If you’re reading this article, then you’re surely thinking of executing a flash sale for your business.
Whether your brand is launching a new product or you’re simply looking to increase brand awareness by offering great sales over the holidays, you’ve come to the right place.
In this flash sale guide, we’ll discuss what flash deals are, the pros and cons of running flash sales, and the best techniques you need to follow to reach high sales volumes and increased Brand Awareness.
Flash sales: what are they, and how do they work?
A flash sale is a limited-time promotion or discount that a company runs for a couple of hours to 72 hours. These sales are great for bringing in some traffic and boosting short-term sales within hours or days.
Flash sales are designed to get consumers to make impulse purchases. However, these sales usually involve a lot of planning and require a well-considered strategy to ensure success.
When planning a flash sale strategy, inventory, marketing, website capabilities, and shipping should all be considered.
Usually, a flash sale will look something like this:
- Determine the objective of your sale (i.e., what exactly is it that you want to achieve?).
- Choose the suitable products to sell to your audience or audience segment.
- Make sure that there are enough of your selected products in-store.
- Advertise the sale.
- Run the sale for an extremely limited time.
Pros of running flash sales
Here are the main benefits of flash sales:
Increases brand visibility
The biggest advantage of flash sales is that they offer great options to get your brand in front of your ideal buyers and increase brand awareness between them.
By posting your sale on social media, more people will learn about your business. Even if they don’t want to buy your products right now, they’ll know about your brand and may decide to visit your online store later when they need something.
Additionally, your ideal buyers may share your posts across their network, giving you, even more, brand exposure, credibility, and power.
Manages extra stock
Buying stock can be tricky as you can’t always guess how many products you need. As a result, you may be left with excess stock. Flash sales are a great method to get rid of these products without failing money in the process. With these sales, you’ll be able to sell products that are out of season and, in accomplishing so, make room for new and trending products that are certified to sell.
Increases sales and revenues
Speed is an extremely effective way that marketers use to turn browsers into customers immediately. This is because customers are far more conceivable to buy products when they know that these amazing discounts are available for a limited time only.
Therefore, your flash sale will boost the number of sales you make consequently, and lead to more profit for your company.
Even though flash sales decrease your profit margin, the number of dealings completed in such a short time frame makes up for it.
Creates customer loyalty
Flash sales offer more suitable discounts than normal sales. Your current customers will see this opportunity as a bonus.
They’ll be able to buy your products at a lower cost, which will hold them dedicated to your brand. And, if they like the product, the probabilities are, that they’ll not only continue purchasing from you but also become brand ambassadors.
Cons of running flash sales
Here are the main collapses of executing flash sales:
Shipping failures
With flash sale seasons being the busiest times for eCommerce companies, an extreme number of orders can lead to shipping failures.
Unfortunately, shipping failures lead to disappointed customers, which can lead to negative reviews and a poor reputation.
To ensure that this doesn’t occur to your business, you need to keep an eye on customer perception during the sale and after the order has taken place.
That’s where a good shipping system comes in. The quicker your delivery services are, the better. Usually, shipping takes three to five business days. Yet, sometimes customers expect same-day delivery.
If you want to stand out beyond your competitors, you can think about offering free shipping. This is specifically true for products priced above $20. Usually, 26% of consumers expect free shopping for products priced between $20-$30, and an extra 27% expect it for products priced between $30-$50.
Website crashes
Even big eCommerce companies meet website crashes during flash sales. With the high quantity of customers coming at and leaving your website, the chances are far higher for your website to break down.
This can be incredibly bad for your business’s reputation since buyer satisfaction depends on good user experiences in today’s digital, fast-paced world.
Therefore, if your business model depends on flash sales, think of doing the following:
- Getting extra server capability
- Getting a reputable hosting plan that can support thousands of visitors at once
- Traffic Load testing your website
- Traffic Load testing your third-party tools and apps
- Running speed trials
- Inventory failures
Expecting a product and not accepting it can be extremely disappointing for a client. In turn, this can lead to them not allowing your business and, thus, telling their friends, families, or colleagues all about their bad experience.
Again, this can lead to a bad brand reputation which could impact your business negatively in the future.
To prevent this, you can do the following:
- Research the market for certain products and schedule your supply chain for the demand.
- Add stock quantities to your product pages so that buyers can see how many products are left.
- Attracts bad customers
A flash sale can attract one-time customers (often called “bargain hunters”) who take benefit of the sale and never visit your store again.
These types of customers don’t benefit your business much since profit margins are far lower during these deals, with prices being 25%-70% lower.
Unfortunately, you can’t avoid this type of buyer since your social media ads will attract them.
Yet, you can try to modify these buyers by heavily promoting your flash sale deals to your existing customers. (including engaged and disengaged buyers) by employing email marketing and retargeting strategies.
What is the best time to run a flash sale?
Here is a list of the best periods during the year to execute flash sales:
Try Sales Before the holiday season
eCommerce companies shoot people with flash sales during the holiday season, which leads to high competition and flash sale exhaustion in buyers.
During this time, buyers’ email boxes are filled with promotional emails, which usually leads to them ignoring these emails.
The resolution to this problem is executing flash sale ads and campaigns before the holiday season as well as during it. This way, you’ll grab new clients ahead of time so that you stand out beyond your competitors.
Try Sales After the holiday season
After the holiday season, eCommerce stores usually see a point in product returns. This is mainly because people return disliked gifts.
Yet, you shouldn’t let this discourage you. To make up for the returned products, you can execute another flash sale after the holiday season (in January) to grow your profit margin and make up the money you lost for the returns.
Willing to run a flash sale?
You’ve learned what a flash sale is and the benefits that it offers to your company. By following the above tips, your flash sale will attract your ideal buyers, increase your sales rate, and help with business growth.
If you’re thinking of executing a successful flash sale for your eCommerce company, have a look at the latest eCommerce statistics and trends for 2022 to help grow you up for success