Black Friday is coming, are you ready?

Like it or not Black Friday and, to a lesser extent, Cyber Monday are now part of the annual retail and e-commerce environments. We speak to loads of businesses who forget that these happen until after they’ve gone or remember them just before they happen. Either way not being prepared is the best way to miss the opportunity or waste time and effort doing it badly.

Black Friday is a big one that gets missed, but we’ve also talked to businesses who’d missed Valentine’s Day, Easter and even Christmas!

With this in mind, we’ve got some ideas you can use to make sure you make the most of Black Friday.

Add Black Friday to your marketing strategy

This might sound obvious, but as we said above, the biggest issue lots of small businesses have is they don’t plan for Black Friday and so they miss it and get annoyed or do it last minute and get annoyed. Annoyance abounds either way. So, time one is plan for Black Friday and all your other promos.

By the way, Black Friday 29th November 2019.

Decide if Black Friday is right for your business

Black Friday doesn’t suit every business. If you’re a hairdresser, plasterer, accountant, construction firm etc then why are you jumping on this particular band wagon? There are lots more appropriate marketing opportunities around for you. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to be involved.

Think carefully about your Black Friday offers

Black Friday was created so that retailers could clear their warehouses to make way for new stock before Christmas. So the majority of the lines available are at the end of their lives and new versions will be available not long after the offers close. When you put together your Black Friday deals think in the same way. If you discount all you have then you’ll just lose lots of money for no good reason in the sale period.

If you discount the products you need to move and throw in a handful of great offers then you’ll have a better time financially while taking advantage of the promotion.

Don’t give customers a way to delay their purchase

As part of your Black Friday promotion strategy you’ll want to tell your customers before the offers begin. But if you say “Black Friday offers, everything 50% off” and that’s two weeks away, what do you think they’ll do? Our guess is they’ll wait until Black Friday to buy, leaving you with a big hole in your cashflow for a few weeks! So rather than offering 50% off everything, think about offering sales on a small selection of your products instead of the whole inventory.

Do something different on Black Friday

Following the crowd isn’t always the best plan. There’s lots of noise on Black Friday, so how can you stand out?

• Maybe you could launch a new product on Black Friday with a limited number at a discount?
• How about one offer each day leading up to Black Friday?
• Perhaps you could combine products with a discount for a bundle?
• Could you discount only your black coloured products?

If you’re business would like help with your marketing strategy for Black Friday call us on 0113 477 1210 or visit The Marketing Optimist website

This post originally appears on The Marketing Optimist blog.