With 50 days to go, it’s time to start planning for Black Friday!

With just 50 days to go, it is important to start building our 2019 Black Friday sales campaigns. Due to both the size of the event and consumer expectations, the value of getting things right during both Black Friday and Cyber Monday is colossal. Plus, if you think we're starting too early, Selfridges launched a Christmas shop on 29th July, with a staggering 149 days to go!

You'll probably be unsurprised to hear that Black Friday has quickly grown to become one of the largest sales events of the year, thanks to its concision with the start of Christmas shopping. Based on recent year-over-year growth, it would be a safe bet to suggest that revenue will continue to grow at a rapid scale this year. In 2018, UK consumers spent over £7bn over the weekend, which is a huge increase from the £4.5bn spent in 2017. Additionally, 64% of adults shopped over the weekend in 2018, compared to just 36% in 2017. This year, Black Friday will fall on 29th November, with Cyber Monday just three days later on 2nd December. Though, many retailers will likely host sales events that typically start early and continue after the weekend as well. Here are some things that you can start to think about as Black Friday weekend starts to approach.

Your sales offers

The first thing to acknowledge when planning for Black Friday is that you almost certainly will not be the only company in the industry that is running promotions. Therefore, you need to make sure that you get your offers right to stand out and leave a lasting impact on your customers. Start by identifying specific products or service packages that you would be willing to sell at a reduced rate. These could be products that are in high demand, recently released products or items that sell consistently well. After identifying these items, you'll want to start thinking about the incentives that you attach to them.

There are many different incentives that you could offer to your customers. Some of the methods that you could use include standard discount percentages, BOGOF, shipping discounts, two-for-one offers or volume discounts. Whatever you decide, just make sure that you go all in. As recently as 2016, 31% of British consumers believed that Black Friday deals were no better than those on offer during Christmas and Boxing Day. Whilst this figure may have decreased over the last few years, it is important to ensure that you are offering a "must not miss" type deal, otherwise, you run the risk of losing out as consumers may look elsewhere or wait for Christmas offers.

Marketing strategy

Another thing to consider is your 2019 Black Friday marketing strategy. There are many different ways that you can showcase your products and you may want to combine several or focus on one or two. Furthermore, if you have multiple products or services, then you may want to think about spreading out discounts and offers across the whole weekend to keep customers engaged. Your strategy will, of course, be influenced by the type of product or service that you offer, as well as the budget that you have to spend. Here are just a few ways that you could promote your Black Friday offers:

• Pay-per-click: A great way to promote your offers is by advertising via Google Ads, Bing Ads or another alternative. If you already have ads running, then all you need to do is change the description on some of your ads. You could use "Black Friday Discounts" or "Black Friday 2019" in the description, for example. If you are new to paid ads, then here's the Google tutorial. Make sure you set a realistic budget before you start!
• SMS marketing: You can send exclusive offers to your customers throughout Black Friday weekend by sending text messages directly to their inbox. SMS marketing costs as low as 1.6p per message sent.
• Social Media: An easy, free and self-explanatory way to promote your Black Friday offers is by posting content on your social media platforms. You also have the option to advertise via paid ads.
• Email marketing: Another great way to promote your offers is by sending out an email campaign. Using a platform such as MailChimp is easy and free if you have under 2,000 contacts.
• Other options: You could also consider other options such as influencer marketing, direct mail, billboards, TV & radio and more.

Evaluate previous performance

In preparation for this year, you should spend some time evaluating your Black Friday performances over the last few years (providing that you took part). Check out which products or services you offered discounts on, the incentives that were offered and how many sales you generated over the weekend. Additionally, you can evaluate how effective your marketing efforts were. You may want to check when you first started advertising before the event, as well as how frequently you promoted your offers and the time of day that you sent out marketing correspondence. Once you have all of this information, then you can determine what you did successfully and other things that you did which were not. This will allow you to make improvements and be better prepared when Black Friday 2019 comes around.

Start collecting data

Finally, the amount of customer data that you collect between now and November could have a big effect on the success of your Black Friday campaign. By building a sizable contact list, you will be able to regularly provide sales offers to your customers during both Black Friday weekend and in the future. And get this, your customers will be grateful for it. Recent studies show that 75% of consumers search in their inboxes just to look for relevant discounts. A great way to start collecting data is by creating a form on your website, which could be titled something like "Register here for exclusive Black Friday discounts". You can also collect data when customers are making a purchase, just be sure to include an opt-in option. Some of the data that you may want to collect include a telephone number, email address, date of birth and location.