EP31 - Still on the Fence About Black Friday?

Welcome to Episode 31 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast

https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep31

We are now entering November, for most brands one of the biggest months of the year for ecommerce sales, with big events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, not to mention Singles Day, Thanksgiving and so on. 

I hadn’t originally planned to do a show about Black Friday, because honestly how to smash it is covered in just about every other ecommerce podcast. But just in various conversations over the past few weeks I’ve been quietly asking around among sustainable brand owners as to what they are doing for Black Friday this year.  I guess what I was expecting was a polarisation of views, from brands that have decided not to participate and are quite vocally against the event, and other brands who had a well thought through strategy for how to participate.  What I really wanted to find out was why they have chosen one camp or the other.

Naturally I did find some of both, but what surprised me was the number of people who were still on the fence, who simply couldn’t decide what to do about it.  Now there’s risk in either approach.  As we’ll discuss shortly there are potential brand congruency issues with taking part which could lead to brand damage. On the flip side, you risk losing the opportunity to acquire a flood of new customers, and potentially disappointing some people who were looking forward to purchasing from you during the event. 

But in some ways, not making a decision is the worst of both worlds, & could lead to doubling that risk, especially if you leave it to the last minute to participate. That’s likely to result in an undercooked promotion, poor sales result AND questions raised about whether it matches your values.

So if you find yourself undecided, or if you’re yet to plan through what to do about the big events at the end of this month, this show is for you.