Should you run Black Friday ads and when do you set them up?

We’re only a few weeks away from Black Friday. One of the biggest sales events worldwide.

Traditionally US based, Black Friday is now also quite ingrained in Australia and many retailers join in.  

In this episode I want to talk you about Black Friday, whether you should participate and if you do, whether you should advertise.

First of all, it’s entirely up to you to decide whether you want to participate in a Black Friday sale.

It’s a great opportunity to sell before Christmas, as Australia doesn’t traditionally have a pre-Christmas sale, but at the same time you don’t want to overdo it with sales either.

At least that’s my opinion.

At the moment though, it could be a good decision to participate as Australia post is recommending early shopping to ensure that parcels arrive.

So a Black Friday sale could be a way for you to get the last pre-Christmas sales through.

Tune in to hear more 🎧

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Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Or if you’re new, welcome. I’m excited to have you here and teach you all about marketing and Facebook & Instagram advertising.

We’re a few days into November and the busiest quarter for advertisers. 

We’re only a few weeks away from Black Friday. One of the biggest sales events worldwide.

Traditionally US based, Black Friday is now also quite ingrained in Australia and many retailers join in.  

In this episode I want to talk you about Black Friday, whether you should participate and if you do, whether you should advertise.

First of all, it’s entirely up to you to decide whether you want to participate in a Black Friday sale.

It’s a great opportunity to sell before Christmas, as Australia doesn’t traditionally have a pre-Christmas sale, but at the same time you don’t want to overdo it with sales either.

At least that’s my opinion.

At the moment though, it could be a good decision to participate as Australia post is recommending early shopping to ensure that parcels arrive.

So a Black Friday sale could be a way for you to get the last pre-Christmas sales through.

Another option for you is to have a sale before the official Black Friday event, so that your business doesn’t get lost in the hype and you might want to do it for your own sanity too. 

If you decide to do an early sale, you could call it a Black Friday sale but make it 1000% clear that it’s now and not during Black Friday. The other option is to give it a different name, like a pre-Christmas sale and let your audience know that it’s the only opportunity to buy your products on sale. There won’t be a Black Friday event.

Personally I don’t recommend e-commerce store owners to have too many sales because you’ll really just train your audience to wait for the sale. I wouldn’t have more than 2 or maximum 3 sales events per year. 

You could join the Black Friday sales, or you could hold off and join the more traditional Boxing Day sales (if you’re in Australia). Or you could focus on the end of financial year sales. 

Whatever you decide, I’d keep it to a minimum and outside of the sales events I’d focus on promotions.

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, because you might see sales and promotions as one.

A promotion is something you can do any time, and it doesn’t involve discounting your products. 

Instead you could focus on adding value or create urgency, for example you could tell people to purchase now and not miss out on the restock. 

In terms of Facebook advertising for Black Friday.

If you decide to do this, I wouldn’t wait too long with getting your ads plan ready.

Focus on your goal.

Set yourself an income goal, calculate how many orders you need to reach that income goal.

Make sure you have the stock available for it.

Also think about your audience.

Are you going to run these ads only to your warm audience, i.e. people who have already interacted with you in some way. They may be Instagram followers, or maybe they’ve ordered in the past?

If you want to run Black Friday ads to a cold audience, i.e. people who don’t know you, you really want to start ‘warming them up’ now.

You’ll need to start running engagement ads so that people get to know you and your brand.

Another tip I’d like to give you is that if you run ads to a cold audience and these people purchase, you want to make their experience with your brand so phenomenal that they won’t forget you. 

It’s easy enough to make a sale when your prices are heavily discounted but often these types of buyers are not the kind who would usually pay full price. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, but you might be diluting your audience a little bit.

So should you run Black Friday ads?

It’s up to you. As long as you have a clear plan for them, I can definitely see merit in running them.

My suggestion is to run them to your warm audiences but if you want to test some cold audiences too, there’s nobody stopping you. 

As for when to set them up? 

I’d start earlier rather than later, especially if you want to run ads to cold audiences. 

Your warm audiences can probably wait until closer to the actual day.