From what I can remember, Black Friday has only seemed mega-popular in the UK over the past 3, 4 years or so. It was always massive in America, but it’s so great for UK business now that we have jumped on the band-wagon too!
According to consumer experts, Brits alone spent over £1.5 billion on Black Friday, and over £5 billion in total across surrounding days until Cyber Monday *(Cyber Monday is always the Monday that follows Black Friday). With the sales generated last year equating to £2.3 million per minute *, Black Friday is an event that every business must capitalise on, as if you don’t your consumers may wonder what’s going on and will definitely visit your competitors!
The best thing about Black Friday however is, the majority of businesses all run similar deals, therefore you’re not in competition about price. You’re instead battling it out for the best quality product, where your clients will feel that they have got their best Black Friday deal.
I know in a lot of our previous posts we don’t normally advise running big discounts, however this event is an exception! As the whole nation seems to go in to promo-mode, you’d be at a disadvantage if you didn’t discount also. Typically, from my visits to the high street across the Black Friday weekend, most companies offer 20-30% off their usual RRP. Therefore, you have to let it be known that you are participating in the event and also the offers that you are going to be running as you are up against the mass market.
So, what can you do to get the best out of Black Friday and still make a profit?
Weigh up what your trade costs will be against the retail price with your discount. Also, what are your best sellers? If you know that a particular service of yours sells extremely well all year round, a smaller discount on this treatment, for example 10%, will still be attractive to your customers as likelihood is they will have purchased this normally anyway. Then look at your slower selling lines and maybe advertise these with a larger discount to make them more attractive to your clients. However, when looking at your trade prices make sure that when you are running a discount, you are still making a slight profit for yourself. As at the end of the day, this is always the end goal with all promotional events. And obviously the more of each service you sell, the better that profit is going to be anyway.
Now, let’s discuss your retail products. A nice stat for the health and beauty industry – a massive 28% of the total sales generated last Black Friday were in the Cosmetics & Perfume centre. * Not to mention, 63% of purchases were identified as ‘gifts for others’ – in which this means that this % could be even higher for all those sales that weren’t specifically accounted for as gifts. * So, what a perfect time to club together some of your retail products and create ‘Christmas Hampers’? Work out the RRP for each individual product, add all these together and then decide on an overall % discount to sell the bundle at. This way, you’re not discounting individual products, you’re instead offering a range of products for slightly cheaper (but the client doesn’t have to know this) and also this is usually the case generally with multi-packs anyway. This way, you are guaranteed to make a better profit than if you were to discount each individual product separately. However, if you have a few single products that won’t fit the Xmas bundle, then it’s up to you whether you want to put an offer on these, or tie them in as freebies with a treatment depending on the original cost of that.
What else can you do to make a bit of extra Christmas cash?
We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s so simple and such a good little money-maker for you. And this is the Christmas gift wrapping service. This doesn’t just have to be applicable on Black Friday either, you can use this over the whole Xmas period. For all the little gift-bundles or retail products that you are selling, offer a gift-wrapping service for £1.50? By doing this you could even then use this as an extra on Black Friday and throw it in FREE for that day? Another little idea is to get a local charity involved, and for every gift-wrapping service someone purchases, you could offer (X) amount of the cost to donate to your chosen charity? This also builds on your brand’s credibility, as people can share this across social media - and especially around Christmas time whilst people are in a festive mood they are extremely likely to help in your fundraising!
How can you let everyone know you are taking part and where do you promote it?
The easy one, Social Media. The Black Friday hashtag will be one of the most popular and commonly used hashtags across that weekend and the good thing about posting on your social pages is that it is the most cost effective. However, studies go to show that a text or email on the day before or on the actual day of Black Friday work extremely well. This is because the open rate is much higher than the rest of the year round as people check their inboxes expecting to see all the retailer offers. * So, a mailshot or SMS to your client base is essential. Banners and decals in your shop window are also a great tool, as this can attract walk-in clients from the street if they happen to see your advert as they are passing by.
When do you run your offers?
Obviously on the day, but many businesses run their deals across the whole weekend, where the Monday following Black Friday is called ‘Cyber Monday’ and is said to be the biggest day for online deals! Great if you have an online store at the salon. However, a lot of businesses go into early promotion on the Thursday night before the event, especially if they have an online portal to be able to advertise.
Good luck!! We hope this Black Friday is your most successful yet!
(p.s keep an eye out over on our blog over the next couple of weeks to see what promotions we're offering you this Black Friday)
Salon Tracker x
*Stats from Centre for Retail Research & Retail Week
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