If you really want to make the most out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s something you need to focus on all year round.
What started as a post-Thanksgiving shopping day in the US has now spread across the globe. As you approach the back end of the year, you can’t move anywhere online without seeing the phrase ‘Black Friday’ splashed all across websites and social media. And whether you’re for it or against it, the world’s biggest shopping day shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
It was estimated that Brits were going to spend £7.5bn over the course of the Black Friday weekend in 2020, so it shows just how much is to be gained from stepping up your efforts at this time of year.
And while it may just be one day, it actually requires a huge amount of effort and planning; you can’t be starting things at the beginning of November and hope that you make some sales. If you really want to make the most out of it, then it’s something you need to focus on all year round.
Why? Well, let’s take a look.
People start early
Who doesn’t love a good deal? Well, apparently people all across the world just can’t wait to get their hands on deals at one particular time of year. So much so that they don’t even wait till November rolls around.
Google Trends data shows that people in the UK actually start searching for ‘Black Friday’ as early as October. For our friends across the pond in the US, more than 50% of shoppers actually start their Christmas shopping before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, too. 12% started in the summer!
So if you follow that logic, you should actually have your promotions and deals ready to go before that. If you haven’t got things ready by September, then you may not be able to reach the sales targets you’d hoped for.
If this doesn’t spur you on to get things in order, we don’t know what will!
Black Friday is actually a year-round effort
Sometimes people don’t know exactly what they want to buy for Black Friday; they might just know the industry or area that they want to shop in. So they might just search for Black Friday deals in general – Black Friday makeup deals or Black Friday clothing deals, for example.
It’s not enough to optimise your page for Black Friday terms at the start of November, or even October when people might be searching. Black Friday SEO is a long game that is well worth playing, but it does mean starting early and keeping your efforts going throughout the year. Here’s a quick summary of what you need to do:
- For the majority of the year (for example, after Black Friday to the start of the next November), you should have a dedicated page for Black Friday page that consists of long-tail keyword questions and answers e.g. ‘What is Black Friday’, ‘When is Black Friday’, etc.
- At the start of November, that content moves down slightly and a banner with ‘Coming Soon’ or something similar is added
- On the day (or before depending on your policy), your deals go live
- Repeat once the day is over and the deals are done
Online is the new big thing
2020 hasn’t been a friend to businesses, especially those with bricks and mortar stores. If you weren’t online before, then the impact of the pandemic should have certainly shocked you into stepping up your digital efforts. Not only have lockdowns and government guidelines prevented shops from even opening their doors, but the convenience and safety of shopping online have been stressed more than ever in recent months.
This means that more people than ever before are going to be shopping online for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday now more than they have done in the past. And the bottom line is that if you’re not selling your products and services online, then you’re going to struggle to adapt and grow in a post-COVID-19 world.
You don’t have to focus every second of every day on Black Friday, but with so much competition all around, it still needs to be a top priority throughout the year.
