Webinar - BFCM and the Holiday Season: A Retailer's Guide

In this blog post, we take a deep dive into our latest webinar, BFCM and the Holiday Season: A Retailer’s Guide. Hosted by Robyn (Account Manager), and Zara (Marketing Executive), this webinar covered trends, marketing strategies, deals and discounts tips and much more for the upcoming peak shopping season.

BFCM 2023

Before beginning this year’s planning and execution, it is mindful to look at trends that arose in 2023. This will offer valuable guidance on potential trends for the current year and enable us to develop more effective plans

Some of last year's trends included:

• Mobile shopping continued to dominate last year, with more than half (51.8%) of all online sales coming from mobile throughout BFCM.
• Both Black Friday & Cyber Monday saw growth last year with increases of 9.6% and 7.5% respectively.
• BFCM period continues to grow with over 200 million shoppers placing orders over the 5-day period. Shopify alone saw 61 million global shoppers during BFCM 2023.
• Click & Collect orders made up around 25% of all online orders over the BFCM sales week.
• 2023 saw a massive increase in returning customers, with repeat purchases increasing by 180%, showing the potential for building brand loyalty and strong relationships with customers during this window.

Deals + Discounts

When planning your deals and discounts for the upcoming period, it’s important to be strategic. Many believe that everything needs to be discounted for this period, but being selective of your deals may have a more effective approach. Not only does this help your profit margins, but it also offers an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell other items that are complementary to what is in customers' carts.

It’s also worth noting that shoppers may be more incentivised to convert if they believe that the discount or deal is limited. By using techniques such as Flash Sales or Countdowns, and spreading these throughout the peak season, you may increase conversions.

Of course, discounts and deals are great for your customers and attract increased traffic, but it is critical to keep an eye on your profit margins as well. The goal is to offer deals that appeal to your audience without hurting your bottom line. Finding the right balance between tempting offers and healthy profits is key to a success during the busy sales period.

Other strategies can include Early Bird offers and bundling complementary products.

Site Optimisation & Enhancing Customer Experience

There are a couple of small adjustments you can do to your site in advance of the peak season to improve the overall shopping experience for customers.

• Navigation and Search: Making sure your site is easy to navigate and search is essential. If users become frustrated and cannot easily find what they are looking for, they will quickly leave and go elsewhere.
• Free Shipping Motivators: Offering blanket free shipping is often not feasible for businesses, but sometimes extra fees associated with shipping can be enough to make shoppers walk away before a purchase. By visually displaying how much more a buyer needs to spend to unlock free shipping, you encourage them to add more products to their cart
• Wishlist: All traffic does not necessarily lead to a sale, but if shoppers can build a wishlist with your store, this begins to build a connection and encourage them to return. A big advantage of offering a wishlist feature is that they help to reduce cart abandonment.
• FAQs & Social Proof: Social proof and FAQs can easily influence the purchasing decision. When it comes to FAQs, ensure that BFCM topics such as Shipping & Delivery FAQs are updated to reflect the busy period.
  Social proof is user-generated content such as imagery, reviews and testimonials. Make the most out of your of social proof by displaying them prominently on your product pages and email campaigns.
• Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL): BNPL enhances affordability among budget-conscious shoppers. This flexibility can help to encourage the shopper to purchase with your store over a competitor and can increase average order value.

Marketing Strategy

The key to a successful strategy is to start planning early. We recommend beginning as early as possible. Here’s a short breakdown of just some activities in a month by month guide:

September: If you haven’t started yet, use the remainder of September to plan out your goals, discounts and content. Reflect on last year’s performance to guide your Q4 objectives.

October: During October, begin preparing behind the scenes. Build out campaigns and content that will help you through the busy months. Update landing pages and encourage lead generation.

November: Execute! With all the campaigns and content finalised it’s time to focus all your attention on the execution, ensuring there is enough time and resources to monitor and adapt campaigns where needed.

December: Just because BFCM is over doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. There’s still much shopping to be done before Christmas. Focus on customer retention and encourage the BFCM shoppers with holiday offers. This is also a good time to start generating feedback and reviews from those shoppers.

January: With the busy period over, it’s time to reflect, gather feedback and focus on retention. Leverage gift voucher redemption. Take the time to identify areas for improvement and note down thoughts to begin next year's planning.

 

You can watch the full webinar below or download the slides here.

 

 

Looking to jump start your BFCM and Holiday Season strategy?

If you are keen to learn more about any of the tips, from search optimisation to learning how to expand your lead generation efforts?

Contact us today and let's discuss how we can help you achieve drive conversions and gain a competitive edge this peak season.