Winning BFCM! Here’s a guide to the holiday sprint

Double 11 is coming to an end, and the BFCM that follows is equally important to merchants. So how can we make marketing strategies before the festival to stimulate consumption and maximize profits? This article may provide you with some ideas.

While many consumers start their holiday shopping early, there's always a swarm of last-minute shoppers waiting for clearance sales days before the festivities begin.

In view of this, Inpander, a professional influencer marketing agency, will combine its years of rich experience in building overseas influence for Chinese brands to provide you with effective strategies to attract and convert last-minute holiday shoppers during the BFCM peak period.

BFCM: Short for Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday

Black Friday: November 24

Cyber ​​Monday: November 27

1. 4 Types of Holiday Shoppers

Understanding the various types of customers is essential to developing an effective holiday shopping strategy and fostering customer loyalty. Accurate customer segmentation helps you craft effective cross-channel messaging that not only drives conversions but also resonates deeply with potential and current customers.

1. Comparison shoppers

Keen on finding unbeatable deals, these shoppers rarely buy at full price and carefully search for the best discounts before buying. They play a key role when you plan to clear out your inventory.

These shoppers exhibit low brand loyalty, tend to resist upsell attempts, and quickly switch to other brands when a better offer comes along. As a result, they are likely to make purchases during BFCM, as this is typically when brands and stores release their best discounts.

2. Planned Shopper

Planners Shoppers are an important group during the holiday season, and they may start planning their gift lists from October until before the holidays, with their shopping peaking in November and December.

To attract this type of shoppers, marketers should maintain a consistent presence throughout the holiday season. You can start your promotional marketing early and use various channels to effectively reach your target audience.

3. Early Bird Shoppers

This group of people usually complete their holiday shopping months in advance. They are usually well prepared for their holiday gifts, and for them, staying up late waiting for a big sale is not worth it.

However, this group of traditionalists also look forward to every holiday season when it comes to sale-exclusive products and services. Meet their needs and you’ll ensure they’ll return next holiday shopping season.

4. Last-minute shoppers

These people leave everything to the last minute. They may still be searching for the perfect holiday gift on Christmas Eve. You'll find them either frantically searching the Internet or rushing through physical stores, racing against the clock. As a result, last-minute shoppers can easily turn into impulse buyers.

These customers often venture into holiday shopping without a predefined list. They embrace spontaneity and go with the flow. As the second most promising target market after loyal customers, impulse shoppers offer a great upsell opportunity.

Additionally, these impulsive shoppers often respond positively to product recommendations. Keeping them informed of new products can significantly increase the profitability of your online store.

5 Ways to Target Last-Minute Shoppers

1. Promise of fast delivery

One of the biggest concerns of last-minute shoppers is whether their purchase will arrive in time for the holidays. Address this issue by prominently displaying your shipping options and delivery times on your website. If possible, offer expedited or same-day shipping. Clearly communicate holiday delivery deadlines to meet customer expectations.

2. Simplify product discovery and purchasing

Rushing to find the perfect gift can be confusing for customers. As a store owner, you can make everything easier by curating gift guides and product bundles. Create categories like “last minute gifts for her” or “gifts under $50” to guide shoppers to relevant products.

Remember to prepare your online store with smart, fast site search and user-friendly product filtering on listing pages. These guys are great friends when it comes to helping online shoppers find what they’re looking for. Plus, bundling complementary items together and offering discounts can also encourage higher-value purchases.

3. Use countdowns to create a sense of urgency

Use countdown timers strategically throughout your site to create a sense of urgency. End-of-BFCM deal countdowns, holiday shipping deadlines, and limited-stock reminders can encourage last-minute shoppers to make a purchase decision faster.

Email marketing and remarketing go a long way in reinforcing the urgency of holiday purchases.

You can use email marketing to target last-minute shoppers with personalized recommendations and reminders. Send emails with subject lines like “Last chance for BFCM deals” or “Last time for guaranteed holiday delivery.”

Don’t miss out on people who visited your site but didn’t buy yet. Implement a remarketing campaign to retarget these customers, focusing on items they viewed, added to cart, or added to wishlist.

4. Live chat and customer support are always visible

Provide real-time assistance to shoppers who may have questions or concerns. Live chat support can help answer queries promptly and provide reassurance about shipping and product details. Make sure your customer support channels are responsive and accessible

5. Don’t forget the influence of influencers

In order to reach the younger generation, don’t forget the influence of Internet celebrities. We can formulate different cooperation methods according to the characteristics of different Internet celebrities.

For example, we can divide influencers into exposure type and product-bringing type:

Exposure type: Bloggers with millions of followers. We can use them to increase brand exposure, and the cooperation method is paid.

Carrying goods type: mainly waist and leg celebrities and amateurs, with fans ranging from 10,000 to 1 million. It can be mainly used for planting grass + conversion, and the cooperation mode is resource exchange, payment, commission and other methods.

3. Influencer creative strategies in the “sprint” phase of BFCM

1. Prepare for Christmas gifts

While we all love to pamper ourselves, Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday are the perfect opportunity to stock up on holiday gifts for our loved ones ahead of Christmas. Instead of a “buy me” message, why not emphasize “buy for whom” in your marketing?

Content suggestions

(1) Gift of Love

• Invite young bloggers to share the Christmas gifts they will prepare for their families
• Embed brand products in gifts

(2) Shopping List

• Invite mother and baby/lifestyle bloggers to share their shopping lists
• Insert branded products into the list

For example, American men’s care brand Old Spice works with influencers whose fan base is predominantly female, an audience most likely to purchase their products for the men in their lives.

2. Organize influencer competitions to increase influencer engagement

Want an easy way to motivate influencers to boost sales? You can add a little competitive edge by hosting an influencer contest.

Content suggestions

(1) Sales ranking

• Announced that the top five influencers in terms of sales during the promotion will receive rewards
• Share your sales ranking with influencers

(2) Creative Dress Up Challenge

• Clothing brands can ask influencers to use their creative dressing styles
• Best sweater/most creative influencer will win a prize

3. Use influencer exclusive discount codes

Discount codes are a staple when running sales and offers, and you can equip the influencers you work with with their unique codes, which not only strengthens the relationship with the influencer but also makes their fans feel like they’re getting something extra special.

At the same time, these codes also allow you to track which influencers convert the most customers, giving you first-hand insights into who you should establish long-term partnerships with.

That’s exactly what Willow by the Sea did with their “20% Off Black Friday Sale.” Dozens of influencers came up with their own ideas to celebrate their organic skincare products and included their unique discount codes in the captions.

4. Collaborate with a large number of micro influencers

Rather than working with a few top influencers, work with a large number of micro influencers. Not only will you reach a more diverse audience, they will also be more engaged because these influencers are more relatable and their content is more authentic.

For example, to achieve the goal of increasing website traffic, British streaming platform BritBox worked with 55 vertical influencers who published 94 Instagram posts and stories and provided links to sign up for a free trial of its streaming service. Its Christmas-themed content resonated, bringing in nearly 300,000 impressions, an average reach of 7.12%, and 30,000 interactions.

5. Maximize your influencer marketing materials

You’ve already promoted your promotion on social media by working with influencers. So why not use these influencer-generated content (IGC) to amplify your campaign’s impact:

(1) Paid advertising

64% of consumers say they heard about BCFM offers from online ads, so repurpose IGC in paid ads to leverage the influencer’s power to endorse your brand.

（2）Email Marketing

Add IGC to the shopping information, weekly newsletters, etc. that you push to potential customers to create a sense of "fear of missing out". Because IGC is diverse, you can also A/B test different IGCs to target specific audience groups.

(3) Website

Add IGC to your product pages to increase conversions.

4. Key points of marketing on each platform

1. TikTok Marketing Tips

（1）TikTok Shop

69% of TikTok users expect to spend the majority of their time on the platform during the holiday season, and they are 1.4 times more likely to purchase a product they’ve seen.

TikTok Shop is designed to help marketers maximize sales. By combining TikTok Shop with attractive TikTok influencer content, you can attract more new customers to place orders.

（2）Social SEO

When working with influencers, make sure they include keywords in their captions and voiceovers, and further include popular hashtags such as #BFCM #BlackFriday #TikTokMadeMeGiftIt #GiftIdeas and #HolidayHaul .

(3) Diverse Creativity

63% of TikTok users say they’ve purchased something from a brand after two exposures to branded content. Influencers are key to unlocking a vast array of different creatives that appeal to different audiences. Additionally, micro-influencers are an affordable way to create at scale while avoiding creative fatigue.

2. Instagram Marketing Tips

(1) Try reels

Short videos are the best performing format across all channels, and influencer marketing is no exception.

1.6 times more people want to see short, authentic videos rather than slickly produced ones when browsing Instagram. And influencers are the perfect way to tap into that unfiltered style with Reels, bringing your products to life in a way that static images can’t.

(2) Diversification

Like TikTok, Meta believes in diversity as much as we do, and different people buy the same product for very different reasons, so having diverse creative that caters to those reasons is crucial.

At present, brand overseas expansion has become a major trend, and market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. If brand merchants want to stand out in the fierce promotion nodes, they need to reach target consumers through reasonable marketing methods. Inpander has a systematic and professional KOL marketing service team overseas, with 5,000+ well-known KOL resources, and involves dozens of business sectors including life, beauty, games, science, digital, food, etc., providing efficient and accurate services for different brands, and is your best partner in enhancing overseas popularity and influence.

Author: Inpander

WeChat public account: Inpander Overseas (ID: gh_eeba4131474f)