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As the digital landscape continues to redefine the way we shop, Black Friday remains a pivotal moment for online retailers and small business owners. It’s a day that can make or break your year, and meticulous preparation is the key to thriving in this high-stakes shopping event.
This year’s Black Friday is on November 24th, and is expected to be huge!
Even though COVID-19 impacted Black Friday sales severely over the last couple of years, 2022 showed a promising result of $9.12 billion spent online in the US. As shopping habits are returning to normal, this year’s profits are predicted to be even bigger.
To rip all of the benefits though, you will need to prepare and get your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales up and running – the earlier that offer goes out, the better.
In this article, we’ll guide you through a comprehensive checklist designed to help you gear up your online store for Black Friday 2023.
Here’s what we will be covering 👉
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Craft an Irresistible Black Friday–Cyber Monday offer
First and foremost, you will need a compelling Black Friday offer to get your target audience’s attention. Now, there are multiple types of offers you can create for this special occasion.
To get started, you can try out these marketing ideas for Black Friday, including:
Alternatively, you can offer a “jaw-dropping” sale on your best-selling or most popular product to attract customers. Once they are there for the deep discount, there is a chance they will also pick up other products or services that you sell, on their way to the checkout.
If you are wondering what can’t-miss sale will draw people to your services, focus on creating the one ultimate offer you believe most customers will respond to, instead of promoting all of your offers at the same time.
Offering discount coupons for your Black Friday deals is the best way to do this.
💡 Find out how you can create your first discount coupon with LearnWorlds.
Prepare for Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday Purchases
Black Friday is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving and marks the official start of the holiday shopping season. However, when everything is ready for your offer (perhaps via a separate landing page or template on your website), we suggest making it available from Thanksgiving day.
The Black Friday sales have moved on and, in some cases, have become 4-day or weekly events, which means you need to think about the best way to engage clients and get them to purchase more.
For example, you can start boosting your offer on the day the US celebrates Thanksgiving with a lower discount and then move on to a bigger discounting day on Black Friday. Traditionally the following Monday (Cyber Monday) is the day for non-physical products and electronics to be discounted.
Many companies apply their own discount dates, and some even have a full-week or full-month discount period. They also set up a sales funnel to help them create the customer experience and journey they expect their customers to take, maximizing buying potential.
If you are trying this out, be aware of whether you are targeting customers in the United States, internationally, or in a specific country. Each region and culture has different expectations of when and how Black Friday occurs.
The usual expectation is a huge discount starting on Friday, which might spill over the weekend and continue until the coming Monday.
Prepare Your Email Sequence
Email matters and offers the best way to generate leads, especially this time of the year with Black Friday marketing. So if you want to go big, you need to build an email marketing campaign to promote your offer effectively.
Create pop-ups to capture emails of first-time website visitors, and schedule emails to go out before the BFCM sales begin.
If you haven’t done this before as part of your email marketing strategy, now is the best time to create a few email sequences that will bring customers back to your site!
Use an email service provider and automation to schedule those email campaigns in advance, saving you much-needed time. Preparing your email sequence will save you time later, as you only need to do a quick review and click send, rather than stress to finish it at the last minute.
Here are a few tips about your email marketing during Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM):
In the email sequence, send out teasers, add countdowns, provide links to your e-commerce store, and your product pages, offer FAQs, and craft some abandonment cart emails. Cart abandonment emails can help keep subscribers’ engagement at heights throughout your campaign.
Reward Loyal Customers
Most successful influencers and business owners know rewarding customers in multiple ways can boost customer retention and conversion rates. The Black Friday period is a great time to reward your current and loyal customers with extra offers and upsell them on courses, bundles, or memberships.
So, if your current clients are already subscribed to your email list, send them an email with your BFCM offers earlier than the rest of your leads. Make sure you do some optimization work on your emails to personalize your messaging.
You can also mention upcoming Black Friday offers in your school’s community, on social media, or through your customer support.
By putting your current customers first, you are encouraging them to buy again from you either via in-store or online shopping and are building long-term customer loyalty.
Retarget Past Visitors and Customers Using Facebook Ads
Having a Facebook Campaign in place to convert lost visitors into customers makes total sense. Running Facebook ads is a great way for any store owner to reach out to new and existing customers and increase visibility.
Generally speaking, a campaign like this can be used to:
💁 Check out this great guide we have prepared for you – The Essential Guide to Selling Online courses using Facebook Ads, wherein we break down the power of Facebook Advertising and Remarketing. Get in-depth guidance on creating top-notch Facebook ads for your online courses for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and any season or occasion!
Double Down on Your Top Sales Channels
During BFCM, you have a great chance to reap the benefits of multichannel selling.
Each entrepreneur has a favorite channel that brings the most sales every time. It’s time to invest more time, effort, and budget in these channels. Whether it’s email, social media, paid ads, or affiliate marketing.
We recommend identifying which channels have the most ROI for your business (best performing) and double down during the holiday season.
If you are choosing to go mobile, don’t forget to invest some time to customize your ad and send out your BFCM notification offers so that they are visible through mobile devices.
Consider Selling Online Courses
When creating your offer, it is wise to consider including products that have seen a rise in demand since the global pandemic.
Google Trends shows that several course topics are getting more attention and are more profitable, with Google searches increasing in many subject areas of online learning.
For example, some steadily trending course subjects are:
Check if any of your subjects or related topics e.g. in your flagship program are popular and offer special offers on those. Chances are, those will get an even bigger spike in sales than any other courses you might have on offer, especially from new students!
Keep in mind that you should validate the feasibility of your online course before creating it, no matter what topic you choose.
Also, if you are building a new course from scratch or updating your existing ones, be sure to apply some SEO practices to your content to increase awareness.
Sell Gift Cards with Coupons
Holidays are the best time to exchange gifts with loved ones. And, what’s better than the gift of knowledge? As people are shopping around for the perfect gift for their loved ones, you can offer your courses as an option.
With LearnWorlds, you can create a “placeholder” (or empty) course for anyone who wishes to buy a course as a gift. Then, you can email anyone who buys that course with a coupon code to send as a gift card.
You can even create a nice template with Canva or Visme and include the code as a beautifully designed gift card!
Include Attractive Banners & Visuals
One of the most successful ways to promote your holiday sales (even for Christmas) is through engaging graphics and visuals. To change the header image on your homepage for BFCM, you don’t need to be a graphic designer or possess advanced design skills.
LearnWorlds’ no-code Website Builder enables you to customize your online courses’ landing pages to suit any seasonal occasion, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
You can easily create a temporary Black Friday template with just a few clicks! You can configure a plethora of sections to adjust your Black Friday landing page offers, like:
Customizing your landing pages for BFCM can help you create a better user experience for your customers, improving your checkout process as a whole.
Pricing Your Digital Products
One of the biggest challenges online entrepreneurs need to face is determining the price of their products.
For online course creators specifically, these questions are frequent:
💁 There are many tactics on how to price your course, and we have written an Ultimate Guide on How to Price Your Course to help you out.
A piece of quick advice is to price above the level you would feel comfortable asking. Figure out where is the best value for money. It might be better to sell five courses for $100 than sell 50 for $10. You will need to test what works for your audience.
Also, be sure to evaluate the time you need to spend with your students. A full self-paced course can be priced at a lower price, but if you offer coaching, live classes, and feedback, you can’t undervalue your own time or knowledge.
💁 Further reading: How Much Money Can You Make Selling Online Courses?
Set the Payment Gateways, Currency & Invoices
If you haven’t done this yet, connect your payment gateway with your online store – through which you will set up the sales and receive the money. Having multiple options like Credit/Debit Card, PayPal, and Buy-Now-Pay-Later options can increase your sales.
For your online school, LearnWorlds supports:
You can even have two or more payment options if you are going to combine, for example, PayPal payments with a Stripe Checkout.
Just remember, Stripe is the only payment gateway that supports subscriptions and payment plans.
LearnWorlds is also the only one adding local payment gateways for specific European countries such as:
You can read more about these local payment gateways that work using Stripe here.
If you are selling e-commerce products on top of your online courses, you can also use Shopify as your payment gateway. With it, you can add a shopping cart to your website and sell your products directly from there.
For this, it’s best to come up with an effective return policy in place to deal with any potential customer complaints effectively.
Go Through the Integrations
LearnWorlds integrates with your favorite apps and tools, whether that’s the software you are using to send mass emails, track visits to your website, or add a chat bubble!
You can see all the integrations here or visit your school to check them out.
With the LearnWorlds integration for Zapier, you can practically automate anything you want, which will save you dozens of hours of work!
Prepare Your Sales Page
Last but not least, you will need to prepare your landing page for the Black Friday – Cyber Monday period. This is going to be a dedicated page that will present all your product offers for the event.
Follow these simple guidelines to compose a Black Friday message that works:
Write short but attractive headlines
Your headline should explain how visitors can benefit from the BFCM offer and positively show how their needs and wants can be met.
Use strong action words and phrases
Choose verbs and words with a positive proposition, such as explore, discover, or start, that prompts them to take action.
💡 Read more about power words: Unlock the Power of Power Words: Boost Your Online Course Marketing and Content
Add engaging media
Any visual element (including photos, graphics, infographics, or other persuasive media) that presents the result your courses achieve can get people right into your sales funnel.
Include an opt-in form
This is the ultimate medium serving your page end-result point. The purpose of this form is to capture email addresses and other important information of people visiting your site, including contact names, company names, etc. so that you can further communicate your offers to them.
Ready to Maximize Your Sales on Black Friday?
Black Friday is approaching, and you don’t have to feel overwhelmed anymore about what to do first.
Follow a well-designed strategy, evaluate your performance, and put the tips and treats we included in this checklist in action based on what suits your online store best, and you are good to go!
Why not start today? If you don’t have a LearnWorlds account yet, you can create a new one with a 30-day free trial today and start selling your online courses!
💁 Download The Complete Checklist to Selling More Online Courses with 65 top tips & tricks for course creators to rock this and any Black Friday!
Further reading for Your Online School’s Black Friday marketing
FAQs
How do I prepare for Black Friday?
As a course creator, the holidays can be a hectic time. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it. But with a little bit of preparation, you can make the most of the holiday season and get your courses into the hands of as many students as possible.
Here are a few tips for preparing for Black Friday as a course creator:
How much will prices drop on Black Friday?
Generally, in-store prices drop by around 20 percent the week before Thanksgiving and rise to roughly a 70 percent reduction on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Black Friday sales for online courses usually start at 20% off and can reach up to 80% off for a limited time as the season ends.
What items are worth buying on Black Friday?
Here are some of the most popular digital products for shoppers to buy on Black Friday:
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Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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