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Ready to boost your online course and digital products sales on Black Friday? Use these 11 ideas to get inspired!

There are two types of online course creators during Black Friday: 

  • Those who get carried away by what others are doing (Oh, they’re giving 90% off? Let’s do that too!) 
  • And those who take the time to craft an offer unique to their business and customers. 

But you’re reading this article, which means you fall into the latter category. 

You know that a copy-cat Black Friday strategy leads to a random offer that hardly makes business sense or delivers outstanding value to your customers. You want Black Friday to be memorable for your target audience in a way that’s healthy for your business. 

We hear you. That’s why in this article, you’ll learn how to craft a successful Black Friday campaign, get 11 exciting Black Friday ideas for selling your online course and other digital products, plus tips on how to choose the right one.  

Skip ahead: 

  1. Let customers “pay what they want” 

One way to stand out and capture attention during Black Friday is to let everyone choose how much to pay for your course. This is a pretty bold strategy, but it’s a great way to generate buzz around your brand, encourage new people to sign up for your course, and build goodwill with long-term customers. 

A pay-what-you-want strategy is best used for selling a product that’s been on the market for a while. At this point, you should have recovered the costs of creating the product and made a reasonable profit from selling it at a standard price. That way, even if many customers pay very little, your prior profits serve as a cushion, saving your business from significant losses.   

Dominic Kent, a freelance content marketer, used this strategy to promote and sell his blogging course on Black Friday. 

  1. Offer a discount 

Black Friday discounts are as common as leaves falling in autumn. For shoppers, Black Friday is about making huge savings on purchases. What better way to help them achieve this than to offer exclusive discounts on your digital products? 

For example, freelance web developer, Nicolas Carlo, slashed his ebook price by 50% for Black Friday in 2023. 

“So, how much discount should I offer?” Our answer: as much as makes business sense. It’s easy to get carried away when you see other creators slashing their prices ridiculously — sometimes up to 90% off. But remember, you don’t share the same business realities.

Take a hard look at your numbers and decide on a discount percentage that’s enticing enough to attract customers but allows you to make a profit or at least break even.

Related: How to promote your course on Black Friday without discounting 

  1. Offer discounts on product bundles 

Instead of offering separate discounts on different digital products, try bundling. It’s a smart way to sell off slow-moving products and offer more value to your customers — as is expected during Black Friday. 

Bundling works best when the products are related. For example, let’s say you have a beginner course on social media strategies and an ebook that explains how to execute one of these strategies. In that case, you can sell them as a product bundle, similar to what Chris Deleon did here. 

You can also bundle the same type of digital product. For example, let’s say you have multiple ebooks teaching social media strategies for beginner, intermediate, and professional influencers. You can sell them as a bundle, too. 

Here’s an example from Elliot Moody and The Brand Identity: 

Creating product bundles in Thinkific is really easy. You simply create a new bundle like you’d create a new course and then select the courses that are part of that bundle.

For Black Friday, you can create a bundle that’s public for a limited time only. When the promotion is over, you can set that bundle as Private so it’s no longer visible. This helps create urgency for your customers and lets you go back to selling your courses at their regular price when the deal is over.

Learn more: How to create course bundles in Thinkific

  1. Offer a coupon 

A coupon is a voucher or code that entitles customers to some sort of benefit during a purchase. It can be a discount or some other freebie, like free shipping, exclusive products, or something else they value. The customer will input the code at checkout to receive the reward. 

There are many ways to use coupons in your Black Friday sales strategy. You can send them out to all your customers or gamify the selection process for more engagement. An example of the latter would be hosting a social media contest and rewarding winners with coupons or only sending them to loyal customers who make purchases above a certain amount. 

Here’s a smart coupon code execution from Colton Schweitzer, founder of Kickass UX. The coupon code and reward are public, but purchasers who meet certain conditions can win free access to the membership community for a year. 

With Thinkific, you can create a Black Friday coupon code in seconds to discount your course by a specific percentage or dollar amount. You can (and should) set a limit on the coupon so that only a limited number of people can use it — or set an expiry date so the coupon no longer works after a specific day.

  1. Host a charity drive 

The 2023 Ipsos global trend report found that customers prefer brands that align with their values. One way to demonstrate brand value alignment is to give back to the causes your audience cares about. Black Friday is the perfect opportunity for this. 

While everyone’s struggling to outdo each other with discounts and freebies, plan charity initiatives that impact others’ lives. You can: 

  • Donate the money you would have spent on running a Black Friday campaign to non-profits that your customers choose.
  • Donate a percentage of total Black Friday sales. 
  • Ask customers to include their preferred charity during checkout, then donate the price difference on discounted purchases to them. For example, if you’re giving 50% off all products, donate the equivalent amount to their selected charity.
  • Donate a dollar for every sale. 

Here’s an example of a charity-driven Black Friday campaign from Wes Bos. 

  1. Host a countdown flash sale

A countdown flash sale is your regular limited-time sale with a twist: the discount or reward gradually reduces as the clock runs out. This creates a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out), urging buyers to shop as soon as possible to secure the best deal.  

Here’s a great example from freelance writer and coach, Jacob McMillen. 

  1. Run a “buy one, get one free” campaign

A “buy one, get one free” (BOGO) campaign is a promotional offer in which customers receive a free digital product when they purchase another one at full price. It’s best for when you’re “retiring” a digital product and want to use Black Friday as an opportunity to make it available to as many people as possible. 

For example, let’s say you’re changing your brand positioning from coaching freelancers to consulting for businesses. In that case, you can run a BOGO to sell off your freelance coaching products so you can focus on your new offering and audience. 

Here’s a BOGO campaign example from Sage Haus. 

  1. Add limited offer bonus products

To enhance your course offering for Black Friday, you could also add limited-time-only bonus products to drive your audience to make a purchase immediately.

Some bonus product ideas include:

  • Exclusive content like a video or e-book
  • One-to-one calls
  • Personal or group coaching sessions
  • Live feedback on an assignment
  • Access to a private group

To make the offer more enticing, use the power of scarcity in your sales strategy. For example, if you’re running a limited-time offer for group coaching sessions, cap the offer at just 30 participants so your audience has an incentive to be quick and secure their spot. 

You could also try a cohort-based course that only accepts enrollments up to a certain date. This encourages potential customers to make a purchase now so they can join the next cohort and avoid missing out.

  1. Use value stacking

You don’t necessarily have to discount your offer to run a Black Friday promotion. There are loads of ways to promote your online course without dropping your prices – and value stacking is one of them. 

Instead of slashing your rate, value stacking helps your customers see exactly what they’re getting for their money. This method lets you group several benefits together into one premium offering, giving students the perception that they’re getting more bang for their buck. 

For example, if you’re currently charging a flat rate of $100 for your course, you can use value stacking to increase the perceived value of your offering – and demand a higher price.

Here’s an example of a course package:

  • 30 hours of training
  • 3 free workbooks
  • 5 templates
  • 15-minute consultation call
  • Exclusive course community access

By outlining exactly what your students are getting and adding benefits like access to your course community to your package, you can increase the perceived value of your course and build a Black Friday promotion that generates a buzz around your brand.

Example: Ellie Diop, Ellievated Academy

Ellie Diop uses value stacking throughout her online course business to add value to her offerings. Here’s an example from her Millionaire Mommy Blueprint Masterclass.

What’s inside:

  • 5 Millionaire Mommy Training modules
  • Millionaire Mommy Hotel Ownership module
  • Mommy to Millionaire Workbook
  • Pay Your Kids job description template
  • Millionaire Mommy Facebook Club Access

Rather than just offering her course on its own, Ellie uses calculated value stacking to make her audience feel like they’re getting extra value from the course materials and modules.

Learn how Ellie Diop made seven figures in less than a year with Thinkific.

  1. Offer freebies 

Add gifts to customers Black Friday orders to say “Thank you.” It can be anything — from gift cards to access to an exclusive digital product, such as a one-on-one consulting session. This is also a good way to test and validate upcoming products before launching them. 

If you want to take things a notch higher, consider sending physical gifts to shoppers. For example, you can send merch and swag items, such as a t-shirt or water bottle. 

Granted, this takes a lot of work, but your customers will appreciate it — especially if it has sentimental value.

  1. Partner with another creator

Launch a joint Black Friday offer with other creators within or related to your niche. This is a smart way to expose your brand to a new audience and build credibility, especially if you collaborate with a more popular creator. 

It cuts costs, too. Instead of going it alone, you can combine resources with the other creator(s) to market your Black Friday campaign. 

Here are a few tips to help you plan a successful Black Friday partnership:

  • Document everything — from how the profit (and losses) will be split to how much you’ll contribute to sales and marketing efforts.
  • Ensure that your target audiences overlap so that both of you benefit from the collaboration. Suppose you’re selling a social media course. In that case, you can partner with a creator offering coaching programs or membership communities for freelance social media managers. 
  • Create bundles or exclusive offers that combine your strengths, offering something unique that neither of you could offer alone.
  • Plan a post-campaign review to assess what worked, what didn’t, and how you might collaborate again.

How to plan a Black Friday sale for your online course

Now that you know the different Black Friday ideas you can use to sell your online course, let’s look at how to plan a successful campaign. The steps and strategies we will share here are primarily for boosting online course sales, but you can adapt them to other types of digital products, including memberships and subscriptions. 

Here are the four phases to launching your online course during Black Friday:

PHASE 1: Get product-market fit 

The crucial first step to creating an online course product is to get product-market fit. That means finding a good market and creating a product that can satisfy that market. To do this, you’ll need to research your audience and validate your course idea. 

  1. Define your audience

Building a successful funnel starts with good foundations: knowing exactly who you’re selling to and what they want. Start with a basic understanding of your audience and then refine your knowledge of your ideal customer as you gather more data.

Knowing your target audience will help you identify exactly how your product solves their problems. You can use this knowledge whenever you create content, talk to customers, or produce marketing materials.

Get our ultimate guide to defining your target audience, plus templates and workbooks to guide you through the process step-by-step.

  1. Validate your course idea

Imagine this: you spend months creating an online course only to launch to crickets. To avoid this worst-case scenario, run a test to confirm that your audience will be interested in paying for your knowledge. This is called “validating the demand.” 

There are two ways to validate your course idea: pre-selling and beta testing.

  • Pre-selling: If you don’t have a ready-made course, we suggest pre-selling your course. This gives you the chance to find out what your audience wants before pouring time and resources into creating your course. 

(If you need some inspo on how pre-selling can work, check out Ellen Daly’s customer story, where she made over $70,000 USD in her first few months of launching her course.)

Consider running your first test as a live cohort experience to gather real-time feedback from your students. This will allow you to craft your content based on their needs and tailor every lesson to them.

  • Beta-testing: If you’ve already created your course on Thinkific, we still recommend that you conduct a beta test launch to gather feedback from at least 10 students. You can choose to sell this course or simply run it for free to test your content.

When you test a course, it’s really important to collect feedback from your students. This will help you refine your course based on what your students liked and disliked and what they want to see more of in your course content.

PHASE 2: Create your Black Friday deal

When you’ve confirmed that there’s a market for your course and people will pay for it, it’s time to move to turn it into a premium content offer that lets you charge your ideal price.

This is the point where you choose your preferred Black Friday sales idea. Here are a few things to consider to help you make the right choice:

  • Do you have multiple products? If yes, consider creating a bundle with a single discount code.
  • Is your product complementary? If you have a single product that complements another creator’s offering, consider partnering with them to create a co-bundle and market it together to reach more people. 
  • Can you afford an enticing discount? If your business margins are too thin for a discount, explore other Black Friday ideas, such as freebies and donations from your total sales.
  • Are you stuck with slow-moving products? If any products have been on your shelf for too long, now’s your chance to sell them. You can offer them as part of your bundle, a free gift, or heavily discounted. 
  • Are you a value-first business? If your core values and beliefs are key to your brand positioning, consider donating to causes that align with them. This shows customers that you aren’t paying lip service to what you believe in. 
  • Are your customers up-market? Consider value staking if you’re targeting a high-end audience with disposable income. For lower-earning customers, provide bundles and discounts that give them more for less.

If you need more help with pricing your courses, read our ultimate guide on how to price your online course.

PHASE 3: Launch your course

By this stage, you should have a premium offer that you’re ready to take to market. Here are the basics on how to sell and market your online course over Black Friday and beyond.

Step 1: Designing your course sales page

If you want to sell more online courses this Black Friday, you’ll need to create a high-converting landing page. If you’ve chosen to pre-sell your course, you may already have a sales page set up but it’s worth revisiting it to make any updates and see how you can enhance your content.

Your sales page has one goal: to persuade the reader to sign up for your course. That’s it. Every word on your sales page should contribute to achieving that goal.

Here are the key elements of a top-performing landing page:

  1. A compelling headline: Effective headlines clearly state both the offer and your unique value proposition. Your sub-headline then fills in the blanks by adding key details.
  2. Visuals: Eye-catching images or an introduction video grabs readers’ attention.
  3. A unique value proposition (UVP) : Think of this as an online elevator pitch. Who is your course for? What does it help them do? Why is that beneficial to them?”
  4. Copy:  Create great sales copy that tells a powerful story and compels the reader to take action.
  5. Urgency:  Add trigger words and phrases like “now,” “limited time offer,” and “act today” to compel sign-ups from readers.
  6. Risk Reversal:  Include a money-back guarantee or a free trial to convince customers to take the plunge,
  7. Social Proof – What are past students saying about your course? Add social proof like reviews and testimonials to reinforce the perceived value of your offering and build trust.

The success of your landing page is measured by the conversion rate from visitors to customers. If it’s not converting, it needs tweaking.

“I know nothing about coding. How do I create a landing page?”

Luckily, you don’t need to be a coding whiz to do it. Online course platforms like Thinkific have no-code landing page builders that you can use to create one. 

Step 2: Go live with course

A course launch is a marketing campaign that’s sent to your existing audience and serves to build awareness and facilitate enrollments in your online course within a set period of time. Course launches are typically done over a period of 3-4 weeks via a series of emails or social media posts. 

It usually consists of three phases that take as many people from your audience from 

Unaware → Problem aware → Solution aware → Most aware

The three stages of a course launch are: 

  • Creating awareness and building hype: In the first step, you need to begin by addressing your audience’s problem with NO mention of your course whatsoever. For example, if you teach dog training, you could share a listicle of the top ten signs your dog needs training – and that’s it. You should not be doing any direct selling of your course or leading customers to your sales page yet! 

At the very most, you could drop hints that you’re working on “something big” and that it will be launching soon, but ultimately this phase is about priming your audience and getting them into the right mindset for your course launch. If you jump in immediately with a sales pitch, you risk losing your audience as they’re not ready to hear it. Be patient, 

  • Official launch/cart open; Now’s the time when you can start directing customers to your sales page. Your campaign focus at this point is to get as many people as possible to purchase your course. This phase will be the bulk of your launch campaign and can be broken down into six steps: launch, problem, solution, benefits, social proof and risk reversal. Our step-by-step guide to launching your online course discusses these steps in detail. 
  • Countdown and cart close: In the last 2-3 days of your campaign, you’ll want to ramp up your communication with your audience. The aim is to keep your course top of mind right before you close your sales to convince any interested people in your audience to make a purchase.

If you’re familiar with that last minute feeling, you’re not alone. Many of us — your customers included — leave things until the last possible chance before making a purchase.That means you need to signpost when your offer is closing and how long your customers have left to buy. A countdown clock on your landing page is a really effective method to drive the message home.

Step 3: Set up your lead nurturing funnel

A lead nurture funnel consists of the steps that will take customers from when they discover your digital product for the first time until they make a purchase. It’s about interacting with potential customers and delivering value at every stage of the buyeer journey until they convert. 

We have a ton of content around building and optimizing lead funnels, so we won’t go into much detail here. On a high level, you’ll need to: 

  • Create a lead magnet that attracts and convinces your audience to share their contact information, such as email addresses. This can be an evergreen webinar, ebook, quiz, etc. All the information you collect will be added to your email list for nurturing. 
  • Create an email sequence to engage leads after collecting their contact information. Try starting with a flow of 9 emails first and then work your way up to a more complex email marketing campaign. Get our exclusive webinar email flow templates here to help you start. 
  • Set up your closing strategy to convert email subscribers into customers. You can choose to use a single method or try using a combination of strategies. For example, you could push webinar attendees to book a consultative sales call with you and send those people who missed your webinar to a sales page.
  • Test the entire funnel first as a customer before launching it. You can send the email to a friend to help go through the entire process and ensure there are no typos, missing links, or barriers to making a purchase.

Once your funnel is up and running, you can start experimenting with marketing automation to scale and reach more prospective customers. Skipping to automation too early could mean committing to something that isn’t help you grow your business. When you’re just starting, you need to be more hands-on before you can automate and scale.

Step 4: Drive more traffic to your sales funnel

Creating a sales funnel is great – but you need to drive traffic to your funnel for it to be effective. Without a steady stream of new traffic, you can’t keep testing your sales funnel. If your current traffic strategy is not working (or if you don’t really have one to begin with), here are a few tactics to help you grow your traffic.

  1. Paid advertising:
  1. Social media:
  1. Partnerships

NOTE: Paid advertising is a great way to get more customers fast, but it’s a strategy that’s only recommended once you have product-market fit, a sound understanding of your customer, and you’re willing to spend time and money honing your strategy.

Related: 57 Ways To Market Your Online Course & Increase Sales

PHASE 4: Experiment, grow, and scale

Once you’ve built a sales funnel to sell more courses, the next step is to keep experimenting and optimizing your funnel for higher conversions ahead of Black Friday.

You can also start building your audience’s curiosity around your Black Friday offering to whet their appetite. That way, when you launch a full campaign, they’ll be excited to check out and engage with your offer.

Here are a few ways to market your Black Friday deal and build excitement early:

  • Run a pre-Black Friday sale for email subscribers
  • Add countdown timers to your website and emails to build anticipation.
  • Publish valuable content that hints at your upcoming deals. For example, “Top 10 Gifts to Grab During Our Black Friday Sale” or “What to Expect from Our Biggest Sale of the Year.”
  • Run Facebook and Google ads targeting your ideal customers with teasers, early access offers, and reminders.
  • Use Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms to create engaging posts that build excitement. You can use polls, quizzes, and questions to interact with your audience.

Launch your Black Friday campaign with Thinkific. 

As a digital product platform, Thinkific gives you everything you need to create, launch, and scale successful Black Friday campaigns as a creator. 

Whether you’re selling an online course, webinars, or community, we’ll provide the right tools for your success. These include a landing page builder to create a digital home for your Black Friday offering, email marketing to engage prospects and leads, and payment integrators to sell to a global customer base. 

Thinkific Commerce also provides features to increase conversion rates and order values including:

  • By 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.
  • Abandoned Cart: Thinkific has just launched Abandoned Cart emails — just in time for Black Friday. This feature helps you recapture potentially lost sales and drive more revenue.

Don’t just take our word for it. Try Thinkific for free for 14 days and share your experience. 

This blog was originally published in September 2022, it’s since been updated in September 2024 to include the must relevant and newest content. 

author profile picture
Colin Burton

Colin is a Content Marketer at Thinkific, writing about everything from online entrepreneurship & course creation to digital marketing strategy.

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