It’s already started. Black Friday sales abound. Today, I counted 16 emails in my inbox with some offer related to the biggest shopping day of the year.

This is all fine and dandy of course. I’m an opportunistic marketer who likes to take advantage of peak cultural consumer dynamics. However, I do my best not to read too deeply into the type of customers acquired during this season. Doing so could set one up for long-term setbacks to their marketing efforts.

Here are my notes from last week.

Notes on marketing “sale” times

• Who are your best customers?
• Are they ones who wait to buy your products and services when they’re on sale?
• Are they the ones who feel FOMO (fear of missing out) so they jump in before the offer ends?
• I’m not so sure. I like a definition I read from April Dunford: Your ideal customers buy quickly and pay full price.
• Not all customers are the same, weigh them accordingly. If you could only have ONE type of customer, who would you want? Optimize for that.
• Segment customers who buy during “big sale” times from the customers who buy at full price.
• Segment customers who buy quickly.
• Don’t set marketing strategies and tactics based on what works during “Black Friday”, “Cyber Monday”, “End of the Quarter”, “Year end closeouts”, etc.
• This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of these times.
• Take short-term gains in key performance indicators (KPIs) with a grain of salt.

Again, I’m not saying don’t take advantage of times when potential customers have a heightened desire to make changes and try something new. Be careful not to let the tail wag the dog, and fall into the fear of missing out yourselves. The only thing worse then having no customers is having ones you don’t want.

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