39: Simple Black Friday Sale Ideas: 6 Low-Lift Ideas for Solopreneurs & Coaches

Do I need to do a Black Friday promo? Is my audience expecting it? And if I do, what on earth should I offer that won't burn me out? If these questions have been floating around your brain (like they have mine), this episode is exactly what you need!

I'm sharing my Black Friday brainstorming ideas - six simple, adaptable sale ideas that work whether you're a coach, creator, or somewhere in between. Plus, I'm pulling back the curtain on my own Black Friday strategy, including the exact 5-email sequence I'm planning and the honest truth about my $20,000 Black Friday win versus my $5,000 flop (and what made the difference).

Check out the full show notes for this episode.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• 6 low-lift Black Friday sale ideas you can customize to your business (no 20-email sequences required!)
• My exact email strategy breakdown - when to send, what to say, and why repetition is your friend
• The simple bundle strategy that generated $20,000 in 4 days (and why I almost overcomplicated it)
• How to create urgency and scarcity without feeling sleazy or pushy
• Why your Black Friday success has nothing to do with your offer and everything to do with your audience warmth
• The one big truth about Black Friday that most creators miss (hint: it can't fix a cold audience)

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

• FloDesk email platform (50% off first year)
• Start & Grow Your Email List (From Scratch) self-led course 

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode!

Transcript

0:00

You would be shocked to see how many sales are missed because just the name of your offer doesn't make any sense or isn't clear at all. And same with freebies. If the name's not good, no one's gonna download it. Welcome to the Creative Bodega, a podcast about content marketing, Instagram growth, and personal branding for female service-based solopreneurs who wanna grow their business. Without letting it take over their lives. I'm your host, EM Connors, and each week I'll share actionable tips, expert advice, and unfiltered truths to help you create engaging content, connect authentically with your audience and turn followers into loyal customers. All without the burnout. If you're ready to simplify your content creation, navigate the ever changing trends and build a business that works for you while staying sane in this crazy season of life, then you're in the right place. Hello, friend. Welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. Today I'm diving into something I know has been floating around. Your brain, it's been floating around mine, and that is Black Friday. That one week in November where the internet basically turns into QVC on steroids. And if you're anything like me, you're probably thinking, do I need to do a Black Friday promo? Is my audience expecting it? And if I do, what on earth should I offer? That isn't gonna like burn me out or just be too much during that time of year.'cause it's already a pretty busy time of year. We're talking Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving's, basically Christmas. I don't care what anybody says. Christmas is like two days later in my mind. But here's the thing. You don't need 20 emails. You don't need to slash your prices so low that you resent every single sale that comes through. What you do need is a plan that feels doable and actually cites you. So today I've put together a Black Friday brainstorming toolbox. It's a whole menu of low lift sale ideas that you can adapt. Whether you are a coach, a mentor, a digital product creator, an actual physical product creator, or somewhere in between. Okay. I'm also gonna share my own Black Friday plan. I'm like, I'm like 99%. This is my Black Friday plan, so don't hold me to, you know, the fire if I actually change up what I'm doing. But I'm gonna share what I'm promoting and how many emails I'm gonna be sending and exactly what's inside those emails. And a couple lessons learned from my own wins and flops from Black Friday. I will leave you with one big truth. None of these ideas work if your audience isn't. Warm. Okay. And that's where the real magic of community and consistency come in. And of course, that's where the content coven, my monthly membership comes in to support you. Hi, shameless plug. Okay, I wanna rewind a couple months. No, not a couple months, a couple years. I ran a Black Friday promo where I bundled a few of my offers together. Honestly, it felt almost too simple at the time. I remember thinking, shouldn't I make this fancier, add more bells and whistles? But no, I kept it really, really easy. I bundled three products together and I basically said, it's how you create, connect, and convert. So it was the create, connect, convert bundle, and it was a Canva specific. Program or online digital course it was, that was Create Connect was how to make 30 days of content in a day and Convert was my Insta Stories that sell. So I bundled those three things up. These are all products that you can come and buy on my website, and it really took almost no effort at all to pull together. I took the prices, added up a big total, and then took a whole lot off at least 50% off. And it worked really well. The result was$20,000 in sales and I was just like sitting at my parents' beach house for Thanksgiving, enjoying watching this roll in over like a four day period. Now contrast to that last year, I waited way too long to plan. I over complicated the entire structure, and I launched it without giving myself proper time to warm up my audience and the result. Is it underperformed drastically compared to the year before? I think I made like$5,000 still. Great. You know, I'll, I'll take it right. Heading into Christmas time, like I'll take anything, but it was my reminder and hopefully yours too, that sometimes the thing that's holding you back. Your sales back isn't the product itself, it's the complexity that you layer on top of it or the lack of clarity around how you talk about it. AKA, your messaging. And actually I'm in the messaging edit my fall program right now, and that is. All this week is about, is literally all the words you use around your offers and what your offers are actually called. You would be shocked to see how many sales are missed because just the name of your offer doesn't make any sense or isn't clear at all. And same with freebies. Inside Start and Grow your email list that I run, I look at everyone's freebie name and I look at the freebies too with the content inside, but I look at the name because I'm like, if the name's not good, no one's gonna download it. Okay, so. As we move into this toolbox, I want you to remember that simple, scrappy, and strategic is always going to beat complicated and late. Okay, so the toolbox six, black Friday sale ideas. This is the fun part. I wanna give you six very customizable, adaptable ideas that you can tailor to your own business model or what feels right for you. Okay? Number one, bundle it up. Right? This one will forever be one of my favorites because it's the idea that brought me$20,000 in sales in four days, a few years ago. The concept is so simple. You take two or three of your existing offers, you package them together as a bundle. Why does this work? It feels like a gift set for your audience. It's more value for less money. It highlights the depth of your expertise by showing how your products all compliment each other. Again, remember I did that create, connect, convert bundle, and there was a digital product or online course per Create connect convert. It works so well and it doesn't require you to create anything new, which in my mind. Is a full on win and super glorious variations. You could try, you could do a bundle, a mini course with a workbook, like a digital product of some kind, right? Or an ebook, right? You could pair a self-paced program with a coaching call. I've thought about doing that. I've thought about and I still might offering start and grow your email list at a very big discount, and then offering like. Two group calls at some point just to like really offer some accountability and some technical feedback for people or technical questions that I could answer for people. And then you could also package a few offers into some type of like holiday toolkit, right? Give it a festive name. Again, I called mine something pretty straightforward, but I've seen holiday success pack or the CEO starter bundle. You know, you know what I'm gonna say? Put everything you're including into chat, GBT and ask it to come up with a really clear strategic themed offer name that's gonna get people to buy. Okay? Idea number two, wait. List only discounts. This is something I've never done, but I'm very interested in it. It's perfect. If you've got something coming up in the new year, which I do, I'm running my signature program, the Insta Canva Collective, which I'm actually rebranding. I'm calling it the brand edit because I loved the way the messaging edit sounded so much and they make sense together. They're honestly like sister courses. The brand edit would come first. It's all those visuals and figuring out what your posting schedule looks like and all that. And then, and how to use Canva really efficiently and get organized in there. And then the messaging edit is really drilling on the words and the messaging around your offers and how you're showing up and making sure you're posting. Uh, according to your goals and not just posting for the hell of it. Okay? So anyways, so I've been thinking about doing this for the brand edit coming out in January, so. Instead of making your whole audience an offer, reward them. Reward the people that have already raised their hand. Right. So how does this work You? You open early access to your wait list during Black Friday. The other great thing about this is if you're 2026, your new product for the new year is expensive. You could offer a much more spread out payment plan, which is also. Probably really helpful for people. You could also give them a limited time discount or a bonus for committing early. Again, you're on, you're asking to commit in November, you know, a solid month, month and a half, maybe even two months in advance. So you give them something, a, a nice little bump for doing that. Why does this work? It makes your audience feel like insiders. You're rewarding, your warmest leads, your warmest audience, and it's gonna create urgency because the doors are gonna be closed to everybody else, right? So if you have a group program launching in January, let your wait list lock in a spot at a discounted rate during Black Friday. You get early revenue. They get first dibs. Everybody wins. Okay. Uh, idea number three, A flash sale on your one-on-one services. So service-based business owners. This one's gonna be more for you. Think limited spots. Special price. This is so glorious because. It lets people get to, you know, be exposed to you and your coaching style for a lesser price. So if you normally charge$500 for a 90 minute strategy session, maybe you offer a group of three sessions for a discounted rate, like, you know, three 50 per session, or, you know, 300 per session, 200 off each of them. Um, but it's only for Black Friday weekend. Why does this work? Scarcity, once those spots are gone, they're gone. So you offer three of them, you offer five of them, something like that, something limited, and it gives people a taste of working with you without committing to a larger container, which is likely more expensive and more intimidating, right? I really love this for people who are kind of just getting their feet wet with being a service. Space provider and offering a service that's more of a one-to-one container to really get those testimonials that you likely need. And that that feedback from those early, you know, adopters, those people that are gonna say hi and raise their hand first. And you also get some quick cash flow without overcommitting your calendar. So. Pro tip, be very clear about boundaries. If you sell five calls, decide in advance when they need to be booked by and be very clear about that. Add it to the fact section on your landing page. Add it to the sales emails. Example, like you have 90 days to use this, or must be used before February 1st, 2026, something like that. Otherwise you might have someone popping in, uh, a year later wanting to cash in their discounted session, which might be a little annoying'cause at that time, who knows what's going on with your business. Right? Idea number four, discounted digital product. So this is the most classic of the Black Friday moves. It's the one that I'm probably doing with start and grow your email list from scratch. The program that I've developed, that I run live, but I also have it self-paced. So self self-paced is gonna be obviously a lot cheaper and um,'cause I'm not a part of it, but I wanna offer it at a heavy discount. Because it's self-paced, it's evergreen, and I want everyone to have a darn email list, plus it coordinates perfectly with flow desk's, unlimited pricing going away. So right now, flow desks has unlimited pricing. And that is going away on December 1st. And unlimited pricing means no matter how many email addresses you have, it's one price. Okay? Right now it's$38 a month. I have a code, I'll put it in the show notes for 50% off your first year. So that makes it$19 a month, which is just crazy cheap. And then from there, after a year, it goes to 38, which in my opinion, for. Everything Flo Dest does is still incredibly cheap. Okay. But I, I wanna kind of bundle that all together. Like last chance to get on the Flo Dest discount and start your email list with this program. It is proven. People absolutely love it. They've had incredible success with it. I will prove that with testimonials and all of that. And this is so great for me because I don't have to trade anymore of my time to deliver it. It's simply buy this, consume it on your own. Okay. So that's appealing to me because it's been a little bit of a wild fall with, you know, delivering the messaging, edit and running that program for five weeks. So I'd like a break. So I don't want anything that's gonna take my time. Why is this work? People are primed to buy a digital product on Black Friday. It's not confusing to anybody, and a big discount is gonna make it a no brainer. Maybe they've been looking at it and now it's like, okay, it's on sale, it's go time. And it's very low effort for you.'cause the content's already created. You just have to say, Hey, here's a discount code. Come and get it. Badda, bing, badda, boon. Enjoy. Okay, so if you have multiple digital products, maybe you consider discounting just one like gateway product that's naturally gonna lead people to bigger offers later on. You don't have to discount everything. I'd be strategic. I've actually done that as well for Bog Friday. I discounted everything. And I think people were too overwhelmed. They didn't know what to pick, they didn't know what was right for them, and that didn't work in my favor. So I'm just zeroing in on email list building and starting and growing an email list. And that's gonna be it. Idea number five, bonus driven offers. So. Not into discounts, no problem. Offer a bonus instead, this protects your pricing integrity and it still gives the buyer a reason to act now. So examples, buy your course this weekend, you get a bonus q and a call in December. So that's actually kind of what I'm thinking of doing. So I'm kind of combining two offers, a digital product discount, and then maybe giving a bonus of like two q and a calls or something like that in November. That'd be really cool. I think that'd be fun. I actually love hosting these kinds of calls, so it's not a huge lift for me and I just show up. And answer questions so there's no prep work on my end, which again is very glorious. Or maybe it's sign up for your membership and get a free month. That's a bonus, right? It's not a discount. Or purchase your template pack and get an exclusive holiday design add-on, like something like that. Something you already have would be really nice again.'cause then you don't have to make anything. This works'cause your offer is. It seems a lot more valuable without slashing any prices. So I did that for the messaging edit. I gave two bonuses. I gave two of my digital products away, no skin off my back, and I knew it'd really help them. In the end, it rewards fast Action. Okay, so a pro tip is to frame this bonus as an exclusive to Black Friday. The word exclusive or VIP or limited time is gonna work wonders psychologically for your audience. Last, but not least, VIP upgrades. Okay. This is a sneaky, smart move. You let people buy something now, maybe it's a mini course, a call, a workshop, and then you give them credit towards a bigger offer coming up. Example, buy this$97 workshop during Black Friday, and if you join my$997 program in January, you'll get a$97 credit towards it. Something like that. This is gonna work'cause it's gonna lock people into your ecosystem early and it's gonna reduce the barrier to entry for your bigger program. It also gets people's feet wet with being exposed to you the way you teach and all of that good stuff, which is gonna make them more likely to buy. In January. So pro tip, make sure there's very clear language around the term credit so there's no confusion. Okay. Now let's talk about email strategy real quick, because I know the next question is, how many times do I have to email my audience without annoying them? Okay, so number one, I don't think you're ever annoying someone if you're emailing them an offer. I actually plan to use a link action button in flow desk. Hi. If you buy my course, start and grow your email list during Black Friday. You'll know exactly what a link action button is, but it is a, uh, button that somebody can click inside an email that takes them off and they, they basically get added to a segment that says, I don't wanna see any more of these emails, so I will do that. And the first one, Hey, you don't need this. You already have it. Don't worry about it. Click here. You're good. I won't email you anymore about this. So, but I don't think you're annoying them. You're, you're really offering them a special, unique offer that they're only gonna get this one time of year. So here's my plan. Email number one is the kickoff email, the announcement, explaining what the sale is, why it matters, why they should buy, why it's so valuable. It's quite informational. Okay? And that's the kickoff email. Email number two is gonna be a reminder. I'm gonna reframe the offer and I'm probably gonna tie it to a story or some testimonials, so I'm gonna make it more emotional, if you will, with tying it to a story like, here's. What you're going to lose out on if you don't buy this. Okay? Uh, email number three is that midway push. We're halfway there. I'm gonna share maybe some facts or behind the scenes about why I created this offer, what it looks like behind the scenes, why you need to buy it Now, email number four is gonna get a little urgent, right? This is gonna be an urgency email. We're almost done. I'm gonna highlight the deadline. Maybe I'll tell another story, just really showing them what the transformation looks like if they purchase this product. Email. Number five, final call. 24 hours left, two hours left, however many hours you wanna do. Straight to the point, you know. Thanks for hanging in there if you're still here, but the sale ends tonight. Click here. That's five emails. And yes, I will probably send one on Thanksgiving and one on Black Friday itself because people's inboxes are flooded and the repetition's gonna be your friend. Or honestly, you guys, I've done the sale the week before Black Friday, and I might do that this year because Thanksgiving is a time I like to be present with my family. I don't wanna be worried about hopping on stories and talking about this offer. So I'd prefer to get it done early, kind of before everybody else. Right? And let me say this, if you're worried about annoying people. Remember this, they can unsubscribe and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The people who unsubscribe, they probably weren't gonna buy from you anyways. So good riddance. Pair down your list, make it leaner, make it the people that really wanna be there, the people who are ready and interested and buying. And those people, they're gonna be grateful for the reminder. So. Please don't worry about the unsubscribes. Trust me, anytime I offer something, I get the biggest unsubscribes. It is what it is. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make a living. I'm trying to send my kids to college, like God forbid. All right, and let's see here, black Friday. It can't fix a cold audience. I just wanna remind you that if you haven't been showing up consistently, if your people don't know, like, and trust you already, no magical bundle or discount is gonna suddenly convert them. That's why the real work happens the other 11 months of the year. Building that consistency, finding your voice, creating content that's gonna attract the right people, and surrounding yourself with community inspiration and accountability so that you can actually just follow through. Okay. And that's exactly what we do inside the content coven. It's not just about templates. I'm not here to just provide prompts and trainings. It's about having a support system of other female solopreneurs who literally get it, plus strategies and structures. They're gonna help you keep consistent. So in Black Friday or any launch rolls around, you're not panicking. You're gonna be really prepared. So here's the challenge. I want you to pick one of these toolbox ideas. And run with it. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't overthink. Don't wait till the last minute. Keep it fun. Keep it simple, and watch how that energy is gonna translate into sales. And if you know deep down that what you really need isn't just a Black Friday idea, but the consistency and confidence and inspiration to show up year round, I would love to welcome you into the content coven. It's where we do the work together. So you are never stuck trying to figure. Anything out alone, which I'm telling you is life-changing. That's it for today's episode. I am wishing you a stress-free successful Black Friday season. Please let me know if you use one of these strategies and how it works out. I will see you next week. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur. Who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, the creative bodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.