How to Launch a Black Friday Offer

It’s already November, and you know what that means – Most people are starting their shopping and planning for the upcoming Black Friday deals online.

Black Friday is great for retailers, but it’s also an opportunity for online business owners to make some serious bank for their biz.

You may want to offer a Black Friday sale this year in your online business, but you’re unsure how to create a product or offering that your audience can’t resist – this post is for you.

Maybe you’re stumped on the what to sell or how to do the marketing, and you need a clear blueprint to make sure you don’t forget an important part of the process. 

Not sure what type of Black Friday deal you’ll create?

Here are some ideas: watch the video

Here’s a Video on 4 Ways to Prep For Black Friday:

 

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A post shared by Ivory Mix™ | Kayla – Canva Templates & Stock Photos (@the_ivorymix)

Want an easy way to Plan and prep your Black Friday in one day? Get the easy Black Friday bundle! This campaign comes with email and social templates built to help you grow excitement before and during your Black Friday/Cyber Monday launch.

While offering a Black Friday Sale can seem overwhelming, I’m living proof that it can be a huge win for your biz. 

My Black Friday Success Story

It’s very common for me to host a sale on Black Friday. For example, November 2019, I partnered with a strategic partner (my good friend and fellow creative entrepreneur, Crystal) for a Black Friday offer. We combined our expertise to create the Creative Boss Bundle (a business-in-a-box for creatives). On Black Friday weekend, we launched our workshop bundle according to plan.

The result? We made over 22k in one weekend. You read that right! 

The key to our success was not found in our actual offering, but in the steps we took during the entire month of November to prepare our audience for the sale. We took the time to plan strategic content, and we followed our plan to the tea. The results speak for themselves. 

In this post, I’m going to let you see inside the process I used to launch my successful Black Friday offering, and I’ll share tips and tricks to help you personalize this plan for your own business. 

Decide What Type of Black Friday Offer Will You Host:

There are two main ways to take advantage of Black Friday in your business. You can offer some type of sale or discount, or you can create a special one-time product or offering for the holiday. 

The important thing, no matter which type you choose, is to DELIVER A CLEAR TRANSFORMATION for your buyer. 

If you choose to promote a discount or coupon code as your Black Friday offer, here are a few specific ideas on how you can do that. 

Option 1-  Create a Sales or Give a Discount:

• Bundle two of your products together as a discount
• Bundle one of your offerings with a strategic partner’s offering and cross-promote
• Reward early buyers with bigger discounts
• Give a discount for a limited time

If you don’t want to run the risk of devaluing your products or services, you don’t have to limit yourself to discounts. Other ways to make sales on Black Friday can include.

Option 2 – Create a new product or offer:

• Partnering with another brand and publishing a gift guide (of course, use your affiliate link!)
• Supporting a charity and encouraging donations
• Creating a mini-product or a jumpstart product. (Jumpstart products get buyers going on the first step of a big goal. If you have a high-ticket item, take part of that course and create a lower cost mini-product from that content.)
• Adding a new bonus or an exclusive item to one of your existing offers

Want an easy way to create a Bonus Black Friday Offer?

One easy way to create a special Black Friday Bonus is to bundle up my PLR products. These digital products are ready to rebrand and resell, and you get to keep 100% of the profits and include planner templates, social media Canva templates, content ideas, and captions. Perhaps one or two of these would make a great bonus to anyone of your existing offers!

Save This Black Friday Launch Checklist to Get Started

Once you’ve settled on a Black Friday offer for your business, use the following checklist to stay on track and guide yourself through the steps you’ll need to take to bring it to completion. This basic checklist will be our guide throughout this post as we dive into the details of the steps.

1. Set your goals — for example, “I want to sell 25 items or make 5k.”
2. Outline your offer – for example “Offer my course for 30% off for 4 days (Black Friday through Cyber Monday)” 
3. Outline your Black Friday Sales funnel
   1. How will you grow awareness? What platforms will you use? (I will post on Instagram and Facebook)
   2. How will you capture leads on an email list? (example: I will have an early black friday wait list)
   3. How will you convert those leads? Using emails, ads, etc? (Example: I will send emails every day during the sale)
   4. How will you follow up? (Example: I will send 2 emails on the last day of the sale)
4. Outline and create your social media content
5. Outline and create your email campaigns
6. Create the actual product
7. Create the sales page and checkout process
8. Create the follow-up process

Time is of the essence, so the more you complete now, the less you’ll have to rush through when crunch time hits! Let’s break down the launch strategy into steps :

STEP 1 — GROW YOUR FOLLOWING AND AWARENESS OF YOUR BRAND

Every launch needs a plan to grow awareness, so how will you get more eyeballs on your offer? Think about what your pre-launch strategy will be. You’ll need to get your messaging in order so you can build anticipation.

Will you use social media to grow your following? What platforms?

This step is called “the launch runway” because it preps your warmest leads to buy.

STEP 2 — GROW YOUR WAITLIST / EMAIL LIST

In this step, you’ll announce your Black Friday sale is coming and work on ways to capture leads and grow your email list so you can reach more of your subscribers with your offer.

You create an early wait list opt-in to build anticipation OR create a lead magnet that adds value for your audience and is closely related to the topic of your offer.

To get them excited about joining the waitlist, you can try creating a freebie, hosting a webinar, hosting a giveaway, creating a mini-challenge, or whatever you need to do to get your audience charged up!

Click here for 8 ways you can grow your email list on Instagram.

STEP 3 — NURTURE AND CONVERT YOUR LEADS WITH EMAILS 

How will you convert those on your waitlist into buyers when Black Friday comes?

Using emails and social media is how most entrepreneurs find success. 

My best advice is to send one email every day of your Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale and 2 emails on the last day of your sale.

STEP 4  — FOLLOW UP

How will you follow up after Black Friday? An often overlooked step, you’re actually leaving money on the table if you don’t follow up with people who didn’t end up buying on Black Friday. Maybe they just have more questions or need more info? Get their feedback! Ask why they didn’t buy in an email or by posting a poll. You can also ask how you can improve the offering as well.

Your Black Friday Social Media / Email Launch Calendar

Whether you’ve chosen social media or email (or both!) as your primary source of communication with your audience for this launch, you’ll need at least one place to capture and nurture leads. In this launch calendar, I’ve broken down a simple content strategy to use on your chosen platform. Use this guide to create the content you’ll need to warm up your audience ahead of Black Friday. 

Content on Monday through Thanksgiving

Create at least one email and 3-4 social media posts to build trust with your audience and  announce your offer is coming and build anticipation for the launch.

This content needs to offer value for your reader, teaching them things they don’t already know from your own expertise. These posts should help to grow your waitlist as well. 

Create content that positions yourself as the go-to expert. Identify your audience’s pain points and show them how your offer will give them a solution. During this time, you’ll continue to grow excitement and anticipation for your upcoming sale. 

 

Content on  Black Friday Through Cyber Monday

Create 3-5 posts AND emails for each day that actually aim to sell your offer. Here’s where you’ll talk in-depth about the features and benefits and share stories from other clients who’ve experienced results from this program or product. Send several reminders to your email list.

Want to make this process easier?

Use our Instagram and captions templates inside the Ivory Mix Content Membership OR if you just want an easy way to Plan and prep your Black Friday in one day? Get the easy Black Friday bundle! This campaign comes with email and social templates built to help you grow excitement before and during your Black Friday/Cyber Monday launch.

Choose your product and how you’ll deliver it. 

Keep it simple.

One of the last, yet most important steps, is to create the actual product and the checkout procedure.

Will you host a PDF? Create video training? How will you share it with your buyers?

Don’t wait until the last minute to create a sales page, checkout page, and a thank you page! You’ll want to make sure you’re able to test, test, test everything ahead of launch day. 

I recommend using tech such as ConvertKit for capturing leads and sending automated emails. Send Owl is equally great for setting up simple checkout links and digital products. Whatever tech tools you use, be sure to run through everything to make sure it’s set up correctly before the big day. 

As you can see, careful planning and content strategy was key to my own Black Friday success, and with the right attention, it can do the same for you in your biz! The best time to get started is now.

Be encouraged — Black Friday really can create the opportunity for a huge win in your business. I hope this launch guide has given you the tools and inspiration to get you started. I am excited to see what you create for your Black Friday offer! 

Ready to get started?

Get the easy Black Friday bundle! This campaign comes with email and social templates built to help you grow excitement before and during your Black Friday/Cyber Monday launch.