Prepare your store for Black Friday with this survival guide!
Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) is full of opportunities for retailers to fatten their bottom line, which is why it’s important to prepare your store for Black Friday! It’s the lead up to the biggest holiday shopping season… Christmas.
According to the National Retail Federation (NFR), as many as 147 million U.S consumers will shop on the day this year (2018). Spending is expected to reach €682 billion! In 2017 over the black Friday and Cyber Monday 4 day weekend, a total of £7.78bn was spent in the UK, according to VoucherCodes!
With crazy figures like that it’s important you prepare your store for Black Friday! So we’re going to share our Black Friday Survival Guide for Retailers.
Gear up early
The success to any event, is organisation. According to NFR research, many shoppers begin their holiday shop as early as October, meaning the earlier you start your own preparations for the holiday, the better.
This means everything from deciding what deals to offer and how long you’ll last, to devising your marketing strategy. Don’t forget about a contingency plan! This refers to what you’ll do in case of a website crash or delayed product shipment.
Also, test the speed and mobility of your website to ensure that the host server can handle spikes in online traffic.
You’ll need to let your customers know in advance about the kind of offers you will be having so that they can start saving or telling their friends/family, because the more sales the better!
Sales and Advertising
If you’re a slightly larger Retail store with an online presence, it’s important that your services don’t go unnoticed. You’ll need to assess your recent sales charts and determine how much stock you will need in preparation for the Black Friday weekend and then Christmas!
Not to mention, promoting your deals and services through advertising and social media. You could run paid ad’s on different social media platforms with different demographics so you’re promoting your products to a specific audience that you want to target. Send out MailChimp emails to local/frequent customers to inform them about your deals. Be sure to tell your customers why they should shop at your store during this shopping period.
Merchandise demand
As mentioned above, during this crazy holiday, the product demand is going to go through the roof! Everyone’s going to be trying to get the best deals and the cheapest products so your inventory better be filled to the brim and your restock employees need to be on the ball! Additionally, ask yourself what the hottest new items in your retail category are and be certain to have sufficient quantities of these items on your shelves.
Seasonal Staff
Being the busiest shopping period of the year, it would make sense to have a backlog of temporary and seasonal staff to help customers complete their purchases quickly. Train your new employees so they are just as prepared as your fulltime staff and use your current staff to help keep an eye on the ‘newbies’.
Extra Services
Did you know that 81% of customers pay in cash at convenience stores? So wouldn’t it be ideal if you were offering those customers easy access to cash? With an in-store ATM you could increase your stores footfall and sales revenue! Cash Machine users go onto spend 65% more in store! Offer your customers a convenient additional service today with a YourCash ATM!
If you want to find out more about the benefits of an ATM take a look at this blog. Or you can take a chance and contact us…
T: 0800 032 0707 / E: info@yourcash.com
Black Friday is one of the most important shopping days of the whole retail year! So make sure you’re prepared and ready for the carnage and you’ll have much to be thankful for later. Good luck!
You know what’s next after Black Friday right? Christmas! So if you’re looking for ways to prepare your shop for Christmas, you can take a look at this blog, we know… we’ve got it all!
