Episode 7: The only Black Friday sales strategy for consumer brands

Welcome to Unboxing Creator Culture, a weekly digest to keep you updated on what's going on in the social media industry, what TikTok and YouTube's top creators are talking about this week, and how I help creators scale and monetise their audience. I'm Shan, Founder & CEO @Genflow where I work with creators and help them sell content, build businesses and work with the best brands. Click Subscribe above to be notified of my weekly edition.

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Black Friday is my favourite week of the year - the best time for an entrepreneur to test their skills, come up with unique strategies and deliver results for their business.

Black Friday is about three things:

1 - The UX of your eCommerce website/landing page

2 - The actual offers themselves (need to be compelling)?

3 - The messaging through the content you post

Customers want one thing from this weekend. They want the best offers, as fast as possible, and move on to the next website. So you have to make that experience good for them, you can’t just give them your normal website with a banner or pop-up. Most brands and founders think that putting a banner on the top of their regular website saying “x% off” is enough to make Black Friday and Cyber Monday a success.

From my experience, changing the shopping experience to a Black Friday experience means you need to rebuild your website just for this weekend. This means a new landing page, a new theme, and something that feels like you’re offering something unique to your customers - and better than your competitor.?

The next strategic move is deciding what offers you want to have this year. The first decision needs to be when to start the sale and when to end it. I would recommend a sale that lasts four to seven days, at the very maximum. A 30-day sale takes the fun out of immediacy and creating scarcity. You have to make it sound like it's too good to be true - put something on sale that people cannot believe has gone on sale.??

In terms of audience, for me, Black Friday is all about converting people who have been warm but have never been your customer. This weekend is about converting those people, instead of going after the same ones.?

Finally, your content and marketing strategy. What message are you sharing with your audience? Because this is the final and most important part of the weekend - the messaging needs to be sharp, ‘this is too good to be true' and ‘you need this in your life’. Founders, work on the marketing strategy yourself to make sure it’s the best it can be.?

Every single touchpoint, every social media post, every paid advert, all email marketing, everything needs to be strategically thought about and engineered to make the most of Black Friday.?

And then, when Cyber Monday comes around, save something special that drives further conversion. It could be a release of a new product. Or something that nobody expected to go on sale. There's got to be something in your back pocket that you release on Cyber Monday.

If you do those things, I guarantee you'll have the best Black Friday weekend for your business. Black Friday is the pinnacle of the e-commerce season in the entire year. And if you're not cashing in at this time, then you’re not winning at entrepreneurship. It’s that simple.?

What’s your Black Friday strategy? Have you tried anything quirky or different??

My Podcast – Life of an Entrepreneur

This week’s episode is the audio version of this newsletter – the ultimate sales strategy for consumer brands to succeed this Black Friday weekend.?

Listen below.?