Crafting a Feel-Good Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer KDS: 112

Creating A Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer can be exciting, intimidating, and a little cringe-inducing.

It all depends on how you approach it.

I’ve been on both sides of the coin and somewhere in between when it comes to creating a Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer.

As someone who spent way too many years working in retail management, I had a pretty negative feeling about Black Friday for many reasons, mainly because I usually worked that weekend. I would have rather been enjoying time with family or kicking off my own holiday season.

Once I was out of retail, though, I promised myself I’d never go into a store that weekend… and for the most part, I haven’t.

I may have gone once or twice with my Mom and sister, but that was more about doing something with them as opposed to shopping.

For the sake of all of our sanity, I’m going to stay away from the argument that addresses the ‘for or against’ Black Friday Cyber Monday.

It is what it is, I don’t see it going anywhere, and there’s no point getting worked up about it.

What we’ll focus on is how to create a Black Friday Cyber Monday offer that aligns with who you are, how your support your audience, and what you can create that feels good for everyone.

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Should you Create a Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer?

This question might seem a little contrary to the topic of this episode (because obviously, I think you should), but there are a handful of things you should consider before deciding whether you should create a Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer.

First question: Do you want to?

Before you call me Captain Obvious, what’s really important about this question is getting clear on your “why” behind the answer.

Many people say they don’t want to because they’re “anti” the whole concept. I’m sure you can come up with many reasons why you or someone else might be “anti” running offers over this weekend. Fair enough.

Just make sure you’re being completely honest with yourself.

Putting together the right offer for the right reasons and for the right people takes work.

You also need to go into it with the right expectations.

If you’ve never run one of these offers or created any type of similar marketing campaign, there’s going to be a learning curve, but more on that in a minute.

Second question: Do you have an email list?

Unless you sell on social media ONLY (and have data that supports how well your social audience responds to offers), you have to have an email list.

I don’t care if it’s 500 or 5000.

Every single business needs an email list. This is the one source of traffic you control. And yes, if you don’t have one, it’s not too late to build one so you can send an offer over the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend.

Last question: Are you willing to do the work?

I might sound a little like a stern parent here, but if you’re not willing to put the time and energy into this, then don’t bother.

Can you half-ass it and make some sales?

Sure, but with enough lead time and effort, why not go all in and do it correctly? There are no guarantees of how it will go, but keep in mind that regardless of how well your offer does, you’re most likely going to make some sales and will gather massive data.

And more than likely, you’ll end up with an offer you can use later with another campaign (different season, sale, special, etc.).

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What Type of Offer to Create Based On Your Business & Audience

Contrary to what people might think, creating a Black Friday Cyber Monday offer isn’t just for product businesses (courses, e-com).

Service businesses can do extremely well with a Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer as well.

I’ve done both e-commerce offers and service offers, both converted.

Let’s look at three different business models and different offer types.

1. Service business
2. Creator business (courses, digital products)
3. E-commerce

Service Offers

The first service Black Friday Cyber Monday offer I did was for coaching sessions.

At the time, I was still running the first planner business with a partner, and since we were running some Black Friday Cyber Monday offers, I knew I wanted to run one for my personal brand as well.

I didn’t have the time to pull together a digital course/product offer, so I let people know I was going to be raising the price of my coaching sessions by $100 (from $297 to $397), and this was the last chance to buy at this price.

I also added scarcity (please only do this when there’s truth behind it. In other words, no ‘limited’ quantities of digital products) because this was based on my time.

I only offered 10 of these and sold them all.

Depending on when you start creating your Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer is going to determine what type of service offer you create.

If you don’t have recurring revenue in your business, this could be a great weekend to make that offer… even as a presale.

Example: If you do website designs, do you have people on care plans? You could use this weekend to create a launch special for care plans for customers (or even people on your list that aren’t customers but have a website you could support).

That alone, though, isn’t enough.

You need to think about how you can over-deliver and, as Alex Hormozi says, make them an offer so good they feel stupid saying no.

I’m a big fan of bundling things as opposed to a straight discount.

So, in this case, you could do something like “sign up as a founder for our brand-new care plans and receive half off an SEO audit.”

The goal of your offer is to bring in revenue for you while providing massive value to your new customer. You might think you wouldn’t want to discount an SEO audit, but if it means you’re gaining a customer who pays you MONTHLY?!?! It’s a no-brainer (and you can also upsell SEO services after the audit).

Remember the Dan Kennedy saying, “Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins.”

The “cost” to acquire this customer is half of the SEO audit.

Other types of offers for service providers:

• A bundle of services (Again, don’t do a straight discount. You can discount, but bundle them together so you raise your cart value)).
• Adding a physical product to a service offer. You can do this as a wholesaler or simply find something of value they get for free (remember, the cost to acquire a customer)
• Adding a digital product to a service offer
• Templates: Personally, I’d create these or repurpose something I’ve already created. I’m not a huge fan of PLR. It’s usually generic. Don’t cheapen the quality of what you do because you don’t want to put time and energy into doing the work.

Creator Business

This and the e-com offers seem pretty obvious, but I want to challenge you to think about bundling things as opposed to straight discounts.

You can also structure the offer in a way that gives you the end result you desire, but you’ve worded it in a way that has a higher perceived value.

The example I always think about is one from Russell Brunson when he launched Click Funnels.

I’m paraphrasing here, but you’ll get the idea.

He was running live webinars to sell ClickFunnels (for SIX months!). The initial offer was six months of ClickFunnels and a bonus course.

When he changed it to purchasing the course and getting six months of ClickFunnels for FREE… it took off.

Same price and products, but the perception of six months of software for free shifted everything.

Also…

One thing creators tend to do (guilty as charged) is give away their time as a bonus.

The goal of creating a Black Friday Cyber Monday offer is that you’re providing massive value for your customer while getting a cash injection in your business.

If you start “bonusing” your time, you may end up in the negative with this offer.

Your time should be the highest cost, not the free cost.

Piggybacking on the service offer, if you don’t have your own physical product, is there something you can send your customers? (Obviously, making sure that after the cost of the physical product and shipping, you’re still profitable).

• Swag: With sites like Printable, Printify, etc., it’s easy to create a branded swag item (your brand, their brand, non-branded item)
• A book: find a book that supports or complements your digital product. Teaching email marketing? What about your favorite copywriting book?
• Partner with someone: If someone came to me asking to offer my physical planner as a bonus item and they could get a deal or discount on a bulk quantity, I’d absolutely say yes. You could also find someone who has a software product, and in exchange for giving up your affiliate commission, they could receive that amount as a discount for the software.

This is probably the easiest type of business to create a Black Friday Cyber Monday offer for, but try not to do what everyone else does.

Discounts are fantastic (and a lot of people wait to purchase over this weekend), but if you give away the farm, you’re going to end up feeling a little resentful.

Wouldn’t you rather have one sale for $197, where you’ve discounted two small workshops or courses that individually sell for $197 and bundled them, then “hope” people buy both individually for the same amount?

Obviously, you need to ensure they complement each other, but I promise you you’ll feel better while still giving your customers incredible value.

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E-Commerce

I won’t go too into a lot of detail with this one because it’s more obvious, but man, I wish I had understood this much, much sooner.

With the first planner brand company, we learned from our first Black Friday Cyber Monday offer, and the second year we only bundled things.

We had a “one of everything” – physical, digital, and masterclass.

We had a “buy 3 get one free.”

And we had a “digital-only” and a “physical + masterclass” offer.

What BLEW me away was how many of the “one of everything” we sold.

It was incredible.

We also sold a lot of the buy 3, get one free offer.

These offers did so well that we kept them in the store (and consistently sold them).

Based on what I know now about this market, I think I would do one of two things in this example:

• Test selling a digital course and GIVING the physical planner away, with an upsell of continuity.
• Sell a discounted continuity program with a BONUS of a free planner while upselling an AI course to create their content strategy.

Both of these have high value, create recurring revenue, and cover their costs.

Win-win.

How to make ANY of these a Feel-Good Black Friday Cyber Monday Offer

The sooner you get started on creating your offer, the better it’s going to be.

You’ll also have enough time to get clear on the following:

• The problem it solves for your customer
• WHY you’re doing this. It’s perfectly OK to want a cash injection for your business, but if you’re not doing it FOR your customer, it’s going to backfire
• Crafting the right copy. You can take many different approaches with your marketing message – don’t write something because you *think* it sounds like marketing speak. It must feel right in your body, and YOU need to feel excited about it.

If you approach this from a place of creating an incredible experience for your customer where you can deliver the solution to their problem WHILE surprising and delighting them?

It’s going to be a WIN-WIN for EVERYONE.

As difficult as it might sound (or how much your ego might be fighting this idea), doing the ‘right thing’ will always be to your benefit.

Even if you don’t end up with the sales you hoped for, you’re going to end up with raving fans who will probably buy from you in the future.

Not to mention all the data you’ll end up with when all is said and done.