How To Prepare Your Smoke Shop For Black Friday 2024

Parodied in films, lamented by employees, and adored by the most avid of cheapskates - Black Friday is a uniquely American phenomenon where spending money to save money truly becomes a no holds barred death match for customers looking to save a buck.

Despite the softening of the edges of the holiday in recent years, with less frigid midnight openings and stampede-inducing limited price points, the day is still firmly ingrained in the public psyche as a time to spend, baby spend!

For your Smoke Shop, Black Friday offers you a chance to make a massive amount of sales in a short time, expand your recurring customer base, move your back stock, and a whole host of other bonuses so good you’ll be as happy as the Thanksgiving Turkey that just got pardoned!

Take a look below to gain some insights into how you can properly prepare for Black Friday 2024, and let Got Vape Wholesale help you make this year's sales a total knockout!

Table of Contents:

When Should I Start Preparing My Smoke Shop for Black Friday?
How Can I Prepare My Smoke Shop For Black Friday?
Organize Your Various Sales
Light Discounts On Top Shelf Products
Deep Discounts On Back Stock
Prepare Your Social Media Posts Now
Conduct a Social Media Countdown
Can Fliers Help Market My Shop’s Black Market?
Word Of Mouth Marketing
Start Sales In The Lead Up
Reward Your Loyal Shoppers
Stay Cool, Calm, and Collected
Put Your Best On The Register
Now Get To Preparing!

When Should I Start Preparing My Smoke Shop for Black Friday?

Now! The sooner truly is the better when it comes to Black Friday preparation, which is why we are sounding the alarm a full six weeks ahead of the date to allow you the breathing room to make all the right decisions and maximize your potential profits.

Avoid rushed decisions and frantic stocking by beginning to make these hard decisions today, instead of letting them build up till tomorrow when they may be made for you!

Starting now will pay off in dividends later and make the entire process much less stressful as you don’t have to sweat as much about delivery times, social media posting, and other time consuming events. Instead you can focus your energy all on selling!

How Can I Prepare My Smoke Shop For Black Friday?

To get your shop all ready for the Black Friday rush we wanted to walk you through the steps that will best prepare your smoke shop for the influx of customers, increased marketing needs, and rush of sales that is ahead of it.

Keep reading for some tips on how to organize your sales, properly set discount prices, prepare your social media, use grassroots marketing via fliers / word of mouth, start your sales early, put your best on the register, and more!

Organize Your Various Sales

First and most important amongst your tasks to prepare for Black Friday is to go through your products to decide what’s going on sale and for how much you are going to list it.

In order to keep track of all this information, we recommend creating a Google Sheet in order to have a hard copy of all your planned sales. To assist with this we created a basic template that you can freely use as your basis to start itemizing your discounted items.

This is also a great way to take a step backwards and be able to see the forest through the trees of your Black Friday Sale. With all of the prices and discounts laid out in front of you, making sense of the grander scheme is much easier.

You will be able to notice if any one particular area of products is lacking in terms of sales options or if your plethora of options for discounts end up drawing each other out in the maelstrom of savings.

Having this on Google Drive is great because you can easily access it on your phone and input any on the fly updates as you dial in the sales over the next 6 weeks.

Light Discounts On Top Shelf Products

When it comes to the sales pricing of your top shelf brands, we recommend that you create bundles or light discounts on things like concentrate vaporizers for example.

This gets fans into your shop looking for the discounts, without cutting into your profits too heavily. Concentrate vaporizing is massively popular right now so these big ticket items are essentially the Flat Screen Television of the Black Friday vaping world.

Do not underestimate the power of discounts around 10-15% when so many people are after these products, whether it's for themselves or a gift for the upcoming winter Holidays - these highly sought after devices are incredibly attractive when discounted.

Deep Discounts On Back Stock

Black Friday is your best time during the entire year to unload your dead stock! Look into your wares to take note of everything that has been languishing on the shelf over the years and use these as your insanely discounted items.

If you have a product that hasn’t sold many items over the years, instead of letting it sit on your shelf you have the opportunity to discount these items with crazy incentives like 90% off.

Importantly, by listing these back-stocked products so low it lets you include imagery in your marketing that says “90% Off”, which is more than worth the price in terms of marketing.

People love to search for those massive deals, so it’s worthwhile to take a lesser profit on these back-stocked items just so you can advertise higher % deals in your marketing. Speaking of which…

Prepare Your Social Media Posts Now

To make your life a whole lot easier, create all of your social media posts in advance instead of waiting until the day of and just writing them as you post them. That way when Black Friday is imminent, all you have to do is press post on your content and away it goes.

Whether you are using Instagram, X / Twitter, or Facebook - all of these social media sites allow you to save drafts of your postings. This means you can create your content, with the sales info and pictures you desire ready and waiting weeks ahead of the actual event.

This gives you the freedom to review these posts and the sales numbers themselves over time instead of having to post on the fly. This allows you to put the care into the posts that will make them resonate and stand out in people's feeds.

Customers can see when shops are just phoning it in and will respond much more eagerly to those who go the extra mile with creative slogans, pictures, and deals.

Conduct a Social Media Countdown

An incredibly effective means of marketing your Black Friday sale, is to conduct a countdown on your various social media platforms in order to build the hype around your shop specifically.

The general rule of thumb is that the closer to the day you are, the larger, more attractive, and specific the reveals are going to be. For instance if you were going to do a “10 Day Countdown” you would start day one announcing a discount on something less expensive but still loved like a 20% off on water pipes for example.

This is a broad category and is great to whet the appetites of customers. As you continue through the days, proceed to up the ante and the specificity.

By the time you reach day 9 and 10, you want to be advertising some real show stoppers such as a big discount on a specific branded bundle. This gives a nice package item that customers can strive to get that day and will draw people looking for the big score to buy additional items while they are in the shop.

Can Fliers Help Market My Shop’s Black Market?

Yes! A great way to get your customer base aware of your deals without the help of social media is to head down to your local print shop or chain store like Staples to get some fliers printed.

Start off by writing down the text that you would like to appear on the flier, then go online to the website of your desired print shop and see what templates they have available. These premade set ups will give your flier proper structure and design without you having to sweat about it.

Now just choose your size, a flashy but still readable paper color, and get to printing out an army of fliers to have on hand at your POS system, placed in shopping bags, or at local events.

Having a nice paper that includes all the info is great for customers who may not be interested in the deals now, but will notice that piece of paper in their bag at some point and end up deciding to cash in on these deals.

While it is scattershot, it's one of the most effective ways to spread your Black Friday sales message due to the density of information you can include on it.

Word Of Mouth Marketing

Another effective and free method of marketing is to simply talk about the sale with customers as they are checking out. This is a great opportunity for you to hand them a flier with some of the general sales on it too.

If you saw a customer eying a water pipe but refraining from purchasing it - why not casually mention to them the deals on water pipes you have coming up and give them a flier.

This type of targeted in person marketing is incredibly effective and builds trust between you and the customer.

Start Sales In The Lead Up

As every arms race inevitably does, Black Friday has slowly expanded the scope of its reach and begun taking over the days surrounding it.

For you as a Smoke Shop owner this gives you a lot of leeway for when you start your sales and what exactly you put up for sale. Many large stores will discount some items on the days leading up to Black Friday or will instead extend the sales to the entire weekend.

Whichever method you choose, it’s important that you set the rules / dates of your sales as early as possible as this will allow your customers to have the time to plan around it.

Shoppers will act differently if a sale is 3 days versus 1 day and vice versa, this doesn’t mean one method is necessarily better than the other, but people will plan their purchases much differently depending on what you have laid out as either a one off or weekend long deal.

Reward Your Loyal Shoppers

A pro tip we wanted to float your way is that it always pays to clue your loyal repeat customers into some of the sales that you are going to have ahead of time.

Now we're not saying tell a customer you're gonna discount a product as they are about to buy one, but instead for shoppers that you know are reliable and big spenders - clue them in about things they may potentially be interested in.

This is a great way to build a bond with your customers and earn some trust, letting them in on the secrets early gives them a sort of behind the curtain experience that makes them feel part of the in crowd and thus more likely to spend $$$.

Stay Cool, Calm, and Collected

When it comes to the actual day of Black Friday, we wanted to make sure to remind you to stay as cool, calm, and collected as possible. We know that the frenzy of shopping and rush of customers can be a lot, but oftentimes shoppers will reflect the energy you are giving out.

That’s why if you stay as positive and uplifting as possible in attitude, you can be sure people are going to feel more comfortable buying that extra item that they may not need, but see a great price for and decide to treat themselves.

It’s ultimately about fostering an environment people want to spend in, so if you are acting like the Grinch expect your sales to reflect that. We recommend setting your day up with some treats for yourself to keep your mood up and mind driven to the end goal of massive sales.

Put Your Best On The Register

When it comes to the actual day(s) of Black Friday sales, we recommend that you make sure your point of sale is all ready to handle the rush of sales that are about to descend upon it.

Much like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory - your stream of customers is going to keep on coming and if you are not ready to deal with them in a timely manner sales are going to start falling through the cracks and off your profit conveyor belt!

To ensure everything goes smoothly, you are going to want to make sure you put your most experienced and point of sale savvy employees on the register that day. Choose your employees that are able to work the register quickly and correctly, this is a must to make sure you are doing everything you can to avoid back ups.

If employees are less than thrilled about working Black Friday, potentially offer them a special bonus in pay for the shifts or stock your shop with some special amenities and snacks to make their day less stressful!

Now Get To Preparing!

Now that your eyes and ears are open to the issue at hand, it’s time to start preparing for your Black Friday right this instant! The clock is ticking, so make sure to follow along with our tips and make this Black Friday the best it possibly can be for your smoke shops bottom line.

For more product updates, mushroom buyers guides, and industry investigations make sure to check out all of our postings at the Got Vape Wholesale Business Blog.

Thanks for reading and please reach out to us if you have any Black Friday questions! Our sales team has been doing this for over 20 years, so we know a thing or two about how to get it done right!