Black Friday is just over three weeks away, which means that if you’re running an online shop, there’s a good chance you’ve been planning for it for months.
Or you’ve just looked at the calendar and realised it’s November already. In which case, don’t worry – you’ve still got time!
For plenty of retailers, Black Friday is one of the most important dates in the year.
It’s an opportunity to attract new customers, reward existing ones and generate a decent amount of business before Christmas.
And there’s quite a lot to think about beyond deciding what discount to offer.
Making sure you’ve got enough stock, checking your website and checkout are working properly, planning your emails and advertising, and working out whether the offers you’re running will actually make you any money.
That last one is fairly important.
But I wonder how many service-based businesses have ever considered doing something for Black Friday?
It’s easy to assume it’s only relevant if you’re selling televisions, clothes or Christmas presents, but I don’t see why that should necessarily be the case.
If you’re a training company, perhaps you could offer an extra session with courses booked for January.
If you run a beauty salon, you might put together a package of treatments.
Or if you’re a consultancy, perhaps there’s something additional you could offer to people who commit to a project before Christmas.
It doesn’t have to mean reducing your prices either.
In fact, for some businesses, discounting probably isn’t the right approach at all.
But offering something a little different, adding some extra value or simply giving people a reason to make a decision they’ve been putting off could work rather well.
And don’t forget about the people who’ve already bought from you.
Your existing customers are often the easiest people to have these conversations with, particularly if there’s something else you offer that they might find useful.
Of course, you don’t have to do anything for Black Friday. Plenty of businesses won’t, and that’s absolutely fine.
But if you’ve got an idea for an offer, a package or a promotion that might appeal to your customers, why not give it a go?
Just make sure you’ve worked out the numbers, given yourself enough time to tell people about it and made it easy for them to take you up on it.
After all, there’s not much point putting together a brilliant Black Friday offer if nobody knows it exists.
And if you’re only just starting to think about it now, you’ve still got three weeks to get something organised.
Which is probably enough time, provided you don’t spend the first two weeks deciding what to call it.
If you’re thinking about running a Black Friday promotion and could do with a hand planning it or getting it in front of the right people, just reply to this email.
We’re always happy to have a chat and see where we might be able to help.
