Ready or Not, Black Friday & Cyber Monday are Coming appointment reminders

It’s that time of year again! For many it’s an exciting — but undeniably chaotic — time as both in-person and online shopping starts to really pick up ahead of the holiday season. But what if we made it easier for you to keep your brand top of mind for your customers during this busy time?

Black Friday, the day immediately following Thanksgiving has been known to mark the impending holiday season, but in recent years, its online counterpart known as Cyber Monday has broken records in sales. In 2022, Black Friday sales sat at $9.12 billion, while Cyber Monday sales showed up even stronger with a whopping $11.3 billion!

The potential for your business to boom this holiday season is tremendous — but how can your business make itself heard above all the noise that already surrounds Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales?

If your business hasn’t already started its holiday season marketing plans, now is the time to start. 

A Strong Black Friday Marketing Strategy 

Much like its name says, Black Friday marketing is all the ways a business promotes its Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) deals. You might also have heard this week is called “Cyber Week”, as what was traditionally just Friday has expanded to be week long over recent years.

This often involves a variety of marketing channels, including:

• Social media promotion in the weeks leading up to the holiday weekend
• Direct mailer or email marketing campaigns about limited-time sales
• Paid advertising of special deals and urgent deadlines

Now, before you get overwhelmed, let’s break this down into a strategic, step-by-step plan.

Let’s Get Personal

The number one thing you can do to nail down a successful holiday season for your business is by getting hyper-focused on your targeted customer base before doing anything else. 

If you’re going to be doing a ton of marketing campaigns, you’ll want to be able to personalize them to really stand out to your target audience. 

If you don’t already have a clear idea who your target customers or personas are for your business, start by narrowing down this information:

• Demographics (age, marital status, etc.)
• Geographic location
• Industry or occupation
• Hobbies or interests
• Values, behaviors, and lifestyle choices
• Purchasing power
• Communication preferences
• Motivations or challenges

Once you’ve identified your target customer, you can craft a personalized marketing message that will speak to them – and that, paired with your killer deals and regular reminders, will land more sales!

The Power of Urgency & Repetition in the Buying Process

It’s not a shocker to anyone that today’s world is saturated with information. Isn’t that why you’re here, trying to get your business’s Black Friday deals and specials heard above the din? There are two key elements to rising above the noise, specifically during this part of the year: creating a sense of urgency and repetition. 

Sales urgency is a true art form. It is set up in such a spectacular way that your target customer feels absolutely compelled to hit the “buy” button right then and there, for fear of missing out (lovingly referred to as FOMO). It taps into our most basic human emotion (fear) and pushes us to get over our indecision quickly and effectively. 

In fact, 60% of people have been found to make purchases because of FOMO — most of those happening within a 24 hour period. Still, it’s important to make sure you’re utilizing the real urgency as opposed to implied urgency. 

Real urgency: “Get this once in a lifetime deal before it expires in 12 hours! 

*insert clock widget that’s ticking the count down, second by second, as your customer starts to sweat*

Implied urgency: “Do it now: take part in this great sale, today!”

One sets a tangible deadline, and sets the expectation that in twelve hours, the customer will no longer have access to your incredible deal. The other just nudges them towards action, without any real consequences. We know we’ve fallen victim to thinking I’d be able to go back and buy something on sale, only to find out the sale ended. Setting clear deadlines becomes paramount in getting your customers to take action. 

The other thing that’s essential to rising above the noise surrounding holiday sales is to repeat, repeat, repeat. Should I say that again? Repeat, repeat, repeat. 

It might feel obnoxious, but think of it this way: you’re consuming your own marketing constantly because it’s your job, but your customers may have earnestly missed it the first few times. 

According to the “Rule of 7”, people need to hear (or scroll by) smaller, bite-sized chunks of information seven times before they will take action.

Repetition in marketing has been found to:

• Build brand awareness & recognition
• Enhance brand familiarity & trust
• Establish brand loyalty
• Elicit positive association
• Initiate word-of-mouth marketing
• Increase sales

Let’s talk about how AddEvent can help you stand out from the crowd, using urgency and repetition with our stack of event management tools!

Integrating AddEvent Calendars & Events to Your Black Friday Marketing Strategy

For years, we have become accustomed to the main channels of marketing. Email, social media, paid ads, direct, billboards, commercials, you name it. But what hasn’t yet been tapped into is calendars. We’ve all heard the phrase, “If it isn’t in my calendar, I’m not going”, or “I live by my calendar” or any slight variation of that phrase. So why is it that in the year of the Barbie movie, where we have gotten a front-row-seat to a crash course in all consuming marketing, we haven’t yet leveraged calendars?

Using AddEvent, you can meet your customers on their calendars, a channel yet to be developed as a means of standing out for the holiday season!

Embedded Calendar & Embedded Events

Embeddable calendars are a smart way to engage your customers right from the start. Think outside the box: you can use your “events” to schedule when your limited time offers, sales, and deals will start or expire. You can then embed these calendar elements or event widgets into your website after you’ve customized them to match your business’s branding. 

Subscription Calendar Tool

One of the most powerfully functional options AddEvent’s embeddable calendars can offer is that they also function as a subscription calendar.

So you’ve set up your AddEvent calendar and input all your special deals that are happening over the holiday weekend as “events”. If you want your customers to be updated about any new events or existing events, you can offer for them to “subscribe” to your calendar. This will allow you to add, delete, or edit an event within your subscription calendar in the AddEvent dashboard and that change will be reflected in every single one of your subscriber’s calendars. 

It streamlines the process of staying up-to-date with all of your events, and can help with both the urgency and the repetition that’s essential to getting your business to your customers’ top of mind. 

There are four ways you can invite your customers to subscribe to the calendar:

1. Add a button to your website (“Subscribe To My Calendar”)
2. Grab your calendar’s unique URL that is automatically generated and share via email or social media
3. Use the link methods to share the calendar in emails or campaigns services like MailChimp, Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc. 
4. Embed your calendar on your website or landing page with the “Subscribe” button toggled on

Add to Calendar Links & Buttons

Add to calendar links are another fantastic tool for getting your events on your customer’s calendars! By sharing a link in the marketing emails you’re already sending them, you can get your Cyber Week sales on their calendars and stand out of the crowd.

Similar to our subscription calendar buttons, our add to calendar buttons are totally customizable and can be seamlessly integrated onto your website via your website builder — WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and more. 

AddEvent is the number one “add to calendar” service on the internet. Leverage our suite of calendar and event marketing tools to rise above the noise this holiday season and delight your customers with your very own Black Friday and Cyber Monday steals!
Curious to see how it works? You can try AddEvent for free! Sign up today to take it for a test spin.