Historically, Black Friday marked the kick off of Christmas sales. It’s a day on the calendar that followed Thanksgiving and the reason for it being called “Black Friday” was all the tyre marks that shoppers left on the road after they’d driven into town to grab themselves a bargain.
Not surprisingly, marketers leveraged this and converted the holiday into an online shopping opportunity and Black Friday and Cyber Monday was created.
Our clients have had significant success with Black Friday in the past:
- A client generated €1,000 PER MINUTE in revenue at launch during a Black Friday campaign.
- Another campaign generated over $US200,000 in just one weekend.
- And a client returned 22x ROAS on Facebook ads during Q4 promotions.
In 2018, Shopify merchants processed over $1.5B in sales over the BFCM 4 day period. Over $573M of that was on Black Friday alone. Close to 11,000 orders and $37M in sales was processed per minute during the peak sales time.
But… we’re predicting this year might be different.
Australians spent $50.46 Billion online in 2020 up 57% year-on-year and this year continues to grow. Australia Post just employed 4,000 additional people to keep up with demand and will be delivering on weekends for the rest of the year. Australia Post has been urging customers to do their Christmas shopping early this year, to avoid disappointment in delayed shipping times. Also, Covid has given people the opportunity to get super organised for Christmas shopping (because, what else are we going to do in lock down?!)
You may have noticed that online stores are updating their schedules to align with this and have been talking about Christmas already.
And, we are actually recommending against doing a Black Friday sale.
What are we recommending instead?
- Go early and have your one big promotion at the end of October or early November.
- Communicate to your customers that this is your one and only promotion before Christmas to create urgency.
In regards to the type of promotion you should be having, we recommend keeping it super simple.
Work out an offer that is irresistible to your audience AND works for your business.
The most popular offers are:
- Site-wide discounts
- Specific product discounts
- Coupon codes
- Free shipping on all orders
- Free shipping by order value
Plan ahead
Most ecommerce brands start planning in Q3. We held a Q4 planning workshop for our eComm Club members in August.
If the year has gotten away from you and you’re only reading this in October, it’s not too late to capitalise on Q4!
If you’d like a safe space to brainstorm ideas or workshop your strategy, come join our free group for Unstoppable eCommerce Entrepreneurs.
Megan Winter
Megan is an inspiring, brilliant and fun digital marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.
Megan loves helping purpose-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact.
