Is Your Business Prepared for Black Friday?

What do these three things have in common?

• The episode of “Friends” where Monica, Rachel and Phoebe all stand in line anxiously awaiting to plow through women to find Monica’s wedding dress at a discount Bridal Shop.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger’s journey to find the coveted Turbo-Man action figure for his kid’s Christmas present in “Jingle All the Way.”
• The scene from “Confessions of a Shopaholic” (skip to 0:55) where Isla Fischer’s character and another woman have a grueling death match over a pair of Gucci boots.

The answer? They are all situations you want to avoid in your business on Black Friday!

While your store might not have a mob scene like those three examples, you do still need to be prepared for Black Friday. Actually … do you remember the buzz about “Black Thursday” last year? Black Thursday referred to the fact that some stores open and release their sales the night before Black Friday. Each year, the times seem to get earlier and earlier, so make sure you check with the stores near you so your sales can be in line! Whether you are preparing your business for Black Friday or Black Thursday, check out these steps to ensure you are ready!

• Hire extra employees ahead of the holiday rush to make sure they are well-educated about your products and business practices before the Black Friday storm hits!
• Make out your staffing schedule for the Black Friday weekend in advance to make sure you will be fully-staffed.
• Make sure you have an inventory tracking strategy in place. This includes having extra inventory so you don’t run out of your most popular and profitable items.
• Start your holiday promotions early. Remember from our “12 Tips of Early Christmas Shopping” blog that each year, approximately 40% of consumers start their holiday shopping before Halloween! Need some assistance with time management? Check out this Holiday Marketing Timeline.
• Don’t just start your holiday promotions, start them with a BANG. No matter what industry your business is in, there will always be some amount of competition out there, and you want to make sure YOUR business stands out from the pack! If your business is amongst an array of other businesses in a strip or outlet mall, consider hanging a banner in your window that promotes your best sale to grab passersby eyes!

If you are an e-commerce business, you need to make sure your site is prepared as well! If you have an online business, you need to prepare for the “Black Friday” of e-commerce … Cyber Monday!

• Guide your visitors through the buying process, from beginning to end, in a logical and customer-friendly manner. Have clear and visible choices “above the fold” (the part of your site the visitor sees without having to scroll).
• Use quick-loading landing pages for temporary holiday promotions
• Reduce the amount of high-resolution images and video on your site in order to reduce loading time.

Whatever type of business yours falls into, you should be pulling out all the stops to market your holiday line! This includes using email marketing, social media marketing or even sending out a postcard via postal mail if that is something that has proved successful with your business in the past.

You and your business can’t afford to NOT tap into the millions of shoppers out on that holiday weekend. By tapping into this active, have-money-to-spend group, sales from these shoppers can help your business:

• Increase sales and profitability
• Widen your client base and stimulate new customer referrals
• Help you launch a new product and/or service
• Sell off old products
• Gather enough funds to hire an extra employee
• Provide extra cash to personally reward yourself such as with a family vacation

These five(ish) weeks, starting with Black Friday (or Black Thursday if you want to open your doors on Thanksgiving night), can either break your holiday season, OR make it the most successful you’ve had in years. Our suggestion? Take the steps necessary to go with the latter 🙂