BFCM is a the noisiest time of year. It’s all chaos and zero charm, unlike the electric back-to-school season. Back Friday is usually considered in marketing land to be the last big push to meet year-end revenue goals before everyone falls into a hot chocolate coma and disappears until the New Year.
As a result, you might see several different marketing tactics at play:
limited drops / services (guides, 1:1s, merch, etc.)
bundling (i.e. adding something to your offer to increase its perceived value)
immediate gratification / quick wins
discounts
People are going to be brand “shopping” more than ever because the economy, well, sucks. BFCM and the word “deals” quite literally go hand-in-hand, and while we often see this more with product-based brands, you bet your boots that online service pros are similarly evaluating fellow service pros because money is tight tight.
We’re going to tackle the first 3 so you can avoid slashing your prices.
(Quick disclaimer: there are many ways to and variables that affect how to create more sales during BFCM. But but i’d argue the first step—before the campaigns, before the ads, before everything—is your offer messaging. That’s what we’re talking about today).
Where to start
we’ve already deduced that BFCM feels like survival of the fittest. So the best thing we can do to prime your offer to convert during this time is to make sure your messaging is solid.
At the risk of sounding a little “woo”, in order to stop feeling like you need to discount your offers to make (more) sales, you have to kick the scarcity mindset to the curb. The way to build desire around your offer isn’t to reduce your price tag (thereby reducing the perceived value of it); rather, it’s to make your audience not just ‘get’ it but need it.
Let’s run through a brief exercise to help you refine your offer messaging so instead of feeling like you need to entice your audience with discounts, you’re empowering them to make an educated decision that this offer is for them.
Step 1: Decide on Your Offer
What offer do you want to showcase for BFCM? Is it a new offer? A “limited drop” you’re releasing only for BFCM? Your signature offer, or perhaps a tripwire offer because you want to re-launch your signature offer in the new year?
We’re not about to add false urgency where there isn’t any. This is more so about creating constraints that build excitement naturally and tap into a sense of (genuine) novelty.
If it’s a new offer or limited drop, be sure that you spend the month of November warming people up to it so they’ll be primed and ready to opt in when the offer drops.
If you’ve got a current offer you want to put in the spotlight, there are a few ways to build excitement, as we’ll go through in Step 2 and Step 3.
I’d highly recommend marketing the offer that feels the most exciting to you (after all, your biggest selling factor is your energy).
Step 2: Decide on Your Bonuses
Regardless of which offer you choose, but especially for those your audience may already be familiar with, adding a bonus resource (guide, template, 1:1 session, audit, etc.) is a great way to increase the perceived value of what you offer.
Now that you’ve decided on your offer, answer these 3 questions to deduce what kind of resource you could bundle with your offer:
What problem does your offer help solve?
What kind of bonus mediums feel like a natural extension of your offer? Is there one in particular that stands out to you, whether because you like it or you know your audience will (or both!)?
What benefit does this resource offer, and how does it relate to your main offer?
For example:
You could offer a 1:1 social media audit and the bonus is your personal, tried-and-true content calendarn (with plug and post ideas to try)
Or you could offer a brand design vip day and the bonus is a complimentary PDF sticker sheet, with custom illustrations designed for your brand and only available during BFCM
You could offer a productivity-based Notion yearly planner and the bonus is a physical planner (!!) sent directly to your mailbox, only available during BFCM
The goal? Make your bonus just as desirable (and timely), if not more, than your main offer. This only adds to the perceived value of your BFCM offer, making your offer even more enticing for your audience.
Step 3: Decide Your Angle
You’ve decided on your offer and you know what bonuses to add. Great!
Now comes the fun part: deciding on how you want to position your offer for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
You don’t need to change anything within your offer to change its brand messaging for the season. You just need to change the angle, or lens, of it.
You could have the same offer and tailor its messaging for all types of seasons without changing anything inside the offer; when you can tweak the messaging to feel timely (without pressure), there’s a higher likelihood that the right people will opt in because the messaging makes sense to them where they are in this season of life (literally and metaphorically).
Black Friday signals this simultaneous push-pull for a lot of folks… you are either hustling to the end of the year, or you’re slowing right down.
How does your offer speak to what’s happening seasonally? Here are a few angles you can take:
tackle your year of end goals while also slowing down
automating your processes now so you don’t have to think about it when you’re sipping hot cocoa later
gearing you up to show up stronger in 2027
planning for 2027 vibes
There are so many angles you can take and chances are there are at least 1 or 2 that make sense for your offer. Feel free to play around, too.
If you want to layer on one of four angles i follow year-round (year-round + seasonal) for added warmth impact, I’ve added them all to Wardrobe Envy so you can pick and choose which angle you want to “try-on.”
Recap
You’re a hard-working creative and despite how scarce the social media landscape feels, I don’t want you to feel like you have to discount your offers just to make BFCM sales this year. There are, of course, many levers to pull for your Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing, but before you can do any of that, you have to make sure your offer messaging is solid. Like, i’m-so-excited-about-this-offer-you-can’t-get-me-to-shut-up-about-it vibes.
I created Wardrobe Envy to help you test out different angles to strengthen your offer positioning. These four angles (the ones I always use for my own offers and my clients’) are season-agnostic so they can be used for any offer and in any season.
