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Integrated SEO-CRO-SEA strategy for Black Friday and seasonal offers

Are you already using seasonal offers to increase your profit? If Black Friday is one of the user’s favorite moments to take advantages of unmissable offers, there are other “hot” moments throughout the year in which you have to be prepared:  big sale, Valentine’s Day, Christmas holidays, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter and many more.

Competing only on the price could not be the proper way in terms of brand and a necessary way either: instead, it is important to plan a structured visibility strategy to intercept the user’s wishes.

Coordinating the synergy between the SEO, SEA and CRO activities allows creating a virtuous cycle in which quality, knowledge of service users, and relevance of advertisements boost each other. Here’s how!

 

SEO: what’s better? A single landing page or multiple custom landing pages?

Black Friday is a global event that brings spikes in traffic and profit to companies in one single day, in a weekend if companies take advantage of Cyber Monday, or in a week if they are going for the Black Week.

As a result, the user search queries on this specific topic are concentrated on the same period, with truly remarkable volumes.

Di conseguenza, anche le ricerche degli utenti su questo specifico argomento si concentrano nello stesso periodo, con volumi davvero notevoli.

As always, it is necessary to comprehend the user intent – informational or transactional query? – and create an ad hoc landing page. You might be asking yourself: do I need to create a new landing page dedicated to the BF every year? When we are looking at “recurring” events, the best practice is not to create a page per year, but to create one URL to keep online, carrying out the proper permanent redirects (with a 301 status code) of any old page included in the website (e.g. landing Black Friday 2016), to capitalize on the trust previously gained.

CRO: is the price the only factor that affects the purchase?

According to recent findings, the majority of Italian consumers focus their necessity of purchase during those periods which are “hotter” and encoded in terms of advertising.

The user is definitely encouraged by the price because he thinks – or he knows- that is possible to make a deal during those specific days. But it is definitely not the only advantage: to optimize and increase the conversion journey, we can exploit some bias which are common to the users.

  • Firstly, the bias of the scarcity, which means to make visible the limits of the promotion from a numerical and temporal perspective, like notifying an active promotion for a limited time or highlighting that some articles are almost sold out.
  • Afterwards, a bandwagon effect, which is the people’s propensity to trust and follow the behavior of the majorities: highlighting the reviews and the fact that a product is highly requested or very popular, brings higher conversions.
  • Last but not least, the anchoring bias: it means the tendency to “anchor” after a piece of initial information to determine the value of something. In this sense, highlighting the initial cost of a product or a service, followed by the percentage of a discount and the final price, gives right away the impression of facing an unmissable deal.

It is important to remember that all these possible tricks have to be tested on your audience to verify its efficiency.

SEA: which are the phases to be followed for an efficient strategy?

In regards to SEA, it is important to follow 4 steps:

  • A preparatory phase, in which it is important to analyze the presenting history, establish a budget and make an accurate selection of the keywords that we want and we don’t want to appear, with the setting of shopping campaigns also on search network;
  • A second phase of creating interest, and its re-activation, through retargeting campaigns towards the clients that have previously evaluated to purchase a product without finalizing the actual purchase;
  • The third phase is the actual purchase, which is the push phase during the “hottest” days, through promotions and optimization of the campaigns on a daily basis.
  • Finally, the final step composed of the cross-sell and up-sell actions, thanks to retargeting, which means offering complementary products and accessories to a user who has already purchased one of our products.

Conclusion: a replicable strategy for any period

The much-loved Black Friday is one of the user’s favorite moments to take advantage of the Brand offers, so much that the purchases in sight of the Christmas gifts have a peak during the Black Friday days up to Cyber Monday.