Many small businesses, especially e-commerce businesses, thrive on Black Friday sales. They see a huge spike in income and potentially bring in new loyal customers.
Everyone loves a deal. Offering one when people are already in a spending mindset can be what pushes them over the edge to actually purchase.
But a successful Black Friday offer takes thoughtful preparation, not last-minute scrambling. These clear, actionable steps will help make sure you can handle the volume of sales and give your customers a positive experience.
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Should You Have a Black Friday Offer?
Small businesses can often benefit from a Black Friday offer, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for everyone. Sometimes we feel pressure to throw a Black Friday offer together because we see everyone else doing it, but it might not be right for your business.
If you relate to any of these scenarios, you might want to rethink creating a Black Friday offer:
- Your Business Model Isn’t Built for Discounts: Discounting can accidentally devalue your expertise.
- You Don’t Have the Capacity to Fulfill a Surge in Sales: If you’re already stretched thin, selling more spots may create delivery issues, unhappy customers, or burnout (especially when the holidays are already a crazy time of year!)
- Your Offer Is New or Still in Development: You want your offer dialed in before putting it in front of new buyers.
- You Haven’t Warmed Your Audience: If you haven’t been emailing, posting, or nurturing your audience consistently, suddenly showing up with a deal can fall flat.
- Lowering Your Price Will Attract the Wrong Customers: Discounts can attract bargain hunters rather than ideal-fit clients.
- You Don’t Have Time to Execute It Well: If you can’t prepare for at least a few weeks, it’s better to opt out.
You don’t need a Black Friday offer to have a successful Q4. Sometimes success looks like actually taking some much-needed time off around the holidays!
8 Steps to Prep Your Black Friday Offer
If you DO decide to create a Black Friday offer, it needs to be well thought out and planned to be successful. Here are eight steps to help you do that.
1. Define the Goal of Your Offer
What do you want this promo to achieve? Thinking about the goal first will help you create an offer in the next few steps.
- Revenue?
- New clients?
- Email list growth?
- Product validation?
Setting a goal shapes the type of Black Friday offer you choose.
2. Choose the Right Kind of Offer
You don’t have to offer a discount on your products or services! There are a lot of Black Friday offer options you can choose from:
- Bundle
- Bonus add-on
- Limited spots
- Early access
- VIP pricing
- Free shipping
Match an offer to your business model and audience behavior. If your audience loves learning from you, you might consider offering limited strategy calls. Or if you have an e-commerce store, you could throw in a free gift with qualifying purchases. Get creative with your Black Friday offer!
3. Map Out the Customer Journey
What needs to happen before, during, and after the sale? Thinking through this process will ensure a positive experience for every customer. I’m doing this right now with one of my clients for their Black Friday offer!
Here are some examples of what that could look like.
Before The Sale: Builds Awareness and Gets Your Audience Ready to Buy
- Share educational content related to the offer.
- Post case studies, testimonials, or transformations.
- Tease what’s coming without saying the exact details yet.
- Finalize the offer.
- Set up your landing page, checkout flow, and email automation.
- Create and schedule promotional graphics and copy.
- Run a lead magnet or early waitlist to build hype.
- Send warm-up emails reminding people to watch for the upcoming announcement.
- Encourage followers to join your email list for first access.
- Test payment processing, coupon codes, email triggers, and deliverables.
- Make sure product files, onboarding forms, or confirmation pages are ready.
- Confirm that your website is fast and mobile-friendly.
During The Sale: All About Clarity, Urgency, and Addressing Objections
- Send the main sales email (with a clear CTA button).
- Post across social platforms with direct links.
- Update your website hero section or add a banner announcing the sale.
- Post daily reminders.
- Reshare customer messages or reactions to build social proof.
- Be available for DMs, emails, or quick questions about fit or logistics.
- Clarify anything confusing ASAP (pricing, deliverables, deadlines).
- Offer alternatives if someone is close but not fully aligned.
- Send “24 hours left” and “last call” emails.
- Post countdowns on social stories.
- Highlight remaining spots if it’s a limited-capacity offer.
After The Sale: Determines Whether Your Black Friday Offer is Successful
- Automated post-purchase email with confirmation and next steps.
- Deliver downloads or materials instantly for digital products, or send onboarding documents for service-based offers.
- Check in with buyers via email to ensure they received everything.
- Provide access to any portals, links, resources, or calls.
- Offer a “quick start guide” or best practices overview.
- Add buyers to a segmented list for future upsells or VIP updates.
- Send value-packed follow-ups to support their use of the product/service.
- Invite them to share testimonials or feedback.
- Review metrics (traffic, conversions, email open rates, revenue).
- Identify what worked and what didn’t.
- Note updates for next year or the next promo.
- Continue creating content for your audience’s next steps.
- Turn Black Friday customers into recurring clients (membership, retainer, repeat services).
- Share wins from customers who purchased your offer.
As you can see, A LOT of thought and decisions go into a successful Black Friday offer. Want some help creating your customer journey? Let’s chat!
4. Organize Your Assets
Create all the assets you need to make the process easier for you. You don’t want to be scrambling to create a social post or template!
Here are some ideas of things you might need to create:
- Graphics
- Sales page
- Landing page
- Checkout setup
- Email automations
- Social posts
Try to batch as much content as you can before you launch your Black Friday offer so you can just sit back and watch the sales flood in.
5. Prep Your Email and Social Media Strategy
Email and social media will probably be your two biggest marketing strategies to promote your Black Friday sale. Think about the strategy for the two channels as a whole and how each email or post contributes to promoting your sale.
Again, batch as much of this as you can!
- Teaser emails
- Countdown emails
- Cart-close reminders
- Offer education
- Addressing objections
During your launch window, talk about your offer all the time! You aren’t being annoying. You’re reminding your audience of your offer. Most people need to see promotions about seven times before they even consider buying. They will find ways to ignore you if they truly don’t care.
6. Optimize Your Website for the Sale
Your website needs to be optimized before your sale to draw in organic traffic and provide a positive experience. Make sure your website loads quickly and is optimized for mobile devices. The last thing you want is a technical issue preventing conversions!
You might need to:
- Update your homepage with a banner or pop-up announcements.
- Create a dedicated landing page and optimize it for search engines.
- Make it easy for visitors to find the sale page from anywhere on your site.
- Make sure every page includes a prominent call to action to the sale.
- Simplify the checkout process.
- Clearly explain your offer and all the details someone needs to know about it.
Don’t forget to test everything to make sure it’s working as expected!
7. Get Your Systems in Order
Check your checkout flow, payment processing, confirmations, and nurture sequences. Go through the entire process as if you were a customer and note any gaps that need to be addressed.
If possible, make sure deliverables are automated (downloads, welcome emails, or onboarding). It’s just one less thing you have to manually do during your launch window!
8. Set Your Metrics
Track metrics such as traffic, conversions, sign-ups, revenue, or refund requests to determine the success of your Black Friday offer. Revisit your goals to see if your sale met them.
This is a learning experience, especially if you’ve never done a Black Friday sale before. Take some notes after your sale to determine if this could be something you want to do again in the future:
- What part of the process worked well?
- What didn’t?
- Is there anything you want to tweak for next time?
- Did you enjoy planning and delivering this offer?
- What did customers have to say about the offer?
Remember, you are the business owner. You can never do this offer again if you don’t want to! Or if it was a huge success, maybe you could offer it a few times a year. You get to decide!
Start Small and Build a Repeatable Black Friday Framework
A Black Friday offer can be a huge opportunity for your business. If you’ve been curious about creating one, I encourage you to do it! You won’t know how much you enjoy or hate something until you try it.
If you want some support in brainstorming the customer journey or implementing your Black Friday launch, I’m here to help! Schedule a call to get started.
FAQs About Creating a Black Friday Offer
The key is to start attracting them before Black Friday. A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of waiting too long to start talking about their Black Friday offer. They first talk about it on Black Friday, and their audience isn’t warmed up yet. Start talking about your offer at least a few weeks before you actually launch it.
You can announce the deal, highlight the benefit, create urgency, encourage action, incorporate social proof, or tease upcoming surprises. I recommend doing a mix of everything throughout your launch window!
Start building anticipation 2-3 weeks before. About 1-2 weeks before, invite your audience to join a waitlist. During Black Friday week, share all the details about your offer. Then, 1-3 days before your sale ends, use “last chance” messaging to get those final customers in on your offer.
