Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and you know what that means – Black Friday is the day after! As a business owner, Black Friday is the perfect day for you to make some massive sales at the hands of consumers who are Christmas shopping or taking advantage of the incredible deals. Jump on board and offer some savings to your customers. The outcome should be more than worth it!
To help your business benefit from Black Friday this year, we put together the best plan of action for making the most of the post-Thanksgiving shopping craze.
Ways to Prepare Your Business for Black Friday 2018
Get started on your advertising as soon as possible.
As soon as you know what deals and sales you will be holding on Black Friday, get to work with promoting. Physical posters and advertisements will help you reach a large number of people locally, so get the word out in your area using these methods. Another way to market your sales is through posting on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, or through actively reaching out to customers via email and text message. Include as much information about the deals as you can – make them sound enticing and hard to beat at any other store or business.
Engage customers in-store by talking up your Black Friday bargains. Hang posters and give out flyers or bag-stuffers that have all of your store’s Black Friday information – a complete list of sales, your store’s Black Friday hours, and even some coupons. Sell your sales, make your deals sound too good to pass up!
Make your discounts worth it.
A good starting point for any discount is 20%. This is just enough to be both eye-catching and competitive without threatening the loss of profit. Of course, if a product is particularly popular, consider raising your discount percentage even higher. 50% off is where items become nearly irresistible!
It’s also important to have more than one sale going on in order to appeal to more people. As many products as you can afford to mark down, do it! In addition to great deals, offer a free gift with every purchase or additional coupons to be used at a customer’s next visit. This is a good way to establish good relationships with your customers and encourage them to come back even after Black Friday.
Have a doorbuster sale.
Nearly every business partaking in Black Friday, if not every, will have some kind of doorbuster sale. A doorbuster sale is regarded as the biggest, best deal offered by a store. Usually, it’s a large discount placed on a product in high demand.
The benefit to a doorbuster is that it draws customers into the store to purchase a product they like but might not buy without the sale. Once the customer is in the store, they may find other items or sales they like and will therefore spend more money on your business.
If you do have a doorbuster sale, make sure to advertise it like crazy!
Ensure you have plenty of product.
When Black Friday comes, you can expect already popular products to fly off the shelves and less popular products to experience more demand than usual. It’s a good idea to check your inventory and be absolutely sure you have enough product to keep your store properly stocked during the shopping rush.
If you do happen to run out of a product, take down a list of interested customer’s names and contact information so that they can come back to the store when you restock. Allow them to still get the Black Friday deal!
Check that your business’ website can handle higher traffic than usual.
If you run an online business or if your business has a website, you should prep for the holidays and Black Friday by doing a check that your website can tolerate an influx of visitors. Here’s a site that allows you to test your website’s performance for free: loadimpact.com.
Have enough staff on hand.
During the holiday season and especially on Black Friday, make sure you have proper staffing. The last thing you want is to be short-staffed on what might be the busiest day of the year for your business! In some cases, you may even need to bring on seasonal employees. At the very least, come up with a Black Friday schedule and, if you need to, make working on Black Friday mandatory.
Happy Thanksgiving, and good luck this Black Friday and holiday season!
Note: these tips can also be assigned to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday!
Renee McBride
“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one,” is my favorite quote. I’ve been working since high school mostly with small, growing businesses across various industries. I’ve had to wear many hats for each role. In that time, I’ve learned that problem-solving and helping pass on that information to others is what drives me. Today, I’m the Digital Marketing Manager at Acumen Connections.