As Black Friday draws near, it’s important you set goals for what you want to achieve as a property from this event – don’t just do a special offer for the sake of it! Identify what your property’s needs are and ensure you don’t compromise your business, bearing in mind your consumers are savvy and hard to fool.
Here’s our Top 8 Tips for creating your offer:
1. IDENTIFY THE TIME-PERIOD
- Black Friday offers are a great way of filling bedrooms during periods that would otherwise be quiet
- Make a list of dates you want to protect from the sale (events, concerts, Saturday nights that would otherwise fill, Bank Holiday weekends)
2. KEEP IT SIMPLE!
The last thing you want is for there to any confusion about exactly what your offer entails – try to keep the title, description and the conditions of the offer straight forward. Some simple steps to remember are:
- Make the offer name clear and concise
- Description of the offer: keep it simple and to the point
- Be creative! The likelihood is your competitors are also selling a Black Friday offer, so make your offer unique
- How ever you choose to sell your offer (e.g. as a package or as a voucher) make sure the customer is aware of the steps involved
3. BE GENEROUS
- The offer needs to be unique and outside the norm of what you would usually have on your special offers page throughout the year
- Use power terms such as “irresistible,” “unique” or “One-Off” to describe the offering and draw people in
4. USE SCARCITY AND URGENCY TACTICS
- Make the offer only bookable the 24 hours of Black Friday, or the time period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Make sure this message is communicated to evoke the urgency to book now, especially if you are going to limit availability
5. BE TRANSPARENT
- Don’t try to fool your customer
- Make sure that Terms and Conditions are clearly visible and easily understood
- Don’t leave grey areas with booking dates, stay dates and what’s included
6. BUILD YOUR OFFER
- Choose the target audience – is the offer for all customers or is it for a specific customer type such as families or a romantic couples retreat?
- If your offer is only going to be valid for a certain time period (Midweek, January and February) make sure that when your rate plan is set up that these restrictions are correctly applied
- Just remember – if you apply too many restrictions (room type, specific dates/days, target audience, MLOS) you limit the success of the promotion
- Check and double check your offer is set up correctly
7. PROMOTE YOUR OFFER
The list is endless as to how you can push the offer but a few of these would be:
- Social Media
- SEO
- Website – popups and banners etc
- Ezines
- SMS
- Mobile only offers
- Create awareness of impending offers by doing a countdown to Black Friday
- Ask customers to sign up to ezine database to get “a presale” or exclusive only offers
8. CONSISTENCY
And lastly, ensure that you’re using consistent imagery, messaging and tone across all platforms to promote awareness and recognition which will also work towards ensuring you have a Successful Black Friday campaign!
