Tis the season for deals! As a creator, the fall and early winter is prime shopping time, which means that you have a big opportunity to earn more income during these months. Black Friday is one of the most important days for businesses to earn big returns. In fact, that’s how the holiday got its name – many businesses wouldn’t be profitable (or “in the black” in accounting slang) until their Black Friday promotions became a success.
To maximize the time while consumers are in spending-mode, you’ll need a thoughtful sales strategy that gets both new and existing customers excited about your digital products. Follow along through this article for a comprehensive Black Friday sales strategy guide that will help you build an impactful, revenue generating campaign this fall.
Know exactly what you’re looking for? Jump to any section here:
- Value of a Black Friday sales strategy
- How far in advance to prepare for Black Friday sales
- 8 Steps to creating a super successful Black Friday sales strategy
- Examples of great Black Friday promotions for digital products
- Conclusion
Why do I need a seasonal campaign for Black Friday?
Seasonal campaigns are marketing efforts that happen at a specific time of year, based on a holiday or event that is relevant to that time of year. For example, Black Friday promotions always happen in November because it is right before major gift-giving seasons and it’s a prime time for consumers to stock up on presents.
Since most companies are using the upcoming gift-giving holidays to encourage sales, it’s now become a sought-after time for consumers to get into new brands that they may not otherwise have afforded.
For example, you may have potential customers who are interested in purchasing one of your courses or digital products. But if the price was deterring them (either because it’s out of their budget or because they are new to digital learning), you can now use this opportunity to bring them into your online learning audience with a lowered barrier. Then, you just need to show them how great your content is and work on maintaining a high retention rate (which is arguably much easier than earning an entire new lead).
The same goes for encouraging upsells with existing customers!
How far in advance should I plan a Black Friday sales strategy?
Planning for seasonal campaigns starts a few months in advance of each holiday. It takes time to strategize, plan, craft, and design all of the components that go into a campaign. Some large companies even plan a year in advance. Usually marketing, sales, and product creation teams are all involved in the campaign development. But, if you’re a solopreneur, you can do it too!
With this in mind, aim to start your Black Friday sales strategy planning in August or September. Last minute campaigns are possible too, especially if you’re a small and agile team, but certain paid media channels may fill up fast. It’s a best practice to build your campaign template as soon as possible and complete the smaller details, like messaging and calls-to-actions, closer to your go-live date.
8 Steps to creating a super successful Black Friday sales strategy
No matter how big your content creation team is, Black Friday sales strategies can be done in just 8 easy steps. Breaking it down into these steps helps you plan in advance and ensure that you’re hitting your milestones before the big holiday.
Pro tip: if you’re short on time, do just one step per week until you hit your go-live date! If you’re launching a teaser campaign to hype up your audience before the official promotion drops, use the teaser announcement date as your go-live date.
Effective research is mandatory to making your Black Friday campaign a success. Some things to research are:
- Who is your target audience? Hopefully you know this by now, but if not, use this guide.
- What problems are most relevant for your target audience right now?
- What solutions are working or not working? Why?
- How is your solution different from the other ones available?
- Where does your target audience go to get information about solutions?
- What does your target audience expect from a Black Friday sale? For example, are they motivated by discounts, multi-item packages, or exclusive access to your learning community?
While this seems like a lot of questions, it will map a clear picture of where your target audience will be online during the Black Friday rush. And it will help you understand what messaging and products you should put in front of them.
Again, it’s important to consider both new and existing customers. If these two groups need a very different approach to messaging, channels, and offers, it’s best to split them into two separate campaigns at this stage.
Another preparation you need to secure at this point is your budget. How much money are you willing to spend on promotions? How much money are you forecasting to make as a return in investment (ROI)? As a guideline, aim for at least 300% ROI on any campaign (but more is always better).
Marketing channels are any digital or physical location where you will promote your offer. Digital channels are much easier to track, especially when you’re selling a digital product online too.
This table below contains some channel options to consider. You have the choice between organic, or “free,” channels which don’t come at an additional cost but which take longer to build engagement and conversions on. Paid channels, on the other hand, come at various levels of cost but earn higher results faster. Of course, the more you pay, the higher results you earn.
It’s possible to combine a mix of strategies and channels, but it’s not recommended to only utilize just one marketing channel for your sales strategy.
If you’re looking for the most basic and easy to launch channels, use email marketing, website, and social media. They’re all easy to leverage for organic (free) traffic.
| Organic (free) channels | Paid channels | ||||
| Organic social media | Website | Paid social media | Paid search | Industry advertising | |
| LinkedIn TikTok YouTube X (Twitter) | Blogs Product landing pages | Newsletter Drip campaigns Webinar | LinkedIn TikTok YouTube X (Twitter) | Google Ads Bing Ads Amazon | Physical magazine Digital magazine Trade shows |
A few things to keep in mind for any content that goes on your channels. It should:
- Be mobile-friendly so that consumers using their phone can navigate the sales page easily
- Have fast loading speeds so that people don’t bounce or forget to purchase
- Clearly state the offer & directions to purchase right at the top so it’s easy to drive conversions
- Not focus too much on products that are outside of the Black Friday promotion, as you want to prioritize getting the highest results on a few core products
Your sales funnel determines how people will flow from first seeing about your products or brand to eventually becoming a paying customer. Important elements to think about at this stage are:
- Offer landing pages. Which website page are you pointing customers to for purchasing your Black Friday deal?
- Forms and lead collection areas. How are customers going to be able to share their contact information with you?
- Payment processing. Which platforms or tools are you using to accept payments on new purchases? Pro tip: Look for payment processing that is built right into your digital learning platform!
This is also a good time to learn the difference between the top funnel versus bottom funnel. The top of the funnel is an early awareness stage and the bottom funnel is right before your lead converts. If you’re leveraging blogs or other organic channels, don’t forget to map out how leads will get from top funnel pages to bottom funnel content.
Thinkific Commerce is a full suite of selling and payments features proven to help our creators increase conversion rates and average order value:
- Buy Now, Pay Later: Offering the flexibility to pay over time has helped Thinkific users increase their average order size by three times.
- Order Bumps: Suggesting complimentary products at checkout help Thinkific users increase their order size by 98% on average.
- Thinkific will be launching Abandoned Cart just in time for Black Friday. This feature will help you recapture potentially lost sales and drive more revenue.
Learn more about Thinkific Commerce and Thinkific Payments
What is the actual Black Friday deal that you’re offering?
It’s acceptable to have multiple offers in one sales strategy. But if you’re seeking to promote multiple offers to multiple audiences, consider breaking up your campaign into more segmented efforts. That will allow you to target more in depth and earn a higher result.
Some example offers include:
- 50% off any course of choice for new customers
- 25% off any new course of choice for existing customers
- 2-for-1 deals or digital product bundles for a discounted price
- Exclusive access for the first 100 customers to join your online learning community
- Exclusive access for the first 50 sign-ups to receive your new course for free
- VIP one-on-one coaching sessions
A few pro sales strategy tips when deciding your offer:
- Don’t have more than 3 offers going at the same time as you don’t want to distract leads
- Each offer should be fairly straightforward so that it’s easy to explain and build excitement around
- It should be an offer that is impossible to get any other time of year
Read more: How to Promote Your Course on Black Friday Without Discounting
Messaging (also known as marketing copy) is what communicates your offer to your customer. Messaging should be specific to your audience, your brand, and the channels that you’re choosing to promote through for your Black Friday campaign. Keep in mind that many channels have a preferred messaging format. For example, while Instagram captions do allow you to post up to 2,200 characters, most posts should have captions under 500 characters so it’s easier for the customer to read.
Tonality is also an important part of messaging and should match your branding. If you normally go for a spunky, fun approach to digital learning, make sure you convey that personality in your sales content, too!
Finally, don’t forget about your call-to-action (CTA). This goes at the end of every message and on every graphic that you post. It tells people exactly what their next action should be. For example:
- Download now
- Access here
- Sign up
- Click to register
- Join the community
It’s time to execute!
If you’re a busy solopreneur or ready to get started on your next seasonal campaign, a pro tip is to schedule your content in advance. Tools like Hootsuite, Meta’s Business Center, and Letterdrop are fantastic platforms that allow you to build and schedule content in advance of your go-live date.
Many Black Friday campaigns are starting to go out earlier and earlier every year. Depending on your sales strategy, you may choose to offer a one-day only offer. Or, you can offer your Black Friday deal a week or two in advance of the holiday. Since there’s such a short period of time for the promotion, consider sneaking in an earlier “light” launch that offers teasers about the upcoming deals.
Don’t forget about your campaign after it goes live. Keep an eye on it as soon as it goes live. For the first day, check in multiple times a day to ensure there were no technical glitches. After that, daily reporting is best. Again, Black Friday campaigns have such a short lifespan so you’ll want to pay close attention. One day of a campaign gone awry can lead to a big loss of opportunity.
Frequent optimization is the key to a successful Black Friday sales strategy. If you see your ads or content aren’t performing well, change them up! Rapid experimentation will help you see what works best for your audience.
Keep in mind that changes to campaign content needs a bit of time to settle in before it shows results – you won’t see rapid improvement within a few minutes. Organic content will take especially longer, possibly even longer than your campaign window. Paid content can usually see improvements in results within a few hours up to a day.
Keep the momentum going long after Black Friday ends. Send a thank you email to customers who purchased from you during the campaign. You can also add a feedback survey to help measure their consumer experience during this campaign, which helps you improve for next year.
Shower your new and loyal customers with a few more exclusive offers. For example, give them an additional, but lower, discount if they want to buy even more of your courses!
Examples of great Black Friday promotions for digital products
Ready to start working on your Black Friday sales strategy but looking for a bit of inspiration? Check out some of these super successful campaigns below.
Audible’s Subscription Offer for New Members
Audible is an Amazon-owned company that allows subscribers to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. Customers pay on a subscription basis and can choose to either purchase on a monthly or annual basis to access a library of digital content.
For Black Friday in 2023, they offered a great campaign to drive new sign-ups and customer loyalty. Here’s what they did that was great:
- Offered a cheap introductory cost for four months, which is enough time to allow new users to fully explore the platform.
- Included additional Audible credit as part of the offer, which allowed users to access additional content “for free” if they didn’t like the included content.
- Purchasing the deal was easy as users could use their existing Amazon account and payment information to convert. Removing this barrier to conversion allowed for higher sales.
Classy Yet Trendy’s eBook Sale
Classy Yet Trendy is an online learning center for anyone who wants to build capsule wardrobes. The site has a number of eBooks and digital downloads to help readers visualize their own style and plan a simplified wardrobe to match.
In 2020, they launched a Black Friday sale on all of their Capsule Wardrobe eBooks. What’s to love about their sales strategy?
- They timed it right based on what their readers wanted. At a time when people were staying home more often and cleaning out their closets, they promoted eBooks about how to do just that.
- They made the offer, discount code, and landing page for redeeming the offer super easy to find.
- They included teasers of what the inside of the eBooks looked like, to encourage purchases from more risk averse buyers.
Ran Segall’s Webflow Course
Ran Segall started as a web designer and later moved to teaching his website course design skills on YouTube, where he now has 400K+ subscribers. So far, he’s earned over $3M from selling his digital products.
Just a few months ago, he promoted the launch of his new Webflow Course. While this one isn’t technically a Black Friday promotion, it does have a lot of admirable elements that are similar. Here’s what made this campaign great:
- He promoted the offer on LinkedIn, where he already has a following of 9,000+ users.
- A sense of urgency to purchase is created. In his post he says, “And to make this launch even sweeter, we’re giving you a special 30% discount on the course. But don’t wait – this offer ends Friday at midnight.”
- The 30% offer is smack in the middle of the image, so it’s hard to miss.
Conclusion
Following this Black Friday sales strategy guide will help you decide what, how, and where you will target your new and existing customers this holiday season. Don’t forget to do your research well in advance and start planning early. There is a lot of competition and noise during this time of year, so getting thoughtful and loud with your promotion will help you stand out from the crowd.
Ready to start building and selling digital products from just one platform? Try a 14-day free trial with Thinkific today!
