Black Friday is 94 Days Away

Now that the bustle of Canada Day and Fourth of July have died down it’s time to get back to business. While Black Friday probably isn’t the first thing on your mind – it should be!

Why? Because as the title says, Black Friday is only 94 days away!

Why does that matter? It matters because your competitors are starting to get ready and develop a plan of attack. This means going over your sales from last year, analyzing trends and changes, ensuring your inventory is prepared, and devising a data-driven marketing plan based on key insights from the previous year to effectively capitalize on this holiday.

The Value of Partaking in Black Friday and Cyber Monday

We carefully analyzed the data of 731 stores in US/CA, 418 Non-US/CA, all small-to-medium businesses that have at least 3 years of historical data for comparison averaging ~30 orders/day on a normal day with the average store bringing in approximately $1million/revenue in 2016.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns were more expensive but drove more engagement and more purchases.

Overall, they achieved a higher return on ad spend:

• Cost Per Conversion up 46%
• Click Through Rates up 25%
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) up 48%

But wait, there’s more:

• Black Friday/Cyber Monday were each the equivalent of 5.4 normal days
• Sat/Sun are 2 normal days each
• So those 4 days represent roughly 2 weeks of sales
• An extra 2 weeks is 2/52 = 4% additional revenue (Pretty good right?)

Black Friday is a fantastic time to attract valuable, new customers. 2016 had one of the biggest holiday shopping seasons ever online. Though a surge in spending was seen across Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the spending definitely didn’t stop there. The data suggests that Black Friday is no longer a single day, but rather a multi-day event that seems to have swept both Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday deals up under its name. It might surprise you to know that spending increased on Thanksgiving Day and continued until 11:59 pm Cyber Monday.

Everything about 2016’s Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales was bigger and more aggressive than 2015. Previous years saw a clear lift in spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but now there has been a clear shift from a day of deals to a weekend long event. That means shoppers are no longer feeling the same sense of urgency to stay up late to score the sales. Our predictions are that 2017 will undoubtedly be the biggest yet.

What does this all mean? It’s time to get started! Trust us – you don’t want to be scrambling last minute to get your store and products ready to go since this holiday could account for a large portion of your yearly revenue. Begin strategizing your marketing plan now to see your store’s best performance ever this Black Friday.