5 tips from a professional creator and tricks to help you prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday |
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two biggest retail days of the calendar and we've listed 5 tested strategies to help creators get the most value from them.
If you're here then you've probably heard the fact that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest sales days of the year.
And you may not be surprised to hear that online shopping has become an ever-growing piece of the Cyber Weekend pie in recent years With Cyber Monday 2020 making history as the largest on-line shopping event ever in U.S. history .
What is the significance of Cyber Weekend which runs from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday this year?
If you're looking to get in on the action and aren't sure where to start -- here are five proven Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategies for creators to reach more people and make more sales.
How to make the most from Black Friday 2021 Take advantage of Black Friday with these dedicated guidelines, tricks and techniques to make this the best year of sales ever.
5 ways to make the most of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday yet
#1: Make the most of discounts
Black Friday is known for massive discounts on anything in the world, however there's no need to stick with this tradition to be able to run a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale.
Actually, you ought not to -- especially if you already have tight profit margins.
Instead of offering the universal discount, instead give discounts for your most expensive items. Example: give 20% off of an $1000 course. However, do not discount the 10 dollars worth of ebook.
The reason is that it's usually simpler to convince a handful of individuals to purchase larger items rather than getting a large group of people to purchase smaller items.
If you only sell one place in your $1000 course, you're still earning $800 even at a 20% discount. If you discounted the $10 book by the same amount it would require you to sell 100 ebooks to make that $800.
And no matter which products you decide to offer discounts on the coupon on, creating them can be done easily. To create or view your coupons, navigate to the coupons page and click on "Coupons" in the navigation. You can click on "New coupon" to generate coupons to purchase your goods or memberships.
Create the coupon. You can either choose a descriptive coupon code like BLACKFRIDAYSALE or click on "Generate an individual code" to create a special coupon code.
After that, choose the type of coupon you want to use based on which products or memberships you want to use the discount.
Next, you'll set the price of your coupon. It is possible to offer a percent discount or an amount that is set.
It is also possible to set limits on how many times coupons can be used on your site. And lastly, you can set an expiry date for the coupon.
After that, then click "Create coupon" and your coupon will go live.
(Not yet selling digital goods on ? Check it out for yourself using a 14-day trial for free .)
As for how much to discount -- everything comes down to your margins for profit. If profit margins are limited, consider smaller percentage discounts, explain Mike Moloney , founder of FilterGrade :
"If you have limited margins I would highly recommend less discounts. They should be between 10% to 20%. They are extremely successful in getting new customers."
Another reason to avoid going Coupon-mad: Constantly reducing the price of the price of your items can damage your image as a brand. . If you discount your products all the time, consumers are less likely to purchase the entire price, instead of sitting around waiting for the next sale to start.
In 2020, though, Reuven experimented with a brand new Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, including bundles.
"I'm planning to do an entirely different approach this year. I'm moving toward creating bundles of my courses rather than selling each course individually. Instead of five different introduction Python classes, I'll sell them as an intro bundle.
It's a little dangerous, as it doesn't mean I'll be selling everything at a massive discount, rather the products I offer. I'm hoping less people buying more expensive items."
Price bundling includes selling multiple items in the same price. Bundles are usually sold at an affordable price than each product was purchased separately.
Bundles are a great option to increase your average order value without giving a coupon or a sitewide discount.
In bundling the products, Justin sold his best training and materials designed for digital marketers at less than if you buy the items individually.
The strategy boosted the sales of customers and assisted Justin bring in new customers. :
Although discounts might be the norm in the traditional Black Friday sales, you can also create enticing holiday promotions without having to lower your prices. Read our next article to learn more about what I'm talking about.
#2: Give incentives other than discounts
It's not necessary that all Black Friday and Cyber Monday events need to be conventional discounts and coupons.
Instead, add value without lowering prices by offering incentives such as the gift of free items during festive promotions.
Promotions are likely to influence 82% of the holiday shoppers People view the gift of free presents as among the top three most appealing promotions:
And according to psychologist and academic Dan Ariely Consumers "appear to behave as if zero pricing of a good does not just reduce its price, but also adds to its advantages".
That's right, the public loves and values things that are free, which makes incentives an excellent strategy to run the Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotion.
When coming up with incentives, think about how you can help your clients to get the most value from their purchase, like the opportunity to have a one-on-one coach call.
"Take the best price you can deal and find a way to double down on value" recommends Ryan of Signature Edits who utilized the same strategy for Black Friday. "I have gotten my marketing subscription and offered a free website review to the first 10 clients."
In offering only a complimentary review of the website to the initial ten customers, Ryan encourages people to act quickly so that they don't miss out on the deal. (We'll discuss more ways to trigger FOMO which is the anxiety of being left out in the future.)
Marketing Showrunners followed an identical approach by offering the following free gifts to students who signed up early for their Showrunner sessions course :
By offering a PDF ebook by co-founder Jay Acunzo, Marketing Showrunners provided value in exchange for early registration.
Whether you offer a free offer, discount, or even a bundle of products, you need to get the word out about your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotion ASAP, and our second tip can help you do just that.
3. Create excitement through a drip email campaign
Marketing via email is among the best marketing tools out on the market, especially for advertising your sales during the holiday season.
"Social advertising and media may be an option but not as efficient [as emailsor email marketing]," explains Ryan at Signature Edits . When compared to advertising that costs money, email is a low-cost, high-ROI option for creators to get word out about their upcoming events.
To make the most of to get the most value from your Black Friday emails, send several emailsknown as a drip campaign -- leading up to the shopping time. For example, Constant Contact advises sending 3 emails starting a week before your sales begin.
A drip campaign builds excitement about your campaign and keeps it top-of-mind for your audience.
If you want to create the most successful drip email campaign, you should begin with your email marketing as quickly as you can. If you do not promote the sale in time then it will be difficult to stand out from the crowd.
There's plenty of noise to break through -- marketers from ecommerce have launched more ads in the days leading up to Black Friday than any other day of the year in the year 2018.
Coach for mindset and entrepreneurship Becky Mollenkamp can speak to that:
"I've only run an Black Friday promotion (in 2019) but it was not particularly successful. I tried discounting my courses, and then emailed my students about the promotion.
I made a few sales, but I think it was lackluster because I didn't talk about the subject enough.
In general I find it difficult to distinguish yourself from the mass of emails we receive concerning sales around this time of year."
In order to stay ahead of the game, Ryan at Signature Edits begins his email marketing campaign one month before Black Friday. Ryan makes the contents of his messages relevant and makes the recipients more likely to click on every new email.
"Provide an important email at least once every week prior the day of Black Friday," recommends Ryan. "Next you should send a massive message the week prior to the event that they're likely to be eager to read their emails and a really amazing deal is headed at them."
Thanksgiving week is when Ryan sends out two or three educational, informative emails that connect the product and services he offers. "Set the issue, how to solve the issue, and then explain how your product makes solving it simpler."
Once his lists are all heated up, here's how Ryan's drip marketing will look as during Cyber Weekend (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday):
Thursday: Announce the sale with a Friday deadline.
Friday: Follow-up. Add a countdown clock for 24 hours. (An experiment by ConversionXL observed that the addition of a countdown timer led to a 147% increase on conversions.)
Friday Night: Give an additional bonus to anyone who purchases (and those who already have).
Monday: Surprise! Because you truly want them to have the most successful year of their lives in 2022, you're opening the gates for another 12 hours.
Late Monday night: Last opportunity to remind yourself.
How do you know?
"I'm an amateur and had NEVER ever done anything like this previously. But following these strategies, I made around $2000 during Black Friday, plus another $2k or $3k over the next couple of days. Comparing to my usual sales of $150/day, this was amazing."
If you don't have an entire month to start your email campaign, fear not. Reuven Lerner will begin his Black Friday drip campaign the week before.
Reuven has an active mailing list with 19k customers who already look for his updates each week on Mondays.
"I'll often utilize the header space at the upper right of my newsletter to market a new program, or to declare that something's happening," explains Reuven.
One or two weeks before Black Friday, Reuven uses his email every week to let people know the fact that he's having an offer again in the coming year. This is how it appears:
Thursday: Let people know to get ready for the sale.
Friday morning: announce the sale.
Sunday afternoon: announce that the sale continues.
Monday afternoon: remind all that the sale will end on the next day.
In the year 2019, this method -- along with offering a discount code for every item in his shopresulted in Reuven making $20k from Cyber Weekend sales. "Beyond and credit card/PayPal fees there weren't many other expenses, which is why this strategy was quite successful," he says.
If you'd like to create Cyber Weekend campaigns like Reuven and Ryan, it's easy to plan your emails in advance with 's email marketing tool.
First, navigate to the email page by clicking "Email" on the menu. Then, click "Create," then select "New broadcast".
Set your email subject line as well as whom you'd like to get your emails.
You can also schedule your email to go out at a certain time -like, for instance, during on the day of Black Friday -- by selecting "Send later".
Make sure you set the send time, click "Schedule broadcast" and you're good to start.
Of course, when you send emails for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails out, you need provide your readers with a link to your website. While you can link to your website's homepage however, it's much more sense to point to a specific page that is focused specifically on your marketing. Let me explain.
#4: Create landing pages to your holiday promotional campaigns.
Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are only available once per year -- so it is only natural to be able to have separate landing pages.
Landing pages are dedicated destinations with a focus on one particular product or service, for example, you're Black Friday promotion. The landing pages you create are the places those where people "land" upon clicking the hyperlink in your email or social media.
What makes the perfect landing page?
In the first place, you must make your offer super clear. Your landing page needs to inform the reader exactly what it is you're selling and the reason what they can expect from the product.
You don't have a lot of time to get that message across.
When someone first arrives at your website, you have around 15 minutes to get the attention of your visitors .
Your headline will be the mainstay of your landing page.
Take it from the "father of advertising,"" David Ogilvy : "On the average, five times as many readers read the headline as read your body copy. Once you've composed your headline, you've spent eighty cents out of your dollar."
Make a compelling and clear headline. As with your email subject line, your headline should contain information on the offer or promo offered.
A different way to draw interest quickly is to place important details and your call to action (CTA) above the fold which means that people do not need to go down the page to find this details.
Below and above the fold, your sales copywriting for your landing page should be focused on the advantages and value the customer can enjoy from taking advantage of your fantastic Black Friday offer.
Take this landing page for No-Code MVP's online training course , for example. The page's top features a explanation of the course, as well as two purchase options for CTAs as well as a short video telling viewers more about what they can expect from No-Code MVP.
Farther down on the website, No-Code MVP is deeper, providing details about who can benefit from the course and the content of the course.
The layout is easy and easy to follow, and the additional information helps people who are on the fence figure out which course is best for them.
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Reviews can be particularly useful when it comes to more expensive products such as costly online courses or annual memberships. Studies show that sales rose by 380 percent when reviews were included in a product's higher-priced landing webpage:
We're trained to seek out reviews and the opinions from our friends before we purchase something. This is why testimonials from customers are more persuasive than even the most beautifully designed sales copy- and 89% of buyers check reviews online before buying a product.
Meanwhile, we've got one more proven strategy for making you Black Friday and Cyber Monday a success.
#5: Utilize FOMO to use it to your advantage
Scarcity and urgency are powerful motives, particularly with regard to sales. That's what Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about -deals that will be disappearing in the blink of an eye, which is why shoppers better pounce on them fast.
These sales tap into the concept of scarcity , that is among psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini's fundamental principles of persuasion. Basically, people want to have more of what they can have less of.
One iconic study revealed that individuals perceive a greater value of things that are scarce:
200 individuals were requested to rate cookies
The 10 cookies were arranged within a single Jar
2 of the same cookies were put in a different
Scarcity won out: The cookies contained in the jar of two were rated 2x higher than the jar with 10 cookies.
That same principle is behind FOMO, a.k.a. the fear of missing out. We're afraid of missing out on a positive experience that others have access to.
We can apply this principle to sales and marketing -If a promotional offer is available only to a select group of consumers or for a limited amount of time, people are more interested in it.
Actually, 89% of Americans think that an exclusive offer would increase their likelihood of shopping for a particular brand. 48% of them say that an exclusive offer would make customers buy more quickly.
So, how can you leverage the potential of FOMO to make more profits on Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
"Create both scarcity and value. The motivation to move now," recommends Ryan at Signature Edits. Be sure your clients understand that your offer will only be available for a short period of time and you will have a certain number of offers available, or both."
Take the following Black Friday message from Readdle to get an instance:
The message reminds the reader that the celebration is over. And who would want to miss an unforgettable celebration? Research shows that limited-time offers increase " anticipatory regret " (aka FOMO), which drives people to spend money on things they wouldn't.
Additionally, you can add a countdown timer on your landing page or emails to provide a visual reminder of how long customers are left to purchase, like in the following email of Designmodo :
In some promotions there are times when time isn't the sole issue. There are many other things that can be scarce. If you're running an online course or membership community, let people know that you have just a handful of seats left.
A study conducted by Wageningen as well as Tilburg Universities on product scarcity revealed that consumers chose the scarce item over the non-scarce one because they thought that items with limited supply were more sought-after.
Workshops Collective Workshops Collective uses this technique in the landing page of The Space Camp workshop :
Workshop leader Erin informs participants that there's only 4 spots left and explains the value in having such a small group, making that "Join the Adventure" CTA even more appealing.
Before we get started here's a major limitation to using the "scarcity" concept in the course of your Black Friday marketing: it must be authentic. If you're planning to make your offer last longer than one time or offer a bunch more spots within your online class Don't mislead the audience.
Your customers will eventually realize what you are doing, and it can deal the ultimate blow to their trust in your company. To quote Abe Lincoln, always err on the side of honesty.
Okay, now that you have this done, you've got tools that are packed with Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategies ready to go.
You're all set to take one of the largest shopping day of the year.
If, however you're not sure it's your style.
Extra tip: If it doesn't feel right not do it.
It's definitely a major day for sales. It's important to take care of yourself and your business comes first, and if you can't make any Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotion work for you it's fine.
It's not always possible to make everybody happy, especially when you're in the midst of a hectic year. Therefore, if you're in a position to prioritize Black Friday this year, allow yourself to leave on this particular one.
For Minessa the same mindset applies to refusing to provide Black Friday promotions.
"I don't usually run Black Friday promotions or discounts. I have anxiety and, honestly, planning for Black Friday has always given me so much anxiety since I quit selling clothes and moved into coaching, I decided to let them go.
It's been great for my productivity and mental health. Also, I advise my clients to not run them if it doesn't fit in with the way they'd like their business to look.
According to my calculations, if eventually it becomes more of a priority or necessity, I'll find a way to work it in while at the moment I'd rather not contemplate selling while hanging out with family."
If you do choose to pass on Black Friday this year, remember that it's not your only opportunity to run promotions.
"I prefer to offer promotions at times that are less certain in order to have the best likelihood of getting people to see it," advises Becky Mollenkamp, who chose to stop running Black Friday promotions in 2019.
If you do wish to dip your toe into the Black Friday and Cyber Monday excitement, but are nervous about the commitment to time or the work required, begin by doing something small before you expand. This is the way Ryan of Signature Edits Signature Edits found his success in the Christmas shopping season:
"Don't think about doing everything. Only do one thing. Create ONE product and put your focus on ONE marketing channel. Beginning marketers chase millions of concepts and don't make any money. Professionals concentrate on finding one great offer and scaling everything else out of it."
Always do what is best for you and your business -- always.
What creators can do to tackle Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up and offer a thrilling possibility for those who create to be part of the largest shopping day of the year.
Here are our favorite tried-and-true Black Friday strategies for creators:
Use discounts sparingly. Only offer discounts on specific products -- higher-ticket items If you've got the capacity to offer them all of your site. Also, you can utilize bundles to boost the average value of your orders.
Provide incentives beyond discounts like complimentary content or one-on-one coach call. It allows you to add value without lowering your cost.
Build excitement for your Black Friday promotion with an mailer drip prior to the event.
Design landing pages to promote your campaigns. Make sure you highlight the benefits of your products, keep the design minimal, and incorporate testimonials for to more clients.
Utilize the principle of scarcity in order to get customers to take action quickly. FOMO can be a very effective tool however, you must ensure you're using it for the right reasons.
Then, last but definitely not least:
If you feel that participating in Black Friday doesn't feel right avoid it. Make it a priority to take care of you as well as your company.
Whether or not you choose to take part in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, wishing you and your company all the best for the rest of this year. Shopping holidays are included. We wish you a Merry Christmas!