Black Friday Marketing Ideas and Strategies

Business owners whether they are big or small are always trying to increase their sales especially in the holiday season or during festivals. For big businesses, the availability of huge promotion and marketing budgets play a critical role in giving them the required boost needed to hit their sales target. But that unfortunately is not the case when it comes to smaller businesses. 

Particularly in the days leading up to major sales seasons such as Christmas, Boxing Day, and the biggest of all, Black Friday , smaller businesses start to feel the inherent pressure to increase their reach that will help them have a positive impact on their bottom line .

A crafty marketing strategy with proven actionable ideas can produce results for small-scale businesses without requiring major capital expenditure. Let us look at some of the tactics that can be employed using a strong digital strategy for the Black Friday event to attract customer interest and turn it into profitable sales. 

Five Black Friday Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses to Increase Sales in 2021

• 1. Offer Discounts – The Most Popular Strategy
• 2. Create Hype – Pre-launch your offerings for Black Friday
• 3. Create an early bird discount for Black Friday even before Black Friday
• 4. Update your operating hours on Google My Business for Black Friday 
• 5. Create a Black Friday-specific page for maximum visibility during the season

1. Offer Discounts – The Most Popular Strategy

This one, of course, is a no-brainer. But for it to produce results, it must be strategized correctly. Offering discounts and some percentage off the retail price of your products or services is one of the easiest ways of attracting customers and increasing online sales. 

That’s right, a flat 25% off discount is the most common norm for Black Friday sales, but what will make you stand out is offering a combination of discounts on different products,  depending on the category, that will be pivotal in bringing your customer to the store. 

1. X $ off at X $ Purchase – Greater the purchase, the better the deal

In this type of discount scheme, you can offer to take a certain amount off if a customer makes a purchase of a certain value. This can be divided into further brackets, and a higher amount can be discounted on a purchase of higher value. 
For example, on a purchase of $50, $5 can be discounted, so the customer would have to pay a net of $45, whereas for a purchase of $60, you can offer $7 off. This tactic helps to increase overall sales volume as well as net profit. 

2. Buy 1, get 1 50 % off

This is another enticing offer that, when advertised, makes up for a great increase in sales. Experts suggest that such types of offers be specifically selected for convenience products that are used by customers on a running basis, such as toiletries etc. 

The illusion this gives is that the customer is getting a product for half the price, whereas technically, they are getting a product at 25% off, which is in itself a very generic and basic offer from any business during Black Friday sales. 

3. Reward Loyalty

For smaller businesses, it is very important to retain customers and elongate the customer lifecycle. Therefore, to do that, Black Friday is one of the greatest opportunities. 
For your returning customers or those who have made a certain amount of purchases from you in the past, offer a greater discount compared to first-time customers.
This will not only prompt your current customers to increase their purchase volume at your store or for your service but will also prompt new customers to keep on returning to your store as they’ll feel that loyalty is rewarded by your small business.

2. Create Hype – Pre-launch your offerings for Black Friday

Letting your customers know what exactly you are offering in terms of discounts and deals for Black Friday is very important before the main sale event itself. And what’s more effective is you making those special deals and discounts accessible to your customers even before Black Friday.

Provide your customers with a sense of exclusivity while you will be getting the first-mover advantage in terms of sales. This technique will not only help you grab a major chunk of the category sales early on but will also cause your customers to return to your business on the main day itself for more exciting deals. 

As a business owner, you can deploy email marketing to create a buzz for your Black Friday discounts in advance. This will not only help you increase loyalty, but you will be able to re-engage the sleeping customers.

3. Create an early bird discount for Black Friday even before Black Friday

This strategy works in two ways. The first is that you start offering discounts on certain products or services before the main Black Friday event.
Customers will not only learn more about your business but are then more likely to come back to you at the main event itself because of the familiarity they develop with your brand. 

Another way this can play out is that you can offer an early bird discount to those who log in to your website and pre-book your Black Friday sales option with a minimum advance. This will not only help create hype but will also help you in projecting inventory for the main event. 

4. Update your operating hours on Google My Business for Black Friday 

This may seem common sense, but a lot of the time, businesses forget to update their operational timings for Black Friday sales. For small businesses, whether you have a brick-or-mortar presence or not, do update the launch timings of Black Friday Deals for your website, and in case you do have a store presence, ensure that your working timings for Black Friday are updated accordingly. 

You do not want to lose out on customers waiting in long queues outside your store or visiting your website where the deals are not available yet. This is one of the best techniques to improve your rankings with local SEO. 

5. Create a Black Friday-specific page for maximum visibility during the season

This may sound simple to do so but this is one of the easiest marketing tactics that businesses ignore and then suffer a huge loss in sales. 

‍When a customer visits your website or your store in person, they would want all the best deals and all the discounted items to be made visible to them in front of the store using pamphlets or posters or on the website right there on the main page using attractive colors and attaching attention-grabbing headlines. 

On Black Friday, when the inventory for the best deals is depleting rapidly, customers do not have the time to search your website for the best offerings; that is why what is visible to them is what will make you your profit. 

What is Black Friday Marketing?

Black Friday is a mega sales and shopping event that falls the very next day after Thanksgiving ( A native USA holiday). It is informally taken as the kickoff to the major shopping spree season leading to Christmas and New Year celebrations across the globe.

When referring to marketing for Black Friday, we mean all the marketing strategies and promotion tactics that small businesses, service providers and huge retailers alike focus on and execute at times even weeks in advance to attract customers and increase not only sales volume but profits as well . The marketing techniques used for Black Friday focuses majorly on customer psyche as well as sales volume criteria for generating a higher profit margin. 

Conclusion

This Black Friday marketing ideas and strategies guide is no doubt going to help small businesses in increasing sales and broadening their customer base but what you need to understand is that there’s a lot more that still needs to be done throughout the year before this major sales event.
What is important to note here is whether you are a small business or a huge retailer, you must take advantage of this wonderful opportunity and not only boost your sales but also develop a loyal customer base that will help you expand your business further.