This year’s Black Friday falls on the 29th of November, just a couple of days away. In other parts of the world and particularly in South Africa, Black Friday is a huge phenomenon. Black Friday is a phenomenon that started off in the US and has been widely adopted the world over. It is a day on which goods and service providers offer alluring discounts, specials and a broad range of affordable deals for their customers. Despite South Africa being big on the Black Friday craze, Zimbabwe is still lagging behind with virtually no significant activity on Black Friday. In this article, I shall discuss how local businesses can and should capitalize on Black Friday. Before I get into that, let me just highlight a few important things:
Important Considerations To Note
There is a balance you must strike between amazing deals for the customers and being profitable at the same time. There are ways you in which you can achieve this and it takes you putting on your thinking cap to come up with witty packages. One of the ways to do this is by employing bundle pricing. Here is how it works, instead of selling items individually you can bundle them together and sell as a unit. This will give a semblance of convenience and value but you will be knowing you are realizing a profit. This is just one example; I highlighted it to show how you have to think outside the box in coming up with alluring offers, discounts or specials.
Discounts And Special Offers (and Such Like)
This makes up most of what Black Fridays is all about. This calls for meticulous modelling and calculations to ensure that the tenets of profitability are kept intact. I am well aware of the unstable state of the economy but that is no excuse for not thinking along the lines of discounts and special offers. As I usually tell people, “in the midst of all the noise, quietly discern what really matters”. There is definitely a way you can institute these strategies to drive sales for your business during this upcoming Black Friday. Think of how you can generate sales using, for instance, the buy 2 and get 1 free approach or buy 3 for the price of 2. Think of simple low-cost gifts that you can incentivise people with so that they spent more.
Establish Strategic Partnerships
The crux of Black Friday is generating buzz and drive sales throughout the day. One way to do this is by partnering with fellow or complementary goods or service providers that are popular. That way you drive sales for your goods or services by riding on the popularity wave of the strategic partner in question. It is not necessarily just a one-way street though because you can also drive sales for them in the process. After all, such strategic partnerships can essentially only be entered into once a symbiotic working relationship has been ascertained.
Contests And Giveaways
Figure out ways of conducting contests and giveaways on the day. This will not only generate interest in the participating products but it will generate a buzz that will draw people to your business. You could, for instance, say one can get a certain giveaway if they spend over a certain amount. You could say the first 100 customers to walk in and spent at least a certain amount will get a gift. Same thing for the contest you could target certain products and say that if one buys at least, say 3, of the participating products they enter into a draw that will be conducted on-site. These are examples I am just giving you so that you get the picture of how you should be thinking.
Clearance Sales
On this one, you will be earmarking mostly goods that have been in-store for too long. You could target products that are nearing expiration or breakages and the like. You price them lower but still getting a profit so that people scramble for them. If you can price them lower than other players yet with a profit still being attainable, that will be great.
Bundle Products
This is a term I have just put together to suggest taking two or more (even unrelated products) and selling them together at a discounted price. You could take a well-performing product and couple it with a poorly performing product. Since the poorly performing product obviously will not be popular, the prospects of possibly paying less for the popular one will encourage people to buy both. Your thinking process here is that you will be trying to push sales by smartly taking advantage of the popularity of well-performing products to drive sales of other products.
If you have just finished reading this article you should start acting immediately if you are interested. The best way for you to quickly and effectively generate awareness is by being all over social media. The majority of Zimbabweans are cash-strapped so any possibility for them to get something much cheaper is most welcome. If you carefully plan and coordinate a Black Friday sales drive you can realize remarkable returns in just one day. So start brainstorming and put your plans to the test. All the ways I have mentioned herein are nowhere near exhaustive; what I have done is to provoke you to think. There is absolutely no reason why the Black Friday craze should not become commonplace in Zimbabwe. Remember be alluring but in a profitable manner.
