When selling wholesale, you can undoubtedly expect spikes in traffic around significant e-commerce holidays. Unfortunately, many of your wholesale customers may not know how to prepare for Black Friday – also known as the biggest shopping day of the year.
There are several ways to get your wholesale customers ready for Black Friday. Your efforts can prove mutually beneficial. On the one hand, you’ll start seeing a higher volume of orders. On the other, wholesale customers can also stand to gain more revenue due to your actions.
In this article, we’ll talk about why your wholesale customers need to prepare for Black Friday. Then, we’ll share five tips on how to help these customers get ready for the day. Let’s get into it!
Why You Need To Prepare For Black Friday Early
As a wholesaler, you likely already know that Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. This is even more crucial for e-commerce store owners. In 2022, Black Friday online sales reached a record-breaking $9.12 billion.
Moreover, it is estimated that nearly 200 million shoppers participated in the 2022 Black Friday season, marking a 17 million increase from 2021. This record-breaking figure, the highest since the National Retail Federation (NRF) began tracking in 2017, sets high expectations for Black Friday in 2023.
Clearly, the profit potential for this singular day is immense. What’s more, wholesale businesses like yours are key to helping retailers stock up on inventory to meet this demand. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that many wholesale stores start to prepare for Black Friday well in advance.
Still, your wholesale customers may not be aware of the importance of preparing early. If they aren’t ready for the influx of orders, they may miss out on significant sales opportunities.
When you encourage your customers to prepare for Black Friday early, you can help them avoid the holiday rush. This will ensure they have enough inventory on hand to meet customer demand.
More importantly, you can fulfill crucial orders in advance to keep them from running out of stock and relying on backordering. However, your wholesale customers won’t be able to prepare for Black Friday soon enough if you aren’t ready for them.
How To Prepare Your Wholesale Customers For Black Friday (5 Tips)
Due to the massive potential that comes with Black Friday, it’s clear that you’d be wise to prepare your wholesale store (and customers) well in advance. Here are five tips to do just that!
1. Create a Black Friday plan
The first step in preparing for Black Friday is to create a plan. This plan should include goals and objectives, as well as a timeline of when tasks need to be completed.
You should consider what items you want to promote, how many you need to sell, and what conversion targets you hope to achieve. You also might want to think about other goals, such as building brand awareness or generating new leads.
Once these objectives have been identified, you can start to devise a marketing strategy to achieve them. This strategy might include leveraging email marketing to deliver special offers to your mailing list or running advertising on social media.
It would also be wise to create a schedule, including what content to share and when. Companies like Drip can provide you with special Black Friday email templates like the one below:
Keep in mind, a key focus of your Black Friday plan should be to stand out among your competitors. Otherwise, your marketing content and promotions could get lost among the noise.
This may mean creating generous offers that are too irresistible to pass up. It might be a discount on a popular item, free shipping, or a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deal. Whatever it is, you’ll want to ensure it’s something that will grab attention and drive conversions. Ultimately, when you have a plan, you’ll be able to reach your customers early and efficiently.
2. Encourage customers to buy early and buy large volumes
When it comes to using Black Friday for wholesale, one of the best things you can do is encourage customers to buy early and buy in large volumes. By buying early, they can skip the holiday rush and take advantage of any early bird offers that you may be promoting. This way, they can begin to prepare their inventory way in advance.
As such, if your customers purchase large quantities, you can reward them with volume discounts. This means that they’ll be able to get a better price per unit, which can have a significant impact on their bottom line. Not only will this encourage them to buy from you again in the future, but it can also help to build a long-term relationship.
The best time for wholesale customers to buy their stock is likely at least a few months before Black Friday. In the past, this may not have been necessary. However, with supply chain issues being more prevalent in recent years, it should be a precaution.
3. Provide extra wholesale offers and promotions
To really help your customers prepare for Black Friday, you can provide them with extra offers and promotions. This might include discounts on bulk purchases, free shipping, or exclusive access to early bird sales.
Customers will want to save money when making large orders, so make sure it’s something that will entice them to buy from you over your competitors. Since you’ll be focused on preparing your customers for Black Friday, you’ll need to run these promotions in the weeks leading up to the event. However, you’ll also want to ensure these offers are distinguishable from those you regularly run, perhaps by being more generous.
Furthermore, you might want to get creative with your Black Friday promotions. For instance, you could sell WooCommerce gift cards, or you can encourage your customers to join your WooCommerce loyalty program. Alternatively, you could generate personalized coupons or send out product samples to make your customers feel special.
4. Offer Black Friday marketing materials
Black Friday marketing is key. Therefore, it’s a good idea to help your customers promote the wholesale products you’re supplying. You can do this by offering them marketing materials.
This could include Black Friday templates for flyers, posters, and social media images. Customers will appreciate having these assets ready-made so that they can start promoting their products as soon as possible.
If you’re hesitant to provide this type of freebie, you could use it as an incentive to purchase on your online store. For instance, you can give free marketing materials as a bonus on all orders over a certain volume.
This is a great way to encourage larger orders and show customers that you’re invested in helping them succeed. Not only will this generate goodwill, but it can also lead to repeat business down the line.
When creating marketing materials, you’ll want to make sure they’re high quality and can be easily modified to match your customers’ brand. They should reflect well on your customers’ businesses and help them to stand out from the competition.
5. Make sure your ordering system is ready
Finally, you’d be wise to make sure your ordering system is up to the Black Friday task. This might include your website, point of sale (POS) system, or even just your order forms.
Customers will be placing a lot of orders during this period, so you’ll need to be sure that everything is in place to handle the increased volume. This means ensuring that your website can take a large number of orders without crashing, that your POS system can process them quickly, and that your order forms are accurate and easy to use.
If you use WooCommerce, Wholesale Suite is the perfect platform to help you weather Black Friday (and beyond). With our easy-to-use system, you can be sure that your customers will be able to place their orders quickly and easily:
Plus, when you opt for one of our “bundle plans,” you’ll get multiple plugins, including Wholesale Prices, Wholesale Order Form, and Wholesale Lead Capture.
This way, you’ll get access to everything you need, like wholesale pricing, user tiers, order forms, tax display control, and hundreds of other great features. When you use Wholesale Suite, you can be confident that your ordering system will be up to every task no matter how big or small.
Conclusion
Black Friday is a busy time for wholesalers, but with the right preparation, it can be a great opportunity to boost your business. You can set your business apart by helping buyers get ready for the day, creating a mutually beneficial situation.
To review, in this article, we provided five tips for helping your wholesale customers prepare for Black Friday:
- Create a Black Friday plan
- Encourage your wholesale customers to buy early and buy large volumes
- Provide wholesale offers and promotions
- Offer Black Friday marketing materials
- Make sure your ordering system is ready
Do you have any questions about how to prepare your wholesale customers for Black Friday? Let us know in the comments section below!
