Black Friday goes wrong before Black Friday
Black Friday falls on 27 November. If you're reading this in early October, that's about eight weeks.
That sounds like plenty of time. It isn't, and the reason most Black Friday campaigns underperform has almost nothing to do with the discount. It's that the planning started in mid-November, when everyone else was also buying ads, and by then the price of attention had already doubled.
Here's what tends to go wrong, roughly in the order it happens.
The audience is cold when it matters most
The most expensive mistake is starting your advertising on the day.
By late November, ad costs rise sharply because every retailer in the country is bidding for the same attention. If the first time someone encounters your brand is a Black Friday ad, you're paying premium rates to introduce yourself to a stranger and ask them to buy in the same breath.
Businesses that do well on Black Friday have usually spent the preceding weeks building an audience they can sell to cheaply. Website visitors, engaged followers, an email list. On the day, they're talking to people who already know them, which costs a fraction of what cold acquisition does.
That warming-up window is now, not in three weeks.
The offer isn't actually good
Plenty of Black Friday deals aren't deals. Ten percent off, with conditions, on products that were quietly marked up in October.
South African shoppers have been through enough Black Fridays to recognise this. They compare, they screenshot, and they remember who wasted their time. A weak offer dressed up in urgent language does more damage than not participating at all, because it costs you credibility with the exact people most likely to buy from you later.
If your margins don't allow a genuinely compelling discount, that's worth knowing now. There are other angles. Bundles, a free upgrade, extended warranties, early access for your email list, something added rather than something cut. Decide which one you can afford while there's still time to build a campaign around it.
Nobody checked whether the site can cope
The painful version of this is a campaign that works.
Traffic arrives, the site slows down, the checkout times out, and the payment gateway starts declining. You paid for every one of those visitors and converted a fraction of them.
Worth checking before the day: how your site performs under load, whether your payment options are all functioning, whether stock levels are synced accurately, and what happens on mobile with a poor signal. Most Black Friday traffic is mobile and impatient.
Also check your shipping settings. If your delivery costs or cut-off dates are wrong, you'll find out at the worst possible moment.
Stock and fulfilment weren't planned for
Two failure modes, both bad.
Selling out of your hero product in the first two hours leaves the rest of the day's traffic with nothing to buy and a bad impression. Selling far more than you can ship leaves you with a week of angry messages and a reputation problem that outlasts the revenue.
Courier services are at their limit in late November and early December. If you're promising delivery timeframes, make sure your courier can actually meet them, and say so clearly on the product page rather than hoping nobody asks.
The campaign stops at the sale
Most businesses treat Black Friday as a revenue day. The businesses that benefit most treat it as a customer acquisition day.
You're about to have more first-time buyers arrive at once than at any other point in the year, most of them bought on price, and most of them will never come back unless something happens next. That's not a discount problem, it's a follow-up problem.
Decide now what happens after the purchase. A welcome sequence, a reason to reorder, a reminder before they run out. For anything consumable, that second purchase is where the actual profit is, since the first one was discounted.
What to be doing eight weeks out
Right now: decide the offer and check whether the margins work. Start building the audience through content and low-cost traffic. Audit the site honestly, especially checkout and mobile.
Four weeks out: creative and copy finalised, email sequences written, retargeting audiences built, stock confirmed, courier arrangements made.
The final two weeks: teaser content and early access for your list. Ad spend ramping up against audiences you've already warmed.
The day itself should be mostly monitoring. If you're still making decisions on 27 November, something was left too late.
One more thing worth saying
Not every business should run Black Friday.
If your margins are thin, your product isn't discount-driven, or your customers aren't price-led, a sale can train people to wait for discounts and devalue what you sell for the rest of the year. Luxury, bespoke and service businesses often do better ignoring it or doing something deliberately different.
Participating badly is worse than sitting it out.
If you need a hand
We plan and run Black Friday campaigns for South African brands, covering the offer, the content, the ads and the e-commerce side of making sure the site holds up.
Eight weeks is enough time to do this properly. Six won't be. If you want a plan put together, email charmonix@seenhaus.co.za.
