The golden era of Black Friday shopping and sales has passed. Over the past few years, the Black Friday mega sales that have been a staple of brick and mortar businesses for years have dropped precipitously, being replaced by online sales, Cyber Monday, and more and more businesses trying to get a competitive edge in their industry. Anymore, Black Friday starts weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, especially online. So what can you do to take advantage of this trend?
With more platforms finding new ways of advertising and selling products online, providing your customers with opportunities to buy your products around the holiday season has become easier. New ways to sell are constantly popping up, providing early adopters more opportunities to find new market space for their products and connect with more users than their competition. Amazon, Instagram, Google, and more have all continued to push the envelope for online sales and advertising.
- Amazon: Clearly, Amazon is the elephant in the room, but the difference is, EVERYONE can see it. Recently announcing its second headquarters, connecting with more payment platforms and rewards programs, and taking more market share for online advertising than ever before, Amazon is continuing its not so slow march toward world domination. You can advertise and sell your product directly through Amazon, figuring out shipping logistics and distribution along the way, or you can advertise on the platform and send people to your ecommerce solution to purchase form there. Either way, there are going to be plenty of eyeballs to attract over the holiday season, and you don’t want to miss out on these opportunities.
- Instagram: Instagram just recently unveiled new shopping features for its advertising platform that will enable companies to capture more hearts and minds of their users. The new features include an option for users to view the products that are shown in a video they are watching, allowing them to purchase some of their favorite products from the media that is right in front of them. With the increase in video consumption almost daily, this a great opportunity for companies that are able to produce video of their products regularly.
- Google: The behemoth that is Google continuously provides advertisers the ability to advertise their products through the Google shopping network, enabling companies to target users using the already robust Google Ads platform. Especially for those that are already using Google AdWords as a way to reach their customers, this is an easy space to include a new shopping feed and take some more market share while selling more product.
- Facebook: Even with some of the issues that Facebook has had in recent months, ad revenues for companies continue to run and be a viable opportunity to sell products and services to its users. When considering that that Facebook user demographic is getting older, those are the users that have some disposable income, have children, grandchildren, and are potentially using Facebook even as a way to search for and research products amongst their friends and family. Have a Black Friday deal you want to send to those that have visited your website but didn’t purchase? Consider using Facebook remarketing campaigns to bring them back around and complete that sale.
There are certainly more things to consider during the holiday season to ensure that you are able to maximize sales for your user base. More users than ever are searching for products and services through voice search, whether through a device like an Amazon Echo, Google Home, or just their smartphones. If you are not focusing on the appropriate search terms for your advertising purposes and creating mobile-centric ads, you could very well be missing a load of opportunities.
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