The world has gone crazy for Black Friday, should you ride the wave of popularity and jump on this trend or ignore it and just act like it’s a normal day?
Last year £810 million was spent on Black Friday, now hailed as the biggest shopping day of the year in UK. This American phenomenon was only brought to the UK five years ago and has sent the nation deal crazy.
This year’s predications are set to bring in £1 billion of sales – but almost exclusively on reduced price items.
In yesterday’s post 5 Myths of Christmas Marketing I ask if you can afford to compete with the retail giants slashing prices on high end electrical goods and whether a sales campaign at this time of year is in line with your business objectives.
But on a more practical level – if everyone is promoting Black Friday – how do you stand out from all that noise?
Some retailers like Amazon have been running a black week sending out a special offer ever day this week. This is proving popular in high street stores to reduce the amount of craziness as people pile into shops for one day offers – hunger crazed for a bargain.
Purple Parking’s alternative was a Purple Tuesday offer – which I quite liked for novelty and getting out there before some of the Friday offers.
Is it a risk to not have a Black Friday sale and loose customer pounds to other retailers, or would your customers come to you for your goods and services anyway because of your reputation and quality, is it a risk to squeeze your margins and reduce your prices?
If you choose not to have a Black Friday sale then you are in good company as Asda is instead offering low prices throughout November and December and avoiding the flash sale mentality that it was in the thick of last year.
I’d love to hear what you think and whether or not you have had success as a small business running a Black Friday campaign?
Black Friday will soon be red Friday if there’s no profit after all the advertising, additional stock & staff & all the huge discounts!
This year we will have a few good offers on carefully selected items – but not apply discount across the whole ranges
Totally agree Louise.
It’s not relevant to my client base and I just think there is so much overwhelm and traffic bombarding us left, right and centre. I personally switch off from it.
Some people love it – I’m not one of them!
I’d rather pay full price and have a nice shopping experience buying from local businesses or at least in a physical shop or store (hence why Monday the 12th is booked out for our annual train ride to Leeds Xmas shopping!)
Can’t wait to get into that new John Lewis store 🙂