Guest Post: Black Friday Deals: What to Know About This Year’s Biggest Sale

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Throughout the year, there are particular events and seasons that marketers pay attention to. Of these, Black Friday is one of the most notable, with around $8.9 billion in online sales being made in the United States (US) in 2021. Across the globe, Black Friday deals attract customers with discounts to purchase from every type of brand. It’s become an annual tradition for businesses and buyers alike to see drastic discounts and incredible sales figures.

As you prepare your business for this year’s Black Friday events, it’s important to understand what makes it stand out from other sales during the year as well as how your brand can make the most of it. There’s a whole host of ways your business can utilize Black Friday not only for large one-off sales, but also to acquire and build loyalty with new customers. Having these in mind can make this your sales and marketing team’s best Black Friday yet. 

What Makes Black Friday So Special?

Originating in the US, Black Friday happens at the end of November on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This places it ideally for Christmas shoppers and customers looking for a bargain. Although businesses have adopted Black Friday, the sale began with customer demand creating high levels of traffic in stores and online during this period. From here, it’s become one of the top consumer retail trends through businesses increasing savings and marketing. 

Unlike other sales, the discounts are epitomized for one day rather than spread out over several weeks at the end of a season, or after New Year. Although the sales have extended over the weekend to include Cyber Monday, or even throughout the month, businesses tend to give their biggest discounts for one day only. This creates a sense of urgency in customers, making them more likely to purchase on impulse, leading to huge profits for the businesses involved.

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6 Black Friday Deals for Ecommerce

With most other businesses also giving customers promotions, your standard discounts are unlikely to stand out amongst the competition. When approaching Black Friday, your marketing and sales approach needs to be creative and original to convince potential customers to shop for your brand. Trying a new strategy or deal to engage with ecommerce browsers could also interest them in your business, leading to future purchases and better customer retention.

1) Mystery Savings

Gamify the process of giving deals, encouraging customers to interact with your brand across different platforms and to subscribe to your email updates to receive personalized offers. The discount is revealed to the customer in either a scratch card format or after spinning a wheel, giving them a code to use at the checkout. Your marketing team can then promote the larger potential savings that a few customers will win, exciting your target market.

2) Subscriber Codes

For a more exclusive Black Friday sale, offer your email newsletter subscribers discount codes for extra savings or additional deals. This makes your existing customers feel valued for their loyalty, alongside encouraging new customers to subscribe to your brand. Subscriber codes could also be offered to social media followers and at the end of customer calls to your sales team using internet based phone systems, encouraging them to participate in the sales.

3) Influencer Partnerships

Combining your Black Friday sales with current marketing trends can boost your reach and attract more new customers to your ecommerce website. Partnering with influencers to offer exclusive deals or discounts can expand your target market and introduce them to your brand. Working with influencers also helps to build your product’s social proof, using the review of the influencer to build trust and interest in potential customers.

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4) Discounted Sets

Black Friday is an ideal opportunity to cross-sell other products in your range to engaged customers, helping you to maintain a high average order value (AOV). By creating discounted sets, you create groups of your products that relate to each other, presenting these as cheaper when bought together. This inspires customers during peak season, encouraging them to buy more from your business to increase business profits and enable you to offer bigger sales.

5) Free Gifts

Everyone likes something free and a gift adds something extra to your customer’s already discounted basket. This can be a way of marketing new products by giving away samples, hoping that, after a trial period, the customer would return to buy the actual product or creating a sense of exclusivity with one-off promotional gifts. It also makes the customer feel like they’re getting more for their money, encouraging them to return to your business for value for money.

6) Extended Sale

Although Black Friday is only a day, your sales don’t have to be. Instead, extend your sales and discounts, building up to the day throughout November with other sales and reduced prices with savings increasing the closer you get to the Friday. Likewise, after the event, continue the sales on certain products or for those subscribed to your ecommerce updates. This encourages your customers to keep shopping and allows those who initially missed out to still find a bargain. 

Black Friday Tips

As a business, Black Friday can be incredibly busy and overwhelming. If you’re not on top of things, you could miss out on marketing opportunities and fail to get the most out of the sales. Using software from NetSuite ERP competitors to manage your business resources can help with this, alongside the following six tips to help you and your business get sorted before Black Friday starts. Using these as a guide, you can optimize your ecommerce to be ready.

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Plan Thoroughly

It’s so much easier to get your teams on the same page to carry out a successful sale if you have a plan to follow. This should cover not only the discounts you plan to offer but ensuring you have the SAP cloud platform integration suite and marketing software to help the sale run smoothly. Creating a thorough plan surrounding Black Friday allows your other departments, such as delivery teams or customer service, to prepare themselves for additional demand. 

Advertise Early

By the time you reach Black Friday, most of your marketing work should already be done. Customers, like businesses, prepare themselves for Black Friday by researching the best discounts for the products they want. If they haven’t seen your advertising, customers will be unaware of the sales you’re putting on and look to the competition instead. By advertising early, you increase the exposure of your campaigns and raise buyer awareness of your offers.

Prepare Your Followers

If you have email subscribers or followers on social platforms, you already have a loyal customer base that supports you. Let them know what you’re planning for Black Friday and get them involved in exclusive deals and rewards for their commitment to your brand through a newsletter or online updates. This enables them to advocate for your brand and get excited about your sales, spreading the news through word of mouth to other potential customers. 

Optimize Your Website

With sales drawing in lots of new customers in a short time frame, your ecommerce website needs to be able to accommodate increased traffic. Before the sales start, optimize your website, ensuring it runs quickly and uses an inventory system requirements checklist to ensure your product management and website integrate well. Also consider how your website appears on mobile devices, checking that customers can easily purchase with its intuitive interface.

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Automate 

Increased traffic on your ecommerce website also means more work for your sales teams during the Black Friday period. Make their role easier by automating tasks where possible, meaning your teams aren’t worried about managing inventory or answering basic FAQs. Instead, your team can focus on ensuring the sale runs smoothly, trusting your automation software to carry out scheduled posting to social media and sending welcome emails to new customers.

Follow Up

After the Black Friday sales you have a great opportunity to reconnect with those first-time customers, moving them through the marketing funnel to retain their interest in your business. This can grow your customer base and encourage repeat purchases, as well as cross-selling them other related products to their initial purchase. Sending a follow-up email with other sets they missed or introducing them to your blog starts to build your customer relationships.

How Are You Managing This Year’s Biggest Sale?

With Black Friday drawing ever closer, it’s time to start preparing your business for the biggest sale of the year. This planning needs to involve every department, helping them to get ready for increased traffic and optimizing your ecommerce website to accommodate new customers. It’s also important to know what Black Friday deals you’re going to be offering and how these will make you stand out from the other competitors throughout the preceding month.

If you’ve never participated in Black Friday before as a brand, it’s about time you did. Start small, with discounts and deals that you can easily manage and that appeal to your target market. Automation can also help with this, managing your inventory control methods and online storefront without a hassle. As you feel more confident in your business and your ability to run sales on your products, allow your Black Friday deals to grow too.

About the Author

Nick Shaw - Brightpearl

Nick Shaw has been Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Brightpearl, the number one retail-focused digital operations platform and order management software for ecommerce which encompasses sales and inventory management software, accounting, logistics, CRM and more since July 2019 and is responsible for EMEA Sales, Global Marketing and Alliances. Before joining Brightpearl, Nick was GM and Vice President of the EMEA Consumer business at Symantec and was responsible for a $500m revenue business.Nick has written for sites such as Hubspot and G2. Here is Nick Shaw’s LinkedIn.

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