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With the biggest shopping weekend of the year coming up just around the corner, we’re here to help your business make the most of the Black Friday, Sofa Sunday and Cyber Monday sales. A seasonal sales event adopted from the US, we started taking part in Black Friday sales in the UK when Walmart-owned ASDA inspired others to follow suit in lowering prices back in 2013. Since then, more and more businesses are getting involved in promoting special offers around this weekend, with customers spending as much as £1.4bn online alone in 2017.
Here’s everything you need to know to help you prepare your marketing strategy for what’s set to be the biggest Black Friday in the UK yet!
Hire Some Temps
To prepare for the huge footfall your store will surely see over the Black Friday weekend, it’s a good idea to hire some temporary staff. Just like Christmas temps, adding extra staff around busy times of the year helps ease the pressure on your store and also makes sure the customer’s experience a lot smoother. (It also helps to prevent repeats of the infamous 2014 shopping brawls!) It’s also a good idea to start training both new and existing staff a month or so before the big rush starts. They should know what to do in difficult scenarios and how to prioritise the competing responsibilities that come with a huge surge in customers.
(Source: The Independent)
Plan Which Products You’ll Promote
Whether you’re promoting instore or online, you’ll need to decide what kind of special offers you’re going to have. Some stores decide to have ‘X% off everything’ sales, whereas others pick star products that’ll have huge discounts but will draw customers into the shop/online store so they’ll be tempted by everything else.
Other things to consider are whether you’re going to include multi-buy offers – where you’ll have certain bundles of products that are discounted when bought together – and whether or not you’d like to offer some kind of special delivery service (e.g. discounted next day delivery) if you’re an ecommerce business.
Decide How You’ll Promote Your Special Offers
Online – Digital Marketing
How are you going to build a buzz about your sales? There are tons of ways of promoting your products or services to potential customers, from hosting giveaways and contests across your business’ social media accounts to having discounts instore or online. If you do choose to use social media marketing campaign, make sure to use relevant hashtags like #blackfriday2018. You could use email marketing to let customers know what to look out for on the day, and even to remind them that you’re having a huge Black Friday sale. Or you could try your hand at the latest in marketing trends and have an influencer promote your products/brand!
Instore – Print Advertising
Print marketing is extremely important for Black Friday. On the day, you’ll need to let high street shoppers know that you’re taking part in Black Friday. Keep in mind that your competitors will also be throwing pint marking into their marketing mix. That’s why it’s so important to have a few promotional tools up your sleeve to stand out from the crowd. We recommend advertising your Black Friday offers by sending out mail promotions such as a catalogue beforehand, filled to the brim with your offers. Then, pop up some posters in your shop window a week or two before (see below for an example). When Black Friday comes around, make sure you have a flag outside your shop advertising the sale – and also to help you stand out from your competitors.
(Source: ABC News)
If you’re having a sale area within your store, roller banners come in really handy for directing customers towards this area. Top tip: plan out the route customers will have to take to reach the sale area so they pass other products you think they’ll pick up on their way.
Prepare Your Website
Online shop owner? You’ll need to make sure it’s ready to handle the Black Friday rush. Something you really don’t want to happen, but is very common on busy sales days, is for your website to crash because of the massive spike in traffic! To make sure your website can handle it, you can test your website before sales go live with free performance testing software, like Load Impact.
You can also promote your Black Friday deals on your website by creating a new homepage banner just for the event. This will be the first thing people see when they go on your website, meaning it’s also one of the most clickable areas! If you’re not a professional designer, there’s no need to worry. You can get free website banner templates from loads of different online sources. We really like Canva templates because they have a huge choice, including templates specifically designed for Black Friday.
Making sure you’re prepared from both an online and instore perspective is crucial for your business’ success this Black Friday weekend. We hope these tips and tricks to preparing for the big rush help your business to flourish! If you create and print your Black Friday marketing materials with us, we’d love to see them! Share them with us on our social media channels by tagging us @instantprintuk or #instantprintuk.
