In this solo episode of the Content Amplification Podcast, Shaun Whynacht breaks down the phenomenon of Black Friday and its implications for small business owners. He explains the consumer psychology behind the event—scarcity, urgency, and the bandwagon effect—and how large retailers use loss‑leader tactics and inflated perceived value to drive traffic. Shaun then challenges small businesses to question whether they need to join the deep‑discount frenzy, highlighting the financial risks of loss‑leader strategies for brick‑and‑mortar shops. He offers alternative differentiation tactics such as community engagement, value‑add add‑ons, and maintaining pricing while providing extra benefits. The episode also covers post‑Black Friday actions: tracking marketing performance with UTM parameters, leveraging consumer data for the holiday season, and managing inventory and supply‑chain constraints. Finally, Shaun advises using the heightened consumer attention around Black Friday to launch broader holiday campaigns, even if a traditional sale isn’t offered, emphasizing email outreach and strategic positioning of the weekend as a kickoff to Christmas shopping.
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Hey, welcome to this episode of the Content Amplification Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about Black Friday. Now, this episode has come out on Wednesday. November 22nd, and if you're following it, that means Black Friday is coming up in a couple days. And a lot of retailers have gone ahead and actually started Black Friday early. But what does it mean for having Black Friday? Like, what does it mean to you as a business? You may be encompassing sales for this cultural phenomenon that has seemed to have blown up over the years. It used to just be one day, and then we saw Cyber Monday, and then people started to take the whole weekend. And now we're seeing early Black Fridays and people taking the whole week. And I'm sure we're probably going to get to Black Friday month in the meantime. But let's talk a little bit about the psychology behind this type of thing that's happening and what we come to associate with Black Friday is deep discounts. And with these deep discounts comes scarcity, limited amounts. Look at the flyers. It says, you know, super 80% off this big screen TV, only 3 available. That is a tactic for scarcity. And when we look at this, what this does is it creates urgency in the buyer's mind. And this is probably the largest sale that happens where Retailers, a lot of large retailers use this in their flyers as loss leaders. So they're reducing, you know, a television, you know, a hot item, you know, at 80% off. There's no way they're making profit on that, but they're banking on the fact that you're coming in, you're going to buy other things that they will then make up that profit for. So that's the big thing with that. Now, in your consumer's mind, they're going on this kind of crazy fit. You probably have seen videos in the US, people lined up for hours before in this big stampede, and people actually get hurt. Some people have actually died getting stampeded to get these sales. And it's crazy to think about that. And it's crazy to even feel like this is necessary, but for a lot of consumers and a lot of retailers in the big side of things, the big, like the Walmarts, the Targets, the things like that, it's almost a necessity to be part of this. But for you as a small business owner, I'm going to challenge you to think you don't have to do that. You don't have to jump on this bandwagon. It's hard enough to compete with these large big box stores, let alone trying to do it now on this type of day. So why does this happen? Well, there's something called the bandwagon effect. And this is where people have that, that fear of missing out, that fear, that FOMO that plays into these Black Friday sales that that consumers see others buying and they don't want to miss out. So while they may say, hey, you know, I don't need anything, but then you see your friends posting that they got this great item on Black Friday. You're like, oh, I got— I should go check it out. And this is where that, that bandwagon effect really comes into play. Now with this, a lot of times we look at perceived value when it comes to pricing structures. In your business. And I mean, I'm not a huge fan of this where you see, you know, anyone that has these coaching programs or other workshops and things like that, they start to list out, you get this at this value, this, this, this, and this, but you get like $30,000 in value for $9.97. Well, in reality, you know, they're not giving you $30,000. Right? They're not losing that much money for giving it to you at $9.97. Right? It's something that has been digital. It's, it's this inflated value, but there's a perceived value and it actually works with that, that pricing structure. So when we look at this and we look at your business, you got to take into account, how is this going to affect you? Are you going to come out on the positive side of actually jumping on this Black Friday bandwagon. Now we're using Black Friday with it coming up, but this can happen for, let's say, you know, Christmas shopping or, you know, back to school, any major kind of holiday where people, you know, tend to buy, you know, Christmas and Black Friday are the kind of the biggest ones that are out there. So you need to look at, is this going to financially impact you? You know, as a small business, can you balance offering these attractive discounts while still maintaining those healthy profits. You know, you're probably, if you're in a small type of brick and mortar type store, you're not going to be able to sustain this loss leader type of mentality because you're probably not going to make up those margins by people coming in and buying more things from that. So look at that before you decide to do that. Now, what are some, some differentiation strategies that you can come up with for doing different types of sales, right? So, you know, how can you stand out for Black Friday, right? Not going through the whole discount mode, but maybe there's something you can do for, for community engagement or personalized services, add-ons to your existing services that aren't costing you as much to add on these additional things, but it doesn't require you to deeply discount. You're giving people more versus discounting and losing that way. So that's a lot of things to, to really kind of shift your mind because we're programmed to think that these major sales are reducing prices. When in fact you can actually keep your pricing, keep your margins, and then find additional things that aren't going to cost you as much more., but are going to give the consumer, the client, more value out of it. So the more they buy, the more they get, those type of things, you know? And the other thing too is what happens after Black Friday, right? How can you leverage this even further? So it's not just about that day, right? There's an importance to having post-Black Friday strategies. Like follow-up marketing, leveraging consumer data gathered from that sale, and also using that to prepare for the rest of the holiday season, right? We're lucky enough that it is just before we run into December, which is the big holiday buying cycle. So you could almost use this weekend because people are programmed to think about spending this weekend, right? So think about it. Maybe you have something that you want to buy. And you thought about it a couple of weeks ago, but now, you know, Black Friday is coming. I'm going to wait for those sales. I'm not going to pay for it now. We're programmed that this weekend is the buying time. A lot of people do all their Christmas shopping on this weekend. So maybe you're going to have a kickoff to your Christmas buying season. Don't call it Black Friday, call it your kickoff Christmas buying party, whatever you want to call it, have fun with it. But then it can lead into the following weeks leading into Christmas, right? So And then you're also going to see that, that if you do take part in these sales, right, make sure you're tracking that data. Make sure you're tracking, you know, how many people are coming in from different advertising methods. If you're selling online, have proper tracking in place for your store, your links. If you're running any ads, make sure that you've got different UTM parameters on your links so you can see which ones are working the best with it. Now, The other challenge that you run into also with this is maybe you decide to put something on sale and you sell out a lot of it, but you don't have a really healthy supply chain for it. And you also need those type of products for your Christmas weeks leading into it. You got to keep in mind, you've got some options here. You're either not going to put it on sale, you're going to put it on sale and you're going to sell out of it. Or you're only gonna put a limited amount and keep a back inventory to put out after the sale that you need. So think about that in your business for that inventory and supply chain management side. So Black Friday, I mean, just it's from a consumer side, it's fantastic. From a business side, especially from a small business side, you're probably feeling that you need to compete in these Black Friday sales, that you need to be part of it, and you don't. You can still succeed by not deeply discounting, and you can do that through leveraging the already attention that people are getting and they're looking online, right? Make sure you're sending out emails to your clients, to your customers, Whether you've got a consumer email newsletter that goes out about your products, send it out at that time because people are used to these emails coming in this weekend. Whether you're going to have a Black Friday sale or not, leverage this okayed attention to getting emails that people are programmed for. So, so just think about that in your business and you know what, hopefully you have a successful weekend, you have a successful weeks leading into the Christmas holiday. But Black Friday, I mean, it's, it's not going away anytime soon. It's something that's going to be around. So you got to think smarter in the way that you market your business by leveraging this weekend that works the best for you.
