What’s your Black Friday marketing plan? Here’s why you can’t overlook audio ads.
PLUS our top tips that will get more sale shoppers visiting your online or physical store
The Black Friday to Cyber Monday period is a fleeting moment for you to generate a significant portion of your yearly revenue. But luring customers to your eCommerce site or retail store requires more than amazing discounts. Your deals need to be noticed.
Formulating a Black Friday marketing strategy that attracts and converts is a science. A blend of precise targeting, with considered scheduling, and a mix of traditional and contemporary media channels. In addition, good Black Friday marketing should combine both visual and audio elements. This will help you reach the widest audience across multiple networks increasing your conversion opportunity.
In this article we look at the audio element of the media mix – specifically digital audio. For Black Friday marketing, digital audio can be one of the strongest channels on your plan. Podcasts, streaming, and in-game audio isn’t a nice to have – it’s a must have. And here’s why….
Why Audio for your Black Friday Marketing?
Being a peak sales period of eComms and retailers, advertising really ramps up. We flood social feeds, inboxes and websites with Black Friday messaging. But overexposure to sales advertising through classic visual formats leaves customers fatigued and nonreactive. And don’t forget the rapidly decreasing attention span of humans! This impossible situation leads businesses to create bigger discounts and louder ads – impacting your bottom line!
By implementing a quality audio strategy into your Black Friday marketing plans you’ll amplify your entire media plan. Each channel will work better, leading to more awareness, sales, and shoppers! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?! Here’s how….
THE BENEFITS OF AUDIO ADVERTISING
Sonic Science, a study by Neuro-Insight found that audio has a significant positive impact on listeners’ emotion, engagement and memory. For advertisers this means:
- Engagement: the relevance and reliability of your ad is better
- Emotion: the emotional intensity felt when hearing your ad is stronger
- Memory: the specific details of your ad and recall is improved
Digital audio is a type of media that retailers of any size can use to effectively create a buzz. When your Black Friday ad is placed alongside international shows and popular music listeners associate your brand with them, thereby making you sound bigger and increasing trust factor. A priceless competitive advantage!
Digital audio ads cut through the noise of the visual environment and have a huge audience composed of key shopper demographics. Deloitte research shows Millennials and Gen Z are the biggest Black Friday Cyber Monday shoppers; these are also the highest consumers of digital audio.
WHY DIGITAL AUDIO OUTPERFORMS RADIO
When you think audio you might default to radio. But times have changed and this is not the best Black Friday audio strategy. FM radio ads are like megaphones – a spray and pray approach. Whereas digital audio is more refined, experiential, and human. There are many advantage of using digital audio over radio for your retail promotions, including:
- Today’s programmatic audio tools allow us to quickly serve ads across multiple platforms and networks with detailed targeting parameters. This creates a unique mass but targeted reach.
- The analytics data produced from digital audio ads are detailed and accurate including conversion data, better qualifying your ROAS.
- While the number of digital audio listeners are increasing, FM radio listeners are decreasing, especially among the key shopper demographic (Gen Z and Millennials)
- And if that isn’t enough – the cost of a digital audio campaign is less than radio and you get more for your marketing dollar.
TIPS TO INCLUDE AUDIO IN YOUR BLACK FRIDAY MARKETING
The Black Friday marketing battle ground is fierce. If you’ve decided to use audio to help fight for your slice of the pie here’s what we suggest:
- Synergise across all channels. When sound and visuals are aligned your ad message is better enforced and more effective. Create a catch-phrase, tag line, etc. and use it across all media channels.
- Use a unique or strong voice actor that uses tone and character to bring your amazing deals to life. It will supersize the impression of your deal and catch the attention of listeners.
- Stick to your target shopper! Use the same profile data for visual and audio channels. Digital audio has contextual and demographic filters to narrow in on your key audience to improve relevance.
- Influencer marketing. Podcast hosts are the new and powerful influencers, and great to promote your sale. They can vouch for your product/service improving trust and consideration. Learn more about podcast influencers
Putting energy into the audio element of your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing plan will optimise your entire strategy – improving awareness, trust and consideration. Done right, it will become the essential ingredient in all your retails advertising plans.
Before you go! No doubt social media will be part of your Black Friday marketing plans. Be sure to learn how audio and social makes a powerful advertising partnership!
