Up the ante this Black Friday

Image credit: Justin Lim on Unsplash.

Despite negative consumer spend trends, brands remain optimistic that shoppers are ready to open their wallets for the right deal. Stats from BankServ Africa show that the nation racked up R3bn in card transactions on Black Friday 2018, up 16% from 2017.

Shifting the cloud on consumer behaviour

Isana Cordier  9 Apr 2019

Recent surveys conducted separately by Jacaranda FM and East Coast Radio revealed similar learnings with an overwhelming number of participants (75%+) stating that they actively engage in shopping on Black Friday either in-store or online.

These audience surveys disclosed that the most popular Black Friday shopping categories include groceries, clothing, shoes and home décor. Furniture, electronics and gadgets, as well as travel and leisure, also featured prominently.

Festive season retail is all about timing

Eben Esterhuizen  30 Sep 2019

A pressure point exists for brands this year, as Black Friday falls in the last week of November, essentially collapsing its sales into the retail month-end and festive season push. The net result is that merchants have less time to drum up holiday sales.

Is Black Friday a threat to SA's December retail sales?

14 Mar 2019

The same challenge is being felt at the media owner level with the pressure on inventory to accommodate both retail month-end and Black Friday campaigns.

The following media tips can help ensure that your brand is well positioned and that it stands out, over Black Friday:

Make sure you are well prepared for the onslaught

If you haven’t already, engage with media owners and partners, evaluate their Black Friday deals on offer and secure your inventory early and. These are most likely to be in high demand and short supply.

Go Premium

With the knowledge that content is king (or queen), the opportunity exists to amplify your generic price and product offering with customised solutions.

Premium inventory is limited by nature and aims to cut through the clutter of standard advertising formats. Think native advertising, branded content, power spots and homepage takeovers.

Run awareness and teaser campaigns ahead of the day

Many consumers start saving for Black Friday months in advance. Start engaging with them in the weeks prior to getting on their radar. Let them know you have great promotions coming up and tease your deals ahead of time.

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Don’t forget to target your message

When Black Friday comes around, many brands forfeit the principles of personalised and targeted engagement in favour of mass communication. A deeper understanding and targeting of specific audiences are guaranteed to boost campaign results.

Engage media owners to share the behavioural nuggets of their audiences and use these insights to target more effectively. The magic happens when brands overlay these insights with their own data analytics.

Warc predicts that Google and Facebook will make $176bn from advertising this year

22 Mar 2019

Integrated solutions

Given the level of marketing material consumers are exposed to, it’s important to reach them across multiple channels. An integrated media solution enables you to reach consumers through their medium/channel of choice, driving better uplift and response rates.

An omnichannel approach: 3 ways to drive festive season sales

Simon Wilson  1 Oct 2019

Keep the campaign alive through to Cyber Monday and beyond

Published data reveals growing participation in Cyber Monday. In fact, in the same radio surveys referenced earlier, over ⅓ of the participants shop on Cyber Monday.

Think strategically

Sure, Black Friday can be a useful way to clear stock/inventory, but which brands and media owners are thinking beyond serving bargain-hunters. We are all compelled to invest in analytical insights before planning our campaigns and media deals.

As with brands, media owners can too use the demand on Black Friday to improve satisfactions scores among existing advertisers as well as acquiring new ones.