3 Black Friday Ideas For Small Businesses to Use This Holiday Season

Black Friday is coming up, and you’re probably wondering how to capitalize on that for your own business. The truth is you don’t have to do something extravagant for Black Friday. You could do something very simple and still get sales. Don’t sit out the holiday season this year; there are many Black Friday ideas for small businesses you can use.

According to US Commerce, 30% of retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. It’s not too late to earn extra money from the holiday season. That’s also a great reminder that you do not need to rush to put out something today. You have the rest of the holiday season to grab sales.

Here are 3 Black Friday ideas for small businesses that you can use for the rest of the holiday season.

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1. Create a Coupon or Discount Code

Everybody loves a good deal. Did you know 80% of people would buy from a brand they wouldn’t have just because of a discount?

Now is the time to grab new customers, treat them well, and have them return and tell everyone about your business.

Many free coupon creators are online if you’re curious about creating a coupon. Venngage is a coupon creator that offers a free plan. They also have tips for creating awesome coupons. According to Venngage, your coupon should have a theme, eye-catching font, match your brand, and expiry date. 

If you want to do a simple discount code, you could create one in two minutes for your products or services. We are using discount codes this holiday season. We host all of our digital products on Payhip, which makes it easy for us to create a discount code. 

2. Create Bundles 

You could offer a deal on two or more of your products together. That way, customers are encouraged to buy more of your products, and you’ll still make a profit. 

There are many ways you can create bundles. You can pair products that sell quickly with those that are the exact opposite. 

The Shop Pad also recommends bundling products that customers usually buy together. For example, if people usually buy your lipgloss and mascara together, you can bundle them and offer them cheaper for Black Friday or the rest of the holiday season. 

If you already have bundled products, you can discount them. We have done that.

3. Try BOGO

BOGO usually stands for buy one get one free.

 You could have an offer that involves the customer buying one product and getting another free. Or you could have a deal where the customer buys one product and get another one of your choosing for 50% off. It’s a great way to upsell your products. 

BOGO is especially great for slow-moving products or products that you want to discontinue because of a lack of interest. You probably won’t make much profit with this method, but you can eliminate merchandise that may take up space for too long. 

The takeaway is that many Black Friday ideas exist for small businesses.

How to Prepare Your Business for Black Friday

Now that you have some Black Friday ideas for your small business, it’s time to prep your business. 

Have a plan

US Commerce says when preparing a plan, you should:

• Know which products and services you want to promote
• Pick the platforms you will advertise on 
• Figure out the types of deals you’re going to offer.

The great news is you probably know what kind of deal you want to offer by this point. 

Picking the products may be a bit tricky. 

If you’re a product-based business, check your inventory. What you don’t want is for there to be more orders than products. Chances are those customers won’t recommend your business or shop with you again.

You can also try having deals on products that don’t sell as quickly or pair them with those that do, as we suggested earlier. 

If you’re a service-based business, you still have to be careful if your business involves you selling your time. You don’t want to overbook yourself. 

Courses, eBooks, and other digital products are great to promote during the holidays since they’re already ready. The only thing you have to do is promote them, which brings us to our next point. 

Promote Your Offers

It’s not enough to just mention once or twice that you’re having a sale; shout it from the rooftops. Entrepreneurs sometimes feel shame in promoting their products and services. However, there is no shame in self-promotion. Here are some ways you can promote your offer:

• External Holiday Shopping Guide- You can submit your business and your special offers to a shopping guide.
• Gift Guides- You can develop and share a gift guide for your products in your network. 
• Social Media Platforms- You can advertise your products and services for free on your social media platforms. Make sure your post is appropriate for the platform. If you’re promoting on a platform like Instagram. You’ll need a simple but effective graphic. The graphic should be relevant and high quality. We suggest using Canva. 
• Send to Your Email List- Come up with a clever subject line and craft some emails for your list during the holiday season. 
• Run Ads- You can pay for a sponsored post on a social media platform to get your sale in front of more people. In addition to that, you can create a landing page and run ads to it using Google Ads. 

Get People to Care

You get people to care about your offer and sale by making your sale about them. 

You’ll get the hang of it by working on your copywriting skills. It’s not enough to say, “Hey, I’m having a sale” and post that ten times on all your platforms. Copywriting is a skill that you’ll have to master or outsource to someone else. 

However, what you can do right now is make sure you know your audience and their pain points. Then you have to find a way to talk about your products in a way that proves it’s a great solution to their problem. 

Conclusion

In the future, don’t wait until the last minute to prep for your holiday sales. When you take the time to do long-term preparation, you’ll have a better idea of what products or services you want to promote; you can draft your social media captions and emails beforehand and have time to prepare your audience. Keep this in mind for next year. 

We hope the Black Friday ideas for small businesses we shared help you secure a bag this holiday season. Remember, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday aren’t the only days you can have a sale. You can go straight up until the end of the year if you want to!

Last updated October 3, 2022 at 11:30pm EST