How to Run a Values-Driven Black Friday Promo
A guide for choosing what to offer and how to approach Black Friday without selling out.
For entrepreneurs who value integrity and credibility when it comes to selling stuff online, Black Friday/Cyber Monday and the general over-consumerism of the end of the year can be a little hard to navigate.
On the one hand, many of our potential members are ready to plan their upcoming year and often have budget to spend. On the other, it’s a time when a lot of us buy stuff we don’t need and never use.
So how do we navigate this time and make decisions that both set the business up success and align with our values?
There’s a legitimate argument for not participating at all. And, for some of us, there might be an opportunity to be a bright spot in what your people are spending on and also to set yourself up for a big boost in revenue going into the end of the year.
If you’re not sure exactly how to approach it, or if you’ve never done a Black Friday deal, here are some principles I recommend when deciding on what, if anything, to offer.
3 options to consider for a Black Friday promo
Do nothing.
You don’t need to participate at all. No matter how much we try to simplify it, having a Black Friday deal takes work. For most of us this means writing new emails, testing automations, and risking annoying your people into unsubscribing. So if you don’t have a good idea of how to do it, sitting it out is a perfectly legitimate choice. You can even skip a year and do it next time, no one will mind.
Main product special offer.
This is the most popular approach. It involves taking the primary thing you sell people (membership, course, coaching program, etc) and making it a no-brainer for people who’ve considered buying in the past to take action now.
There are a few different ways of doing that:
Offer a steep discount — give people an unprecedented discount. It should be a great deal that you’ve never offered before. This works even better when you bundle products in creative ways you haven’t before and discount them based on their full price. Something to note with this approach is that you have to be careful about relying on discounts as your only marketing strategy. Your audience can get too used to them and stop buying full price (I’ve never bought a full-price item at The Gap for example 😬).
Create a bonus package — instead of, or in addition to offering a discount, add one-time-only bonuses. These are ideally resources you’ve created in the past that aren’t usually included in the core thing you sell. Whatever you choose should ideally answer an objection for your potential buyer. So if they haven’t bought all year because they didn’t think they’d have time, consider offering a planning checklist around making time. If they haven’t bought because they are waiting to finish another step before they’re ready, make the bonus a step-by-step guide on that first step.
Offer a time-sensitive bonus session or event — If your community is always open and will stay open to join past your Black Friday launch, a great way to create the urgency promos like this need is to offer an extra live session that will happen shortly after the offer expires. This can be a special secret workshop, a networking extravaganza gathering, an end-of-year planning session, an additional coaching session, or whatever is super appealing to your people.
You can also combine the above strategies as you see fit in a way that makes it a complete no-brainer, for the ideal person.
Promote something you don’t usually sell.
Another way to approach Black Friday is to make it about a product that is related to the topic you talk about but is in a different format from what you usually sell. This strategy is meant to attract people who are on your list but have not been interested in your core product. These might be people who want to know what you have to teach but don’t want the commitment of a membership. Or who wants to work with you, but not in a group. Or who want your content but are in a time zone across the world and wouldn’t make it to the group coaching sessions.
This is a good option if you have a healthy list that you’ve launched your main offer to a few times, with lots of people who aren’t interested in the version you’re currently offering. The point of this approach is not to distract from the main thing you want to sell, but to capture a bit more revenue from an already engaged audience.
What do your values say?
The first place to look when making a sales promotion (or any decision) for your business are your values. I wrote about values here. There’s an exercise there for you to explore and find yours and your community’s set of values.
As mentioned in that piece, useful values are not words you put on your website and forget about. They’re an active way to make your everyday decisions.
Given your values, what would be the most values-driven way to approach a Black Friday sale?
Let’s explore:
Let’s say one of your top values is joy. Then, for Black Friday you might find a way to host a fun gathering/class/event in December that is all about celebration and include that as a bonus for people joining your community around Black Friday.
If your top value is fairness, instead of discounting your community for only new members that come in, you might instead promote a way for your existing members to be the ones to get discounts or bonuses towards their memberships when they refer new members.
If your top values include generosity, then you might make your entire campaign about gifting membership to a friend. Or a buy one, get one free deal.
If your top value is continuous improvement, then you might choose to sit out Black Friday, in favor of marketing efforts that work consistently year-round and don’t require extra effort.
You don’t have to do anything in particular and you don’t need to follow anyone’s playbook. If you’re on the fence about participating, consider that offering your people something worthwhile, like access to a community that helps them learn and connect, is perhaps a better option for them to spend their money on Black Friday than niche appliances they’ll never use.
If introducing a campaign this year feels right to you, but you haven’t yet started, it is not too late to put something together! Remember to lead with your values. Regardless of the results, you’re guaranteed to learn something.
What do your values say about how you should do Black Friday this year?
PS. If you’re interested in learning about our Black Friday offer for Build a Community Business, click here to sign up for the waitlist! It’ll be a bonus package with everything you need to get started or grow a business that centers community. We’ll even be including free 1:1 sessions with me for the first few people who purchase the course as part of the promo. Here’s the waitlist link again.
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