How to Prepare Your Business and Website for Black Friday
Black Friday is just around the corner so now is the perfect time to start planning your promotions. Contrary to popular belief, Black Friday is not reserved just for big retailers. In fact, Q4 is one of the most profitable seasons for small business owners.
And it can be used by all kinds of businesses to boost your income and reach your financial goals for the year.
However, if you have an online business, your Black Friday sale plans will be a little different than if you have a brick and mortar store.
But don’t stress as I’ve rounded up my best tips to help you get ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and any other holiday sale that’s coming our way.
And if you want to save a ton of time planning, prepping, and launching your Black Friday sale, I’ve got you covered with my Black Friday Masterclass + Toolkit.
Heads up: this post may contain affiliate links. In other words, if you make a purchase using my link, you won’t pay a dime more but I’ll earn a small commission. My chips and salsa fund thanks you from the bottom of its heart… er stomach?
Get Your Business & Website Ready for Black Friday
Below are 5 practical tips to help you get your business and website ready for Black Friday and other holiday sales.
1. Decide On Your Black Friday Sales Goals
The first thing you should do is decide on the goals for your Black Friday sale. Once you know what you’re hoping to achieve, you’ll have an easier time mapping out your Black Friday campaign.
Here are a couple of things to think about:
What are your overall goals for the sale? Are you hoping to boost your income for the year so you can hit your financial goal? Or are you planning to spotlight a product that you haven’t promoted in a while?
What do you need to make that goal a reality? This can include a lot of things but a few examples include:
preparing promotional graphics so you can share the sale on social media
asking past customers or clients for reviews and testimonials to gather social proof
creating a dedicated sales page for your offer
implementing a sales funnel with a few upsells or bump orders to boost your average order value
2. Choose What To Promote
Now that you know what your Black Friday sale goals are, it’s time to decide what you’re going to promote. While it might be tempting to dream up a completely new offer, remember that it will be a lot easier to pull this off if you focus on an existing product or service.
Creating a new product from scratch takes time and it will only add to your overwhelm. So instead of trying to think of something new, look at existing offers and think of an exciting way to package them for Black Friday.
A few examples include:
Bundling a few products together and offering them at a discounted price
Offering a special bonus for an existing course or program such as an extra coaching session or extra support time, co-working calls or implementation weeks
Offering a product or service for free when they spend X amount of dollars on your website
All of the above is a great way to use what you already have in your business and make the offer exciting for your audience.
But what if you don’t have an offer to promote?
Easy — take advantage of affiliate programs! As a business owner, I’m sure you have products and services that you absolutely love. Now is the perfect time to see if they offer an affiliate program and sign up for it.
Most online services will be running a special offer for Black Friday so you can take advantage of that and boost your affiliate commissions.
3. Decide on Black Friday Offer Type
There are many ways to package up your offer for Black Friday. As mentioned earlier, could bundle a few products together or offer an extra special bonus that’s only available during Black Friday.
You could also choose several products and offer a daily deal for each of them during Black Friday weekend.
You could also offer a discount that starts high on the first day and gradually decreases every day after that.
You could also offer an early bird pricing if people buy before Black Friday or a steep discount for first 10 orders.
You can also combine several of these offer types if you have a large catalog of products. This applies to physical products as well as digital products such as courses, workshops, templates, masterclasses, etc.
4. Plan, Create, and Schedule Your Promotional Content
Once you know what you’re working towards, what you’re going to offer, and how you’re going to sell it, you need to brainstorm and create your promotional content.
Start by deciding how long your sale is going to be and then plan your content accordingly. This may include the following:
Emails for every day of the sale
Social media posts for every day of the sale
Pre-sale content for social media and emails where you warm your audience up and prime them for the sale.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to create all the content from scratch. Be sure to look through your old launch/sales emails and social media posts first. I can almost guarantee you that you will find a plethora of posts that you can reuse and repurpose.
Share as many social media posts and emails as you feel comfortable with but don’t be afraid to send and share more than you think it’s necessary. Black Friday is typically a very noisy day when it comes to inboxes and social media so sending more during this period is expected and necessary if you want to get noticed.
And don’t forget: send extra emails and social media posts on the last day of the sale — there are always people who wait until the last minute to make their purchase!
While this may seem like a lot of content, by planning it out now, you can have it ready before Black Friday sale and schedule it out so you can enjoy the holidays as well.
5. Optimize and Test Your Site
The last thing on this list is to prepare your site for the holiday sales. And then test it. Thoroughly.
When it comes to optimizing your site, here are a few things to pay attention to:
Incorporating announcement banners and popups that draw attention to the sale
Simplifying your navigation to make it easy for visitors to navigate around your site
Highlighting the sale price so the visitors understand the discount they’re getting
Optimizing your product descriptions with emphasis on why they should take advantage of the Black Friday offer
Putting your top-sellers front and center
Create a discount code that applies automatically during checkout to make the sale as easy as possible
Once you’ve done all that, it’s time to test every nook and cranny of your site. You’ll want to make sure to check the following:
Check website speed
Test buttons and links
Go through the checkout process yourself (put your site or cart in test mode or create special coupon that gives you 100% off)
Check your site on different devices and browsers
Make sure CTAs stand out
Double-check every discount code and make sure it applies correctly
Be sure to also test multiple times as tech likes to go wonky at the most inopportune time. It’s a good idea to run the final test minutes before you send your first email announcing the sale. Remember, it’s better to be over-prepared rather than deal with a flood of unhappy customers.
Final Thoughts
Black Friday is one of the busiest days for most small business owners so it’s normal if you’re feeling overwhelmed. But by following these tips, you can make sure that your Black Friday promotion is ready well in advance.
Start planning early, give yourself time to create the necessary content, and optimize your site now. The sooner you start, the more time you have to prepare and the less stressed you’ll be when Black Friday rolls around.
And if you want a helping hand with planning and executing your Black Friday sale, check out my Black Friday Masterclass + Toolkit. It has everything you need to plan, prep, and launch your Black Friday offer so you can feel confident about your holiday promotions.
The masterclass covers practical tips to help you plan your campaign, including:
Understanding different types of Black Friday offers
Choosing the right offer for your audience
Priming your audience with targeted and strategic content
Planning out your emails and social media posts
On top of that, you also get Squarespace sales page templates, Canva templates, and Flodesk/Kit email templates to save you time and cut your hard work in half. Grab it here today!
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