Should your B2B business run a Black Friday promotion?
This year, 27th November will be Black Friday, one of the biggest days for sales and shopping in the pre-Christmas calendar. For many businesses, this is one of the most important days of the year, and that may be especially true this year due to the economic slump caused by the global pandemic.
But for service-based and B2B businesses, the question of whether to run a promotion for Black Friday is a tricky one. Can you run an effective campaign if you don’t sell physical products? What might a B2B business offer instead? If you’re pondering these questions right now, let us inspire you with a few ideas about how to run a Black Friday promotion for a B2B business.
You don’t need physical products
The key to any Black Friday promotion is discounts, and while we usually associate Black Friday with the slashing of prices for physical goods, that doesn’t have to be the case. Whatever your business offers, whether it’s a service, a subscription or a digital product, you can offer discounts for Black Friday. Also, online shopping extravaganza Cyber Monday (30th November) follows hot on the heels of Black Friday, so if your business is in the digital sector, you could combine your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions into one long weekend.
Focus on impulse purchases
With so many discounts on offer, Black Friday sales rely heavily on impulse purchases – customers typically visit retailers to see what bargains they have, rather than with a particular product in mind. So for your B2B Black Friday promotion, try to apply discounts to things that could be considered impulse purchases, such as less expensive products and one-off or short-term services.
Add sensible limits
Discounted products can be sold and shipped quite quickly, but if your business is offering a service for Black Friday, you’ll need to add some limits to give you time to fulfil the services your clients buy. For instance, you could offer a discount only to the first 50 or 100 customers, or keep the offer open for a limited time; you could also make it clear that the service will be fulfilled within a certain number of months, rather than right away. Ultimately you must ensure that if you sell 100% of your discounted services, you will be able to meet your obligations in a timely way.
Think about your profits
The main reason for running a Black Friday promotion is to give your business a boost in sales before the end of the year, so before you do anything, make sure that what you’re offering still gives you a reasonable profit margin. If you’re going to have to work overtime to fulfil your orders and not see a decent profit or a surge in new customers in return, it’s probably not worth it, so always make sure that your promotion will have a positive effect on your B2B business overall.
Do you need help running your Black Friday promotion? Get Ahead VA has a team of professional virtual assistants who can offer support with everything from planning to social media promotion, so your Black Friday will be a success. To find out more about how we can help, get in touch today on 01483 332 230, or email office@getaheadva.com.
