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Black Friday was once the Super Bowl of shopping days. A day when shoppers would skip Thanksgiving dinner with their families, so they could line up in front of a Best Buy or Walmart in sub-zero temperatures for the opportunity to save a few hundred dollars on a new flat screen.
But this year, something happened that every business needs to take note of. For the first time ever, retail spending on Black Friday, for both online and in-store, dropped from the previous year. However, spending overall in Q4 is expected to break records.
The National Retail Federation expects overall retail spending in November and December to increase by as much as 10% compared to 2020. Additionally, the federation found that 61% of holiday shoppers began buying before Thanksgiving, which is an increase of 51% compared to a decade ago.ย
โCustomers are shopping differently this year. We had to alter our Black Friday strategy.โ Kohl’s Corp chief marketing officer Greg Revelle, said in an interview with theย Wall Street Journal.ย
Instead of stacking up all of their best “doorbusters” for the Friday after Thanksgiving, retailers are now spreading their deals throughout November and December.
Part of this is a result of businesses attempting to get ahead of supply chain issues, but another major issue is consumers’ reluctance to jam into crowded malls where they’ll have to dodge Covid and a few elbows while trying to get their hands on a new X-box.
So while all of those stats are fascinating, what do they actually mean for your business and brand?
The most important takeaway is that if you want to maximize your Q4 sales, then you need to expand your definition of what Black Friday means. Rather than planning all of your marketing efforts around a single day or weekend, you need to build out your strategies for every day between Halloween and Xmas.
Generating the most holiday sales now means that you need a strategy for buyers who want to finish up their holiday shopping by the time the last trick or treater has knocked on their door, as well as those who still want to stick with a more traditional shopping time. Understanding when customers want to buy is now just as important as knowing what they want to buy.
The good news is that there is more money than ever flowing through the e-commerce space, but the real news is that you’re going to have to work harder than ever to get your piece of it.
Whether you do that on your own, or by working with an agency that has over a decade of experience in affiliate marketing is up to you, but the opportunity is there if you know how to seize it.
