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How to Prepare for Black Friday Sales

Black Friday is one of those big, epic retail days that’s followed by Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday and Black Friday give you an opportunity to liquidate product, and put things on sale that you have a lot of inventory on. What could you put on sale? What do you need to sell? Think of this as an amazing opportunity to move product.

Assess Your Marketing Budget

When thinking about Black Friday though, you have to think about what your marketing efforts are going to look like and how it’s really going to be met by the public. Do you have the budget to compete with the big guys when it comes to Facebook marketing? Do you have the budget to compete with the big guys when it comes to Instagram marketing? You need at least $100 a day or more to compete in this digital marketing during this specific time of the year, you should not do it.
Feel free to use all your organic channels to go ahead and support your sales. In fact, I even suggest being able to work concurrently with influencers or people in your social media space who are real brand ambassadors, and are fans of what you’re doing. They are going to be the best at promoting and telling everyone, “hey, this brand has a really cool sale going on.”

Make Sure Your Logistics Are Solid

When it comes to preparing your backend for logistics, you want to make sure you have enough inventory of the items that you are marking down. Don’t put the entire store on sale, it’ll look like you’re going out of business. Take some strategic products, mark them down, but make sure you have enough inventory, especially if you’re going to market it. Next, make sure you have the right shipping procedures and policies in place.

If you’re going to be putting some energy in marketing towards a holiday selling season such as Black Friday, you have to make sure that you’re going be able to ship these packages out on time. Maybe that means you hire a friend or get someone on board for a few hours to help you with fulfillment. You don’t want to let anyone down by not getting packages to them on time, for that special person, for that holiday present. Next, you want make sure you have the right boxes, and the right packaging. Someone who’s taking a chance and buying your product for the first time, even if it’s on sale, deserves an excellent customer service experience. Think about how your branding is going to translate across all of the purchases, whether they’re on sale or whether they’re full price.

You Can Skip Black Friday

Now lastly, you do not need to participate in Black Friday as a small business. You have the opportunity to break sales strategically and mark down and drive your business when you need it. Don’t feel like you necessarily need to fall in alignment because every other company out there is doing something for Black Friday.

I hope you get a lot of great ideas from this. Some other tips and tools can be found in the holiday sales planning guide, at scalingretail.com. I cover things like how you’re going to be able to plan your products a year out in advance, so you can take advantage of better markdowns. Ideas like product bundling are explained, taking best-selling products, putting them together, and putting them at a special price.

Need extra support? Feel free to get in touch. Start by booking your 30 minute initial consultation by emailing us at hello@scalingretail.com.