Flash Sale: How to do it Right?

Having heard so much about flash sales, does anyone know what goes into organizing an effective flash sale? Flash sales became popular in the early 2000s, and they continue to be an effective promotional strategy for e-commerce businesses. It is easy to say that an online store can run a flash sale - but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Unsuccessful flash sales can result in bad profits, hurt brand image, and attract disloyal, one-time-only customers. On the other hand, a well-executed flash sale can increase customer loyalty, aid in customer acquisition, and help move excess inventory. 

A glimpse of what goes into organizing an effective flash sale:- 

Defined Purpose - The foremost thing that brands look out for is to get customers on board and help them with brand trials during flash sales. They try to build consumers’ confidence in trying out the brand during these sales in order to retain them for a longer period. For their existing loyal customers, they prefer to allow them to try out new product categories apart from the regular ones, it’s good for creating an impact and awareness around the new products. For every brand, it is the smoothest format for customer acquisition capitalizing on the buyers’ perception of extremity for a great deal. 

The amount of attention is enough to generate awareness on the top of the funnel activity for your brand. Marketers not only see from a perspective of acquisition or sale but for the long-term results is the bottom line. Chances are high to get trusted and qualitative results if you partner with the more renowned and experienced platforms. Additional benefits of flash sales include driving them to a website and, hopefully, encouraging them to purchase other listed products in-store, as well as flash sale items thereby doubling the traffic during these sales. 

Ideal Time for Flash Sale - A flash sale can be done for the whole year only till the time the brands are doing fairness to the sale. It can be an hourly sale, a weekly sale, or even a quarterly sale, and so on. One thing the brand should keep in mind while arranging such sales is that it should not become a regular thing as well as it should have some uniqueness for the consumers to be excited for. Brands need to maintain a balance between a regular period and a sale period. Also, it is very important to decide the regularity of flash sales depending on the type and scale of the brand. For instance, it is advisable for beauty& skin brands to organize flash sales every quarter whereas for electronics brands it is advisable to organize it once a year. 

Spend Ratio - A proper budget planning has always been the topmost priority for any marketer. Similarly, for flash sales, the brands should always keep a dedicated budget and utilize it via different marketing channels. Channels like Google and Facebook ads turn out best for brand identity and should always be considered. Usually, it has been observed that brands choose to keep a mix of major three channels- Facebook, Search Ads, and Affiliate. While all the channels have their own pros and cons, and of course, the purpose of opting out of any channel varies. While search ads play an important role in brand awareness (pushing things on Google and Facebook, for a limited period can become difficult because of their algos which didn’t allow brands to scale after a certain point.), affiliate comes at the bottom of the funnel to increase the conversion rate. Affiliate networks have the right mix of audience and the right mix of channels to generate that kind of traffic in that specific period. Not only that through affiliate marketing, but brands can also leverage their visibility on various affiliate inventories at the same time. 

Will it Outlive its Usefulness?

Flash sales can quickly generate a lot of money for your brand. They offer not only short-term benefits like getting rid of excess inventory, meeting sales projections, and increasing revenue, but also long-term advantages like building brand awareness, gaining customer loyalty, and fuelling business growth. 

The industry is maturing, and transparency is very imperative. Currently, brand representation and their partners are spending healthy time nurturing their relationship as they see a great rise. Data points such as buying behavior among customers and exchanging insights help all the stakeholders. 

Overall, to summarize, the age of flash sales will depend on the brand devoting their time, purposefulness, and keeping a set budget for such sales.