The Business Lounge Podcast with Kimberly Ann Jimenez
Welcome to The Business Lounge Podcast! Each week we'll share proven marketing strategies to help you build an audience of buyers, create impactful content, and grow a profitable business without compromising on your values with your host, Kimberly Ann Jimenez!
Kimberly is an Online Marketing Strategist, Educator, Founder and Thought Leader in the online marketing industry.
Having worked with 33K+ small business owners & entrepreneurs across an array of industries over the past decade, Kimberly and her business partner Chris Harris are obsessed with helping you level up your marketing game, and grow your bottom line.
They co-lead their flagship program, The Business Lounge, which teaches business owners & entrepreneurs like you how to navigate the confusing & often overwhelming world of online marketing and build an unapologetically profitable business on your own terms (and without compromising your faith, your family or your freedom).
Join us at kimberlyannjimenez.com/businesslounge!
The Business Lounge Podcast with Kimberly Ann Jimenez
S7 EP6: 12 Proven Black Friday Innovative Strategies to Stand Out and Thrive in 2024!
Ready to make this Black Friday your most profitable yet? Join me as we dive into 12 powerful strategies that will set your business apart during this high-stakes shopping season! We’ll cover fresh trends, like early deals, time-sensitive bonuses, and flexible payment options, plus how to navigate rising costs and economic shifts.
This episode is your ultimate guide to maximizing Black Friday sales—don’t miss it!
RESOURCES MENTIONED
🔗Experian Article: https://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/black-friday-trends-2024/
✨ Text Me - Text 'holiday' to (866) 498-2080 to snag your FREE Holiday Promo Ideas Cheat Sheet!
MORE FREE RESOURCES
📅 Download The FREE Content Calendar Template:
http://thecontentcalendartemplate.com/
📔 Download The FREE Success Path: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/success-path/
📈 Sign Up for our FREE Profitable Content Class: http://profitabilityclass.com
📽️ Watch our FREE Content Creation Class: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/content-class/
WORK WITH US:
✨ Join The Business Lounge Waitlist: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/businesslounge/
📌 Work With Kim & Chris 1:1: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/tblc-waitlist/
✨ Grab The Content Calendar Playbook: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/content-calendar-playbook/
✨ The Prosper Plan: https://kimberlyannjimenez.com/the-prosper-plan/
Hit us up on Instagram and tell us your biggest takeaway from the show!
✅ Kim: @kimannjimenez
✅ Chris: @heycmh
✅ The Business Lounge: @thebusinessloungeco
Go to ContentToCustomers.co & enter code 'Blueprint' for $90 off your 3-day workshop seat!
Welcome to the Business Launch Podcast. I'm your host, kimberly, ann Jimenez and familia. In this episode we are going to talk about Black Friday, what you can expect, what are some of the trends, the things that are like coming up this season and I got a bunch of data. I'm going to pull up some pretty interesting data analytics why consumer behavior is up. Interesting data analytics why consumer behavior is up. Uh, just so much happening this week with the election and also coming into black friday season, holiday season q4. We're gonna close eight strong and listen, even if you are not, if even if you're one of those people who are like I just want to be chilling with my family on black friday, I hear you. I hear you. I still have a really great strategy for you to implement regardless. So we're going to talk about holiday promotions, what you could do pre post Black Friday, going into the new year. It's going to be awesome. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Business Lounge Podcast, where each week, we unpack the hottest online marketing and business strategies so you can grow your business, increase your bottom line and make a bigger impact. And now here's your host, kimberly Ann Jimenez all right.
Speaker 1:So, first of all, we got to address the elephant in the room yes, trump won the elections. There's so much that is happening this this week and, um, we are going to chris and I are working, actually, on a podcast episode coming up for you guys on how we're preparing our businesses for what is to come. So, listen, I know that there's a few of you who are really upset about the election results, but there's a lot of us who you know are part of this community, who understand the economic predictions and why this is actually a really amazing opportunity for small business owners, and so, whether you, you know, are on the camp of like being super upset about what happened, or you are absolutely celebrating and just sighing a relief in this season, I just want you to know we love you. This is a podcast that is still for you. We're still rooting for you, whether you voted like us or not, and we're still going to keep championing small businesses. We're going to keep championing independence. We're going to keep championing freedom. We're going to keep equipping you with strategies, with amazing new ideas, with resources so that you can up level your business, crush it with content and build an incredible income. That is what we're all about in the show, and so I just want you to know that I got so many beautiful messages from you guys over the last week on Instagram, just celebrating, excited about what's to come, just breathing a sigh of relief because our economy is in shambles it really is. We have a very, very tough road ahead about what's to come, just breathing a sigh of relief because our economy is in shambles it really is. We have a very, very tough road ahead and there is a few hateful, very hateful comments to messages that came through. But listen, I love you Like I'm sorry. I'm still here for you. I love you. I'm encouraging you to continue building your business and growing a highly successful company, no matter what happens in elections, no matter what happens, you know, in politics.
Speaker 1:At the end of today, god is in control and we are. We should be all together, whether you voted one way or the other, empowered and excited to keep moving forward to build our businesses. It's interesting because both sides should be focused on one thing building a resilient business in this season. It just that's what it's about. Like, it's about independence, it's about protecting your individual interests and figuring out how to move forward with courage and with resilience. So let's get into today, because we have so many things to share and it's very interesting. I'm actually pulling an article from Experian here. As you know, experian has a bunch of interesting data that they collect with consumer behavior. Of course, they have like a front, you know, site view of what's happening, at least in the credit card world, right, which is how most transactions are done now, and so there's some really interesting forecasts that they're making for this upcoming Black Friday.
Speaker 1:Now, we have talked in the past and we're going to continue talking about, like unpacking, why the online economy is so freaking strong and why, regardless of how you are building your business, you need to be tapping online. I know, I know, I know there's a big push right now. We're going to talk more about that later, about going back to in person, and we're here for it. We actually are hosting our first in-person event next year for our tbl plus and tbl coaching one-on-one clients. It's gonna be amazing, and so we're absolutely adapting our offers to hit the trends.
Speaker 1:But, regardless in person at least when it comes to online, business has a limit of scale. Right, has a limit of scale. There's a cap on how much you can service beyond yourself, and so, having been in an offline business where we had to, at one point, over 300 seasonal employees, I can say Experian. Experian is saying that it was really interesting because, despite slower spending last year, right from 2022 to 2023, we saw a 7.5% increase in e-commerce sales, with a record of $9.8 billion spent online and the most substantial growth of in-store traffic in recent years, up by 4.6% from the previous year. Shopify even reported a record in 2023 for Black Friday sales numbers, offline and online, reaching $4.1 billion, with a lot of spending across personal care, clothing, jewelry, shoes and decor. Around 75% of those sales occurred on a mobile, actual device and 25% occurred on desktop.
Speaker 1:So listen, guys, there is no excuse, right? We have no excuse to excel this year when it comes to Black Friday, when it comes to holiday promotions, and even if you're in the camp of people because I do hear this every time I just I'm not into Black Friday, I don't believe in consumerism. I want to be, you know, chill with my family and I'm like, okay, all right, but understand that you're missing out on the biggest holiday sales event of the entire year. It's totally up to you to not participate. I'm all for that. But be strategic in how you position it, because, at the end of the day, there's not a lot that you need to do to have a Black Friday promotion. You can send a couple emails, have a good discount code, schedule them in advance, you know, and just kind of chill there's that that is definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1:And there's also this idea that Black Friday has to be this full-blown launch with the ton of hustle. No, it doesn't have to be. You could do something very simple, very basic and still cash in on an amazing holiday event. And so, at a time where businesses especially online, you know are seeing massive shifts with AI, are seeing massive shifts with the adoption of kind of like especially if you sell courses or memberships the adoption of done for you or done with you there's a lot that has shifted and we are in a place where economically, at least in the United States, we're not in a strong position, and so sometimes we have to get outside of our comfort zone and do what needs to be done.
Speaker 1:Ok, we are strong, resilient entrepreneurs and at times, you know, maybe, like a few years ago, you could have said I'm going to skip Black Friday. Should you really skip it this year you know it's a few years ago you could have said I'm going to skip Black Friday. Should you really skip it this year? You know it's totally up to you. I'm not going to shame you or guilt you into anything, but if your bank account could use a boost, if you could use, you know, some extra cash for holiday gifts for Christmas, you know, for Thanksgiving if you could use an extra couple thousand dollars to stow away or invest or even just, you know, have for a rainy day fund, do it.
Speaker 1:There is nothing wrong with being a part of Black Friday, and I kind of just want to demystify this culture, especially as women, that selling things and being upfront about what you offer is taboo or weird or icky. You know, I think I'm one of the few people in the online space who has always run a Black Friday sale, a holiday promotion. It is one of the biggest promotions of the year for us. It does exceptionally well and we don't have to kill ourselves in order to actually create it. So I'm going to break down a little bit of our strategy with you so that you can steal it. But I just want to normalize selling things. You know retailers sell things every single day. Why is it that, as service providers, as course creators, as membership owners, as online business owners, we're like, oh, I don't know about that. It's like, no, let's do the thing. I get it. A lot of girls in the online space don't do it, but I happen to be a little bit more aggressive.
Speaker 1:I think I was also mentored a lot by men who gave me the courage to be like just go do it, whereas girls we tend to be like, oh, I don't know, I don't want to bother people, and in reality, they're probably wanting to see something from you. It's really interesting because this last promotion that we wrapped up for the business lounge, we had like record amount of traffic on our sales pages and it was so incredible to see, like, wow, like there's more interest, there's more excitement, there's more energy, um, for what we're doing now than ever before, because I think people are starting to realize that you can't just play on the internet for fun, like you got to actually make money as part of your content strategy. You need to have a real business. You need to actually, um, you know, build a ton of value and take care of your people and build something real, and I am so here for it. I've never been more excited than in this season. I'm just like, let's go. I am so ready for people to wake up and realize like, okay, I need to take my money seriously, I need to get my finances seriously, I need to figure out how to make this work, and so we've been teaching and preaching this for over a decade now and I'm just so excited for it. So how do you actually build a successful holiday promotion or Black Friday promotion? I'm preaching this for over a decade now and I'm just so excited for it. So how do you actually build a successful holiday promotion or Black Friday promotion?
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you a couple of different options here, because there's a lot to talk about. Number one it's really, really awesome that we get to pick and choose, and so one of my mentors used to say this listen, you get to pick your suck, okay, and you can pick your suck in every situation. That's the beauty of having free will and having freedom you can pick your suck. And so for you, if you're just like, listen, I'm going to pick the suck of not making a ton of money in Q4, but I'm going to come in and I'm going to open the year with a bang Okay, awesome, that's a really good idea, right, have a new year sort of promotion instead of a Black Friday promotion Sweet, that's one option you could go. You could also say I'm going to do a Black Friday promotion and I'm going to do, like, a Christmas sale or a holiday sale. You could do that as well. So you could say I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:You know, back to back, I'm going to do maybe Black Friday, cyber Monday and then right before Christmas maybe like a week or two before Christmas I'm going to open a third sale. I have done that. That is too much for me. Okay, I'll be super honest. We do Black Friday and we do Cyber Monday. We might do a January sale this year because I have something really exciting going on that we're going to be releasing brand new. I'll tell you about it in a little bit. But I put a lot of energy and effort into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If I'm not going to do a Christmas sale, right, I'm not going to do a holiday sale. Now you could say I'm going to skip all of that and I'm going to do no Black Friday, no Cyber Monday, but I am going to do a holiday sale, I'm going to do a Christmas sale, I'm going to chill during Thanksgiving and then come Christmas, boom. That's what I'm going to do. And so if you have a physical product business, if you have a service-based business, if you have a course business, a membership business, there's tons of different ways in which you can adapt any of these sales events to serve your business, all right. So now that you know, like the four different opportunities that you have coming up. You can decide okay, what are you going to do for one or two or three or none of them, like if you want to skip it all together, you can do that too. But get a strategy like write it down, figure out what is it that you're going to be sharing, and then pull out your calendar and figure out what are the dates right, when are you going to start?
Speaker 1:One of the big trends that we're seeing with Black Friday right now is and we've been seeing this just really I know I get it Every year it starts earlier and earlier, but consumers are responding to starting early with Black Friday. I think that they want to be able to chill during Thanksgiving weekend and not have to stress out about missing on a deal, and so we're going to be opening up. Last year was the first year we opened up our Black Friday promotion on my birthday, which is November 14th, so we started really early last year and we're thinking about starting early this year too. But it's one of those things where you could choose right how long do you want to do it? In prior years, I'd already always started my Black Friday promotion the night of Thanksgiving. So it's like that Thursday night and then it went all the way through to Sunday and then we had Cyber Monday on the following Monday and that allowed me to kind of have a little bit more time to prepare. But again, it's one of those things where you want to figure out what makes the most sense for you and your individual process. Now you wanna pull up that calendar and mark off the dates. When are you gonna be promoting your Bug Friday promotion? When are you gonna do your Christmas or your holiday promotion? When are you gonna do your New Year's promotion? Block out some time.
Speaker 1:And I highly recommend that your promotions are at least three days long. Usually three to five days is a really good timeframe, unless you're starting and opening up something like Black Friday early. Then you can experiment with having it be a little longer. If you're going to have it be a little longer, you want to make sure that you have incentives in between so that the promotion does not lag. So, for example, for us, we go in and we actually have some cool bonuses that expire, you know, in between those days, so that even though the promotion is a little bit longer, we're not like continuing to say the same message over and over again buy my thing, right. It's like no, we have this cool bonus. If you buy it now, you can actually get that extra bonus. It expires, it goes away and then another bonus comes up, right, and so that keeps the momentum going in your promotions so that it's not ultra boring if you are going to have that extended timeframe. And I'm actually going to pull up some data from Experian where it talks specifically about starting that promotion a little bit earlier.
Speaker 1:So trends that we can expect to see in 2024 with Black Friday, mobile shopping will continue its growth trajectory. Of course people want to be on their phone. Number two, consumers will keep seeking early deals. Okay, that's really important to know. Next, marketers will prepare promotion sooner than ever. Yep, hence why I'm doing this podcast. And then the next one is really interesting to you guys. Flexible payment arrangements like buy now, pay later, will drive conversions and continued inflation, or sorry, amid continued inflation, exactly. So people have less money in their pocket right now, um, understandably. So you know. We're just not in a good place economically. So thinking about how can you extend, um, multiple payment options is really really smart. We'll talk a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1:But back to how you're going to be establishing the length of time when it opens and closes. Don't overthink it too much. Just circle a couple dates and then be prepared to send emails to your list. Promote it on social media. If you have a text list, awesome. Do that too and get cranking. It doesn't have to be complicated.
Speaker 1:Now you might be thinking okay, well, what are some of the ways in which I could maybe position something creatively and offer some cool Black Friday ideas? So here are a couple of those ideas. Number one you could offer early bird specials. Like you'd have some really cool extra gifts. You could have a great discount. You could have a bundle that you're putting together. This is really great, especially if you have a lot of digital products. Like maybe you have a course and you could pull a couple lessons from there that stand alone and bundle those. Maybe you have a bunch of templates that you could put together and make it really easy for people to implement the things that you teach. You could also have a special workshop that you deliver after the promotion. So if you have nothing right now, you could absolutely just do a Black Friday special. Take everyone's payments, make it very clear on your emails and if you have a sales page on your sales page that you're going to be delivering that workshop on a specific date and that could be a live workshop. It could be, you know, a prerecorded one.
Speaker 1:You could also sell an audit if you have services, right? A lot of people ask me, like, what do I do? I don't want to discount my services. You shouldn't, you should never discount your services because they are, you know, your time has a lot of value associated to it. So one of the things you could do is you could sell an audit. You could do is you could sell an audit. You could do reviews. You could actually get a group of people together and do a Q&A session. You could do some live reviews, especially if you have something like you sell website design or you are an SEO specialist or you are a social media manager. This is really cool stuff where, like you can essentially create it as a event where people are essentially paying for your time all together, like they're spreading the cost of your time across multiple different seats, and then you can go in and have them, you know, present your website, you can make recommendations to their site and, like, everyone's learning together, right, so that's an awesome.
Speaker 1:Other idea If you have a physical product business, you could do a buy one, get one, right. Bogos are very attractive. You could also do like a gift with purchase. If you're going to do a gift with purchase, it needs to be something really awesome. Remember buyers in the black friday, specifically in the black friday mindset they're looking for like amazing slashed prices and so a lot of, but retailers can't offer that anymore. I don't know if you guys have noticed that where, like, the deals are just not as good as they used to be in stores, and that has to do with profit margin Right.
Speaker 1:Cost of everything is up across the board. I think we're going to see a lot of that come down with the new administration that's coming in. But gas is up, manufacturing product cost is up, raw material cost is up, and so, because of gas being up, transportation costs are going to be much higher. I know that's come down a little bit more, as it always does when we mirror election cycles, because apparently politicians think that we can be manipulated easily, and so that's kind of part of it. But overall inflation is real right. We're seeing like 30% grocery prices, you know, go up and it's just been absolutely nuts. And so, across the board with manufacturing, you're going to see, you know, shrinkflation come in. A lot of manufacturers are manufacturing cheaper products so that they can compete in the market, and so they can't slash prices as much as they used to. At least that's my perspective. I could be wrong about that, but from speaking with a lot of people who are in the retail space, that seems to be the biggest issue.
Speaker 1:And so, if you are in that space too and you're in retail, think about how you can get creative. Right, you could do gift with purchase. You could do free shipping, you could do, um, you know, mystery boxes of extra. If you have extra inventory, that's a really cool thing to think about. Just get creative with it, rather than, if you can't offer an awesome discount and that's what the mindset people have is position it in a way that it's still really attractive. Now, for those of you who are in the online space, this is where you can really really stand out, because your profit margin is usually much higher. This is where you could do a pre-order discount, like if you're thinking about launching something new, like we are, we're actually launching a. I just can't wait to tell you about it. It's going to be awesome. We're launching a low ticket subscription very soon, literally on the back of Black Friday this year, and one of the things that we're doing is we're offering a pre-order discount. So essentially, we're going to be giving people 50% off their first month, and it's going to be super amazing because they get to not just like get an early bird discount where essentially their founding member or a family, I guess it's not a member, it's a founding subscriber and by doing that, they're actually going to get, uh, grandfathered into the pricing because they joined us, you know right at the beginning, and they're also going to get an extra 50% off for their first month. So that's where you could get really strategic For us.
Speaker 1:Every single year, we put out our content marketing bundle. It's the ultimate content marketing bundle. We do it every single year. It's awesome, and we put in some of the freshest, newest trainings that we have for the year, and I handpick some trainings from both TBL Plus, our group coaching tier, as well as the business lounge where we do our monthly live workshops, and so I'll pull a couple of those trainings. Give people like a 98% discount, bundle them with done for you.
Speaker 1:Templates and resources have a couple bonuses. That is all stuff I've already created. Right, it's all stuff from this year. I'm not doing anything new, except for one of the bonuses is going to be new Belle is our amazing content manager. She has a really cool Instagram template that she's going to be releasing. But other than that, it's all going to be stuff that we already have, that we've already created, that has already been proven. People absolutely loved it inside of our paid membership, and now we're going to be discounting it. Give people access to that training, help them understand what it's like to be in the business lounge and then hopefully get them excited about joining us next year when we open up the doors to that training.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of a win-win situation where we get to have like hundreds of orders during Black Friday. Especially for people who, like they can't necessarily swing the investment to join us in the business lounge, this is a really good place for them to get like a taste. It happens once a year. We never, ever, ever discount like we do on Black Friday, and every single year our bundle is different, and so that's part of what you could do, and if you don't have a lot of things, like maybe you're not as active as we are. Maybe you have like a course that's kind of one and done, whereas you know we're literally doing two live workshops every single month, not even counting new tutorials and trainings that we're putting in the business lounge.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of content that we produce that's paid over the course of a year, but if you don't have that, then you can get creative. Right, you could just, like I mentioned earlier, pull a couple trainings, maybe create something new, maybe test out a new offer, like we are. We're doing this on the back end um of our black friday promotion, so you're not going to get access to it unless you actually buy our black friday bundle. We're wanting to test it with, like, our best customers first, but at beta test it and then we'll release it into the world at a higher price point, and so it's one of those things where, like, there's a lot of really cool things that you could do when you get kind of creative with it. Now, if you don't have anything like that, you don't have time.
Speaker 1:Another great thing is just give people a really awesome discount, maybe like a 40 or 50% discount to some of your templates you could also do. If you've done some coaching calls with clients, you could show people behind the scenes of what that's like if you're actually selling expertise. If you have digital products, you could also think about doing just like you would a mystery box in the physical world. You could do like, hey, here's a mystery box that's going to be delivered to your inbox with all of our best templates of the year. Right, and then give people a great discount. Boom and you're done. The offer needs to be something that people love, that is highly discounted and that you don't have to put a ton of time and energy into creating. That's the magic of black friday. That's where you actually get to monetize on something that you have been building on for the whole year, like we have, or something that takes you a lot less time to come up with but is still valuable and amazing.
Speaker 1:Now, hear me, I am not saying put trash out. I'm not saying, you know, because people are not going to buy from you next year, so don't do that. Make sure that what you're selling is high quality, that it's going to be something exciting, that people can continue buying from you next year or move into the next tier of your services or products. So if you want a PDF of all of these 12 holiday promotion ideas, just to have it handy, maybe print it out, maybe you have it on your desk to get some motivation for getting your blog Friday promotion ready, all you have to do is text me the word holiday Okay, so that's holiday, and you could do that over on our business, our direct business phone line that I'm constantly talking to you guys about that's the number is 866-498-2080. That's 866-498-2080. That again is the word holiday, and we will send you that PDF totally free, just to get your mojo on, get you some of the creative juices flowing and help you come up with a really great Black Friday promotion.
Speaker 1:All right, fam, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Again, I'm sending you tons of love. Remember, this is the year we're gonna get our finances right. We're gonna get our profitability right. It's going to happen. And listen, if you are not yet a part of our newsletter, you are going to miss out on our Black Friday promotion. Do not miss out on it.
Speaker 1:We are launching our ultimate Black Friday bundle. It's going to be amazing. We're going to offer it for the best value that we have ever offered it this year. So make sure that you are enrolled on our newsletter. You can either join our text list directly and a lot of you guys do that by texting the word Kim. That's K I M. Two, eight, six, six, four, nine, eight, two, zero, eight, zero. That's the easiest way of doing it or just follow the link below this episode. It'll take you to my website and one of my lead magnets and you can join our email list that way.
Speaker 1:Don't forget that we have something amazing for you. This Black Friday we're going to be launching our content club, which is going to be an awesome subscription. I actually asked you guys in a poll I've been spending so much time talking to you guys one on one, but also I sent you a poll, if you're part of the newsletter and you're part of the text list, asking you what is it that you would want help with? And, oh my goodness, did you deliver? So we're going to post a poll below in case you want to make your voice known. It's going to be epic. I can't wait to tell you a little bit more about that in the next episode, but for now, have an amazing Black Friday promotion. Put that together. I'm going to keep encouraging you. Don't ever stop tuning into the podcast, because we have some amazing new strategies that we want to share with you to up-level your content game and your bottom line. All right, I love you. I'll see you in the next one. Un beso, bye for now.
