Is your business Black Friday ready?

New Zealanders love a bargain. We’ve been trained to hunt them out through decades of hard retail advertising and always-on supermarket discounting. It is no surprise then that a massive sales event like Black Friday is proving to be so successful. We are naturally primed and ready to buy.

Black Friday weekend sales are on the rise in New Zealand. Paymark figures showed Kiwis spent $219 million on Black Friday in 2017; this was up 32.8% from the Friday one week earlier and more than 10% uplift in Black Friday spend compared with 2016 (Paymark,  2017).

Originating in the United States, Black Friday is a sales event where large retailers and chains are known to offer jaw-dropping discounts of up to 70% to entice shoppers. Because of its popularity the Black Friday retail event has now extended to a 4-day period starting on the Friday, followed by Black Saturday and ending with Cyber Monday for e-commerce or online retailers. For this reason, it’s become known as ‘Black Friday weekend’.  Key dates for 2018 include:

Shopper marketing specialists Energi give NZ retailers the run-down on Black Friday weekend and how smaller businesses can still take part in a way that’s not going to ‘break the bank’.

Finding the right sales approach for your business

Black Friday weekend is a collectively hyped-up sale phenomenon designed to stimulate mass shopping behaviour. Therefore, it is all about catching the attention of shoppers with something that is ‘out of the box’ and interesting.  It’s all about being visible and available with special time limited offers available on that weekend only when shoppers are primed and triggered to buy. Some options include:

• Price discounts (e.g. 10% off)
• Price points (e.g. $9.99)
• Special deals (e.g. buy three for the price of two)
• Conditional discounts based on behaviour (e.g. 20% off if you buy before 10am)
• Cash back offers
• Free delivery (e.g. when you spend over $50)
• Free gifts (e.g. with purchases over $50)
• Free gift wrapping on purchases
• Progressive discount - the more products  you buy the more you save
• Alternative currencies (e.g. triple points offers)
• Lucky buyer offers (e.g. every 20^th shopper wins)
• Time-bomb offers (e.g. only at this low price for the next 15 minutes)
• Gamification (e.g. spin the wheel with your purchase and win a discount or a prize)
• Dutch auctions (e.g. buy individual items available at descending prices)

Letting your customers know early

Telling customers about your Black Friday weekend special offers and deals in advance is one of the keys to a successful outcome for your business – here are some ways you can do this:

Build suspense

• Make it special – by creating a sales party feeling that is out of the ordinary and ‘too good to miss’
• Build anticipation with your customers with ‘heads-up’ emails to your database
• Advertise your Black Friday sale in the media and your shop windows
• Use social media to tease people about what to expect
• Take photos of your displays to whet appetites
• Share images of your fastest selling products to get people thinking about their Christmas shopping
• You can also schedule a series of posts in advance, to keep the momentum and reduce workload when you’re flat tack
  

Use online marketing

• Make sure Black Friday weekend banners and ads  are prominent on your website from early November
• If you are considering Google Ads or other online advertising, start early to maximize exposure to shoppers
• Incorporate popular terms in your ads like ‘Black Friday’, ‘Black Friday NZ’ or ‘Black Friday 2018’ to ensure your ads appear in front of people on the look-out for Black Friday deals
  
  

Preparing for the volume of sales and customers

This weekend could be one of the busiest of the year, so it’s important to ensure your stock accurately accounted for in your system – this can reduce both customer and staff frustration over this Christmas season. There are also few Black Friday weekend considerations for in-store and online retailers:

For more  tips on appealing to early and late Christmas shoppers see the ‘Top Christmas tips for retail businesses’ blog, part one in our NZ retailer Christmas series for small businesses. 

Turn seasonal customers into year-round customers

Customers who shop with you at Christmas have the potential to be year-round customers. Retail events around Christmas time are one of the best and biggest opportunities to capture customer details with which you can use in marketing. Whether you are a ‘bricks and mortar’ or e-commerce retailer, this time of year is also a chance to win the loyalty of customers, with your great products, service and overall experience.

Keep an eye out for more handy tips for retail businesses in our Christmas blog series. 

References

1.         Paymark 2017

2.          Energi, Shopper Magazine Volume 2 (2016 Survey Data)