It is not only a term that is already familiar to us, this American invention designed to favour consumption (another one, they’re geniuses) has penetrated in Spain (and throughout the world) as it did Halloween vs Holy Week. And, trust me, that is a deep range here.
Black Friday is another marketing strategy designed to increase sales for a traditionally lazy month, the one before Christmas. And, be aware, “Single Days” which has been used in China since the 90s, is starting to get traction here too.
A quick look at Wikipedia gives us information about its origins both in the USA (apparently the day after Thanksgiving there were huge traffic jams and queues in shops) and in other countries. For example, MediaMarkt is cited as the driving force in Spain back in 2012.
But that data is not fish or fowl. Here, at Disruptivos, we are struck by other data, with more chunks.
From our privileged position we have experienced the evolution of the Black Friday phenomenon in the skin of our projects and clients: shops of all kinds that have been dragged, forced or thrown into a tide hard to stop.
“We have seen e-commerce offer irrational discount percentages without measuring margins, we have seen B2B companies bidding on Instagram and not receiving a click, we have seen competitors copy strategies without any qualms, we have seen businesses trying to ignore the Black Friday craziness and feeling how sales have vanished … we have seen things that you would not believe, and in this 2019, we have some certainty about this incoming Black Friday. ”
Some cold facts about Black Friday… at least in Spain.
Black Friday is here to stay
As for Google searches, it has already eaten national classics as our lifelong “sales” or another similar invention to sell in a lazy month: “Valentine’s Day.”
Black Friday steals purchases from Christmas.
In our analysis, many consumers anticipate their purchases to this date of special discounts and Christmas campaign suffers. Margins shrink at the cost of raising turnover in a traditionally lazy month such as November. Trends confirms that searches for “Christmas” also descend. Black Friday is The Grinch.
Black Friday increases “brand” traffic
Users scan the shops looking for what interests them in the previous days and when Black Friday is celebrated, they search directly for the name of the store where they usually buy the product. This trend of looking for your brand instead of the product or service, in general, can be greatly favoured if you already have loyal your customers with strategies that offer, not only discounts but interesting and exclusive content throughout the year through profitable channels like email marketing.
In this example, we see how an exact brand SEM campaign has its maximum traffic peaks coinciding with Black Friday. Bear in mind, users go crazy that day, but they’re mainly looking for offers from brands that interest them.
Losers sprout
The strategy is key, especially online since in those days you should not pretend to hunt new clients on channels with high competition (PPC, Facebook or Instagram Ads).
The reason is very simple: many businesses will be announcing their wonderful Black Friday offers, and a high percentage of them will be businesses that do not do it regularly, so they will not be experts and their campaigns will not be optimized.
This will cause very high bids, so the advertising ecosystem could become contaminated and it is very likely that the profitability of these possible new sales will evaporate as the uptake costs rise.
Well, and even if you think you are safe from these things, it has happened even in the best of families.
Black Friday will not grow much more
Last year in Spain there were already the same searches (maybe some less according to Trends) than in 2017, confirming that the term has already entered the market and consumers are no longer surprised by it. We do not expect a huge growth in the volume of business generated with respect to the previous year for those businesses that already participated in this promotion in previous years.
In fact, Black Friday falls as a search trend in some countries that discovered it before. So maybe in Spain we will see similar behaviour, aligned with what could have been happening since last year.
So from Disruptivos, we give you a tip:
Don’t trust your last quarter incomes to Black Friday unless you’re able to do something really profitable. It’s better to have a sustainable and constant strategy to take advantage of that extra push that the consumer is willing to give without forgetting your margins.
