Article at-a-glance: - Why Black Friday & Cyber Monday are ideal for making more sales. - 15 unique ideas to boost sales during Black Friday & Cyber Monday. - Also included link to tips for maximizing sales for other retail holidays and events.
Black Friday & Cyber Monday are typically the biggest shopping days of the year.
Things can get crazy…
So here are 15+ ideas to help you boost your sales and profits (or pass these on to your clients to boost their sales and profits, winning yourself some goodwill in the process)!
Why Black Friday / Cyber Monday Work To Get More Sales…
But first, it’s worth thinking about ‘why’ that is so you can use these principles at other times of the year too.
- People are “trained” to buy during this period and often hold out on making purchases earlier, just in case they get a better deal when the time comes.
- There is built in scarcity. Black Friday and Cyber Monday each occur once per year. It’s well known the deals typically only run for these days. That gives a sense of urgency and action.
You can use this in your own business outside of these two big buyer days.
Train your audience to expect an event, yearly, monthly, even weekly.
This could take the form of emails you send, offers you promote, webinars you run, blog posts or videos you publish, and so on.
It could take the form of an annual special offer or event you hold, much like Amazon adopted “Prime Day”, away from Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
As for scarcity – this can take many forms (time, quantity, price, conditions…). My only advice would be to make it clear and make it strict.
15x Sales Boosting Black Friday & Cyber Monday Ideas
These ideas can be combined, some work together in harmony, some are a trade off. You can pick and choose what you think might work best for you.
Generally speaking these ideas work as well for eCommerce as they do for digital or information products as they do for agency services. You just have to think about your offer and how it fits.
1. Start Early…
If you put all your efforts into announcing your deals or offers or the special event at 00:01… you’re probably not going to have the biggest impact.
We’re about a week away and that’s enough time to get an 80/20 in place for sure.
Ideally you’ll have been thinking about and implementing your strategy before now, but if not, there’s always next year… or your own version of “prime day”
2. Let People Know & Get Them Signed Up…
Related to the above, whatever you have planned, give your audience as much time to prepare as you can.
You can set up an email list and let them know they’ll be first to know when the offers go live (even get exclusive access to the offers).
You can reach out to clients or customers and let them know what you have planned.
As much as 30 days ahead is usually reasonable, anything more than that lacks urgency.
Likewise, 30 minutes before is probably too little but better than nothing!
3. Perplexity Top Offers…
If you’re short of ideas on what to promote or don’t already have an offer in mind, you can use Perplexity.ai and ask for “20 <niche> offers for black friday.”
It’s a handy blend of A.I. + Search to save yourself a bit of time.
4. Consider The Keywords…
While paid ads become way more competitive and expensive, Google search traffic still offers countless low-competition opportunities to get those buyers.
Publish content relating to your niche, good deals and hot offers with e.g. “black friday 2024” in there…
- “black friday 2024 deals for <niche/audience> “
- “black friday 2024 coupons for <product>”
- “<X vs. Y> black friday 2024”
Do the same for Cyber Monday.
If you’re part of Simpler Traffic or $1M Content Plans then refer to our niche and keyword research training for a more in depth guide on how to uncover zero competition $-driving keywords and content ideas.
5. Launch An Amp Or Two Or Three…
If you’re reading this reasonably soon after I sent it, then there’s still time to publish your Amps and get in front of that search traffic for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, especially if you get your keywords right!
6. Publish A Buyer’s Guide…
Buyer’s guides are super popular content pieces, provide a lot of value and are things people are prone to sharing, for even more traffic and some good links.
Ask Perplexity.ai what a good buyer’s guide should include and you’re off to the races.
7. Go Heavy…
In terms of actual strategy – major retailers (and many smaller ones) popularized the black friday “stunt” on high tickets items, discounting by $100’s to $1,000’s in order to bring more traffic (both digital and on foot).
90% is very attractive. 99% off is crazy attractive (people might buy it even if they don’t want it!)
But will it result in you making more money?
If enough people know about the offer and it’s attractive enough – and there’s scarcity (you remember those videos of people rushing Walmart to grab TVs right?), then you might make enough from selling other items or on the back end with new customers.
And 99% may not be necessary.
50% or even 20% may do.
You’ll need to know your numbers or run a limited low-risk experiment.
The point is – you can use the heavy discount as a way to attract attention. What you do with that attention is what matters.
8. Extend The Promotion…
Although this slightly undermines one of the core reasons why Black Friday and Cyber Monday work so well… i.e. Scarcity… i.e. 24 hours only.
Extending Black Friday deals to cover a weekend, a full week or even an entire month is becoming more popular.
The argument is what you lose in conversions, you make up for in quantity.
Again, you’ll need to know your numbers to know if it’s worth doing.
Just remember – if every day was Black Friday, it wouldn’t be special anymore.
9. Dime Sale…
A clever way of increasing scarcity even more is to reduce the discount, the more gets sold.
A traditional dime sale starts at a very low price and that price rises $0.10 every time a new item is bought.
When people see this, they buy as soon as they can, to get the best deal… even if it’s only $0.10.
Of course you can have some variety.
Adjust the price increase ($0.10 might be insignificant when the item you’re selling is priced at $5,000).
Adjust the quantity interval (every 10 sales vs. every 1 sale etc).
You can even adjust the time interval (price rises every 30 minutes, for example).
This can be done automatically and may need some tech… or it can be done manually.
10. Viral Incentives…
You can offer bigger discounts to people who share your offer. Some examples:
- Share on Facebook and receive an extra 5% off.
- Get 5 friends to sign up and get X free.
- Publish a video and receive $50 off.
Things like that; again there are automated solutions for this, or they can be done manually if it makes sense.
11. Buy One Get One Free…
“BOGOF” – one of the oldest sales tactics in the book.
Effectively a 50% discount framed as a 100% gain.
Much more attractive than “2 For 1” as it includes a clearer call to action.
Very clever and is a classic for a reason.
Just make sure your profit margins can take it (or adjust price accordingly) – or that you can make it up on the back end somehow.
12. Bundles…
Offering Black Friday Bundles of products, offers or services is an attractive way to sell more, without getting too specific on exactly how much of a discount is being provided.
The value of a bundle is the sense of ‘more’ or ‘completeness’ or ‘convenience’.
13. Flash Sales…
Take the ‘time’ urgency even further by cutting down the offer window from 24 hours to e.g. 60 minutes.
You could have, for example, a 20% discount for Black Friday, but for that single hour it’s a 50% discount.
Best to give people a lot of advance notice if you’re going to do this, so they can plan ahead and make sure they’re there.
Amazon does this well (obviously).
14. Countdown Timers…
There is something about seeing a series of numbers approach 00:00:00 zero that make the scarcity feel that much more real and urgent.
Use them where you can.
15. F*ck Black Friday…
And of course, you could simply take the stance of “we don’t need to discount our offer – it’s already exceptional value”.
You could argue this is strong positioning.
You could also argue it’s kind of ‘grinchy’.
Probably best to find a way to offer “something” extra to make the most of the spirit of the season, which doesn’t involve cutting the price of your offer.
Keep Calm and Continue Making Your Sales
Those are 15 ideas you could potentially use. Pick one, or combine several.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday happen once per year and buyer traffic is typically at its highest.
So it’s worth using these strategies to maximize your profits where you can and consider how you can use them throughout the rest of the year too.
We’ve also listed a few more tips, like partnering with niche influencers and content ideas on our November Retail Calendar article.
Schedule an appointment now with our team to discover other ways we can help your brand to boost sales and profit.
