Black Friday Breakdown

Background

Black Friday started in Philadelphia in 1961. This is the first time it was made into a shopping festival, but it was a much smaller scale than it is today.

The phrase originated from 1950 and was used to describe heavy traffic after thanksgiving. It became a shopping mania in 1961. And special offers were offered by the shop owners as they opened the shops early in the morning.

When it started, it was just a one-day event, and retailers would offer discounted products. Black Fridays stretched all through the weekend.

Black Friday wasn’t all about shopping. The idea actually came from shoppers, so it wasn’t a marketing idea from retailers themselves.

Nowadays black Fridays stretch through the weekend to Mondays. The entire world has adopted black Friday, especially with a lot of things being on the internet. It’s not only for products but also for services. All sorts of businesses have taken on this black Friday sale. In Europe, the discounts aren’t as significant as they are in the USA, but they’re still great.

On the other hand, cyber Monday started in 2005. The goal behind cyber Monday was to boost sales online for the first online retailers. It was making online shopping more popular. Today it’s all the same to us—Black Friday and Cyber Monday kind of merged together.

Because it’s been around for so long, shoppers are educated, and it’s a habit to go out and shop on that day. It’s crazy to not take advantage of black Fridays.

Black Friday Statistics

2016 was the first year that more online purchases were made with tablets and mobile phones. It’s vital to make sure that your online store is mobile-friendly.

90% of users that plan to shop online will compare deals and discounts. You want to make sure your offer is easy to find, transparent and possibly better than your competitors.

61% of shoppers will start searching for deals on the days leading to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We’re catching the searchers. You want to avoid being trampled on Black Friday.
Men spend 50% more than women on black Friday. Men are better savers than women.

If we compare regular Friday to a Black Friday, the sales increase by 624%. This is a global average.

The average world discount is 55%. If you’re thinking of doing 20%, it’s no. This is the time to get aggressive. If you’re only going to profit like a little bit by cutting 50% off, do it because you’re creating retail customers.

Also, people tend to buy more. You’re taking 50% off but what happens is that more people will buy. If you have physical products, you’re getting rid of a lot of that inventory. Maybe it’s going to be out of season soon.

Black Friday Ideas

When you create your Black Friday marketing campaigns, make them specific. Figure out your rules and be super unique. If you see somebody else with a similar sale, try to figure out something that will make yours a little bit more unique.

You can team up with a lot of small businesses. You can put something together with some businesses in your area who have a common goal. Maybe, if someone buys something from one store, they get something free from your store and vice versa.

Creating gift cards. Gift card themed emails result in a 48% higher transaction rate than promotion emails even though they take a little more time, money and effort. Gift cards are one of the top things that you can do for your business.

Bundling products together. Bundles that you wouldn’t have typically put together in the year can put together as black Friday bundles. Let’s say you’re a skincare company. You have the top 5 selling products. If you do some holiday set that you’re going to sell on a black Friday price, those are going to do well. They’re also a great way to up-sale customers. You can take that particular item that you don’t want to sell at 50% off and bundle it with other products that aren’t going to sell.

Also, you can promote your gift cards on social media, not just emails. You’re going to post 2 or 3 times a day of what you’re selling for a discount. The standard is once a day. When you feel like you’re marketing too much and getting people to start unsubscribing, that’s when you’re starting to market correctly.

Another thing you can do on cyber Monday is to create hourly deals. Your subscribers can get emails from you every hour with the new hourly deal. That’s a great way if you want a specific amount of people to buy a special deal.

Exclusive deals emails. If you have a loyal customer list; people who’ve bought more than 10 items from your website in the past month, you can also offer them an exclusive deal. It makes people feel even more inclined to buy.

Sneak peeks. You can give sneak peeks but only if you’re going to do a longer black Friday. To prevent them from chilling for three weeks waiting.

Free shipping is another good thing that you can offer. You can offer free shipping along with your deals. Often, you’ll get the discount, and then the shipping is as much as you saved.

Extending the deals. You want to keep the party going, but you’re not going to tell the people the party will go on until it’s already done. Then you let them know it was such a success (even if it wasn’t) and so you’re going to keep it going. If you can handle the high volumes of sales, keep it going.

Don’t forget that after Black Friday, you can do a re-engagement email; a re-targeting email for those who didn’t buy. Do something like ‘come back and get this last-minute black Friday prices’.

Adding Value to Black Friday Deals

Giving deals on gift cards. If you have a website, you can sell gift cards on your website. If you buy the gift card today, we’ll give you the free meal today.

A survey found that during 2016 in the holiday season, 81% of shoppers estimated gift cards to be half of their holiday purchases. Meaning gift cards are great for business.

Customers spend 6% more on gift cards in December than any other time of the year. In 2016, 75% of consumers spent an average of $24.74 more than the amount on the card. Meaning if you get somebody a $10 gift card, they’re going to spend $30 more than the gift card. You make more money.

An event. If you only want to do like 20 or 30% off your products, set up an event and offer some cookies or hot chocolate. Also, you can promote a charity. People who love helping will be inclined to buy because they’re helping. You need to be smart. You can host giveaways, holiday competitions, or get your audience to engage on social media as well.

New product promotion is a big deal for black Friday. It’s a great time to roll out something new. You can give a sample version of the new product as up sale.

You can create referral campaigns. For example, create a can’t-resist-cyber-Monday deal and ask your recipients to share with their friends. You can have a forward to a friend link in your email.

Creating testimonials and reviews. Testimonials are huge in the online world because you want people to trust you. Whether it’s testimonials or reviews, you want to have that social proof that shows that people are buying your products. If other people find out that people bought your products in the past, they’re more inclined to buy.

Now that you’ve been through a Black Friday 101 like blog post, hopefully you never let another one go bye.

It’s hands down one of the biggest events of the year for your business, and can mean so much to your success by simply taking advantage of it.

Let me know your thoughts on the article, and how you did for Black Friday this year!