7 reasons why you can't afford to not offer a Black Friday sale
Last year’s Black Friday took everyone by surprise. Sales were 30% higher than estimated, overwhelming some retailers and carriers who weren’t prepared. £810 million was spent in a single day, making Black Friday the biggest retail day of the year – overtaking Boxing Day for the first time ever.
And this year is expected to be 30% bigger again.
So here are 7 reasons why we think you can’t afford to skip Black Friday this year.
1. Take your cut of over £1bn
Yeah you read that right. That’s one whole billion pounds sterling, the amount estimated to be spent by UK shoppers on Black Friday 2015 by Experian-IMRG. And you deserve a cut, don’t you?
0.000001% of £1bn is £1,000. Your store accounting for just 0.000001% of sales during Black Friday doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch does it? And surely the £1,000 in sales is worth the effort.
Okay, so we’ve oversimplified things a bit there, more work goes into a Black Friday sale than just deciding to offer one, but the benefits well outweigh the cost – especially for a company placing orders on-demand who don’t need to order stock in anticipation of sales.
2. Black Friday is just the start
The same prediction by Experian-IMRG estimates almost £950mil in sales on Cyber Monday and over £725mil on Manic Monday. Factor in your small drop-shipping business as being responsible for 0.000001% of those sales again and that’s another £1,675 in sales for another two days work.
It’s not even that much extra work either. First, extend your store sale over these days, possibly offering exclusive deals on different days to keep customers checking back. Second, make sure your marketing materials tell customers what to expect during your Black Friday sale.
3. Black Friday sales figures have taken over Boxing Day
Once upon a time shoppers flocked to high streets and shopping centres on Boxing Day to take advantage of the post-Christmas sales. Now technology is taking over, and when someone can shop from their sofa, with their curtains drawn, sat in their y-fronts and eating Nutella from the jar they’re probably going to.
The experts are predicting a drop in sales after Christmas because of the 31% rise in sales throughout the Black Friday period. That means if you’re not getting involved you might find yourself taking less money than during the holiday period last year.
4. The average Black Friday shopper profile
Apparently the average shopper typically has a family with children and a salary of around £50k+. Doesn’t that sound like the type of person you’d like shopping from your store?
Around the holidays family members are thinking about gifts to buy their loved ones, meaning if you’re offering products for men, women and children then you might just have something they’re looking for. Plus if you do make a sale and the customer loves your product they’re likely to return, bringing that £50k+ salary with them.
The average Black Friday shopper is also a Facebook user and regular consumer of online content, so an aggressive and cleverly targeted Facebook Ad could scoop up plenty of sales.
5. Even if they don't buy, these shoppers are still valuable
Because if they're interested in your brand but don't buy you can collect their email addresses instead. Black Friday will see a surge in shoppers heading online to find the best deals possible. Well targetted marketing will bring some of this traffic to your site, and maybe they're only curious for now and would rather spend their money on cheap technology instead of clothing for now, a well timed email a week after visiting you might just trigger a sale.
6. There’s huge demand, but not much panic about shipping
That sounds a little strange, but it’s true – Black Friday customers are either shopping for gifts for Christmas or shopping for something for themselves. Either way, shipping is not a priority. There’s a whole month between Black Friday and Christmas for their products to arrive, and if it’s something for themselves there’s unlikely to be a deadline for it to arrive.
What’s more, customers expect there to be acceptable levels of delays. This means you don’t need to panic if you do get a large volume of orders. Sure, Black Friday sales clog up the shipping infrastructure but there’s plenty of time to get everything delivered.
So here’s a chance for your small business to shine: with Inkthreadable handling order fulfillment you don’t need to worry about anything once you’ve passed the order on to our team. We aim to stick to our 3-5 working day turn-around time, come hell or high water, so when your customer’s t-shirt turns up quicker than they expected during the busiest shopping and shipping period of the year you’re going to impress.
7. Inkthreadable are having a Black Friday sale too
Our sale is a little different because it isn’t geared at shifting as many products to as many customers as possible, or even trying to attract new customers to our drop-shipping service. Our sale is for you.
You might be apprehensive about slashing prices on some of your most popular products and losing profit in the process, so we’re offering a discount on every single item ordered on demand during the Black Friday period, from 12 noon on Friday 27th November to 12 noon on Tuesday 1st December 2015.
