Your $10,000 weekend: A Black Friday sales strategy to increase your profits
With the most important weekend for many businesses approaching, most online entrepreneurs are looking for a Black Friday sales strategy to help them make the most profits. If you’re one of them, you’ve come to the right place.
A $10,000 weekend
Whether you’re a shoemaker or a pastry chef, every course creator can benefit from this easy six-step Black Friday sales strategy.
Step 1: Create an offer people can’t resist
To entice people to buy during your Black Friday sale, you’ll need to create an irresistible offer. For course creators, it could be anything like:
- A hefty discount on your online course
- The same discount on the products in your business
- A coupon for complementary products for those who enroll in your course
- Access to a private community for new students
- An exclusive webinar packed with added value as a bonus for new students
- A bundle of your course and complementary products that’s only available during Black Friday
Naturally, the more established your business is, the easier it’s going to set up an offer for your Black Friday sale. However, even if you don’t have a lot of products yet, you can still make your offer stand out. A great way to do so is by testing a fresh idea for a course or a product as a bonus or discounted offer.
For example
Let’s say you teach people how to bake traditional sourdough bread. You might have plans to expand your curriculum by adding a course on making pastries out of sourdough in addition to making bread.
This Black Friday weekend can serve as the perfect opportunity to test out whether your students would be interested in learning to bake sourdough pastries. So, put together a short PDF or even a short video lesson that covers this topic. Offer it as an exclusive Black Friday sale bonus to everyone who enrolls in your main online course over the weekend.
Step 2: Create a dedicated sales page
The reason why you want to create a whole separate sales page for your Black Friday offer is simple—exclusivity. Everyone runs Black Friday sales. It’s not a new concept. So, if you want to stand out, putting effort into making people feel special with your offer is the way to go. And a dedicated sales page can help you get there.
You can easily create a separate sales page for your Black Friday sale offer on Teachable’s platform. Because you are already familiar with the interface and all the tools available to you, it will be very quick and simple.
Tools like Lead Pages can help you create incredible sales pages without much hassle. Plus, you can link to your Teachable course from that sales page and go straight to your offer.
There are a few things you want to include in your Black Friday sale landing page:
- Countdown: Because it’s a limited-time offer, a visual countdown will make it easy for people to grasp the urgency. Fear of missing out is your best friend here, so the more prominent the countdown until the offer ends, the more urgency there will be and the more people will be tempted to buy.
- The hook: Why should people care that you’re running a sale? What’s so special about it that makes it worth their money? This is the time for you to show your Black Friday offer is the thing customers need in their lives.
- What’s inside: Be clear about what’s included in this special offer. If you have bonuses to the main offer, this is the time to let people know that they’re getting more for their money.
- CTA: Include a clear call to action you want people to take once they learn everything about your offer, inviting them to enroll in your course. Make sure it’s easy and quick for people to do.
Step 3: Let your email list know first
Your email list is the true goldmine. It’s where people who are truly interested in what you and your business have to offer live. So, they’re the first ones who need to know about your special Black Friday sale offer. Email marketing still has one of the best ROI, with an average of $42 made for every $1 spent, so don’t skip on this step.
It might even be a good idea to offer exclusive early access to your Black Friday sale to your email list. Send out an email ahead of time, letting your audience know that you’ll be running a special sale for a limited time. And let them know those on your list get access to your offer a few days before the start of the official sale.
Your email list will feel appreciated because they get extra value and you’ll have sales coming in without adding any additional effort in promoting your Black Friday sale.
Also, offering early access to the sale for people on your list is a great way to grow your email list. Let your audience on social media know that anyone who signs up to your list before a certain time, gets early access to the special, limited-time Black Friday sale.
Step 4: Consider short-term ads
Running a few ads over the Black Friday weekend, or better yet, a few days prior, is a good way to get more exposure and attract an audience. There are a few platforms you want to consider for running the ads on:
Running ads on Google offers the best reach because Google owns 92.71% of the search market share. When people are searching for something on Google, they’re ready to purchase and make a decision in most cases.
The average CPC (cost-per-click) on Google AdWords is $2.32, making it the most expensive place to run your ads.
With over 2.7 billion monthly active users in 2021, Facebook is still the largest social media platform out there. And their online ads can be very effective. Facebook Ads Manager offers a lot of customization, which is great for targeting a very niche audience.
The average CPC for ads on Facebook is $1.72.
If a lot of your target audience hangs out on Instagram, then it might be worth considering running ads on this platform. Instagram ads can be run from the same platform as Facebook ads. Plus, they offer a lot of customization as well.
Instagram ads also cost cheaper than Google or Facebook coming at the average CPC of $0.5-$0.95.
A lot of shoppers are hanging out on Pinterest, yet this platform tends to get forgotten. Pinterest ad prices depend on which of the three goals you’re trying to achieve with the ads:
- Building brand awareness: costs $3-$5 per 1000 impressions
- Driving traffic to the website: costs $0.1-$1.5 per engagement
- Boosting engagement: costs $0.1-$1.5 per engagement
Exactly how much running online ads will cost is an ever-changing metric. Due to many businesses also running ads on Black Friday weekend, there will be a higher competition for target keywords. So the chances are that prices will be higher than usual.
However, even with taking all of this into consideration, it’s worth experimenting with paid advertising if you have the budget for it and want to expand your reach.
Step 5: Announce it early
Set the short period when the Black Friday sale will be live but announce it to your audience two or more weeks beforehand. This way, you have more time to prepare people and ensure that the news about the sale reaches them in time.
Also, make sure that you have a full announcement campaign ready to go. Let your audience know on every single social media platform, on your blog, and on your podcast. And don’t worry about repeating yourself. Most people won’t see every single announcement on every platform you’re on. Even if they will, some might need a few tiny pushes before they’re ready to commit to making a purchase.
Step 6: Deliver on the exclusiveness promise
And lastly, for this Black Friday sale strategy to be effective and bring in the best results for you, make sure you deliver on the promise of the offer being exclusive. Even if you’re tempted, make sure you end the offer when you promised and reserve it for one time only, choosing to go with new exclusive offers in the future.
When you’re looking to build a long-term successful online course business, it’s important to stay on top of all the promises you made. Plus, your audience will notice if you don’t deliver.
The success of your $10,000 Black Friday weekend sale lies in your ability to make it special and exclusive, a one-time experience that people can’t resist.