, combined with industry trends, it is recommended that the Black Friday activity period start from Early November Start and continue until Early December, keep 15-30 days The cycle. In this way, it can not only grasp the needs of different consumer groups, but also flexibly adjust promotional strategies to maximize sales.

Black Five warm-up period

The warm-up period is a key part of Black Friday marketing, but too long or too short may be counterproductive.

• The risk of too long warm-up time Prolonged warm-up will cause consumers to lose patience with the brand, while causing sales to decline sharply before the event begins. After all, most consumers will delay their purchases because they are looking forward to the low-priced offers on Black Friday. The longer the warm-up time, the higher the loss of sales and market risks faced by merchants.
• Disadvantages of too short warm-up time If the warm-up time is too short, the best window to attract consumers' attention may be missed, resulting in potential users who have not yet understood the details of the event, the event has already started or even ended, thus affecting the overall effect.

So how long is the warm-up period more appropriate? After the actual measurement of each brand, about 2 weeks is the best time.

For example, an outdoor products companyPatagonia, Announced two weeks in advance of "Black Friday” that it would donate all sales on the day of Black Friday to environmental protection organizations to create momentum, and their sales on the day of Black Friday also exceeded 10 million U.S. dollars!

Black Five Waste Heat period

The "Black Friday” is over, but the war has not stopped. Using the flow of the waste heat period is the last opportunity to tap potential customers and continue the promotion effect. Even if the sales performance during the Black Friday period is poor, the waste heat period can become an important stage in reversing the war.

case：DoggylootWaste heat strategy After the Black Friday is over, Doggyloot sends a special email to customers, which roughly reads: "Although the Black Friday is over, we still offer great discounts comparable to the Black Friday. ”This strategy of doing the opposite has allowed them to achieve sales close to the day of Black Friday during the waste heat period.

Successful Black Friday marketing not only depends on the peak performance of the event period, but also requiresReasonable planning of the warm-up period and Waste heat period。 Through precise timing and meticulous marketing design, merchants can maximize traffic and sales at every stage. Next, letus delve into some specific marketing details to help you impress consumers and stand out in the fierce market.

Common promotional plans for Black Friday

In the competition of the Black Friday, choosing the right promotion method can not only attract more users, but also realize brand differentiation in a fierce market. The following programs combine actual cases and creative gameplay, hoping to provide you with inspiration and direction.

1. Random discount code：Gamification promotion, create topics

Random discount codes are unique discount codes that are automatically generated by the system after consumers visit the website, register an account, or complete specific tasks during promotional activities. The discount range can be random. The biggest difference between this method and ordinary discounts is that the discount is gamified! The advantage is that while users participate, they can also create topics. Given 1-2 high discount places, it can go viral in the consumer circle. Pinduoduo's marketing method is similar to random discount codes.

case：Amazon Amazon launched a random discount code campaign during the Black Friday period, which attracted a large number of users to visit the website and increased the overall traffic and conversion rate.

case：ASOS The “Mysterious coupon code” campaign launched by the British fashion e-commerce company ASOS not only increased the user retention rate, but also significantly boosted the growth of new users.

2. Blind box: The perfect combination of mystery and interactivity

Blind box activities are a very popular promotional method in recent years. When consumers shop, they cannot know in advance what goods they will get, and they will only be revealed at the moment they receive them. This form increases consumer interest and participation through “mystery” and “randomness". Its essence is to use human curiosity and greed for cheapness. During the ”Black Friday" period, many brands and businesses used this kind of activity to increase consumer participation, interactivity and desire to buy.

case：Nike

Nike has launched a limited-edition ”sports shoe blind box“ campaign during the ”Black Friday" period, which requires consumers to pay a fixed amount to participate in the purchase of blind boxes. Each blind box may contain a pair of sports shoes or sports accessories. Due to the limited styles and sizes of sports shoes, the blind box setting of the event has produced a huge buying boom, and it has also helped Nike increase the attractiveness of the brand and consumer stickiness. Beauty brands such as Sephora and L'oréal have also launched similar activities.

case：Sephora

Another wonderful use of blind boxes is to clean up merchant inventory. Set up a huge discount for the blind box, and add some explosive products to the blind box to attract consumers to buy. Cleaning up inventory in this way is not only efficient, but also avoids the huge price reductions of all tail products and affects the brand.

3. Green Friday: A win-win situation between Marketing and environmental protection

The Green Five vs. the Black Five do the opposite. Unlike the traditional price war, ”Green Friday" focuses on the concept of environmental protection and uses the brand's sense of social responsibility to attract consumers' attention. By donating sales or promoting environmental protection actions, businesses can not only stand out, but also win more loyal users.

case：Patagonia

Patagonia is a well-known outdoor clothing brand. Every year during the “Black Friday” period, Patagonia will launch a “Green Friday” event. Through this unique way, they have successfully stood out. At a time when the concept of environmental protection is becoming more and more popular, the marketing methods of the Green Five have made them famous and won widespread media attention and consumer praise.

case：Tentree

Founded in 2012TentreeDuring the Black Friday period, they promised to plant 10 trees for every item sold. In the end, their GMV doubled and 1 million trees were planted.

case：Lush

Lush launched a limited edition orangutan-shaped soap, promising that all income from the soap will be donated to SOS andThe Orangutan Information CentreTo raise people's awareness of orangutans on the verge of extinction. In the end, all 14,600 pieces of soap were sold out on Black Friday. Through Wukong Soap, they not only created amazing growth, but also implanted the brand in people's hearts, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

4. Don't buy activities: Creative gameplay that runs counter to traditional promotions

The ”Don't buy" campaign goes the other way, the core of which is to call on consumers to reflect on their consumer behavior. Although it seems to be contrary to the shopping trend of the Black Friday, the results often exceed expectations and build momentum for the brand's future growth.

case：Patagonia

Patagonia launched its iconic “Don't Buy This Jacket” advertisement in 2011, directly appealing to consumers not to buy unnecessary items. This advertisement quickly became a classic case, not only enhancing the brand's environmental image, but also promoting consumers to choose more sustainable consumption behaviors. After the event, brand sales ushered in a huge increase.

After everything is ready, we still need to think about how to maximize our conversion rate in the limited traffic? Because everyone understands a very simple truth, sometimes an increase in the conversion rate of 0.1% is a 2-fold increase in GMV.

The key to improving customer conversion rates

1. Create a sense of scarcity and urgency

A sense of scarcity and urgency are very effective marketing strategies in psychology, especially during the highly competitive shopping festival such as the “Black Friday”, which can significantly promote consumers to place orders quickly and avoid hesitation. People tend to think that scarce goods are more valuable, and they are prone to the emotion of “Fear of missing Out” (FOMO). A sense of urgency will make consumers feel that time is limited and unwilling to miss out on offers, thereby reducing the time to hesitate.

Case study: Nike Limited Edition Marketing

Nike (Nike) has used this strategy to perfection. It can be found that Nike often launches limited-edition sneakers, and during the Black Friday period, it focuses on limited-edition strategies to make consumers feel the uniqueness and urgency of the product. sense.

For ordinary merchants, the following strategies may be more suitable：

• Countdown tool: Display the countdown to the end of the offer on the website or APP.
• Remaining inventory tips: Dynamically display the quantity of remaining goods (such as “only 5 pieces left”) to enhance the sense of urgency.
• Limited-time promotion: Post short-term promotions on social platforms to encourage instant clicks.

2. Improve customer service quality

In the conversion link of any business model, customer service is an important part that cannot be bypassed, and high-quality customer service can even increase the conversion several times. During the Black Friday Promotion period, the most common problem encountered by merchants is that the customer service staff is seriously insufficient, and the existing customer service is not enough to support such a huge flow of traffic during the promotion period. The good news is that since 2022, with the rapid development of AI technology, artificial intelligence AI customer service has now been able to perfectly solve this pain point. To Mixdesk For example, this is an AI customer service tool specially designed for overseas companies in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Mixdesk uses ChatGPT and many othersBlessing of Large language model technology, Through AI-enabled marketing & service, to help you solve all customer service scenarios, everything can be customized according to business needs, AI roles, service goals, and even response effects, all kinds of professional corpus knowledge independent training, easily reproduce your best customer service. Compared with manual labor, AI customer service can be online 7x24h in real time without knowing fatigue, so that you don't miss every possibility of conversion.

In addition, Mixdesk can also transfer allOverseas social media platform news aggregation, Real-time translation in dozens of languages around the world, and one platform can chat about the world. In order to help improve conversion, Mixdesk has a built-in active marketing function, which can be freely configured with hundreds of marketing templates, and mass distribution in large quantities with one click, efficiently reaching a large number of potential customers.

Compared with traditional manual customer service, Mixdesk AI customer service has significantly improved in response speed, service coverage and user satisfaction. Up to now, Mixdesk has provided services to more than 400,000 companies, covering industry giants such as Alibaba, Procter & Gamble, Audi, and many small and medium-sized enterprises.

summary

The Black Five Wars are on the verge, and a successful strategy is inseparable from precise marketing planning and efficient execution. From a reasonable promotion rhythm, to innovative promotion plans, to key details to improve customer conversion rates, every step is crucial. By creating a sense of scarcity and urgency, optimizing the quality of customer service services, and using smart tools such as Mixdesk AI Customer Service, Merchants can not only significantly improve the conversion rate, but also stand out from the competition.

Whether it is attracting users through blind box promotions or spreading brand concepts through Green Friday, these cases show the importance of creativity and execution. The success of the Black Friday lies not only in the outbreak of single-day sales, but also in how to create a protracted battle through the warm-up period and the waste heat period to truly realize the conversion of traffic to sales. For every business, the Black Friday is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity-seizing this "Black Friday battle” can set the stage for the full-year results to win!