Looking for Black Friday marketing ideas for your blogging business this year? You’re in the right place.
To begin with, check out this article I wrote a year ago with some practical Black Friday tips and ways to make your Black Friday sale a success.
Below, you’ll see the steps to do it last minute and still see some results.
It’s already the 11th of November, and I only outlined my Black Friday offer yesterday. I decided what product to have it for, who it will be for, what the price will be, the promo period for the deal, when to send emails and how many, and even wrote the first email because I felt inspired.
Now, I know many of you can’t find the discipline or motivation to get to it, and are more likely to give up on having any sale this year. But you can still do something about it, and it can still go well.
Here’s how:
Your Black Friday Marketing Plan
Step #1: The What
The very first step of your Back Friday marketing plan is to decide what you’ll promote.
Digital Products
If you already have a paid product or service, then that’s what you’ll work with.
If you have a few, pick the one that makes the most sense, or bundle two or more of them to create a unique offer at a reduced price. This is a once in a lifetime or once in a year opportunity for people from your audience to get access to that exact bundle.
If you don’t have a product yet, these are 2 paths you can take.
First, you can create a digital product or start offering a service right now. That’s right! It doesn’t need to take months and you don’t even need to create the content yet. You can presell your course, for example. That’s called a beta launch and it can be your motivation to actually produce great content and release a new module or a few lessons every week or at whatever pace you decide and promise people.
If some people join, then consider your idea validated. People have paid for something that doesn’t exist yet. You now get to create it and get their feedback in the process.
If you want to learn all about creating, launching and preselling a course or another digital product, I teach that in detail in my program Bold Business School.
Affiliate Marketing
Now, if you don’t want to deal with all this, as it can be stressful last minute or you might simply not be ready for it, especially if you just started blogging, then you can rely on affiliate marketing.
Other companies have amazing Black Friday deals, so as long as you’re an affiliate and believe in the product or service, you can promote it to your audience. It’s still a win-win because your people hear about great offers and can grab one of them and save a lot. Or even get a lifetime deal that can’t be found any other time of the year.
You earn a commission, and the company you promote gains a new customer.
That’s what I’m doing with tools I use for my business such as the stock photo and templates membership I’m part of, Styled Stock Society.
Years ago, during Black Friday, I grabbed their lifetime access and it was a great decision. They have this deal every year.
I still reap the benefits as every month they have been adding new beautiful photos and Canva templates that I use on my blog, for promo graphics, for digital products, email marketing, and anything else. Two examples are the featured image of this post, as well as the Pinterest graphic at the end. Amazing quality, right?
I also promote my hosting provider, WPX, as well as another one I’ve used and highly recommend, SiteGround, and which is also more affordable.
Same goes for my email marketing tool, Kit, and my course hosting platform, Podia, in case they have Black Friday deals.
If you’re already an affiliate of some products, start preparing the emails you’d like to send now. Get your affiliate links in one place so you don’t look for them in the last moment, grab any promo graphics the brands have provided for affiliates, or create your own visuals if you’d like. And prepare for the next step of your Black Friday marketing plan.
One last thing to mention about this step, the What of your Black Friday marketing campaign, is that you can do more than 1 of the things I mentioned.
For example, I love having a discount for one or all of my digital products, or creating a bundle (which is like a whole new offer), but also sharing cool affiliate deals with my audience because they are also bloggers and can save hundreds of dollars on yearly expenses if they invest in a new tool or upgrade during Black Friday.
I myself have grabbed those deals and still do sometimes, so I speak from experience.
Also read: How I Saved $1,000+ in Blogging Expenses with 1 Decision
Step #2: The Who
Decide who that offer will be most suitable for. If it’s affiliate deals, that might be your whole email list, so you will send an email to all people.
But if you’re segmenting your list, and want to discount one of your products or services which serves only a specific group of people, then you can email only them.
My main offer this year will be about Fearless Bloggers Pro, the paid plan for our membership and community for bloggers.
It will be offered to those who are already in, as well as those who signed up for the free plan I released recently.
For the first time ever, for a very short period of time, I’m going to offer a lifetime access for a very good price. The offer itself might be available again next Black Friday, for example, but that same price won’t be, because by then, there will be even more valuable content added to the membership and its archives and value will have grown.
But I will also email the rest of the people on my email list about it, the ones who have heard about Fearless Bloggers before but who never joined. Sometimes, we need the right offer at the right time to invest in something new. I myself have been there.
But also for the paid members of the community, that’s going to be an incredible opportunity. So I’me excited to see how it goes.
So, who is your Black Friday offer, or offers, most suitable for?
Just like you had to define your target reader when starting your blog, or your target student when releasing an online course, now you can think about who can benefit the most from this campaign you’re about to run.
Why would they benefit from it the most? What goals will it help them achieve? Why should they invest in it now? What extra incentive do you have for them?
Having answered these questions, you can move onto step #3 of the process.
Step #3: Pricing
What kind of Black Friday deal do you want to offer?
A discount? A bundle of products at a lower price? A bonus such as a free month of coaching or access to a community if they purchase one of your service packages now? A bonus video training or consultation in case they use one of your affiliate links to make a purchase from a third-party, and which brings you a big commission? Or maybe lifetime access to something?
Maybe you want to encourage your existing customers to continue working with you so you can offer some loyalty deals? Something that will make them appreciate you even more and not stop their monthly subscription or cancel their coaching package, but only continue investing in your business.
You can also offer early-bird access to a new offer you’re releasing. Or even something unique such as access to all the things you’ll release next year for a fraction of the price. Let’s say you plan to create one workshop a month on a topic your audience is interested in and which solves problems they have. Then they can get a good value ahead of time, and have more than enough exclusive content to receive next year.
You can get creative and not follow industry rules and just do what you feel like. For example, some time ago, I offered 30% discount on all my products. And during a Black Friday sale, I also released 12-month payment plans for my courses, which made them way more accessible to people.
Also read: How to Price Your Work on Value & Double Your Income This Month
Step #4: Promo Period
The next step of your Black Friday marketing plan is to decide on the dates. When does the promo start and when does it end?
Be specific about this, decide on the exact hour too and don’t forget to include the timezone when informing your audience. They need to know as many people are last minute shoppers.
This way you can also decide when to send your last email, which will serve as the very last reminder that the discount will soon disappear.
Will your promo period be short, from Black Friday to Cyber Monday? Will it be a week or two long? Or will it continue till Christmas?
Anything is possible. The last option might be more exhausting, though. Longer launches or promo campaigns take more energy.
My promo dates this year will be from Nov 26th to Dec 3rd. Black Friday itself is on Nov 29th, but I start my promo earlier as I want to send the first email on a Tuesday because that’s when I send the weekly newsletter to my people. And the campaign ends the next Tuesday, so that’s one whole week.
Also read: How to CRUSH Your Next Launch
Step #5: Emails
How many emails do you want to send? That depends on many factors. The length of the promo period is one of the main ones.
A shorter one can mean fewer emails. Or, of course, you can also tag subscribers who clicked a link inside the email (which means they showed interest in the offer), and send the next email only to them.
I set that up easily inside Kit, my email marketing tool.
Once you know how many emails you’d send, decide on the date for each. You can also decide on the hour if you feel like, and that usually depends on the timezone of most of your subscribers.
Keep in mind that most people get way too many emails in their inbox during these weeks, and discounts and special offers are coming from everywhere. It can get overwhelming.
Find a way to still provide value, to not try to convince them to take any action but to just inform them of the good deals you have for them. And know when you’re overdoing it, when you’re sending too many emails or to the wrong people. Because you might lose some subscribers as a result of this.
Also read: The Inner Game of Sales: 9 Things I Did to Get More Confident Selling
Step #6: Extras
Next, where else do you want to spread the word about your Black Friday deals?
That might be socials (so prepare some posts and graphics in advance and set a reminder or schedule the posts).
It might be to write a blog post on your site, create a Pinterest graphic for the promo and pin it some time in advance but when the deal is already live, so it can get some traction on Pinterest.
It could also be a podcast episode or YouTube video – these take more time so you might create them these days and not in the last minute.
You can also put a banner on your site, and mention it anywhere else where people who might be interested in the deals can see.
Conclusion
So, that’s your last minute Black Friday marketing plan. Sit down today, invest 2-3 hours in outlining your offer, deciding on the details, and preparing the emails, and you’ll be ready by the time Black Friday comes.
Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoyed this guide. It’s also a bit last minute but that was the whole idea. It’s not too late. I wasn’t even planning to share all this, but I felt inspired so I had to create this post with the hope that it might be what you need to make your Black Friday a success and add some extra cash to your revenue this month as well as make your audience happy.
I’ll be organizing all this information from today into a PDF guide that I’ll be sharing with members of Fearless Bloggers Pro, so if you’re inside the membership, look out for that these days. And next week the video training is coming, as well as some other goodies this month.
If you haven’t joined us inside the community yet and are wondering if it’s for you,
you can always give it a try for a month. Here’s the page with all the details.
Prefer to listen to this post instead? Tune into the podcast episode below:
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