BFCM: The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Sales [2022]

Is your eCommerce firm ready for this year's BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday)?

If you had a good BFCM weekend last year or wished it had gone greater, it is essential to get started on the sales campaigns as soon as possible. And besides, they're the two largest shopping weekends throughout the year!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday ..! Yay..!

In this guide, we will be talking about all the must-have points for any of the Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM). We'll go over eight must-haves for any Black Friday & Cyber Monday approach. We'll also discuss marketing approaches that your eCommerce firm should employ to prosper throughout this thrilling period.

What exactly are Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

BFCM is a huge online shopping weekend sale that begins after everyone's Thanksgiving is finished. In brief, the meaning of this event, as well as the BFCM significance, is to provide a targeted shopping opportunity with big offers on show.

Black Friday always happens on the Friday following Thanksgiving, & Cyber Monday always happens on the Monday following Black Friday. In the sense of timing, it falls around the holiday period, when individuals are beginning to consider what presents they would like to purchase from their relatives & friends for Xmas and some other Q4 events.

Throughout this period, brands often run their largest discounts of the year, as customers have grown to anticipate some pretty good offers. As an online business owner, this is an excellent opportunity to up your game & execute on this promise, boosting the number of people that visit your site.

BFCM can be utilized to build your client base, enhance conversions, & also get things out through the door more quickly than ever with both the correct blueprints in place with faultless tactical implementation.

When is the BFCM?

BFCM begins on the Friday following Thanksgiving & continues until the commencement of the following weekend, on Cyber Monday. This will occur on November 25 & November 28, 2022, consecutively.

It's fair to assume that BCFM is the pinnacle of November for people who earn a career in the eCommerce market & put in a lot of work to create an online business. Sure, turkeys & cranberry sauces are delicious, but having a flood of new customers in your store is much better.

How Should You Prepare for BFCM?

There are a lot of actions you can take as an e-commerce business owner to prepare for this selling period & ensure your company is ready well in advance.

And besides, you desire to get your hands on as much of the Consistency pie as possible. Shopify merchants reported $6.3 billion in total worldwide sales in 2021, a 23% increase over 2020. Even a little portion of this may result in your best revenue period of the year.

So, what could be needed to enable the event & smooth issues out ahead of time? First, update your site for both desktop and mobile devices. This includes increasing your site's performance whenever feasible & repairing any bugs that may exist. You don't want consumers leaving their shopping trolleys, or worse, never putting products in their baskets in the first place—because a page isn't loading correctly or they are sent to the incorrect site.

Test, test, & test again to ensure that everything is in working order whenever the huge weekend approaches.

Secondly, go through your application arsenal. Is there anything you could add which would enhance the backside of your shop or the consumer experience? Would changing particular software help you to operate a more efficient and streamlined operation? To ensure that you are receiving the maximum benefit from your add-ons, undertake a comprehensive app-by-app examination.

Despite BFCM becoming the ideal time to lure customers with your products plus with consumers ready to open their purses whenever the appropriate bargain arrives in front of them, make sure you have effective upselling or cross-selling tools in place. An AI-based technology like Swipecart enables you to create customized recommendations for your consumers while they purchase, which could also enhance your average value for orders.

Checking your inventories is among the most critical things that you can undertake to ensure you are BFCM-ready. You will not want to put in a lot of effort just to run out of inventory.

Make sure you have had enough pieces in the warehouses for each of the Product lines. Or else, ensure that you place your order through vendors with enough time to allow for just about any lead periods or delays.

If this isn't your first day in the company & you already have past data to go to, consider how much you bought during last year's similar period, as well as how much your firm has developed since then, to estimate the amount.

You won't be capable of taking advantage of the flood of customers ready to buy and get your things if you don't have enough stock during BFCM.

Fortunately, with proper planning, a large number of orders may be handled without even a glitch.

Another tangible action you can do to prepare is to have your discounts & discount codes available many weeks in advance. Compute your profitability to find out how much you may subtract from your listed pricing. Although you do not wish to chop a significant portion of the tops that depletes your net revenues, you do want to entice your customers with attractive deals that ensure your BFCM is a raging success.

How do retailers get ready for Black Friday?

Make the most of your supplies & materials

All shops must prepare for the surge of clients that generally occurs at BFCM, therefore everything must be ready ahead of time. As consumers arrive, retailers should provide enough resources for them to shop.

Stores typically endeavor to keep supplies & materials including such papers, bubble wrap, & tape available. Set aside a significant portion of your budget for materials & supplies to reduce risk & pay any unanticipated expenditures.

That implies adequate receipts, cashiers, & credit-card machines for everybody. Whenever there are no cartons, you will additionally want bubble wrap & boxes to pack all of the merchandise and available racks.

Manage Manpower

It's no secret that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest days left of the year, as buyers hunt for bargains on anything from apparel to gadgets. In addition to having enough supplies & resources for clients, you must immediately hire extra personnel & employees.

As a result, retailers should hire extra personnel for this Christmas season to manage the predicted high amount of consumers. In this manner, you can ensure that everyone who comes in receives exceptional service.

Get Ready for Omnichannel Retail Sales

Black Friday is about more than just in-store buying; it also involves online purchasing. As a result, you must guarantee that all of your retail routes are prepared for increasing traffic & consumer demand. This entails setting up your website/mobile application for all platforms, making pages for company social media pages, and including chatbots for all of the emails you'll be receiving. Furthermore, BOPIS transactions should be allowed to make customers happy and much more pleased.

Before beginning BFCM, prioritize lead generation

Increase your BFCM reach by collecting because many email leads are feasible in the weeks preceding the event. There are several strategies to increase your email signups, including promotions, membership & reward points, social networks, & others. A mail window on business sites enticing Black Friday discounts & requesting people to opt-in for notifications is yet another approach to getting high-quality leads. Entice users with such a sign-up offer to promote popup interaction.

Send customized SMS & emails to customers

Almost three-quarters of consumers say that they only interact with tailored messaging, & eight out of ten say consumers are more inclined to purchase from businesses that provide individualized experiences. Competitiveness is strong throughout the Christmas shopping season, so distinguishing out is critical. Personalization options for marketing include user-based landing sites, SMS messaging, behavior patterns emails, & others. Marketing events also provide an excellent opportunity to re-engage inactive consumers with customized offers & rewards.

When inventory is running short, use FOMO marketing strategies

FOMO marketing capitalizes on consumers' fear of being left out of good discounts and chances. When inventories are running low, emphasize inventory levels to alert clients that there are just a few things remaining to buy. Another concept is to emphasize missed chances by displaying similar things that are currently available to purchase after an item they saw has gone out.

Use the strategies above in November to make the absolute most of your enhanced site and the most traffic. This Christmas season, excite prospective customers with clever marketing, amazing bargains, & a business supplied with the products they require.

To recapture abandoned consumers, use remarketing

Also with free delivery, cart abandonment is unavoidable during the holiday shopping season — that's fine. That being said, it is simpler to turn an existing client than it is to substitute that with a potential user, that is why a remarketing plan will assist generate more purchases on BFCM.

Here are some ideas for effective consumer retargeting:

Communicate with influencers across several channels

Consumers prefer the sensation of discovering a brand naturally, that's why influencer bloggers are a terrific method to expand your reach across many media. Go beyond Influencer marketing this season & incorporate a new channel into the mixture.

TikTok is a tremendous marketing platform including over 1 billion users globally, & studies reveal that influencers' reach along with interaction on TikTok much outnumbers those on Instagram - by a large margin. TikTok micro-influencers seemed to have an aggregate audience engagement of 17.96%, compared to 3.86% on Instagram & 1.63% on YouTube, as per Upfluence.

Use the strategies above in November to make the most of your enhanced site visitors. This Christmas season, surprise prospective customers with clever marketing, amazing bargains, and a business supplied with the products they require.