Marking the start of the holiday shopping season, few days matter as much in the retail business as those between the Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday. Whether you’re in bricks-and-mortar retail or e-commerce, if you’re a South African shop owner you should prepare to boost sales with Black Friday strategies for retailers.
Why? Without the right Black Friday strategies in place, retailers risk:
- Losing additional revenue opportunities. The Black Friday weekend sees increased consumer spending that only prepared retailers can capitalise on.
- Damaging brand reputation. Mismanaging Black Friday sales can result in website crashes, stock shortages and miscommunications that hurt brand image.
- Falling behind in the surging e-commerce market. Black Friday is a key moment for online retailers who see increased sales year by year.
Black Friday marketing strategies help retailers capture the shopping frenzy that kicks off on the last weekend of November. Far from a one-time increase in sales, these marketing campaigns increase brand recognition, customer loyalty and market share.
Learn about eight proven and expert-backed Black Friday strategies for retailers in South Africa. Find out how to market the best Black Friday deals, use social media and strategic discounting, optimise the sale period, focus on e-commerce, prepare for increased traffic and more.
Ready to take your Black Friday sales up a notch? Read on to get expert insights for the South African retail market.
Don’t let lack of funding keep you from growing your retail business. Explore Lula’s funding solutions and learn how to access up to R5 million in just 24 hours.
Why South African Retailers Should Focus on Black Friday 2024
Popularised in the US, the weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday has become a major sales event in South Africa. 2023’s sales were slightly lower than those of the previous year, courtesy of South Africa’s difficult economic climate. On Black Friday 2023, which fell on 25 November, clearing house BankservAfrica registered a total of R3.1 billion, marking a 21.36% decrease compared to the previous year.
Does that mean this year’s Black Friday could see profits further diminish? Not likely.
Only looking at 2023’s transaction value paints a one-sided picture. The payment infrastructure saw a volume of 5.9 million transactions in 2023, marking a relatively small 6.15% decrease from 6.3 million in 2022. This could indicate that SA consumers were still on the hunt for Black Friday sales, albeit at lower price points.
Consumers look forward to Black Friday and Cyber Monday despite economic hardship. “Despite battling to make ends meet during the month, many consumers have saved up for Black Friday, specifically to splurge on items they wouldn’t otherwise spend their money on,” said David Adams, managing director at payment gateway provider Payfast, when interviewed by news outlet BusinessTech.
Moreover, this year’s economic signs are promising. Inflation has been on a downward trend in South Africa, with consumer price inflation dipping to a three-year low of 4.4% in August, according to Stats SA. The economy, too, has seen a modest growth of 0.4% in the second quarter of 2024 and in September the South African Reserve Bank cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 8%, reducing the prime lending rate to 11.50%. Another cut is forecast for November.
Noticeably, household spending has been the largest contributor to economic growth. Consumers increased their spending from Q1 to Q2 across categories, showing promise for this year’s Black Friday.
Jacob Roux, head of product at e-commerce platform Bob Group, agrees. “With interest rates forecasted to decrease by the end of the year, reduced load-shedding, and the potential for a more effective government, there are positive signs that consumer spending will be under less pressure, potentially boosting spending during Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” Roux said in an interview with ICT news outlet, MyBroadband.
8 Proven Black Friday Strategies for Retailers
With South African consumers looking forward to Black Friday and economic indicators pointing at increased spending, implementing these eight proven Black Friday strategies for retailers can result in significant sales.
1. Improve the online shopping experience
With consumers increasingly shopping online, this year’s Black Friday promises to be another record year for online sales. Hence, you should invest in your online shopping experience.
Following a global trend, in-store sales in South Africa have been dwindling and online shopping is taking its place. “A significant number of consumers are now opting to bypass the hustle and bustle, queues and lengthy transaction times often associated with physical store purchases,” says Chris Pays, CEO of South African fintech Ozow.
In 2022, the e-commerce sector showed an impressive 30% increase in online sales, reaching over R50 billion and massively outperforming the 1.7% overall retail growth – as data from Mastercard shows.
No data shows the consumer’s move to e-commerce better than Black Friday sales. While 2023 saw overall sales levels decrease, the year booked record online sales. On Friday, BankservAfrica’s online card authentication service saw a total of 1.4 million transactions that totaled a value of R1.39 billion, up 39% in value and 11% in volume from the previous year.
What are ways to focus on and improve your retail business’s e-commerce operations ahead of Black Friday?
- Optimise website performance: Conduct performance testing to see if your website can handle increased traffic. Minimise page load times and streamline code.
- Streamline the checkout process: Minimise required form fields during checkout and implement a guest checkout option to reduce friction and increase conversion rates.
- Personalise the experience: Create personalised landing pages, and segment email lists for different customer bases. Consider using AI tools to generate personalised product recommendations.
- Improve product discoverability: Optimise your site search functionality with auto-suggest features. A dedicated landing page and clear navigation helps customers find deals and optimises online sales funnels.
- Analyse the data: Use previous years’ Black Friday sales data to improve the online shopping experience. Analytical strategies like A/B testing can help improve user experience and conversion rates in real time.
- Enhance customer support: Update your FAQ page to cover Black Friday sales. Extend support hours from Friday through Monday and consider using a chatbot to streamline customer support.
2. Optimise for mobile
Improving the online customer experience means optimising for mobile, especially when it comes to sales around the last Friday of November.
In 2023, throughout the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, many South African consumers chose to do their online shopping on mobile devices. Data from Payfast shows that 72% of total transactions were made on mobile phones versus 28% on desktop.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need an app to draw mobile customers. All you need is an optimised website. So, how to optimise for mobile?
- Responsive design: Your website should be fully responsive and adapt seamlessly to different aspect ratios. This means using mobile-first design principles when updating the website and creating landing pages for Black Friday. Make sure to test the new design.
- Touch-friendly product pages: For an intuitive mobile experience, implement swipeable pages and product galleries. These require large, clear product images that can be zoomed by pinching.
- Mobile-specific features: For a better mobile experience, implement features like sticky add-to-cart buttons that remain visible while scrolling, or push notifications for promotion alerts.
- Mobile-friendly content: Mobile devices have less screen real estate than desktops. Write concise texts for easy scanning and implement expandable sections for detailed information. Make sure videos and photo previews are optimised for mobile.
3. Integrate digital payment options
Playing into the convenience and efficiency online customers look for, today’s digital payments offer easy and fast transactions. While Black Friday still sees substantial cash transaction volumes, with clients withdrawing R4.47 billion from Capitec ATMs in 2023, digital transactions are surpassing cash by a big margin, financial network Moonstone reports.
Moreover, an impressive 435,727 transactions were made with payments gateway Peach Payment on Black Friday 2023, using different payment methods.
QR code payments were popular on Black Friday 2023, with Zapper payment volumes increasing by 63% on the Payfast network compared to the year before. Scan-to-pay-facilitated payments also increased by 44%.
Digital payment options don’t just increase e-commerce conversion rates – they can improve in-store shopping experiences. Discovery Bank sees new digital payments become popular in physical stores, too. In 2023, over a third of in-store payments registered by the bank were made with a smartphone or wearable device.
Brendon Williamson, Payfast’s former managing director, remarked how the increased use of digital payments “highlights a key trend towards quicker and more convenient payments that facilitate a seamless checkout experience”.
Besides QR code payments like Zapper and SnapScan being popular payment choices, and mobile wallets facilitating easy online payments, another digital payment option is on the rise in South Africa.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services give Black Friday shoppers a critical financial tool to help them purchase goods in economically hard times.
“Shoppers are increasingly seeking convenient, cost-effective payment options to ease some of the financial pressures brought by a challenging market environment,” says Varsha Dayaram, senior vice president for Group Financial Services at Massmart.
4. Implement urgency tactics
In today’s fast-paced world of near-infinite consumer options, time and money are the big limiting factors in customer decision-making. Limited-time Black Friday promotions like hourly flash sales and countdowns can effectively address both by creating a sense of urgency on exclusive deals.
Adding these types of incentives helps you stand out more, as consumers have more affordable options to choose from as major players like Amazon enter the market and aggressively priced platforms like Shein and Temu compete in price wars.
But what marketing efforts add a sense of urgency on the already time-limited holiday sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
In-store urgency tactics
Despite online stores gaining ground, in-store shopping remains dominant in South Africa. In fact, clients from Discovery Bank followed the growing global trend of people returning to visit shops, with 80% of Black Friday 2023 purchases made in-store compared to 75% in the previous year. That’s why you should maximise sales in your physical store through urgency tactics.
- Door-buster deals evoke that classic image of gallery shopping frenzies during the holiday shopping season. Offer big discounts on popular items for the first X customers and promote these during your Black Friday marketing campaign to create anticipation.
- Hourly in-store specials are promos that you announce every hour via the intercom or social media. Add a sense of urgency by using digital displays to count down to the next hourly special.
Time-limited vouchers can be handed out or digitally distributed through your marketing channels. These are cost-effective and work well for small businesses. These promos can be for discounts or free gifts and can last days or hours.
Online urgency tactics
With online shopping a growing trend and average order values double that of in-store purchases, it makes sense to employ urgency tactics in your e-commerce store. Mobile devices are especially well suited for urgency tactics because of push notifications and because consumers are more likely to make quick decisions on mobile platforms.
- Countdown timers display real-time countdowns for sales, either site-wide or for specific products that customers are interested in or have in their shopping cart. Use them on the home page, landing pages, product pages and in email marketing campaigns.
- Exclusive early access rewards loyal customers with the chance to get great deals before the general public. Add countdown timers with sneak peek pop-ups leading up to the early access shopping event to increase conversion rates. You can also grant early access through referral or other marketing channels to reach potential customers.
- Stock level indicators create FOMO, especially when stocks are low. Add a “Only X left!” to product pages and send push notifications to create awareness of scarcity. Update stock levels in real time and add a subheader or pop-up with messaging like “X people have this in their shopping cart” to maintain urgency.
- Flash sales create extra urgency because they last a short time. Special offers last days or just hours rather than during the whole shopping event. Promote flash sales to the target audience through email, SMS, push notifications and social media platforms.
- Limited-quantity deals offer special prices to a limited number of customers on a first come, first served basis. To drive sales effectively, show a live counter of how many items are left at the special price. This tactic also works well as an email campaign where a discount code can be redeemed for a limited time.
5. Extend your sales period
Besides using limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency, you might want to extend your sales period for some items or product categories. Black Friday might be a single day, but the weekend through Cyber Monday also shows increased revenue opportunities. Extending the sale period allows retailers to capture a larger share of the increased spending.
Other benefits of extending your sales period are reduced pressure on operations and infrastructure, better stock management, and better customer experience as shoppers are given more time to decide.
Some ways to extend the sales period are:
- Black November lets you offer deals throughout the month leading up to Black Friday. Ramp up discounts slowly to create more anticipation.
- Cyber Week extends Cyber Monday deals to cover an entire week, focusing on online shoppers. Cyber Week is popular among e-commerce businesses selling consumer tech.
- Pre-Black Friday sales help increase brand visibility leading up to the Black Friday weekend and increase shopping traffic during that crucial time.
- Post-Black Friday sales let you capture customers who missed out on deals or are still in a shopping mood.
6. Use discounts strategically and sparingly
While Black Friday is all about discounts, it’s important that retailers use discounts strategically. This protects profit margins, maintains brand reputation, perceived value, builds consumer trust and helps manage inventory.
One example of using discounts to your advantage is giving out more outside of peak shopping hours to maintain momentum. Most shoppers are active between morning and noon, the Black Friday dashboard from Peach Payment shows.
Another strategy is to add value beyond just discounts, like giving free gifts to VIP customers or offering extra warranty, support, or upsell and cross-sell promos.
Rather than offering big single-item discounts, upselling and cross-selling can significantly boost average order value and create high-quality customers with high retention rates, extending the customer lifetime value and increasing customer engagement with your brand beyond Black Friday.
Duncan Colville, who is digital marketing agency TDMC’s development director, says, “We advise clients to approach their discounting carefully: lighter discounts of 10% and 20% tend to have lower uptake, but bundle deals are an increasingly popular mechanism.”
7. Minimise abandoned carts
With so much noise and promos during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, cart abandonment can be a big bottleneck during Black Friday – especially with indecisive new customers. It’s a year-round problem, but cart abandonment is extra-high during the holiday season.
Why bother minimising cart abandonment? Simply put, it increases conversion rates and makes your Black Friday marketing campaigns more cost-effective and profitable.
While all of the above Black Friday strategies for retailers help keep cart abandonment down, here are some additional tactics:
- Use retargeting ads to show ads to users who haven’t completed their purchase.
- Offer free shipping. 48% of online customers abandon carts due to additional expenses like shipping fees, according to e-commerce platform SellersCommerce.
- Set up email flows to bring back customers who abandoned their carts. Add a personalised message and consider giving a small extra discount.
- Offer product alternatives. Perhaps your potential customer simply wanted a different product – so offer a similar product that they might be interested in.
- Implement exit-intent pop-ups with extra offers to capture potential customers who are about to leave the site with a loaded shopping cart.
8. Leverage social media
Social media can’t miss from today’s marketing strategies. Whether your customers are looking for Black Friday clothes or consumer tech, there’s a social media platform for every type of audience.
Social media marketing facilitates direct interaction between brands and consumers, allowing for real-time customer service, inquiries about product availability, and feedback. With a big portion of online shopping during Black Friday happening on mobile devices, social media marketing ties in seamlessly with the shopping experience.
Here are some effective social media marketing strategies for Black Friday:
- Leverage influencer marketing
- Offer exclusive social media deals
- Engage with user-generated content
- Run giveaways and social media loyalty programmes
- Build hype and anticipation with content
Social media marketing has the potential to skyrocket sales while remaining a relatively cost-effective alternative to paid ads, but only works when your social media manager is properly dialed into social media culture and your brand tone of voice connects with the intended audience.
By implementing all of these Black Friday strategies for retailers in South Africa, you can boost your Black Friday sales, win loyal customers and stand out in a competitive market.
