Black Friday marks the beginning of the festive shopping period — and what better way to encourage customers to splash their cash than with a huge Black Friday sale?
But to avoid losing money during this competitive season, you should leverage digital prospecting.
Digital prospecting uses digital channels to target high-value new customers with personalized messages and ads to drive conversions. Black Friday is the perfect time for prospecting because it’s when customers are actively searching for deals online and are more open to trying new brands.
A recent YouGov survey backs this up. 36% of customers said they plan to do some Black Friday shopping this year. And what channels are they using to discover Black Friday deals?
Digital channels, of course, specifically shopping websites, online ads, social media, apps, and email.
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Source: YouGov
So, let’s discuss how to do digital prospecting at scale to get more eyes on your Black Friday campaigns and maximize your revenue.
Digital prospecting is the process of using online channels to find and reach out to potential customers who’ve never had any interactions with your brand before. It uses a combination of inbound and outbound prospecting methods to engage and convert high-value, targeted leads.
Digital prospecting activities primarily leverage outbound marketing tactics. This involves proactively contacting targeted leads through cold emails and social media outreach.
Inbound prospecting uses inbound marketing tactics to attract high-value prospects and convert them into customers passively. Instead of directly chasing potential customers, it leverages targeted advertising via social media and search engines to pull customers in.
To do digital prospecting successfully, marketers and sales teams need to understand their target audience on a deep level. They need to know their target customer’s demographics, interests, purchasing motivations, and content preferences to deliver upfront value and personalized messages.
Before we discuss how to use digital prospecting for your Black Friday campaigns, let’s quickly take a look at the benefits.
Digital prospecting takes time, effort, and careful strategizing to drive results. So, is it worth it? Here’s why you should try it this Black Friday:
Free to use image from Pexels
Are you ready to put digital prospecting into practice? Let’s explore some strategies and tips to use this Black Friday.
An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a theoretical yet data-driven description of your perfect customer. It describes the key attributes of customers who will find the most value in the products and services you sell.
Useful in both B2B and B2C prospecting, an ICP helps you narrow down your target audience by distinguishing their unique and specific circumstances, traits, pain points, and needs.
They rely on accurate data, which you can collect through market research, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and analytics platforms. ICPs are made up of the following details:
With a comprehensive ICP in place, you can clearly identify targeted leads (i.e., potential customers that are highly likely to convert). And, with insight into details like their pain points, content preferences, and behavioral habits, you can successfully personalize Black Friday campaigns.
With billions of consumers on social media, it’s the first place you should begin your prospecting efforts.
75% of consumers are using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to search for and discover new brands and products. And for 68% of customers, this discovery has led to a purchase.
Source: TINT
Once you’ve established a presence on the platforms your customers use, you can use social analytics to identify customers who are interested in your niche and target them with dynamic Black Friday ads.
Facebook product ads are perfect for this.
The feature “Lookalike Audiences” takes data from your existing customers — such as your most loyal customers — and uses it to identify individuals with similar characteristics who haven’t yet interacted with your brand. From there, you can display ads to a cold audience with a high chance of converting.
There are lots of different types of ads you can create, such as video ads, carousel ads, image ads, and story ads. Aim to make them eye-catching and instill a sense of urgency to drive conversions.
You can also use social media marketing strategies like creating engaging profile content, interacting with your target customers via likes, comments, and shares, and participating in group discussions that are relevant to your niche.
For B2B companies, LinkedIn provides extra opportunities for personalized outreach. You can use advanced features to identify high-value prospects and send customized messages straight to their inbox.
Contextual targeting shows online ads to potential customers based on the context of the webpage or app they’re currently viewing.
For example, customers reading content on a tech ecommerce website might be shown paid ads relating to phones, laptops, and sound systems. If someone is watching a YouTube video about hiking, they might be shown ads promoting hiking boots or rucksacks.
Contextual targeting is a powerful digital prospecting technique that aligns your ecommerce ads with the current needs and interests of potential customers.
It seamlessly integrates your ads into the user journey, placing them in front of customers who, based on their current interests, are more likely to be receptive to your ads.
This is crucial for Black Friday campaigns, where customer purchasing decisions tend to become more impulsive and emotional. It also allows you to use the content environment to reach customers who match your ICP, driving brand recognition, engagement, and conversions.
Google Ads is one of the best platforms for contextual advertising. It lets you define the keywords, topics, and audiences that you want to target. From there, it uses advanced algorithms to display your ads to browsers based on their real-time content consumption.
Source: ads.Google.com
Email is invaluable to digital prospecting strategies. With consistently high engagement levels, email remains a reliable channel for reaching out to and connecting with customers who are unfamiliar with your brand.
In fact, 51% of customers surveyed by MessageGears said that they prefer to receive marketing messages via email. But — for digital prospecting in particular — you can’t just bulk-send generic marketing messages and expect results. You need to accurately segment your email list and hyper-personalize your emails.
Email segmentation involves grouping prospects based on specific characteristics or actions so that you can target each customer with personalized messages.
Hyper-personalized messages are tailored to the customer, resonating with their specific needs, interests, pain points, etc. According to MessageGear, 83% of customers say that they’re more likely to make a purchase after receiving a hyper-personalized marketing message.
Source: MessageGears
Here are some tips for targeting customers with personalized emails to increase the success of your Black Friday campaign.
Done right, influencer marketing can be a powerful digital prospecting strategy.
Social media influencers have a ready-made audience of thousands, sometimes millions, of people. And they hold serious power over this audience’s purchasing decisions.
A recent survey by Matter found that customers trust influencers more than brands. And 81% have purchased or considered purchasing from a brand based on an influencer’s recommendation.
Source: matter
The key to successful influencer marketing is finding niche influencers with followings that align with your own audience.
By incentivizing these influencers to promote your Black Friday deals and products, you can access an entire market of new potential customers, significantly boosting awareness and conversions.
Chances are, your target audience will bounce between different channels. This is particularly true during the Black Friday season when customers are using lots of different platforms to research the best deals.
To maximize digital prospecting success, you need to meet your customers where they are at the moment. This means adopting a multi-channel approach, using various different channels to reach your target audience.
For example, you might:
Conducted manually, digital prospecting can be difficult and time-consuming. It’s why marketing and sales teams leverage technologies to automate repetitive, low-value-added prospecting tasks.
Free to use image from Pixabay
Using automation, they can boost efficiency and enhance productivity, scaling digital prospecting efforts.
There are two types of prospecting: outbound and inbound.
Outbound prospecting uses targeted marketing strategies to initiate contact with customers via cold email, social outreach, or phone.
Inbound prospecting waits for customers to make the first contact, reeling them in with articles, webinars, and other forms of online content.
The best digital prospecting method is the multi-channel approach.
Rather than relying on a singular channel, it leverages multiple channels — email, social media, mobile, and more — to reach out to potential customers.
This increases visibility and empowers you to target customers on the channel they’re most likely to convert, increasing sales.
Digital prospecting is the process of directly and proactively reaching out to highly relevant potential customers — also known as targeted leads — who haven’t had any interaction with your brand.
Lead generation aims to passively capture the interest of potential customers and nurture them into targeted leads. Unlike prospecting, lead generation doesn’t involve any direct communication.
Digital prospecting can be used alongside your inbound marketing strategies to attract new customers during the competitive Black Friday period.
Once you’ve created ideal customer profiles, reach out to customers using contextual targeting, personalized emails, and social media outreach, using automation to streamline the process.
The best thing about using digital prospecting for Black Friday campaigns is that customers are actively searching for deals, making them much more receptive to targeted communications.
So, get creative and promote your sales to attract new customers and boost your seasonal revenue.