If you’re a business owner selling consumer products (like me), you’ve probably been looking forward to the Black Friday Buying Bonanza for a couple of months now. Here’s the thing though… Black Friday isn’t just a day for selling items people intend to gift to others. In my experience, especially on higher cost items, it’s a day people intend to score a smokin’ deal on items they’ll gift to themselves. Think Amazon Prime Day on steroids for the rest of the internet. If you’re like me, you’ve spent all year building a digital audience who is interested in your products and now it’s time to give them an offer they simply can’t refuse. Now is the time to turn all the lights on. Here’s everything I’m leveraging to win big on Black Friday…

Facebook Ads – They just have so many great tools and everyone is spending their time there and it’s so cheap and I could go on and on and on. If you think making a single Facebook post that only has an organic reach of 10% of your page followers is gonna do the trick you’re leaving literally everything on the table. Here’s how I’m approaching it… Earlier in the year I devoted a chunk of advertising spend to showing a video to a select audience on Facebook I thought might be interested in my product. The goal was never to close a deal at that time, just to see who was interested. From there, I whittled that group down smaller and created a second audience from the first of people who watched 95% of that video. Now here’s the thing. That video – it was about 3 minutes long and it wasn’t exactly motorcycles being chased by police exciting – so if you watched 95% of it you are definitely a prospect for the product. So that audience has been simmering for awhile now and it’s time to close the deal. I’ll be running Facebook ads to that audience for the next 2 weeks. Aside from that, I’ll also be running ads to people who have recently been on the website as well as my customer email list which I’ll also upload to Facebook. If you’ve engaged with my business in any meaningful way in the last 9 months, I’ll be seeing you this week on Facebook!

Email Marketing – Truth be told I don’t do a ton of emails for a handful of reasons, but I ALWAYS send a Black Friday email. All sorts of things can derail a purchase after a correspondence, especially on higher cost items. Doesn’t mean they didn’t want to buy, just that it wasn’t the right time. This is a great opportunity to close those deals that didn’t happen in the prime selling months. Now for my business, I always try to keep the emails entertaining and I’ve been in the game long enough where I know how to write good headlines that will get an email opened. I traditionally average over 30% email open rates which in 2019 for a consumer product without a massive brand attached to it is pretty stinkin’ good. Once inside the email I quickly repeat to the customer the thing they are struggling most with (since I listen to the customers and actually know what that is) and then hit them with the sweet deal on a product that solves their problem. By the way – Email marketing is super cheap, still very effective, and with the tools available you can look like a professional designer with no expertise. Don’t sleep on Email.

Google Ads – Google Ads consist of 3 primary focuses – Google Search, Google Display, and Youtube. Google Search is what drives most of my business. A user has a problem, they search the internet for a solution, and my ad gets shown above the search results. The problem is that search ads are expensive. Conversely, Google Display ads are those little banner ads that you’ll see all over the internet on websites you frequent like ESPN and in games and apps you frequent like Candy Crush, etc. Google Display ads are super cheap and there are some means to target based on interests and demographics, but nobody was actively searching for your product. You just kind of showed up and said “Hey, I’m here with my product” and you hope they might be interested. The key to being effective with these Google Display Ads is to not serve them to a cold audience. Much like with Facebook, I’ve been populating audiences from website visitors who have taken certain actions on my website over a period of preceding time. Keep in mind a lot of these people in this audience originated from a product search, so at one time they were actively searching for a solution I provide. Like I said, all sorts of things can derail a purchase, but now might be a great time for that user to buy. Laying the groundwork and populating those audiences in the preceding months with a wider net affords the opportunity to now reach the narrower group with my offer at dirt cheap prices.

I’ll spend less than $500 in advertising costs to promote my Black Friday Sale. I’ll probably sell between $50 and $100k of product in these next 2 weeks. It’s time to get all the lights turned on and finish the year strong.