Black Friday, the consumer holiday synonymous with unbeatable deals, has seen remarkable growth in popularity, with consumers spending an estimated $10.8 billion in 2024. This annual shopping event not only delights shoppers, but it also presents businesses with an opportunity to attract new customers and significantly increase their revenue.
Here are 15 strategies your business can implement to prepare for Black Friday.
[Read more: 4 Strategies for Early Holiday Shopping Season Prep]
Establish your goals
The very first step in preparing your business for the Black Friday shopper rush should be setting clear and attainable goals. Decide which products and services you want to promote, where you plan to advertise, and the types of deals you plan to offer.
While setting sales goals for the event is clearly a top priority, you can set other related goals to benefit your small business in the long run.
Here are a few goals you can set for Black Friday:
- Increase email leads.
- Create opportunities for return customers.
- Sign up more loyalty program members.
- Promote future sales occurring throughout the holiday season.
Coming up with a sales and marketing plan with specific goals helps you decide what to focus on if you're feeling overwhelmed.
Create a customer loyalty program
Although Black Friday success is often measured by how many sales are made, it's often more sustainable for small businesses to create repeat customers. With a customer loyalty program, your shoppers feel like they belong to something and will turn to your brand, even when another business has something for sale at a lower price. Why? Because you have established a relationship with the customer through loyalty program discounts, rewards, and other special offers.
To increase sign-ups for your loyalty program, launch it via a pre-Black Friday email marketing campaign. Establish different tiers of loyalty and associated perks and demonstrate your program's value by offering "welcome" rewards or points immediately upon sign-up.
You can also put your loyalty program front and center of your storefront and/or website, so new customers have the opportunity to join.
Plan email marketing and social media campaigns
Utilizing email marketing campaigns is a great way to inform your customer base about your upcoming Black Friday deals. This approach enables businesses to show their appreciation to existing clientele while fostering loyalty through personalized, informative, and valuable emails to those on your mailing list. Using loyalty discounts and exclusive offers in these emails can entice customers, increasing customer satisfaction and sales.
Since consumers are bombarded with email advertisements during the holiday season, it's important to remain top of mind. To help ensure customers read your emails, avoid sending a single email full of information. Instead, distribute information about your sale across multiple emails, stagger their send times, and establish a sense of urgency to encourage engagement.
To make the most of social media, experiment with ads. Target local audiences by running ads for those in specific locations — such as key ZIP codes, cities, or states. Dynamic ads are another effective option, as they remarket to audiences who have already shown interest in specific products. You can also make additional sales on social media using services such as Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop.
[Read more: Marketing Insights to Spur Sales This Holiday Season]
Offer steep discounts
If you want to attract new customers this year, you need to be willing to offer steep discounts. Of course, the exact discount depends on your industry and what your competitors are offering. Whatever you can provide, however, can make a big impact on sales: Research from CivicScience reported that 57% of U.S. shoppers use digital coupons, which you can use to your advantage this holiday shopping season.
Review your point-of-sale system
Businesses need to accept as many payment options as possible. That includes accepting credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, and contactless payments at the bare minimum.
Using a point-of-sale (POS) system like Square allows you to accept all of these payment types through one terminal. You also have the option to email or print receipts, and the analytics dashboard will give you insights into your transactions, among other POS system features.
You might also consider using your POS system's embedded payment provider rather than a payment system connected via APIs. This streamlines transactions for customers and ensures a quick and easy checkout experience, strengthening consumer trust while allowing you to gather valuable consumer data and insights to guide decision-making.
[Read more: How to Choose a POS System for Your Small Business]
Check your inventory
Check your inventory levels in advance and make sure you have adequate stock of your most popular items so you don't sell out during the Black Friday rush.
If you sell items online and through a retail store, you might offer your customers an additional incentive to shop in-store. Encouraging in-store shopping helps you move more products, it reduces your delivery services, and it makes inventory management easier.
Add new or exclusive products
Drum up excitement on Black Friday by unveiling an exclusive or new product. If you tease the release of a new product or one that is only available for a limited time, shoppers will want to see it immediately.
Try posting on social media platforms and your website a couple of months before Black Friday to get the word out about your new or exclusive product. You will want to continually tease these products across all of your marketing efforts so the buzz carries from one potential buyer to another. The sense of urgency can create more foot traffic — whether online or in person – and boost sales.
Your business may not be able to replicate Amazon or Target, but studying their promotional strategies can help you come up with additional ideas.
Hire additional staff early
If you need additional staff to help out on Black Friday, start hiring now. Ideally, you can look at your sales data from previous years and determine the number of people needed to operate smoothly. If you've had seasonal help in the past, pull their résumés and see if they are interested in returning this year. You can even offer current staff a bonus for seasonal help referrals.
Remember, the most important thing about hiring seasonal staff is to be transparent, both about the terms of employment and the standards they are expected to follow. As long as your expectations are clear, your seasonal staff should be on the same page and not expect to work after the holiday season.
Make shopping from a mobile device easy
Black Friday shopping doesn't only occur in brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, 90.6 million people shopped online on Black Friday in 2023, according to the National Retail Federation. Since most people have internet access at their fingertips, make sure that for those using a mobile device, the process is user-friendly and that your website is easy to navigate.
To help mobile shoppers, consider fewer steps to make a purchase, mobile-friendly payment options, and larger buttons to make navigation clear. Test your mobile commerce site well in advance of Black Friday so you have ample time to address any issues that potential buyers may experience.
Ensure your website is up to par
No matter how much you think your business's website is equipped to handle a shopping rush, it doesn't hurt to test it. In addition to ensuring your website can accommodate multiple shoppers at a time, it’s a good idea to enhance page speed to ensure you don't lose potential buyers. While assessing your website, review your website's security measures and strengthen them as necessary.
If you're looking to take your web shopping experience to the next level, consider incorporating an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot to help users more easily find what they are looking for. A chatbot can make purchase suggestions based on customers' browsing history.
Devise a plan for shipping
During Black Friday, shipping companies charge higher rates due to increased volume, but many consumers expect a business to provide free shipping — and those that don't may lose customers to competitors that offer free shipping. Therefore, strategically offering free shipping to customers who purchase above a certain threshold can be an effective strategy to garner additional revenue while fulfilling customers' needs.
If free shipping is not possible, offer a deal to customers who are willing to pick up their orders in-store — doing so could lead to additional sales as consumers browse the store during pickup. Plus, your small business can save on shipping costs.
Make search engine optimization a priority
To successfully boost your rankings and gain traction online, as well as target customers, businesses should prioritize better search engine optimation (SEO). However, the sooner you start, the better, as it may take time before you see SEO-related results.
Observe your landing and product pages to find areas for improvement. Tactics for improving SEO include revamping copy or adding search terms that align with your target audience and the shopping holiday. Then, take time to confirm that your website accurately lists relevant company information, including store hours, policies, contact information, and location.
Strengthen your customer support
The Black Friday shopping season is a great time for businesses to attract new customers, but with more patrons come additional questions and concerns that require additional resources to address. To prepare, businesses should ensure they have enough staff that can handle additional requests promptly — otherwise, customers will shop with competitors who can help.
Meet customer expectations through various channels, including in-store and telephone support, as well as online support via live chat, email, and social media. Be sure to update your website's FAQs, which can help answer some consumers' questions without additional resources.
[Read more: How to Sign Up for the Small Business Saturday 'Shop Small' Map]
Watch what bigger companies are doing
Your business may not be able to replicate Amazon or Target, but studying their promotional strategies can help you come up with additional ideas. How are these companies marketing their Black Friday deals, and what tactics are customers responding to?
For instance, in addition to highlighting its daily deals, Amazon provides holiday gift guides for its customers. Offering a gift guide can be a great way to draw attention to products that your customers may be unaware of.
Keep it simple
Finally, while it always helps to learn from more prominent retailers, you shouldn't copy their efforts. Come up with one or two sales you want to focus on and invest your energy into executing them well.
Keeping your plans simple will ensure you can provide a positive experience for customers and avoid unnecessary mistakes. It also makes it easier for you to build buzz and continue these efforts throughout Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
[Read more: Maximize Your E-Commerce Potential This Cyber Monday]
This article was originally written by Jamie Johnson and Miranda Fraraccio.
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