Nowadays many businesses run their Black Friday sales at different intervals. But how long should you run your Black Friday sale for? In this article, we give some tips on what to consider to determine the duration of BFCM sales.
Duration of Running Black Friday Sales
At a minimum, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) sale should run for 4 days long, over the weekend, Friday through Monday.
Over the years, Black Friday sales have been starting earlier and earlier. Some will start a week earlier, while others will run their sale for the whole month of November or into the first week of December.
We recommend making your discount code valid for 1 day before your sale officially starts and 1 day after it officially ends. The main reason for this is to avoid issues with people checking out in different timezones. Having your discount code continue to work a few days after the sale ends also cuts down on support emails from customers asking to honor the sale price.
We sell a product that helps to set up Black Friday sales, and we want you to have enough time to get through it, so we’ve run sales in October. Other business-to-business (B2B) marketing products are running their sales in October too. It all depends on your preference and what you want to achieve at the end of the sale period.
In our experience, you can also consider playing the long game, particularly past Cyber Monday, instead of starting sooner. The advantage is that you’ll get people who have leftover money and would come to you to spend it.
But don’t push it. Especially if this is your first time. Run your sale Friday to Monday (but as mentioned before, Thursday to Tuesday) and see how it goes. You can always adjust things next year.
Getting ready for Black Friday
The following related articles will help you get ready for running sales on your site over the BFCM weekend: