Black Friday and Cyber Monday are major shopping holidays, but they aren’t days to impulse shop. Rather, they are the 2 days you need have a plan if you want to know where and how to find the absolute best deals.
Luckily, a vast majority of Black Friday deals are now also available online, eliminating your need to wake up wake up at the crack of dawn and endure a day of stampeding. Plus, Cyber Monday and Black Friday are almost overlapping, giving you 2 days, rather than 1, to score fantastic deals. With the help of online tools and some insider know-how, you can effortlessly score the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals from the comfort of your home.
To get a leg up on the competition, here are 7 secrets to ensure you get the absolute best Black Friday deals this year:
1) Don’t Fall Victim To Discount Percentage Temptation.
In fact, you should really just try to ignore them the best you can. Plain and simple, the percentage off that you see as a discount is really just used as a marketing tactic to increase impulse spending. The regular retail price you see is often inflated over the holiday season to make cuts seem larger than they actually are.
Instead, focus on the amount you are actually saving. This number is often printed smaller than both the discount percentage and final sales price, but if you take a few extra seconds to find it, you’ll be better able to gauge how much you are actually saving.
2) Assume Shipping Costs Will Be Added To Any Price You See.
Shipping costs dramatically affect the final price of any product, and you should calculate this additional cost before you even consider buying any product. This thinking is especially important when it comes to purchasing larger items, such as those you’ll see listed as the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday tech deals. On the other hand, free shipping is great, but be cautious when you see it offered. Some analysts speculate that the stores that do offer free shipping once you reach a certain price point, only lead you to spend more than you would if you just paid for the shipping separately.
As in insider tip, you can often find shipping on your own, without relying on retailer promotions. FreeShipping.org provides a Store page that lists thousands of coupon codes for hundreds of online retailers. The promo codes are continually updated and contain free shipping codes and offers first and foremost.
3) Use Social Media To Gain Insider Access to Secret Deals and Promos.
Both brands and retailers reward followers who engage with them on social media. During Black Friday, this means special promos and offers that are kept on the down low will be first be ‘leaked’ to social media followers. These shopping promotions may let you know a certain time to shop to save the most on a particular product you want, or give you a heads up on limited-time discounts throughout the day. Be sure to check social media pages both retailers, such as Walmart, as well as brands, such as Dell and Express. You can also search social media for deals on specific products, or types of products you want. For example, if you’re looking for a fitness tracker, you can search Twitter for keywords or phrases such as ‘health and fitness deals’ and ‘Black Friday’ or ‘Cyber Monday”. Whether it’s before you checkout or right when you begin shopping, keep an eye on social media accounts of the brands you are shopping for and retailers you are shopping with.
4) Price Check Ahead of Time.
This one is a must and is the only way to know if you’re getting a great deal. Because consumer-facing prices can alter around the retail holiday season, it’s important to check the prices of items before Black Friday. With your list of items you are looking to buy, do a quick web search and record the prices you see before Black Friday hits. Ideally, it’s best to do this before Black Friday week, when deals tend to leak early, and prices may already be altered.
Tip: To upgrade your price checking method, consider a price tracking tool such as Booli. This unique shopping tool lets you instantly save products and their details, such as price, to a list. To check price changes, refer to your list and click on any item you’ve saved to see a detail price chart of the product price from the moment you added the product to the present. POUCHit also offers price alerts, so you can instantly get updates when prices have dropped on products you have saved.
5) Take Advantage of Price Comparison Tools While You Shop.
You can effortlessly save more money when you can instantly compare prices of items on different retailer sites. Online tools make this easy, with browser add-ons specifically designed to automatically display competitor prices when you reach a product page. Priceblink and InvisibleHand are two of the top-rated tools for instant price comparison. Popular Black Friday and Cyber Monday products, such as the Best TV Deals, will often vary in price throughout the day between online stores, making instant price comparison a must-have online shopping tool to find the best price at the time of your purchase.
Tip: Stick to one tool, to get the best results. Because price comparison add-ons do the same thing, you only really need one tool to compare prices. Adding more than one to your browser can cause the mechanisms to malfunction or create problems with your browser. The tools are easy to install and uninstall, so to make the most of these tools, try them out ahead of time and decide which one is best for you to use on Black Friday.
6) Instantly Save More By Automatically Adding Coupons To Your Order.
Aggregated coupon tools are additional browser add-ons you can use to save money immediately. These tools scour the web for the best possible coupon codes and allow you to select the one you want to apply to your order at the checkout page.
Standard aggregated coupon tools, such as Coupons at Checkout, will display a drop down menu over any standard coupon code box, and allow you to select the that will work best for your order. Other, more automated tools, such as Honey, will automatically apply coupon codes to your shopping cart at checkout. Both tools, save you the hassle of collecting coupon codes online – which can take hours – and optimize your shopping by presenting only the best, most relevant coupon codes for your individual order.
7) Save Even More Money After You Buy With Price Drop Alerts.
Shop confidently on Black Friday knowing you’ll get reimbursed if a product drops further in price by using Slice. The product tracking tool not only tracks the delivery status of your products but has the convenient extra of monitoring prices of products after you purchase them. The software connects to your Gmail account to instantly track products you have bought online based on their emailed receipts. If a product does drop in price and a price adjustment is available – which depends on the retailer – Slice will alert you to the refund amount you can get simply by contacting the retailer.
