Over the last 10+ years, Black Friday has become a core element of the Christmas trading calendar for many retailers and DTC brands.
And from its US roots as a post-Thanksgiving Day spending splurge, Black Friday’s tentacles have spread to the UK from an initial one day only event focus into a weekend promotion, then week-long to where we are now: a month-long campaign for many brands.
“Black Friday” or “Black November”?
This means that there’s a plethora of Black Friday deals out there already, several weeks before the “official” date of Friday 29th November.
Online retail trade body IMRG tracks Black Friday campaigns each year – and saw a record number of retailers starting Black Friday deals from 1st November in 2023, and it won’t be a surprise if this rises again for 2024, with ongoing challenging trading conditions leading many to upweight their promotional activity.
However, there has also been something of a backlash against Black Friday in recent years from a range of retailers from Next to B&M, who stated last year that: ”B&M are an everyday low-priced retailer that focuses on selling products for the best prices all year round. So we don’t have a Black Friday promotions sale”. Much of this is however cosmetic as strong deals are generally available cross market through November, whether badged Black Friday or not.
MMM can help you measure true profitability from all sales and marketing factors
It can be easy to focus on the short-term revenue uplift that aggressive Black Friday activity may bring, without a true understanding of the longer-term impact on profitability. As we blogged earlier this year, Entropy is a big fan of the classic mantra “revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity” as well as the phrase that “what gets measured, gets done”.
At Entropy we help our clients understand all the drivers of their sales with a variety of measurement methodologies including MMM, also known as Marketing Mix Modelling or econometrics.
MMM can quantify the impact of all your sales drivers, in a way that standard digital attribution cannot. For example, MMM can also measure the impact of:
- Pricing & promos
- Seasonality
- Distribution
- Competitor activity
- …and much more (as shown in the diagram below)
Sound interesting? You can find out more about MMM and Entropy’s services here.
How Entropy can help
Entropy offers a range of measurement, marketing and strategic consulting services. For more information, please contact us or read about our work.
