Plan & Build Your Black Friday Sale from Scratch in Just 5 Days

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With Black Friday just around the corner, now is the time to start planning your holiday promotions.

It’s estimated that the average shopper plans to spend $400 on Black Friday this year.

But if you’re not offering some kind of promotion, sale or discount, you can kiss that money goodbye!

planning your black friday sale

In this post, I’m going to show you exactly how to plan and build your Black Friday sale from scratch in just 5 days….so you can start promoting and selling your stuff, FAST!

Day 1: Plan Your Promotions and Deals.

Before you do anything else, you need to decide exactly what special deals or discounts you’re going to offer.

I recommend deciding on a different type of promotion for each day, just to keep things fresh, and to give you an excuse to email your audience each day of the holiday weekend.

For example:

Black Friday: 30% of all products and services

Saturday: Buy one get one half off

Sunday: 20% off and a free gift with purchase

Cyber Monday: 40% off all products on the website plus free shipping

black friday sale

Via BellaMantra

Remember that you have lots of options when it comes to what types of promotions you want to offer. Be creative! Some ideas include:

  • Extra % off
  • Free gift or gift card with purchase
  • Buy one get one (BOGO)…either get the second item free or at a discount
  • Entry into special draw
  • Free or expedited shipping
  • % off based on multiple purchases (e.g., 60% off when you buy 5 items or more

Day 2: Create Your Graphics.

Graphics are going to be a huge part of your Black Friday campaign!

On day 2, it’s time to hunker down and create all the banners and images you’re going to need for your website, emails, and social media.

Fortunately, I’ve done the work for you to find some amazing free or cheap Black Friday templates you can use!

Black Friday photos from Canva

Canva Images

Black Friday banners, posters, social media graphics, etc. from Canva

banners

Adobe Spark’s free Black Friday templates

event banner

InVideo's Black Friday video templates

InVideo-video-templates-black-friday

Promo’s Black Friday video templates

templates

Pixabay’s free Black Friday graphics

pixabay

Day 3: Prepare Your Website. 

Now that you’ve got your graphics created, it’s time to get your website ready to go.

Depending on how you want to structure your promotions, you may need:

  • A Black Friday landing page
  • A blog post announcing your Black Friday sale
  • Banner ads to use in your sidebar or leaderboard

You’ll also need to set up all the behind the scenes stuff, like coupon codes, automatic discounts based on certain dates, free shipping on certain products or on certain dates, etc.

I recommend doing a test run through the entire process of buying a product or booking a service, just to be sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Better to run into a snag now than to have a customer experience this on Black Friday!

Not sure where to start with creating a Black Friday landing page? Here are some landing page templates you can use:

Black Friday landing page templates from Theme Forest

theme forest

 

Day 4: Write and Schedule Your Email Content.

Now that you have your graphics nailed down and your website ready to go, it’s time to plan, write and schedule your email content.

You’ll definitely want to send an email to your list on Black Friday AND Cyber Monday…and will want to send one on Saturday and Sunday as well if you’re doing a daily deals campaign.

In addition, you may even want to consider sending a few emails before the holiday weekend – because while the Thanksgiving weekend is when online sales peak, people are doing their holiday shopping well before then:

black friday sale

Via Abobe Marketing Cloud

Some tips for creating your Black Friday emails:

  • Create urgency by using a timer to indicate when the sale or promotion ends
  • Send your Black Friday emails between 10 am and 4 pm, as these offer the best open rates
  • Show photos of your products to whet your customers’ appetites
  • Use a simple, eye-catching design…as you’ll be competing with emails from a bunch of other companies

Not sure where to start with designing your Black Friday emails? Most email marketing services will offer holiday-themed templates you can edit.

And if you need some additional inspiration, here are some great Black Friday email examples from ActiveCampaign.

Day 5: Write and Schedule Your Social Media Content.

We’re almost there!

On this last day – day 5 – it’s time to plan and schedule your Black Friday weekend social media content.

Besides posts to advertise your promotions, you may also want to adjust your social media profiles to reflect your holiday sales. For instance, you may want to create a new cover photo, profile photo or add different links in your bio.

On day 2, you should have already created your social media graphics. So, today you just need to write and schedule the actual content of your social media posts.

Some ways you can use social media to promote your Black Friday deals include:

  • Go live on Facebook or Instagram to share a flash sale
  • Share links to the Black Friday landing pages you created on day 3
  • Share your daily deals (or hourly deals like Amazon, pictured below)
  • Hold a Black Friday contest or giveaway to generate awareness of your company
  • Use Black Friday hashtags for maximum exposure
Amazon-lightning-deals-black-friday
Amazon’s lightning deals

You’ll also want to make sure you’re scheduling all your Black Friday content because you definitely don’t want to be running around doing it all manually and in real-time!

The tool I recommend for this is Agorapulse. You can set up a custom publishing queue and the tool will automatically send out your posts exactly when you specify…so you can “set it and forget it”!

Final Thoughts

Even if you’re reading this post 5 days before Black Friday, don’t panic!

There’s still time to get your Black Friday weekend promotion up and running.

By following the simple schedule above, you’ll have your promotion planned, created and scheduled in no time at all!

Looking for more Black Friday tips and tricks? Check out my post 10 Black Friday Ideas to Drive Sales.

What are you planning for Black Friday? Share your promotion in the comments below!

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pathave ram
pathave ram
4 years ago

Hi Kim, Nice Information.

Sarad Mishra
Sarad Mishra
4 years ago

I think this is a real great blog article. Thanks Again. Much obliged.

peter
peter
3 years ago

Thankyou For sharing this beautiful Idea.

nipam patel
nipam patel
3 years ago

The article is very nice and most useful so much.

Kathy B Haigler
Kathy B Haigler
3 years ago

I’m not sure yet! I better jump in your class! 😀

Thanks Kim!

Zain
Zain
3 years ago

Hi NIck,

What an amazing article, very nicely explained in a detailed manner. Thanks a lot.

zain
zain
3 years ago

hi,

I have read the post and it is nicely explained in a very detailed manner, and it is helpful too..

Thank you so much

Nazmul Hossain
Nazmul Hossain
3 years ago

Thank you For sharing this beautiful Idea

shashi kashyap
shashi kashyap
3 years ago

Really good blueprint for sales.

Sal
Sal
3 years ago

Nice tips! Thank you so much.. Appreciate it!

nayeemz
nayeemz
3 years ago

Very informative article thanks for such a nice post

manjeet singh
manjeet singh
3 years ago

very nice information , helpful for user and friendly

girish
girish
3 years ago

I Agree Graphics are going to be a huge part.

Pharmapedia Pakistan
Pharmapedia Pakistan
3 years ago

Very good information. I like it

Israil
Israil
3 years ago

very nice information , helpful for user and friendly

israil
israil
3 years ago

Varey good information

Apurva Desai
Apurva Desai
3 years ago

How much is it effective to create Create mystery campaigns, keeping in mind the black Friday occasion?

PickAkayak
PickAkayak
3 years ago

Yeah these are indeed some of the best things, thanks for sharing…

Abduljabbar Ramadhan Ali
3 years ago

Thanks for the amazing
Article you have shared with us
I really love it
Good work

Biswajit Rajbanshi
Biswajit Rajbanshi
3 years ago

very good nice information, helpful for the user and friendly

Suraj Kumar
Suraj Kumar
3 years ago

can you please suggest any black Friday deal for good hosting …I really need one… by the way the article is really nice….

Irshad
Irshad
3 years ago

helpful

kamir bouchareb st
kamir bouchareb st
3 years ago

nice topic thank you

Abhiman raj
Abhiman raj
3 years ago

Nice writle. You are a amazing writer. Please share your content daily I am become your fan.

Aman bishnoi
Aman bishnoi
3 years ago

Nice article. I will share it with my friends.

Marria Saqib
Marria Saqib
3 years ago

Thankyou for posting this article this really help us alot

Shivam Deshmukh
Shivam Deshmukh
3 years ago

Informative content, Thank you

Rezor Tricks
Rezor Tricks
3 years ago

Yes I Know That Black Friday Is Coming, And I’m Ready With My Black Friday Plan.

BestbankUAE
BestbankUAE
3 years ago

Best Blogs I’ve ever found so far over Google

Many thanks for sharing such wonderful article

Vouchers4U
Vouchers4U
3 years ago

Those graphics look so professional!

itfuns
itfuns
3 years ago

very interesting , good job and thanks for

sharing such a good blog.thanks for sharing

Leioljames
Leioljames
3 years ago

Thanks you for sharing this beautiful idea and help it

Ahsan Sohail
Ahsan Sohail
3 years ago

Excellent idea. Thanks for sharing.

Adil
Adil
3 years ago

Hey, It’s Great Information.
I just love it.
Thankyou for detail information.

Tusar
Tusar
3 years ago

Thanks for sharing

Fasi TV
Fasi TV
3 years ago

Thanks you for sharing this beautiful idea and help it

Pasquale Di Rosa
Pasquale Di Rosa
3 years ago

Vi interesserà

Brian Mogala
Brian Mogala
3 years ago

Excellent piece

cabsrental
cabsrental
3 years ago

Nice article.

Emelia Anderson
Emelia Anderson
3 years ago

thanks for sharing this informative post…stay blessed

Kim's Team
Kim's Team
Reply to  Emelia Anderson
3 years ago

Thank you, Amelia. Blessing to you, too!

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