Black Friday - friend or foe?

The noise around Black Friday (28^th November) is greater than ever this year and we understand that the big retailers are poised to fight for their share of the promotional spend just weeks before Christmas. Indeed, hot on the heels of Black Friday is Sofa Sunday and Cyber Monday! Is this all a great idea and how useful is it for confectionery retailers?

A recent piece of research from Verdict (October 2014) suggests that 47% of shoppers intend to purchase a promotion on Black Friday. This is certainly skewed towards the younger shopper with 56% of 15-24 year olds having that intention, 59% of 25-34 year olds and just 28% of those over 65 years.

The idea has come from the USA and seems set to stay on British soil, growing in impact year after year. Synics point out that retailers are simply eroding their margins by promoting at a time when sales are high anyway (Verdict Research states that £90.7bn is set to be spent on Christmas related items this year, up 2.6% from 2013). The problem is, when your competitor jumps in with a Black Friday promotion, you feel compelled to swiftly follow.

Love it or loathe it, Black Friday is here to stay. Is it relevant to confectionery retailers? Well the confectionery retail market is certainly much more fragmented and so it probably depends on your route to market (high street or online) and your customer profile. It is likely that there will be more noise online where a younger audience might be busier and competition is more widespread. If you feel like you’ve missed out on Black Friday, how about Cyber Monday instead?! For high street and local retailers, try to understand what is happening on a local level. You might want to steal the march and use it as a promotional event to get feet through the door or you might prefer to focus on keeping your margins intact and working as hard as possible on your customer service.

However you decide to react to Black Friday, be sure to see some silly deals on offer as the country winds up for the Christmas frenzy.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

Do your customers engage?

We are spotting more and more retailers embrace Twitter for the first time – even the smallest; working to build up a small community of their own to engage with. It’s free and for many, can be very effective indeed.

Smaller retailers can use the likes of Twitter and Facebook to talk with their local customers, getting feedback from time to time and communicating offers and special events when need be.

It certainly cannot harm any confectionery retailer to have a go and build a “community” over time! Of course, you will generally reach out to your most proactive and loyal customers in the main. Those that seek you out on social networks or take action having read that you are there to talk to. So to my mind, social networks can be a great tool for confectionery retailers to engage with their best customers and keep them close.

So how can you engage with the more infrequent customers that you welcome through your doors? Many might pop in just a few times a year when the need arises. Well maybe a need might arise in the run up to Christmas and you could use that to your advantage!

As well as going to town on your product range at Christmas time, it’s a great opportunity to recruit some more customers to engage with beyond the festive season. Think about advertising a weekly giveaway on Twitter or Facebook in your store. Perhaps you supply an exclusive discount code via Facebook every Friday. You could develop a social media promotion whereby every friend on Facebook gets entered into a prize draw to win something rather big.

There are lots of ways to encourage your customers, regular and infrequent, to sign up to your social media and there is no better time than when you might be a bit busier. Use your store, counter and bags to communicate the benefits and look forward to engaging with more customers socially during 2014.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk