Black Friday is pretty controversial – people love it or hate it. While bargains are up for grabs in the run up to Christmas, many small businesses reject the idea of slashing their prices, especially in the run up to one of the busiest times of the year.
But, hear us out. Black Friday can work for small businesses – here are the hows and whys.
How To Do Black Friday Promotions As A Small Business Share on X
Why get involved in Black Friday?
People are actively looking for things to buy
People are in buying mode, they’re looking to buy holiday gifts, and they’re looking to see who has a Black Friday sale on. As they’re proactively looking to buy, it often means they’re buying more, and they need fewer touch points with your brand to convert.
Good timing
If you sell custom or personalized products, or usually have a rush on last minute Christmas sales, it encourages people to buy now rather than being disappointed when they order five minutes before Christmas and realize their gift isn’t going to make it in time.
It also means less pressure on you if sales are more spread out – or maybe it means more if people are ready to buy again in the run up to the holidays.
Reach more people
Bloggers and influencers are looking to create buying guides and promote small businesses, which means you have the opportunity to reach more people and get more backlinks to your website.
Give people options that aren’t big businesses
A lot of people and networks are looking to support small independent businesses, including bloggers and influencers who often do “shop small” roundups or Black Friday buying guides. It’s a great opportunity to extend your reach and gain new followers, views, and sales.
Additionally, you can collaborate with other small businesses and give each other a boost by sharing each others’ deals and swapping leads for bloggers’ and influencers’ buying guides.
How to make Black Friday work as a small business
One of the big reasons that small businesses shy away from Black Friday is because doing deep discounting when you’re making your own products or providing one-to-one services sounds like a lot of work and stress for a potential loss.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some ideas that won’t take you a lot of time, and more importantly will see your income trending up instead of down.
Do a value-add instead of a discount
Adding more value rather than discounting your products is an advantage because you maintain your order value instead of slashing your prices below profitability. (Call it a Black Friday Bonus or Freebie if you’re not comfortable using the word Deal).
This is usually along the lines of adding something extra when people spend over a certain amount, or including something extra when particular products are bought. You could also use bundles for extra value.
The best things to add are limited edition exclusives, or trial size versions of strong sellers. That way you’re not throwing in something free that someone may have bought anyway. (It’s best not to use products that don’t sell super well for this – these are best as part of a bundle of items or a surprise freebie).
Alternatively, free digital products are a strong choice even if you only typically sell physical products. These could take the form of templates, patterns, organizational printables or spreadsheets, cheatsheets, printable bookmarks, wallpaper designs in your art style, and similar.
They could be tied to your brand through the color scheme, style, characters (if applicable) or even form an extra for your product. For example if you sell yarn, your value-add could be a bookmark template with instructions for making a tassel.
Another way to do this is to offer the ability for someone to “unlock” a limited edition bonus from you by sharing their purchase, your Black Friday deal, or referring you to a friend.
Avoid using personalized products or services as a value-add as you want to be able to scale easily, and ideally automate delivery if you’re going down the digital product route.
Try gift card, account credit, or membership bumps
Rather than offering a discount on products or services themselves, you could offer a discount on a gift card to use later, such as selling a $100 gift card for $90 (or similar), and limiting the number of purchases per person. The same can be done if your ecommerce setup allows an “add funds” or “add credit” option for people’s accounts (if you’re using WooCommerce, the WPSwings plugin lets you add credit to a wallet).
With a membership, you could offer an extra free month (13 months for the price of 12). You could also use it to offer extra time on a series of coaching sessions, or create a “season pass” to give people access to a range of your trainings, workshops, or digital products.
The goal here is to raise the average cart value and take advantage of a time when people are looking to get a good deal. It’s also useful if people generally like spending money with you and plan to buy from you in future, but don’t see anything they want or need to buy from you right this second.
Create mystery boxes or lucky dips
These are traditionally used to clear stock – because you’ve overbought and need to clear space for something else, something didn’t sell as well as you expected, or something just wasn’t popular in a particular colorway or style. Black Friday is the perfect time to do a mystery box or lucky dip selection to clear your space – physically and psychologically! – in the run up to Christmas. For extra interest, you could frame it as a “last chance” sale because you won’t be restocking them.
Having said that, you should always include at least one or two popular items that people like, and the box or dip should always be sold at a cheaper price compared to buying all the items individually. This also works well to boost your average cart order value, as you can list it as “$100 worth of items for just $50!” or similar.
Organize a collaborative bundle
Rather than being focused around big discounts, try getting together with other business owners who share a similar audience with yours and building a bundle of products between you as a one-off Black Friday exclusive. If you’re not sure how to find people, try Facebook groups that have a lot of business owners in your niche or area and ask if anyone’s interested in collaborating – shortlist people and then pick the ones who make the most sense.
Make it as low effort as possible for the other business owners, for example by creating the bundle imagery for them to help promote, tagging them in a collaborative Instagram post, and similar. As least a couple of the business owners you work with should have strong followings and engagement.
This can work well because it extends your reach for sales without any more effort than usual; everyone is helping to promote rather than you doing all the work alone. It also means reaching a new audience who are likely to love your products and be really happy they discovered you.
Exclusive or limited-run items
Our own Black Friday bundle of digital products consists of exclusive items every single year. This way people know that this is their only chance to get them. As it’s such a limited run, people also have the advantage that they won’t see those stock photos or graphics templates everywhere, as they’ve only been purchasable for a short time (especially advantageous to those who have a lot of people try to copy them!). It also helps encourage people to buy at the time, as they’re worried about forgetting to buy later.
Of course, the disadvantage to you as a business owner is that you’re doing all the work for something that will only be sold once. This is definitely something to consider when you’re figuring out what to offer. If you’d prefer to continue selling the products after, you could make the price a one-off that will never be repeated rather than the products themselves.
Discounts for multiple items
This needs to be considered carefully as it may not be right for you, but it can be a way to bump average order values.
For example, if you have several ebooks or courses, you could offer people 10% off for buying 2, 15% off for buying 3, and so on. That way people are more likely to buy 3 instead of 2 to get more of a discount.
You could also do this for the full cart value, 10% off when you spend X amount or similar. It doesn’t have to be a wild discount to still encourage sales – people still feel the psychological and pocket benefit from getting a discount, and are more likely to act at the time as they know the deal won’t be around for long.
These kinds of deals can get some backlash from people if they’ve recently placed an order with you; however as many people know Black Friday is coming up, it’s less likely to happen at this time of year.
Run an anti-Black Friday sale
Even if you have strong feelings about Black Friday, people are looking for deals and sale prices anyway – so if you don’t want to be associated with Black Friday, take the time to explain why it’s not for you, and what you’re doing instead.
It could be a different, quirkily named sale/value-add, showing your support for other small businesses who could use a boost, or getting a bunch of other indie business owners together for a collaboration.
Support other business owners
If Black Friday and any kind of related sale really isn’t for you, maybe just sharing other people’s posts and encouraging your followers to shop small could be a better way to show your support. Whatever you’re comfortable with!
Whatever you’re choosing to do this Black Friday, don’t hide away! Make it a selling or supportive season without skipping over it and thinking all the way to Christmas.
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