Black Friday may seem like the ideal time to get sales for your marketing or technology business. But I (mostly) disagree.
These sales occur at the end of the year when companies may not have the budget to invest in creating a strategy and running it properly, but enough budget to buy the product or service on sale.
But at the the end of the year, it's likely very hard to get buy-in to devote the time and resources necessary to get value out of the purchase and to mitigate the risks of using it. Unless the company is planning for the next year.
Here are some questions to ask yourself before making a Black Friday purchase for your business:
❏ Is this a good time to get buy-in from the staff who allocate budget for operations, especially in marketing and sales?
❏ Will that buy-in be possible every year in late November when the product or service renews (at full-price)?
❏ Do you use enough of the features in the product or service to get a strong ROI and justify the price?
❏ Will you have to have a ton of sales in the first month just to break even on the cost of buying and operating the product?
If you've check-marked less than three of these questions, I'd say Black Friday isn't the best option as an investment for your business.
You want products and services that scale with you, otherwise you'll be in debt first, distract yourself from other things and you'll have to stop your growth at a certain point because you can't afford the enterprise pricing for your volume.
Marketing and sales purchases need to scale as your business scales, not before or after.
Don't mistake me, I'm not saying Black Friday probably has no value for B2B. Actually, I think it's a fabulous time to do market research. Think about the intelligence you'll get on your competitors and customers who are considering them!
Read my Medium article on how to use Black Friday for B2B Market Research.