A Florida retailer with two stores set out to determine if it pays to advertise for Black Friday.
Tunes-N-Tint experimented by advertising at one store but not the other for Black Friday. The two stores are 7 miles apart. Typically the company promotes at both stores. But Black Friday sales have been petering out.
“Last year was one of our worst Black Fridays in quite some time,” said Operations Director Joe Cassity. “And the event in general has been on a steady decline for us as the mass retailers have spread the sale out.”
So this year, he listed one store in his advertising and did “zero advertising” for the other. The results were dramatic.
The advertised store did 3- 4 times the business of the non-advertised store. The advertised store, averaged a sale every 8 to 15 minutes while the second store averaged a sale every 30 to 45 minutes.
“Everyone in the market just went to one store,” said Cassity. Overall, the shop was up 40 percent over the year prior. “Honestly, I was debating even if we should continue with Black Friday. We had scaled back on advertising the past year, so this year, we decided to do the analytics.”
The second store also saw a 15 percent jump over last year, so it likely benefited from the other store’s advertising. Foot traffic was also up over last year at the second store.
Shop number 1 advertised on Facebook, and sent emails to recent customers and another to customers that hadn’t purchased in a while. Different phone numbers were assigned to each group and and calls were tracked. Phone numbers were matched to those on invoices so the shop could track purchases based on its advertising.
A full third of customers who purchased were prompted by fliers distributed to local businesses. Only 3 percent came in from Facebook ads, 19 percent from online marketing, and 18 percent from Black Friday newsletters. (Also 8 percent came in from a followup email blast on a Saturday). You can see the full chart to the right.
For next year, Cassity is going to continue advertising for the one store. “We’re probably going to do the same thing. I don’t see any point in running Black Friday sales at both stores. But it’s obvious that if you don’t advertise, you don’t get results.”
A great story !!! Thanks for sharing. It certainly got my attention as I perceived the dilution of the “Black Friday Day” and the sheer amount of noise created by the big noise guys would significantly distract the smaller guy’s consumers.
I am very happy to be wrong all the way around on that subject !!! The moral of the story is to communicate, communicate, communicate with your target audience.
Ray Windsor