The most important thing you can do is start preparing your business and marketing strategies for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Luxury Sunday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and Green Monday. Seems like a lot right? These holidays keep popping up because they are actually really profitable for businesses big and small! Advanced preparation is going to make things run a lot smoother and help you capitalize on all that our capitalistic society has to offer during the holiday season:).
The preparation you put in now will also benefit your business by capitalizing on the other special season shopping events – Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Luxury Sunday, Cyber Monday, and two recent arrivals; Giving Tuesday and Green Monday.
Thanksgiving All our favorite F words – family, football, food, fun. Need we say more?
Black Friday refers to the most popular shopping holiday – a single day of the year when retail companies finally go “into the black” (i.e. make a profit). As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Everybody knows about it, people have been hurt getting trampled on because of it, and businesses have greatly benefitted financially due to the creation of Black Friday.
Small Business Saturday falls on Saturday, November 26th this year. It’s a day dedicated to supporting local small businesses and was founded by American Express in 2010. Small Business Saturday has succeeded even while sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two of the biggest holiday retail days of the year – we like to think it’s because everyone loves small businesses as much as we do.
Luxury Sunday is dedicated to the luxury brands, products and services that don’t discount during the year. A proverbial “slap in the face” to the deep discounts from our other beloved holiday shopping days.
Cyber Monday falls on November 28th this year and is a great excuse for people at work to spend all their time at their computers shopping online instead of working. Just kidding! But it’s kind of true. “Cyber Monday,” which is the Monday just after Thanksgiving, has been considered in recent years to be the start of the online holiday shopping season. The National Retail Federation says it coined the term in 2005 to describe a sharp rise in online revenue and traffic the first Monday after Thanksgiving. Some of the spike has been attributed to consumers shopping from work on the first day after the holiday.
Giving Tuesday falls on Tuesday, November 29th this year. It is a good way for consumers to give back after the surge of buying for friends and family. Many complain about the holidays becoming too commercial – well here’s your return to altruism. Join the movement now known and hashtagged as #GivingTuesday for all of your do-gooder needs.
Green Monday falls on December 12th this year and you may think it’s all about “going green” and saving the planet. Not so. This is another e-commerce date that generally marks the last date that an order can be standard shipped in time for Christmas. Green Monday is the best sales day in December and is a great time to get all your ducks in a row to last throughout the season.