Black Friday is good for your small business. Here's why

Black Friday is the day after the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Why is this significant to South Africa? Well, because since it was adopted in South Africa in the early to mid 2010s, the concept has grown to become a major annual sales driver for local businesses. Between 2017 and 2019, spend in this period jumped by 15%, which amounted to a R400 million increase. Despite this spend dropping after the Covid-19 lockdown, it has seen steady growth again, with 2022 showing promising projections. While Black Friday has been dominated by big businesses, small businesses also have an opportunity to make both impact and money out of this campaign. Here’s how to make the most out of the single biggest retail event.

How does slashing prices benefit your business?

Offering discounts may sound bad for business, but it can also be beneficial, especially if you have stock and items sitting in your inventory for too long. This allows you to move the stock out quickly by cutting the prices, while bringing more eyes to your store where customers can see newer products at full price. This in turn makes space for new stock and increases your brand awareness allowing you to attract new customers and grow your overall customer base.

It's not just for the big fish

While Black Friday appears to be dominated by big-name retailers like Makro and Takealot, online and retail payment acceptance companies Payfast, Peach Payments and Yoco reported a year-on-year increase of more than 30% for Black Friday in 2021. Yoco noted a 68% increase in merchant participation, showing a position trend for small business "adoption" of this growing phenomenon. The Black Friday pie continues to get bigger creating more than enough opportunities for retail and services-based small businesses to thrive. Businesses with e-commerce presence continue to show bigger growth with Bankserv citing more than 17% increase in online transactions in 2020 and 2021, while physical stores experienced a decline of 33% in 2020. Despite the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, more customers that adopted online shopping continue to use it. According to an article on Xtraspace, websites that sell cosmetics and luxury items are becoming increasingly popular.

If you’re in the right industry, you’re in luck on Black Friday

A research study performed by Vodacom in 2021, revealed that customers purchased most of their groceries and clothing during the 2020 Black Friday period. Other categories that enjoyed double digit growth in 2021 include electronics, travel and accommodation and liquor. These trends are likely to continue in 2022. If your business is within these popular categories, then Black Friday is a great opportunity for you. But even if it isn’t, there are alternative opportunities, like those in the delivery business can latch onto the clothing and groceries sales surge by offering their services at a discounted rate for packages purchased online.

Think about setting up e-commerce for your business

An e-commerce store is a great investment with online purchases on the rise as it will not only help you to drive sales over Black Friday, but also throughout the year. Customers will be able to purchase your products at their leisure and have their orders delivered to their door. For more information on e-commerce platforms, read our 5 Ecommerce tools for Small business article.

What Vodacom has to offer

While you're planning how to make the most of Black Friday, Vodacom has launched great Black Friday deals for you and your business. Enjoy up to 75% off on Business grade internet with improved SLA's, big data packages and deals including an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to keep your business connected for up to 8 hours during load shedding. To get these, and other great offers from as little as R169pm, visit www.vodacombusiness.co.za for more.