by: Andrew Rapier | CEO of Sawtooth Digital & Co-Founder of Sawtooth Media Group
The fourth quarter is a great time of year for eCommerce stores in terms of sales. But competition is also much higher then too. The earlier you start planning to prepare your eCommerce store for Black Friday & Cyber Monday, the better.
These are the 3 things your eCommerce Store needs to do before Black Friday this year.
1) Focus on Your Offers
What kind of offer can you give this year? An offer can be a precentage off, buy one get one free (BOGO), or a freebie added in just for shoppers that day. Curring Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there is a lot of competition on offers and customers are expecting a deal or an offer.
What is your irresistible offer going to be?
Black Friday is one of the few times a year when people actually have their credit cards in hand online looking to buy what you have to offer. Buyers’ intent is high, and people are in more of a buying mindset this time of year. But they are also looking for a deal.
So you want to be sure you have an offer that is irresistible. One that goes above and beyond so that you can maximize this timing and get as many new customers acquired as you can.
A great offer could be:
- 25% or 35% off.
- A fixed dollar amount for this time only.
- Free shipping on all orders.
- A percentage off and free shipping.
- Bundled deals or receiving several products and a discount.
- Plus free shipping, a special gift, and add a discount bundle.
You want to go above and beyond with something potential customers won’t be able to resist taking advantage of.
2) Have a Tracking Solution
Right now Facebook Ads data is terrible. It is almost impossible to see accurate data within the Facebook ads manager. Google is not much better off and is set to get worse with coming updates. Not to mention the lack of email tracking through iOS too!
This affects knowing which ad campaigns are working well or which ads are the ones getting the actually sales. It makes it very difficult to optimize towards the best-performing ads, or even know which angles are resonating with which audiences you want to target.
That is why we use and highly recommend using a third-party tracking platform. This could include something like a UTM structure, Hyros, Wicked Reports, Tripple Whale, or something similar.
We recommend & use Hyros as a tracking solution for Sawtooth Media Group.
3) You’re Going to Need a Data Solution
The third thing you’re going to need to do it prepare your eCommerce Store for Black Friday & Cyber Monday is to get a data solution. What does this mean and why?
Facebook ads are struggling because it is impossible to track iOS users if they have tracking off, both for Facebook ads, emails, and soon for Google ads, as well as for Android users. You’re going to want to be sure you have a solution that can help your pixel get as much data as you possibly can. This data will help the machine learning become smarter and better at finding customers for your business that are ready to buy your product.
At Sawtooth, we gave a proprietary solution called A.R.C. that can ensure you are maximizing your data and leveraging it to get the best results possible from your data.
Summary for How to Prepare your eCommerce Store for Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Black Friday & Cyber Monday are huge for eCommerce businesses. Costs are going to be up, but so are buyers’ intentions. With the right planning and strategy, you can make this the best sales time of the year for your business.
If you’d like some support in your holiday marketing planning for Q5, book a free call click here!
To learn more about how to get your first-party data back and get your ads performing like it’s 2019 again, check out our proprietary data solution A.R.C. click here!