The Quick & Dirty Guide To Running A Black Friday Promotion

Black Friday is on its way, and a lot of money is going to change hands over the week or so surrounding it. If you’re planning to do your own Black Friday offer, you may already be busy getting All The Things ready and organized.

But let’s be honest – not everyone’s a Virgo.

Plenty of people are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what they’re going to do for Black Friday, and there’s still time to do something profitable if you get moving on the sooner side.

If you’re one of those head-scratchers right now, then I’ve got some advice for you. Here’s how to quickly decide on a Black Friday promotion that can provide a welcome cash boost before the holidays.

First, choose the type of offer you want to make.

Black Friday deals for solopreneurs tend to fall into one of these categories:

Hefty Discount – One or more of your products/services are on sale for X% off. (“X” is a biggish number, usually higher than you’d offer at any other time of year.)

Extra Free Stuff – Something valuable comes as a bonus to a standard purchase. (Naomi occasionally ran a “Buy 12 coaching hours, get 3 free” promo around this time of year.) You could theoretically include a small discount as well.

Blast From The Past – If you have a backlist of off-the-shelf digital products, you could offer one of them (or make a bundle) during Black Friday. Bundles work well with a steep discount – a few years ago we ran the “IttyBiz Vault” promotion, where there were 17 retired products in a bundle for $99, and that was a strong performer.

Big Reveal – You can also introduce a brand-new service or launch a new product in this window. Black Friday is about exciting surprises, and many people use the window to capture people in search of novelty. You’re not required to offer a launch discount, but if you do, you can boost conversion. (You can also combine a Big Reveal with Extra Free Stuff to really do it up.) Note: If you want to make a new product in a hurry, check out Product In A Weekend.

Future Coupon – This one works especially well with digital products. When someone buys, they get a gift card for a future purchase. One year we ran a store sale, and every purchase came with a $50 gift card to use on any product in the store. (Apple does this with Black Friday sales of their physical products, which is where we got the idea.)

Affiliate Push – If you happen to be an affiliate for various kinds of products, those sellers will likely be running a Black Friday promo of their own. You can forgo promoting your own stuff by sending your list a collection of deals. Some people do this with year-end gift guides – they’re generally special deals on affiliate products.

These are just 6 potential offer types. Keep your eyes open over the next few days as the businesses start teasing their Black Friday promotions – you might get a great idea that you can use, too.

Next, figure out your approach(es).

Once you’ve decided on your offer, you have to make a call on how you’re going to tell your audience about it – and get them more interested in buying from you.

A few options to consider:

Top-of Mind – If you don’t like being overly commercial, you could simply stay top of mind. Send out enough content / emails in November to remind your audience that you exist and are relevant to their interests. It’s helpful to up your content game during this time. If you can impress them with your content, they’ll feel warmer and fuzzier towards you and become more likely to buy when you finally open the doors on Black Friday. If you need content ideas, check out The 1-Hour Content Plan or Plug & Play Blog Posts.

Exposure To Product(s) – If you draw more attention to the things you sell in November without pushing for them to purchase, your audience will be reminded that those offerings exist. They probably won’t buy – they’ll look at the product, see the price and think, “Maybe I’ll get that sometime”. Then, when you run a special Black Friday offer, the discount will come as a delightful surprise. And because they’ll have already been thinking about it, and they’ll be more likely to buy.

Explicit Warning – Of course, there’s always the option of explicitly telling people NOT to buy right now. Naomi used to tell people before a summer sale or Black Friday promotion, “For the love of god, don’t buy anything in the store right now. It’s going on sale this month.” You can take that approach, or let people know the specific deal a week or two ahead of time. Many people like to hear the details of what’s for sale early on so they can plan their shopping and move money around.

So, those are 3 options for you that don’t require a whole lot of faff to execute.

Finally, decide what you’ll do for Cyber Monday.

There are a few ways to approach this. Some people run the same deal from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Other people run one offer Friday-Sunday, and a completely different offer on Monday. Still others run the first deal Friday-Monday and also run a separate deal on Monday. The possibilities, they are endless.

All options are fine – one isn’t better than the other. But if you’re going to offer something separate on Cyber Monday, consider something that’s an no-brainer purchase, because your audience is only going to have 1 day to make their decision.

Cyber Monday can also be exciting, too – so if there’s something extra-unusual or noteworthy you can offer on this day, you can take advantage of the energy of the day. You can make more of a fuss than you might otherwise. )

So, that’s my quick-and-dirty guide to running a Black Friday promotion on short notice.

And if you want your sales pages spruced up ahead of Black Friday, get in touch ASAP.

It’s always a good idea to revisit your sales pages before Black Friday and make improvements to your copy, layout and graphics. So do that well ahead of time so you can tweak your way to higher conversions.

And if you’d like to outsource that review process, you can always book a sales page review & action plan over here. I’ll tell you what to fix and what order to do it in so that you can boost your conversion rate before the big day.

But if you want a review, get in touch ASAP so you we can get that time booked before my schedule fills up.

In the meantime, take care and I’ll talk to you soon.