Black Friday is just one month away and whether you love it or think it’s all hype, as a business person you should be prepared to take full advantage. There are some really basic things that eBay seller or website retailer can do to make sure they maximise your Black Friday sales and profits and here are our top 7 tips:
1) Set up a Black Friday category on your website and eBay shop
This might sound pretty basic, but make it easy for shoppers to find the products you want them to buy and any special deals you have.
2) Prepare shop banners
Get banners and on eBay have promotion boxes ready to go live and link to your Black Friday shop categories. Having banners on your shop home page welcomes shoppers and let’s them know you’ve got deals ready for them. Even if you can’t offer deep discounts (or in fact any discounts), it’s worth decorating your shop front for the biggest retail day of the year.
3) Email Marketing
Send out email marketing or eBay Shop marketing ahead of the big day to prepare your customers and remind them that you’re here. Prompting them a couple of days early could pay dividends.
4) Populate your Black Friday category
Make sure you’ve stock ready to drop into your Black Friday category. Choose attractive merchandise (even if it’s not discounted!) which will appeal to impluse buyers or those looking to buy for Christmas presents. Flea Spray is one of the top products in Amazon’s Home & Garden category, it’s probably not what people are looking for on Black Friday!
5) Liquidate Aged Stock
Add all of your aged stock to your Black Friday promotions and consider deep discounts. It doesn’t matter that you paid £50 for an item a year ago, if it’s still sitting in your warehouse it’s already cost you that many times over. The more times you churn your money in the course of a year the more profitable you’ll be so cut your losses, sell at a knock down price and liquidate.
6) Bundle products
Create bundle listings, put products together into gift sets and increase your average basket size. People love gift sets and you may find they sell well even if you don’t discount the individual product prices. It’s an easy way to guide people towards great Christmas gifts and extract more money into the bargain.
7) Set up cross promotions
If you can offer discounts that don’t cost you money so much the better. Set up shipping promotions for all your Black Friday promoted products. Emphasis free shipping for additional products or larger monetary spend. Make sure the threshold for free shipping is just above the product price for the majority of items so that most buyers will have to buy expensive goods or preferably make multiple purchase orders.
Finally…. Know your margins
Make sure that you know your margins and only offer discounts where appropriate. It’s fine if you want to liquidate stock, but don’t put up a blanket 20% discount only to find that you’re losing money.
One Response
Good tips. Right or wrong, looks like this Amercian import is here to stay so we might as well make the best of it