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Essential Tips For Preparing Your Business For Black Friday

  • Written By Livie
  • Posted September 8, 2015
  • 4 minutes Read Time

As we talked about yesterday, Black Friday 2015 is set to smash records and shows what a force the day has become in the consumer diary. If you own a business, predominantly one in the retail industry, then you will most probably want to have the best preparation to hand that you can possibly have. Take a look at our essential tips for preparing your business for Black Friday, so that everyone’s a winner!

1Determine Your Last-Minute Sales Goals

The great thing about Black Friday is that it opens the door to a large number of prospective and existing customers who are interested in what you have to sell. The primary question is: How much do you think you can sell on Black Friday? Without a sales forecast, it will be hard for you to guide your company in the right direction. You might not have enough inventory, which would result in lost sales. Equally troublesome, you might have to deal with frustrated customers because you didn’t increase your part-time holiday workforce.

2.  Prepare Yourself And The Staff

You might think this only applies to people who have a physical store, but if you run through a combination of eCommerce and high street outlets then you’ll need to be ready. Make sure everyone is able to handle the influx of extra customers, whether that be through an organisation of handling the orders flying in online or at the till. Get extra people in to help get things sorted with you if need be. On Black Friday, the consumer will get frustrated when they have to wait, and they will go elsewhere if your website isn’t up to scratch with handling the influx.

Take the time to examine any historical Black Friday sales results you’ve had and come up with a realistic number for this year’s event. This will make it far easier when it comes to determining your inventory, workforce, payroll, equipment, and marketing needs. Producing an accurate Black Friday sales forecast will see you reap the benefits once the day is done and dusted.

3.  Is Your Website Ready?

Making intermittent updates to your company website will allow your page to remain optimised for consumer searches as well as highlighting that your website is active, rather than unattended and idle for potential customers. Try promoting your Black Friday deals and, however painstaking it may be, offering extended store hours is always a sound strategy for online marketing success. Ensure you’ve advertised these extended hours, as well as a good selection of images of the products that will be on sale, on your homepage. And don’t forget to promote your upcoming Black Friday mega-deals through your social media channels. Underestimate the power of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram at your peril! If you need one of our Magento eCommerce developer’s to help with your platform prior to the day, please do not hesitate to contact us at Media Lounge.

4.  Check The Stock, Then Check Again!

You may have noticed that the consumer is even more demanding than ever these days. The expectancy on quality, low priced products accompanied with a flawless shopping experience is the norm, and if you don’t meet these expectations, then you’ve almost certainly lost yourself a sale. Make no mistake that on Black Friday customers will be ruthless, so don’t miss out! Heaven forbids that you are out of stock, as this would be a total error. Make sure you’re stocked up prior to the Black Friday weekend, essentially.

5.  Last-minute Black Friday campaigns at the ready!

You will no doubt hear and see integrated marketing campaigns from the big players across every possible media avenue, with smaller and local businesses also allocating funds to promote their Black Friday deals; you should do this too. The consumer you are aiming to appeal to will be fully exposed to thousands of marketing messages every day in the build-up to the big day, so you should make sure that your last-minute marketing efforts really stand out from all the other ones, and be price-driven. Make people want to choose you over a competitor.