What are your Black Friday marketing strategies?

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Black Friday isn’t just about crowds of shoppers fighting over discount electrical equipment. In fact, this year, it will largely take place online, with non-essential shops and services closed due to the latest UK lockdowns.

What started as a one day event has become a four day shopping extravaganza ending on Cyber Monday. (Cyber Monday falls on the Monday after Black Friday, with promotions traditionally targeted at online buyers.)

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the US, and usually the last pay day in the UK before Christmas. It marks the start of the Christmas shopping season for many consumers.

Typically, promotions and discounts are offered for the whole four day period. Some businesses offer different types of discounts or Black Friday deals for each of the four days. For example, a fashion retailer may offer “50 percent off everything on Black Friday”, “Buy one get one free” on Saturday, “20 percent off leisurewear” on Sunday and “100 extra loyalty points” on Monday. 

There are no rules for these four days, so you have the freedom to do your Black Friday marketing however you wish. Clinics, no matter what they specialise in, should be sure to capitalise on Black Friday fever.

You may be able to sell your services online or you may prefer to drive phone calls and emails to your clinic admin team. Either way, you can benefit from the spike in sales that Black Friday offers.

1. Ideas for text marketing

Although your clinic may be closed, your patients are still accessible. Text and email marketing is a hugely effective way of getting offers out to them, whether on Black Friday or any other time of the year. The average person checks their phone every 12 minutes, and 90% of text messages are opened and read within the first 3 minutes of receiving them. Mobile phone ownership is over 95% world-wide.

Why not make a feature of the fact that you can’t see your patients in person? How about “We’re sorry we can’t see you in clinic at the moment, but take advantage of our Black Friday offers and book your next appointment now!”

Other great Black Friday offers which can be communicated by text message include:

  • Discount on a course of treatments
  • One free treatment when you book a course
  • If you run a loyalty scheme, additional points when you book on Black Friday
  • Promotion of gift vouchers
  • Free retail item like a face cream or a scented candle when a course is booked

2. Have you built a Black Friday email list?

Hopefully you already know the effectiveness of email marketing in driving sales. But for your email marketing to be fruitful, you need to grow your email list with subscribers that are interested in your upcoming offers.

With a week to go, there’s still time to create a an email popup targeting new visitors to your website. You can incentivise new subscribers by offering them a discount or a gift, depending on your budget.

By leveraging the time before Black Friday with an email popup and collecting subscriber emails, you can send promotional emails before, during, and after Black Friday.

3. Experiment with timing

Thousands of businesses compete for prospects’ attention on Black Friday. Unsurprisingly, consumers become numb during the shopping weekend after receiving the same type of marketing messages over and over again.

Why not try changing your timing so your messages don’t get lost among a million other distractors? But how early or late should you be? That’s up to you.

3. Make your offers memorable

Your clinic may have the best treatments, the loveliest products and the most qualified practitioners, but you won’t be the only clinic making these claims. The competition which already exists gets even more fierce during Black Friday.

This is a great opportunity for you to stand out and make your offering memorable on Black Friday.

4. Offer benefits not discounts

You might be thinking that Black Friday is only about discounting.

You’re right to an extent. Consumers are expecting a compelling discount during the Black Friday weekend, but that’s not all.

Black Friday is a good time to go beyond discounts and offer added value and extra benefits to your customers. For example:

  • A free skincare consultation when booked on Black Friday
  • One free chiropractic treatment when you book a course of six
  • A free facial when you book a course of laser treatments
  • 500 additional loyalty points when you book an appointment
  • A free gift voucher redeemable in 2021
  • A free retail item when a treatment is booked

5. Email and texting – make your subject line stand out

Black Friday is not a battle of discounting, it’s a battle of attention.

If you want to win this battle, your first goal should be getting noticed in your subscribers’ inboxes. Crafting well-written email subject lines or short and punchy text messages is crucial.

Black Friday Inbox

A typical Black Friday inbox looks like this…

Make your efforts stand out with creative copywriting. Consider hiring an expert to make your email or set message as effective as it can be.

6. Make the most of social media

Be sure to engage with your social media following. Let them know about your offers well in advance and consider extra discounts for those who hear about your campaign on social media.

You don’t just have to rely on your posts appearing organically in the feeds of your prospects and patients – this is a great time to post a Facebook post or run an Instagram advertising campaign. Both are surprisingly affordable and let you target the types of people you want to see your adverts.

7. Tease your next campaign

As we already mentioned, Black Friday can start long before the Friday, and it doesn’t end on Friday either.

If you want to make the most out of the Christmas shopping season, try teasing your next big shopping day when Black Friday ends.

You can already start promoting Cyber Monday, Christmas, or even the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions in the spring.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking for creative Black Friday campaign ideas or new angles to improve your Black Friday promotions, we hope you found some quick wins you can apply to your business this year. You can send targeted text and email campaigns to patients and prospects from within e-clinic. If you’d like help setting up campaigns or purchasing texts, get in touch with our support team today.