Black Friday & Cyber Monday for Small Business
Small business owners send us questions about marketing via email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Here is a recent question someone sent to Gary Winchester about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for small businesses.
Is it important for small businesses to offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals?
Whenever I answer a question like this I like to find out one thing first. What are your business goals? In this I will assume the business goal is to increase sales short term and gain long term customers. Just to be clear, not all small businesses should offer Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals. First let’s discuss the difference between Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday deals.
The deals a small business should offer on Black Friday should be reserved for in store purchases only, while Cyber Monday deals should be reserved for online purchases only. Determining which products are reserved for in store and which ones for online is really up to you.
My recommendation is to use sales analytics to determine which type of products sell best in store, which sell best online and which ones don’t. Then I highly recommend mixing them up, offering a few that do great and a few that don’t. While also offering a deal that is just crazy enough to gain traction for the day and continue to build momentum the months that follow.
Now that we have clarified the difference between the two and I gave my product recommendations I’d like to talk about marketing for the sale and moving forward. Just keep in mind this is will not be in-depth recommendations for marketing since I am trying to keep this short and simple.
Since Black Friday is this week and Cyber Monday is a week from today, honestly you don’t have time for marketing this year, but this will apply for next year.
When marketing a sale like these, meaning a yearly sale, I highly recommend giving yourself a minimum of 60 days but 90 days would be best. This gives you time to utilize multiple marketing avenues. The avenues I highly recommend for 2014 are email, mobile and social.
Email marketing is a great way to not just keep in touch with customers, but to give them insider deals. Treating emails, or Enewsletters, as a way to give them some insider news, behind the scenes type of info, something you would not tell every customer.
Mobile marketing is a must for 2014. Mobile sales are on the rise, breaking the $14 billion dollar mark in 2013 and expended to reach about $18 billion in 2014. There are several ways to market your business on mobile devices, from an app to a text messages. I highly recommend a Mobile Web App, giving you a mobile presence.
Social marketing in 2014 will be the way stay connected with your customers online and even offline. Using it correctly to build and maintain relationships is key to the future of marketing your business. These relationships will increase sales and allow you to guide traffic to your website.
For more information on how to utilize these avenues to maximize your marketing efforts in 2014 and assistance with next years Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals contact us at 877-494-9668. To discover what our Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals sign up here.