Gearing Up For Black Friday & Cyber Monday – Some Marketing Strategies

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News!

No doubt if you have a website where you’re selling products
or you’re into affiliate marketing like me, next week and the
days following it will be very important to your bottom line.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are very busy shopping days in
the real world and online.

Each year, for the last 4 or 5 years, I have seen my online sales
jump on those days… actually sales have already picked up for my
sites since I mainly sell high ticket custom electronic goods
which have to be configured to the buyer’s requirements so buyers
like to order early to make sure they get them by Christmas.

In this Newsletter, I thought I would give you a run-down of some
of the things (marketing tactics) I am using to bring in more
sales. Keep in mind, I am doing affiliate marketing (selling other
people’s stuff – I make no direct sales from my sites – all I do
is refer potential buyers to my affiliate partners via my
affiliate links) and it is the kind of marketing and lifestyle
that I prefer.

Now, you too, should be gearing up for the big selling days
next week and beyond.

Here are some things or marketing tactics I do every year.

1. I review all my affiliate links and web pages to make
sure my content and links are up to date. Mainly because I
don’t want to lose any commissions but also because Google
is taking a hard line with it comes to broken links that break
down the quality of your content and their index. Make sure
you check all your links to see if they are good. If you have
a small site – a free service like LinkTiger.com will help
you find the broken links.

2. Key up or ramp up your own marketing… put out extra articles,
do press releases, run sales if you’re selling your own product,
release videos to coincide with the big shopping weekend. I am
planning on doing all of those things.

3. Increase your advertising budget. Buy special advertising
such as links on popular sites, order special ezine mailings
to targeted groups. Also, I always increase my PPC (Pay Per Click)
advertising at this time of year. People are shopping and your
conversion rates will be much higher – at least that is what
I find.

4. Coupons, Coupons, Coupons – all the major companies have
special discounts, sales and coupons for the holidays… make
sure you’re featuring them on your site or sites. Buyers will
expect big discounts on those days and if your site doesn’t
carry or offer them your buyers will go elsewhere. Collect all
the best deals and discounts and make special mailings to all
your lists. Many marketers also make a special page on their
site featuring all the major Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.
Everyone loves getting a bargain.

5. Use or sell major brand names with your online marketing,
I have constantly found promoting big brand name companies like
Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony… always do better because buyers
respect and trust those companies and their products. Also
I have found using big brand name retailers like Amazon.com
bring in many more sales – again, buyers respect and trust
Amazon and your sales will reflect this fact.


Those five marketing tactics have worked for me and here are some of
my most effective marketing strategies which are a little more
complex and detailed.

1. Leveraging your keyword rankings. Around this time each year
I do a close check of all my top rankings in Google. I choose
the ones that will return the most revenue. I place most of
my ramped up marketing efforts on these keywords – making
sure I have found and listed all the best deals and discounts.
Also the price of the affiliate products and my commission rates
play a big part in which keywords I increase my marketing on.
For example, high ticket items like gaming laptops give very
good returns, whereas small items such as laptop cleaning kits
do not. It’s only common sense as to which one I will be
promoting heavily at this time of year.

2. Sell what people are buying. You really have to do some
market research and find the hot items everyone is buying.
This doesn’t really have to be heavy-duty research, just using
something like Google Trends will give you a pretty good
idea. So too is checking out lists of popular items such
as those presented on major sites like CNN, Time… I am
sure we all have read these kinds of lists – such as “Top 10
High-tech Holiday Gifts” just use them to find the
hot items this year.

3. Comparison Shopping The Internet was invented so that
people could do comparison shopping! Well, not really, but
using comparison shopping prices and charts will increase
your sales. Keeping track and getting all the best deals
and discounts can be tedious and time-consuming. Many online
marketers use services such as those presented by comparison
shopping services provided by sites like this one:

www.datafeedfile.com

It sends out data-feeds and the latest deals and offers
are presented on your site. This is great if you’re not
really into affiliate marketing but want to monetize
your site or content. Only catch this site takes every
fourth click in return for using its services. Still
a good arrangement especially if you don’t have the time
or resources to pull all this pricing data on your own.

4. Buyer’s Mindset You probably already know this one
but you should make it your objective to find the buyer
at the exact time someone has their mind made up and are
ready to buy. That one of the main reasons Black Friday
and Cyber Monday are such great shopping days. Everybody
and their grandmother has been convinced by all the
major retailers those days is the time to start buying
your holiday gifts and everyone does. Along those same
lines, PPC and keyword marketers take advantage of this
right buying mindset by targeting certain keywords that
show buyers are ready to buy. For example, something
as obvious as someone searching for the price or lowest
price for a product means they are more ready to buy
then someone just searching for a general product.

5. The Gifts Angle This is a marketing strategy I have
been using for years, along with countless other marketers.
Targeting the gift-buying market is a very effective
way of selling your products. Someone looking for
wedding gifts, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts,
graduation gifts and the one I like targeting
corporate business gifts. All those customers are
ready to buy these gifts when they come into your
store or your online site. They are ready to buy…

Corporate Business Gifts

As an added strategy, I like to target buyers who are
buying gifts not just for one person but for a whole
lot of people. They won’t just buy one item, but
100 or even 1000. Don’t laugh, it happens, especially
if you’re targeting companies or the company boss
who are buying gifts for their employees or clients.
Also, promotional gifts falls into this same strategy,
some people do buy gifts in bulk! Target them.

But it doesn’t have to be anything complex, I have found
just promoting the Amazon Gift List Organizer brings
in a lot of sales because people do use that to buy
all their holiday gifts at once. Again, it’s finding
the buyer at the right time when they’re ready to buy.
Simple marketing strategy but it works.

I hope I haven’t wasted your time and that I have
given you at least some ideas to increase your sales
this coming Black Friday & Cyber Monday. Go get ’em!

Titus
www.bizwaremagic.com