As a blogger, do you have a Black Friday marketing strategy? Learn to plan out your most epic Black Friday promotion yet to dramatically boost your blog’s income, whether you have your own products, use affiliate marketing, or both!
Remember when Black Friday meant getting up at the crack of dawn to navigate the mall’s Texas-sized parking lot to then speed walk through, weaving in and out of roped lines just to get the best deals on your kid’s toys?
Or maybe it was the only time to get your kid’s toys because they were sold out for over half the year.
That darn Tickle-Me-Elmo crisis will go down in history; you mark our words!
Leverage your holiday traffic with our FREE holiday content planning sheet! It’s the perfect tool to maximize your holiday content to boost traffic, email sign-ups, and affiliate income!
Thanks to technology, we replaced cardio with furiously inconsistent clicks and keyboard swipes just to make our way to a checkout before whatever we’re stressing about is pulled from the site.
So much anxiety!
The thing is, it can be even more chaotic now that we’re on the receiving end of it all. Who knew planning out your OWN Black Friday promo would be so stressful?
And, if we’re being honest, a void of information on how bloggers can and should leverage Black Friday’s traffic to generate some serious income.
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We decided to take our Black Friday marketing strategy, created from our own trial and error over the years, into one simple-to-follow yet jam-packed Black Friday promo guide.
Even if you don’t have a big shop or none at all and rely solely on affiliate sales, it’s time you finally leveraged Black Friday’s traffic to end this crazy year with a celebratory bang!
Table of Contents
1. PLAN OUT YOUR PROMOTION
If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. It’s as simple as that!
The nice thing about planning your first Black Friday promotion is that you’ll have a template for years to follow. And as you know, templates are our jam!
Related Post: How to Prepare Your Blog for the Holidays
We advise you to prepare your blog for the holidays while simultaneously planning your Black Friday promo. Because you’ll be in the preparation mindset, your productivity will skyrocket.
Plus, you’ll save even more time, AND your messaging will be more consistent!
SCHEDULE
First, you want to plan out your schedule. Will it be a one-day event, a week-long sale, or something different? We prefer a week-long sale to catch buyers throughout the week since most completely step away from their computers over the holiday.
PRODUCTS
Next up is planning the actual sale – what products will be a part of your Black Friday promotion? Are you focusing on a specific audience group? Will you provide any product bundles for steeper discounts?
We generally discount our whole shop except for entry-level products, priced at $27
We found that bundling based on audience group (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) has really bumped up our sales.
Related Post: Top Holiday Printables for Insane Blog Growth
As a new blogger, for example, a bundle will include what we recommend is best for you, which is generally what our inbox fills with this time of year.
They’re more confident in their purchase by providing that reassurance (products to grow their blog AND what we recommend working on).
Be sure to visit your affiliate tracker to see which products you can promote, too. Many people forget about affiliate marketing when it comes to their Black Friday promo, focusing solely on their own products.
Related Post: How to Leverage the Holiday Traffic with Gift Guides
This a huge missed opportunity because your audience is actively looking for something to buy! You’ll still make a sale with your affiliates, even if it’s not one of your own products.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, we can NOT recommend the Lazy Guide to Affiliate Marketing by Elizabeth Goddard enough. She has completely revolutionized our thought process on affiliate sales, and we absolutely love the set-it-and-forget-it approach!
DISCOUNTS
Lastly, it’s time to plan out your Black Friday promotion rates. Will you run a range or flat XX% off across your shop? BOGOs? The more you buy, the larger the discount.
This will depend on your shop’s host (Etsy or Shopify) and check-out programs such as ThriveCart.
Side note: We swear by ThriveCart, and if you can swing the one-time LIFETIME cost, get it! It’s so easy to customize your checkout pages, manage your affiliates, add bumps and upsells, and so much more.
For our Black Friday promo specifically, we’ll have a variety of discounts for individual products and bundles instead of one flat rate. We really push our bundles this time of year to boost our AVO.
Yes, we even measure those!
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2. BUILD OUT YOUR FUNNEL
Any time we can put our design skills to use, we’re happy campers, and a sales funnel is definitely no exception.
There’s actually a lot of design involved when it comes to creating a profitable funnel. In fact, we’ve created an entire blog post because there’s so much to cover!
Related Post: Ultimate Guide to Creating a Funnel that Converts
If this is your first Black Friday promotion, this is hands down where you’ll spend most of your time.
But it’ll all be worth it because you’re simultaneously creating a full-blown funnel template for you to use over and over again.
We can easily knock out our entire Black Friday promotion funnel in one day, thanks to the insane time and effort we put in years past. And you will, too!
LANDING PAGE
To start, we recommend creating a dedicated Black Friday promo page that’ll update every year.
View our year-round Black Friday sales page here.
This will dramatically help with SEO because it’ll have more time to gain traffic and rank in the search. Plus, it’ll help you save time since all you have to do is update the text instead of starting from scratch.
We use LeadPages for ALL of our landing pages. It’s so simple to design, add in timers, re-direct, and more.
Don’t forget to include an email opt-in (ConvertKit makes this incredibly easy!) to be notified when your Black Friday promotion starts.
EMAILS
Emails are essential for making money with your Black Friday promo, so whatever you do, don’t skip this step!
First, we just want to clarify that you’ll have an increasing number of unsubscribers. It is what it is; there’s no changing that.
But the way you use your emails will have an impact which brings us to SEGMENTS. Always segment your list!
Related Post: Easy Holiday Freebies to Skyrocket Your Email List
When you segment, you can send out targeted emails to prevent promoting a product that a subscriber has already purchased.
If your products are categorized as beginner, intermediate, etc., you can use their purchase history to your advantage by recommending products they’re more likely to buy.
For example, if a subscriber purchases our Five-Minute Brand, we won’t send them an email about our Ultimate Product Creators Toolbox. Instead, we’ll focus more on entry-level products such as Confidently Canva or our Complete Blogger Template Toolkit.
Targeted emails make your subscribers feel appreciated and that you care about them. So again, segment that list!
Also, countdown timers are great at getting those on-the-fence buyers to make a move because it promotes scarcity. Hurry before the time runs out!
We use and love MotionMail. Plus, it’s free!
CHATBOT
Here’s the thing. People WILL have questions whether the answer is in your sales copy or not.
Especially when it comes to customers wanting to buy the next-step product in your funnel.
Related Post: How to Use QR Codes for Easy Money
If you’re ignoring those questions, you’re missing out on sales. While we’re not saying you need to be glued to your computer for your entire Black Friday promotion, having an easy line of communication will help.
We have a ManyChat chatbot set up on all of our sales pages that’s available 24/7. If someone sends us a message that it doesn’t recognize (based on triggered keywords), the chatbot will send us a notification.
The user then receives a confirmation message and a link to our FAQ page, which usually answers their question anyway.
People are more apt to send us a message than an email because it’s literally right there on the sales page. And if you’re available, chatting live with multiple people (including voice notes if that’s your thing) is a breeze.
DISCOUNT CODES
Discounting products for a Black Friday promotion can be done in two ways. Either discounting straight in the shop or creating a coupon code to be used at checkout.
The latter is generally preferred for various reasons, some of which revolve around buyer psychology.
ThriveCart is perfect for this. Just add your code, discount, dates, applicable products – it’s really that easy.
Don’t forget to keep your coupon codes simple. Nothing translates to an abandoned cart more than ‘bot-proof’ coupon codes or even acronyms.
CHECK OUT
We don’t care what anyone says – your checkout pages NEED to be customizable! We love changing the text, imagery, order bumps, and even layout with just a few clicks of our mouse using ThriveCart.
To make our Black Friday promotion even easier for our customers, we added the coupon code to our page’s top banner resulting in fewer abandoned carts!
3. DESIGN YOUR VISUALS
We’ve made it to the best part of a Black Friday promotion – designing our visuals!
While we have an evergreen guide to creating product launch graphics, your Black Friday visuals must take it up a notch.
Related Post: Digital Product Launch Graphics You Need to Create
There’s a LOT of noise in Q4, especially during Black Friday. You need visuals that make your products pop. Your customers need to see what your product is all about to help them determine if it’s right for them.
MOCKUP
If you can only make one graphic for your Black Friday promotion out of everything we’re about to recommend, this is it.
Your buyer isn’t going to care about the title or description if they can’t see what they’re buying, regardless of cost.
Just put yourself in their shoes. Would you buy something without seeing it? Probably not, right?
Related Post: Simple Seasonal Mockup Graphics For Your Blog
A mockup is what your product looks like. Really, what your product IS. If it’s a course, it’ll be on a computer or laptop. If it’s an eBook, you’ll have it on a tablet. It’s all about visual representation!
This is what a mockup looks like. We have a binder and individual pages to represent a printable holiday planner.
Our Holiday Template Toolkit is shown on a computer monitor because it’s digital, along with our Holiday Gift Guide Bundle, shown on a laptop.
You know what this product is all about without scrolling through the sales page.
Here are other examples of more high-end mockups you can easily make using Canva Smartmockups. These mockups are perfect for sales pages and ‘background’ images with text overlay (image #3).
SQUARE
While primarily used for Facebook and Instagram, square graphics are still great for blog posts, sales pages, and emails.
However, there really isn’t a set design process to follow. You can make these in various styles, including just text, photos and text, a continuation of mockups, etc.
Here are three completely different square promotional graphics.
Image one is similar to a mockup in that it showcases just some of the templates available in our Ultimate Holiday Canva Template Bundle with a bit of text describing what the product is about.
Image two, again, highlights the product with a few templates and a small text summary.
Image three is a template from our Ultimate Holiday Canva Template Bundle with some text for you to describe your product and a place for a stock photo or image of your product.
Three vastly different looks, but are all still promotional in nature.
Because Pinterest is a visual search engine, you want as much content circulating through the feed as possible. We have at least 4+ years old pins that still bring regular traffic to our blog.
Remember when we talked about having a dedicated Black Friday promo page?
Even if someone clicks on your Pin in the middle of March, they’ll go to an active page where they can sign up for a discount that may not be as good as the Black Friday promo you offered but is still better than full price.
Talk about SEO and money-making perfection, friend!
VIDEO
Video marketing is HUGE so take advantage of it! To really showcase your product, create a sneak peek or demo of your product in use. We love taking a template from one of our products and customizing it to match our brand.
Our audience responds well to seeing our templates in action because it not only helps visualize them using it, but they can see firsthand just how easy designing with templates truly is.
You can also do a before and after or film yourself going through the product. This may be turning the pages of your book or binder or clicking through on your computer.
We combined our favorite ways to promote a product into one video for our 5-Minute Brand. This is a really popular and easy option, too!
You can easily make this as a GIF or flip graphic to use on social media so it constantly plays through instead of a video that must start manually.
Related Post: Animated Flip Graphics | How to Make a Flipbook in Canva
Bonus, it’s so simple to make right inside Canva. As if anything isn’t, right?!
No matter where you are on your blogging journey, there’s always money to be made on Black Friday.
As you plan out your Black Friday promo and even after, keep documenting what’s working and what isn’t so you can fine-tune your plan for next year.
Remember, progress is still progress. While some might see a ‘bust’ as a failure, it’s still an experience you can walk away from knowing more than you did before you started!
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS POST:
- FREE Holiday Content Planner
- Easy Holiday Freebies to Skyrocket Your Email List
- Top Holiday Printables for Insane Blog Growth
- How to Prepare Your Blog for the Holidays
- Simple Seasonal Mockup Graphics For Your Blog
- How to Leverage the Holiday Traffic with Gift Guides
- Ultimate Holiday Canva Template Bundle
Don’t forget to grab our FREE holiday content planning sheet! It’s the perfect tool to maximize your holiday content to boost holiday traffic, email sign-ups, and affiliate income!
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To be honest? It’s the best $12.99/mo OR $119/yr we spend on our business because that time we save with every design is put back into making MORE money in your business!
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