Boost Your Black Friday Sales with These 5 Promotion Ideas

With the biggest shopping day of the season fast approaching, it’s time to get moving on your promotions. To help, we’ve created a list of actionable promotion ideas that you can use to get your piece of the Black Friday pie.
Ninety-five million shoppers will hit stores on Black Friday, according to the National Retail Federation. The average shopper will spend $407 between Thanksgiving and the following Sunday.

1. Offer you Black Friday 2015 sweepstakes on social networking

Get people in the holiday spirit by offering sweepstakes on social media. Try a tool like Woobox, which helps you create coupons, contests, sweepstakes and quizzes for your social sites.
You can use ready-made templates to create the sweepstakes and have customers provide information in exchange for a chance to win. For example, to enter the sweepstakes, ask Facebook fans to provide their email addresses or phone number. It’s a win-win. You add to your contact list and the customer enters to win.
Tools like Woobox also give you the ability to encourage or require people to Like your Facebook page in order to participate in the sweepstakes, if you’re also looking to build your fanbase.
Be sure to promote your sweepstakes by sending an email or text message to current customers with a link to your Facebook page, and promote it on all your social channels. Use a free and easy image creation tool like Canva to create Instagram and Pinterest-specific photos to promote your sweepstakes.

2. Create mystery campaigns

Entice your customers to shop at your store on Black Friday by giving each paying customer a mystery gift. For example, shoppers spending $25 or more on Black Friday will take home a mystery gift such as a free pair of earrings or a $5 gift card to use at your store on a later date. Promote the campaign via email, social and text.
You could also use a tool like Scratch-It to create and send interactive mystery discounts that customers have to reveal by digitally “scratching” their screens. It’s like emailing your customers a Black Friday scratch-off coupon. The customer “scratches” the coupon to reveal a discount of 10, 15 or 20 percent. Here’s an example from Forever 21:

3. Start an in-store scavenger hunt

Get creative with your Black Friday marketing and create a scavenger hunt for your customers. Give shoppers an object, a menu item, or a short list of things to spot in your store. Have shoppers take a picture with their phone and show it to the cashier for a discount. You could also create a series of clues that lead customers to a hidden spot where a bowl of coupons sites.
Specialty grocery store, Trader Joe’s hides a stuffed monkey (for kids in particular) to find within the store in exchange for a treat, and online retailer, ModCloth hides an image of a pug within their website pages to find for additional prizes or discounts.
However you decide to do it, make it simple and fairly short. It’s a creative tactic to get customers to look through all the corners of your store, but if it’s too long they’ll lose interest.

4. Have a ‘follow the footprints’ sale

Planning to discount specific items on Black Friday? Lead your customers right to the deals by putting footprint stickers on your floor. Tell your customers on social media and via email to come into your shop and follow the footprints to find the hottest deals.
There are companies that design and create floor graphics like footprints, or you can order them from a promotional marketing company. (Here’s a site that offers eight adhesive floor footprints for $8.99.)
You can put a creative spin on this idea too. Run a pet store? Use paw print stickers.

5. Send loyal customer-only offers and sneak peaks

Every business should be using some form of a loyalty program – Hopefully one that tracks customer behavior and includes messaging tools like email, text message, and/or mobile app notifications. This allows you to not only acquire and keep loyal customers but send your loyalty program participants messages like special Black Friday offers. These messages and rewards reiterate the benefit of being a member and loyal customer.
Use Black Friday to send targeted messages just for members. These should include perks like Black Friday sneak peaks (insight into items that’ll be available and on sale, or the ability to reserve an item ahead of time), additional discounts (take another 10% off for being a member), or early bird shopping, (allow customers to come in 30 mins before everyone else).
Advertise in-store and online that some (or all) of your Black Friday offers will be for loyalty program members, and those who haven’t joined should ASAP to receive exclusive deals.
For new members to your program, send offers using verbiage like, “Black Friday deals for our newest loyalty program members only!” For regular or VIP customers, use phrases like, “For our favorite customers!” or “Just for our loyal customers.” Be sure to send more aggressive Black Friday deals or offers to those who haven’t visited your store in a while.
Have any Black Friday promotions that worked really well for you in the past? We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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