Black Friday: How to make the shopping holiday work for your brand

Black Friday is becoming more and more popular in Australia, with a recent Finder survey showing that 6.8 million Australians are planning on indulging in the shopping holiday.

With a predicted $3.8 billion to be spent, it’s clearly a huge opportunity for small businesses — which is why the lady-brains podcast recently sat down with digital marketing and e-commerce expert Gabriella Singh to find out how SMEs and founders can deliver their best Black Friday campaign this year.

In the transcript from the lady-brains podcast episode below, hosts Anna Mackenzie and Caitlin Judd chat with Singh about the reason Black Friday is growing in Australia, and the many different ways in which SMEs can make sales work for their brands.

Key takeaways

1. It could become your best move

   Australian retailers had more success on Black Friday in 2020 than they did on Boxing Day, and that trend is set to continue

2. Make it work for you

   Black Friday sales don’t have to be called “Black Friday sales”. You can rename the sale day to work for your brand with something that aligns with your customer

3. Consider your marketing budget

   Brands that have a large marketing budget and brands that don’t can both participate in Black Friday, but the campaign will look different – and target different customers

4. Friday doesn’t mean start-day

   Your Black Friday campaign should start a lot earlier than Friday. Brands can get away with launching campaigns on Monday, and sending emails every day that week. 

lady-brains: Unsure if Black Friday is right for your brand?

Anna Mackenzie

So can you tell us a little bit about the opportunity that is Black Friday. It’s huge in the US, but it’s also becoming big here, too.

Gabriella Singh

Yes. And that’s the thing, especially post COVID-19, in this new world that we live in, it has never been more relevant.

So what’s interesting is that Citibank actually acknowledged that, last year, Black Friday had phenomenal results for Australian retailers in a way that Boxing Day actually didn’t. And there are multiple reasons for that.

Not only is it more of an e-commerce first event now compared to in the 90s and in the early 2000s (it was a very in-store event), but also with supply chain issues and the fact that people want to be able to shop at the right prices for Christmas gifts. It’s just a no-brainer that it would become the more dominant sales event for businesses over something like Boxing Day.

Anna Mackenzie

It’s really interesting. I think there’s a perception in Australia that it’s kind of a tacky sales holiday, like a tacky sales campaign. But what I think is interesting is we’ve spoken a lot about the fact that brands can participate in Black Friday in a way that still aligns with their brand values and doesn’t devalue their position in the eyes of the customer.

Gabriella Singh

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, especially for smaller brands, I can definitely understand how people might have that perception when big retailers are participating.

But as a small business founder or medium business founder, you have such a phenomenal opportunity to brand your sales event to align with your brand values, whether that is something like authenticity and connection, and really just take an opportunity.

I would recommend putting on your consumer hat, and think from their point of view; acknowledge them and their loyalty and their engagement and their passion for your product. And it’s really more about how you can support them.

Caitlin Judd

Yeah, I definitely think that that is one way to go about engaging in Black Friday. I know we have a coaching client who has a jewelry brand. And her product is a premium, high-end product. She was concerned that participating in Black Friday would in fact devalue the product itself and her brand. And so we spoke about that.

We said, you know, why don’t you find a way that you can participate that aligns with your brand. And her brand is all about bravery. So we’ve kind of renamed it brave Friday. And it’s a way for her to be able to honor her community, and to give thanks to her community for sticking by her over the last 18 months through, you know, a really tough time. And so that’s how she’s going to participate – it might look like a discount, but it may also not look like a discount.

And I want to talk about: what are some of the other approaches [and] some of the other offers that you can, in fact, give your community without having to discount?

Gabriella Singh

Yep. And this is such a great question [and] I think a lot of people don’t realise this. So I feel like this is a really valuable nugget.

But there’s so many different ways you can put together a different promotion for Black Friday. So it isn’t just site wide discounts. It’s special bundles, like curating a mix of your special products and having them at a limited price that is only available for that window; it is developing a gift with purchase, something, again, that maybe that’s limited time only, or comes with key products that are best sellers… And yeah, again, just creating limited time offers through different product structures, like a buy one, get one free.

I remember Steve Madden, last year, the shoe brand, would do a bonus gift with purchase, which was a co-branded partnership with Alex and Annie, a jewelry brand. So you can really just get creative, and then crunch the numbers.

Anna Mackenzie

Haha, well, that leads us into our second lesson when it comes to Black Friday Gab, which is to start with your sales target and work backwards.

Gabriella Singh

A lot of times in life, when we set goals for ourselves, it can be really, really daunting, because what if we fail? We always have that in the back of our mind. But we equally know that it is so important to set those targets that are a little bit of a stretch, because it’s worthwhile to prove it to yourself and really push yourself to that next level.

So when it comes to setting a sales target, we go through this in the course, but I recommend starting with the numbers [and] set a realistic sales target.

Maybe it’s something that’s 10%, maybe it’s 25% above what you’ve already done in the past, and then work backwards to figure out how you’re going to get there. So that would be looking at like, what kinds of products are you going to sell? How much of each product are you going to sell? That’s going to make up that sales target. Then say 10-12% of the revenue number you plan to hit should then go to marketing, because the idea is that you spend money to make money.

So your marketing budget isn’t just an arbitrary number that you put together. It should be that, for example, if you’re planning to make $100,000 then $10,000 in marketing will be what contributes to that $100,000 sales target. Working backwards is key when you don’t know how you’re going to get to a goal. Always work backwards.

Caitlin Judd

Can you tell us where you are spending that money from a marketing perspective? I’m really interested to learn if you’ve got some tips and tools and tactics of what’s working during this time?

Gabriella Singh

I think it’s important to look at what you can do if you don’t have a budget, and what you can do if you do have a budget. So if you didn’t have much of a budget, you would be wanting to spend most of your time and energy on what we call your ‘owned channels’. And so that is where your email list for example, your social media community, that is where your engaged followers live, and your past and current customers. And so therefore, they are almost at the lowest end of the funnel and they’re already well aware of your brand and much more easily able to convert.

Then, if you did have a bit of a marketing budget, you’d be able to spend some of that money more at the top of that funnel. So increasing your brand awareness to try and find new like minded customers that you can then help educate, you can help drive that consideration with your key brand messaging, and really convert them with your amazing Black Friday offer once that goes live.

Anna Mackenzie

Okay, so we’ve defined the Black Friday offer, we’ve made sure it aligns with our brand values, we’ve set the sales target, we’ve crunched the numbers, we’ve worked backwards, we know how much money we’ve got to spend, we know where we’re going to spend it… What next?

Gabriella Singh

This is my biggest tip coming from the US that I think a lot of Australian brands do not realise, and I’m talking if, you know, major Australian brands that you love that have participated in Black Friday, they probably don’t even realise this…you need to start your Black Friday planning and campaign earlier than the Friday. It does not start on Friday anymore.

It really starts Monday, Tuesday, to be honest, really a Monday to a Tuesday launch — you want to get that share of wallet early in the week. That’s it, it’s a very crowded week, you can imagine brands sending out emails every single day, which is permissible during Black Friday. The rules are different.

So that is my biggest recommendation: please don’t wait until Friday, because you’re missing out on potential sales.

CREDITS

Hosts: Anna Mackenzie & Caitlin Judd from the lady-brains podcast
Guest: Gabriella Singh

Listen to the lady-brains podcast on Apple, Spotify or iHeartRadio.