Black Friday is now set to be the hottest ever. As a B2B company, are you in for the “party”?
U.S. holiday spending is projected to reach $1.353 trillion, according to eMarketer.
Advertisers are now expected to start promotions way earlier than the traditional weeks before Black Friday, expanding into something new called Black Fall.
This year (2024), U.S. holiday sales for November and December 2024 are expected to grow at a healthy 4.8% year over year. More than half of customers expect to maintain holiday spending.
Over 1/3rd of customers anticipate an increase in overall spending.
As a business owner and/or a marketer, taking part in Black Friday is completely up to you.
For B2C companies, the answer is almost always an obvious “yes”. They have more than enough reasons to be happy about the season, and get the most out of it – customer reach, engagement, conversion…you name it.
If your company is in the B2B universe, how can you benefit significantly from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday fever?
What are the things you need to consider before deciding to embrace the holiday?
Let’s find out.
Tips for Creating Black Friday Marketing Strategies for Your B2B Company
You’d probably ask, why should B2B companies miss out on the biggest shopping event?
Traditionally, Black Friday (along with Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas specials, and the New Year’s crescendo) have been the mainstay of B2C brands.
While B2B brands are slowly catching up to take advantage of the BFCM rush, it’s nowhere there yet.
But, why not?
If you have decided that Black Friday is the right day for you (too), then here’s what should be done:
But first, congratulations because you’ve spotted a great opportunity for your business to hit the mark, just like many other B2B companies we’ve been tracking on Panoramata.
Make Offers and Stay True for Extended Sales Cycles
Whether you are a B2B SaaS business, an enterprise-level service provider, or even if you were a part of traditional corporate or enterprise sales, making an offer is the first step towards making the most of the Black Friday season or the entirety of the holiday season.
B2B Sales cycles are longer, often taking weeks or months, but don’t let that get under the blanket while continuing to engage and pitch multiple decision-makers.
For instance, when you’re selling to big companies, approval from several decision makers is required. This is unlikely to happen over the course of one weekend.
Similarly, the sale of complex B2B software can take place over a long period (after series of demos, and live events) diminishing the relevance of a limited time sale.
While Black Friday is a major success for B2C sales, your B2B customers (too) appreciate receiving offers on these big shopping days. This means that you can still capitalize on BFCM campaigns, just given the right amount of time.
So put your best foot forward, and remember to start early (earlier than the normal B2C promotion period and sales cycle).
Take for example the email below where Smart Marketer sends out a free resource that aims to prepare their customers for the upcoming biggest event, BFCM, and to optimize Q4 promotional strategy.
Season-pricing for B2B SaaS Brands
Enterprise B2B SaaS providers have it slightly easier than traditional businesses and regular service providers since they can easily adjust seat-based pricing to reflect the discounts during the Holiday season.
By making simple changes to pricing or rolling out discount offers during the holiday season, the seat-based pricing for your enterprise products is already taken into account during the consideration phase of a typical B2B customer.
Fortify & Customize Your Website (& Landing Pages)
Running dedicated BFCM campaigns -- one-to-one, on calls or in meetings -- is fine.
You’d, however, do better to throw open the doors of your campaign to website visitors and dedicated landing pages assigned to other campaigns (such as social media ads, Google Ads, and more).
Stress test your website. Ensure that your offers take center stage, and roll out dedicated pop-ups and banners to make it possible for everyone visiting your website or landing pages to know more about your holiday promotions.
If you need inspiration to optimize your website and landing pages, it is also a great idea to check what others in the B2B sector are doing.
Keep Engagement Alive With Email Marketing
Email marketing and SMS (as a special note) helped ring in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales with a total of 1.83 billion Black Friday emails sent to customers in 2023 (an increase of 13% over the year 2022). Combine the total number of email marketing campaigns sent to account for Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, and others and you have a whopping 3.1 billion emails sent.
Those emails didn’t land on dead inboxes either.
Email campaigns boasted 386.9 million opens and 12.72 million clicks, and email engagement has gone through the roof (in simple speak).
Given that your email list would have been populated by engaged decision-makers already, running a dedicated (& focused) newsletter much before you even think of promoting offers is a great idea.
The best part about email marketing is that it doesn’t differentiate between a B2C buyer and a B2B buyer (while the wording, copy, style, and content are drastically different).
Email marketing lets you take a calibrated and thoughtful approach as far as lead nurturing, lead qualification, and taking those precious further steps forward.
Give Buyers Preferred Payment options
Most B2B buyers today are digital natives and so they expect a B2C-like shopping experience in B2B merchants, whether they are shopping online or in-store.
If your website is not built for this, make a shift to exclusive purpose-built B2B solutions which allows for personalized buying experiences for corporate buyers, custom pricing, personalized storefronts, flexible payment terms, self-serve portals, company account requests, sales rep permissions, bulk-ordering, easy re-ordering, and more.
A quick and convenient checkout process should be available to customers, especially during shopping spree to provide a seamless experience.
