You might read that headline and think “I could make 6 figures in a weekend??? Sign me up.”

But. Just because Black Friday sounds like an easy way to get a quick cash injection into your business… it doesn’t mean it is. 

Black Friday is not, and should not be a flash sale with absolutely no strategy involved! This type of sale is big on a global scale, so you need to plan ahead to make it work. You’re going to be competing overtime for your audience’s attention, so you’ve got to get clever. 

However, if you’re still determined to make a sale work so late in the game, then check out what planning went into my sales last year. You may find the tips you’ve been searching for and get some ideas for your launch!

Black Friday 2021

Black Friday is kind of a big deal around in my biz. Every year, The Contract Shop® hosts our biggest sale of the year, which accounts for about $100k of total yearly revenue. 

Last year The Contract Shop® pulled in about $112K from our Black Friday sale, and in my new coaching biz, $4,911.

And I know these may sound like big, huge numbers, but just remember that it wasn’t always this way. In fact, the first Black Friday sale I ever hosted was really small — I think I made a couple hundred bucks. I’ve also been doing this for several years, so I’ve learned some tricks of the trade along the way. 

That money didn’t come easy. But once I learned how to sell like a pro, it became a simple formula I follow every year, with a few exceptions as the times change. 

What we sell in my digital product shop on Black Friday

In The Contract Shop® during Black Friday, pretty much everything is on sale. We offer 40% off all of our contract templates, 30% off workbooks and checklists, and 20% off our courses.

That’s because these are resources that mostly everyone needs, and with such a large and diverse audience, we don’t want to limit the sale to just graphic designers or just business coaches. We wanted a sale that appealed to all kinds of business owners. 

And in my coaching biz, I put up some of my best-selling products — like Launch Your Shop Academy®, private coaching, and my Perfect Product Recommendations. 

And why did I decide these? Because I tapped into what my audience was saying all year-round and paid attention to what they wanted AND said they needed. From there, I chose an offer based on that rather than just assuming I knew the answer. 

It was also a financially-savvy decision. There’s no point in putting your hard-earned work on sale if it’s just going to end up costing you more in the end. The point of a sale is to make money, not spend more. 

How we market our Black Friday deals

If you have a sale, people need to know about it! For both The Contract Shop® and my Christina Scalera brand in 2021, we used a multi-faceted marketing plan to get the word out and build anticipation. 

Using email marketing

Probs our biggest traffic generator last year. We have roughly 7,000 people on The Contract Shop® email list, so it just made sense. I outsource a copywriting team (shoutout to Uncanny Content!) to write things like this for me — and together, we came up with an email marketing plan that spanned for a few weeks to generate excitement and bring in that money, honeeeey!

People know about our sale, yes, but people also have to be reminded a decent amount of times to remember. Life is busy. The internet is chaotic. Not everyone sees everything you send, but we for sure came up with an email plan that generated the money put into it. 

Same goes for my coaching biz!

Using social media

We posted a lot more last year than we plan on doing this year. That’s because Instagram has really changed, and we’re trying out some new things to ride that wave. But we couldn’t do a full-on BF launch without posting to Instagram because a decent amount of traffic still comes from it.

Again, for both brands, we generated some excitement beforehand and sent out plenty of reminders during the sale — including getting on Stories to reach people who may not have seen our feed posts. 

Pre-Black Friday prep work

Like I said earlier, Black Friday is not the time for a quick cash injection kind of sale. It takes a lot of prep work and planning. I’d go so far as to say that the planning is more important than the execution because, without it, you really can’t execute your sale effectively.

It’s a high-volume, high-traffic time of the year too. Everyone and their dogs are trying to sell something on Black Friday. Black Friday is a BFD, so you’ve got to be clever and in tune with your audience (and your business goals) if you want to stand out and see success. 

We generally start planning in September. Yep. Two months before. The earlier, the better, especially when you have so many hands in the pot of making it happen (like outsourcing help for example). 

You have to give people time to plan and create, along with accounting for edits or meetings that happen along the way. And with so much going on in the fall in everyone’s personal life, things may take longer to get done, and the last thing you want to do is scramble around at the last possible minute to get this shit going. 

So in other words…is it too late to have a sale? Ehh….I don’t wanna say no, but, kinda. 

But if you’re dead set on still having a Black Friday sale…

I wrote a Black Friday survival guide that I believe still holds true for today. In it, you’ll find how to set specific and measurable sale goals, how to generate hype, how to bring in affiliates if you have them, and more!

If you’re firm in your decision to go ahead with a Black Friday sale, then go watch ASAP! You don’t have much time left before the big day.