285: Stop Planning a Black Friday Sale. Plan a Black Friday Season
Most creators don't touch Black Friday until the first week of November, and then they're scrambling to throw an offer together and put a discount on it, hoping that one week carries the whole quarter. That's a lot of pressure to put on three days.
In this episode Ruth Poundwhite turns the tables and interviews me about how I actually plan Q4, which starts with treating November 1st through the end of December as one season instead of one weekend.
In this episode
- Why I have my promo calendar mapped a year ahead, and how that changes what Black Friday has to do
- The October work that decides whether your Black Friday offer lands
- Why a pre-sale is one of the best things you can put out in Q4, especially if you don't have much to sell yet
- How to take an inventory of your offers and pick the ones worth promoting
- Using bonuses instead of cutting your prices, and how mine doubled as market research
- The sale structures we've tested inside HobbyScool, from one offer a day to a twelve day December run
- What I'm handing to AI this year, what I'm keeping, and the automation that puts a page live and expires it on its own
Why do a one day Black Friday sale when you can be promoting your offers throughout the entire season?
Key takeaways
- Black Friday is a season, not a day. Plan November 1 through December 31 as one campaign and the pressure on any single day drops.
- The warm-up has to run first. If you want to pre-sell something in November, the free gift, webinar, or sequence that gets people ready has to run in October.
- You don't have to discount. Put a bonus on the plan you want people to choose, like annual or lifetime, so you protect your pricing and point people to the version that gets results.
- Take an offer inventory first. List everything you have, mark what you want to sell, and give yourself permission to test something new.
- AI builds, you decide. It can produce the pages, emails, and images. It can't tell you what your market wants.
Chapters
00:45 When I actually start thinking about Black Friday
02:00 Why I treat it as a season, not a one day sale
03:30 The risk of putting everything on one week
05:00 Where most people go wrong
06:00 The October plan and the customer journey
06:45 Pre-selling an offer, and what has to happen first
08:15 Training your audience to pay attention to you
09:15 How to choose what to sell: the offer inventory
10:00 Testing a new offer, like a paid audit
12:00 Bonuses instead of discounts
13:30 How my bonus doubled as market research
15:00 Sale structures: one offer a day, twelve days, three day flash
17:15 How much work this used to be
17:45 What AI changes this year
19:15 The automation that runs pages live and expires them
20:30 What I will not hand off to AI
22:15 What to do in the next two weeks
23:30 Where to get help building your Q4 plan
Resources mentioned
- Newsletter Profit Club
- The Creator's MBA AI Mastermind
- HobbyScool
- Read the full write-up on the blog
Black Friday Profit Party
Build your Q4 money plan with me
I run the Black Friday Profit Party workshop every October, and we map your November through December plan together. You'll find it inside the Newsletter Profit Club, and it's also included if you're already in the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind.
Join the Newsletter Profit ClubRead the full transcript
00:00
Ruth: Well, hi Destini. Thank you for having me on your podcast to interview you about Black Friday. I'm very excited.
Destini: I am super excited about our conversation here today, Ruth. It's one of my favorite subjects, and we're delving into it before all the mad rush starts, so I can't wait to get into all the questions you have for me.
Ruth: It's going to be helpful for me as well. And speaking of that mad rush, this is going out at the end of September. Most people are not thinking about Black Friday yet, we've got a little while to go, but when do you start thinking about Black Friday?
00:45 When I actually start thinking about Black Friday
Destini: If I'm being honest, kind of all year round, because I like to have a promo calendar for my entire year. So just to be upfront with you, I have my promo calendar set for all of 2027. It's not necessarily set in stone, but I have a really good idea of what I'm going to be promoting every single month, and I'll give you a little bit more detail about that.
We do monthly events in HobbyScool. I do monthly events in my personal brand, and in my personal brand I also have workshops, or get it done weeks, or sprints, in both of the programs I have, the Newsletter Profit Club and the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind. I try to set the schedule for those in August or September the year before, so the members have an idea of what we're going to be covering in the next year, in the next 18 months or so. It doesn't mean I don't change things here and there, but I like to have an idea for that.
02:00
So to go back to your question about Black Friday, I actually like to look at it a little differently. I don't look at it like it's one day of a sale, or a week of a sale. I like to think about it as, okay, what am I doing in the months of the year when people are spending the most amount of money? They're saving. I have people who have contacted me and said, "What are you going to be offering in fourth quarter, in Black Friday?" because they're saving up their money. So I know people are ready to buy.
And when do they start being ready to buy? Quite frankly, after Halloween. So in November they start getting into that mindset of, I'm ready to start purchasing stuff and getting what I need to plan for having a successful 2027.
So I think you can start running these promotions, and I don't want to say aggressive promotions because we're going to talk about different things you could do that are outside of discounting, but I think people need to be planning out November 1st all the way until the end of the year. There's a lot of things you can do that aren't discounting but will get your audience's attention, and it's part of Black Friday, but it's really the whole holiday promotional campaign, if you would.
Ruth: There's so much goodness in that answer. Firstly, how far in advance you have your promos planned has always been goals for me. We're talking about Black Friday specifically in this interview, but it's not really just about Black Friday, is what you're saying. It's a whole season, and it's a really important one for all of us to be intentional about.
03:30 The risk of putting everything on one week
Destini: Why do a Black Friday sale, right? A one day Black Friday sale, when you can be promoting your offers and how you can help people throughout the entire season. I definitely think there are different angles you can come at it from.
And let's be honest, I've been here also, so I'm going to put myself in this category. If you're putting all of your eggs in that Black Friday basket and you're saying, "This is going to be the day, or the three days, or even the week that I'm going to make all of the money I need for fourth quarter or for the foreseeable future," I think that's a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.
There are probably some people out there who can say, "This is what I do, this is my strategy." But for most of us, myself included, that is very risky in my opinion.
Ruth: It's a lot of pressure to put on a very intense time. It's a very intense time generally, isn't it, that Black Friday period.
Destini: There's a lot of noise. It's a lot of pressure.
05:00 Where most people go wrong
Ruth: So let's talk more about where you see people going wrong. One of the things I experience is not necessarily putting all my eggs in one basket, but I know all year that I'm going to do a Black Friday promotion and I have it penciled in, because it's a fixed date in the year. I'll pencil in the week it's going to happen. That doesn't mean I actually start working on it, or that I know what I'm going to sell.
So I have definitely had those times in my business where I've been like, okay, now I've got to suddenly throw something together. What am I going to do? I've got to make the most of this. And I'm feeling the pressure in that way. I'm guessing you've seen a lot of this, and I'd love to hear what you recommend instead.
06:00 The October plan and the customer journey
Destini: At a minimum, I like to sit down in October and plan out, okay, here's what I'm doing Black Friday week, and here are some things I might be doing to warm up my audience before then. Maybe it's some flash sales, or maybe it's some content I'm doing to get them prepared for what I'm going to be selling.
So you have to think about, okay, this is my audience, this is what they need, and here's the customer journey I'm going to take them on to get them ready for that. And I'll give you some examples.
06:45
One of the things I love to do for Black Friday, and I think it's a really good option for a lot of people out there, especially if you're saying, "I don't have a lot to sell but I'd like to do this," is a pre-sale of an offer.
And when you're doing that, you have to think about, okay, is my audience ready for this pre-sale offer? A lot of times the answer is most likely no. So you have to think about what you need to do to get them ready for this. It might be a webinar you need to do. It might be a free gift you set up that has a tripwire in it, that has a sequence in it to warm them up for this pre-sale offer that's coming around Black Friday, or sometime in the fourth quarter. So you have to think about the customer journey you're going to take people on, and you have to start doing that in October.
Because if you say, "A week or two before Black Friday I want to sell the coaching program I'm going to launch January 1st, and I'm going to put that offer out around Black Friday and a ton of people are going to buy and sign up for it," that's probably not going to happen, because you have not warmed them up for that. So you have to think about what you need to do in the month or few weeks before to get them ready for the offer you're going to be pre-selling.
08:15 Training your audience to pay attention to you
Ruth: That is so important. And do you agree it's more important than ever, that it's so noisy out there on Black Friday and Q4 generally now? This warming up isn't only about the offer itself, it's also about getting people to pay attention to you as the person they want to work with.
Destini: You have to. In most of the niches out there, people need to know who you are before they're going to be ready to buy from you. And the other thing you have to think about is that you have to train your audience to pay attention to you. To open up your emails, to join you on a webinar.
Especially in the beginning, when people really didn't know who I was, I didn't have a lot of people attending my webinars. So you have to train them, okay, this is who she is. They really do need to get to know, like, and trust you, and that happens before Black Friday.
09:15 How to choose what to sell: the offer inventory
Ruth: Absolutely. So if someone's listening to this and thinking, okay, I'm sold on that, but I really don't know what I'm offering and how can I even decide now, how would you guide them to choosing what offer, and how do they go about making it a special one that suits Black Friday and Q4?
Destini: That's a loaded question, right, Ruth? There are so many different ways we could take this. Where I like to start is laying out the offers you have and the ones you want to sell. There may be some where you say, "I don't even want to sell this." Or you may have offers you haven't sold in a while and you say, "You know what, this would be a perfect Black Friday type offer."
So the first thing is to take an inventory of what you have and what you want to sell.
10:00
And I would encourage people to think outside the box here. Maybe doing an audit. I'll throw out some examples. Maybe you're a social media manager and you're really good at going into somebody's Instagram account and analyzing it and figuring out what they're doing wrong. Maybe that's not an offer you've done in the past, but you say, "I kind of want to test this and see if my audience would be interested."
Black Friday's a perfect time to do that. Of course you need to warm them up, we've talked about that, so I don't want to discount that. But Black Friday's a perfect time to put that type of offer out there. And you can give them a month or so to redeem it. I would put a timeframe on it. Say, "You have until X date to redeem it and submit your form, and I'll have your audit done within a week or two weeks," or whatever the case may be.
But think about things where you say, "I might want to be doing that in 2027. Is somebody going to be interested in that?" So just think outside the box. What I like to do with my clients and the people in my workshop is, number one, that offer inventory, and then we say yes, we want to promote this in fourth quarter, or no, we do not. That's where I like to start.
12:00 Bonuses instead of discounts
Ruth: Personally for me as well, I like what you said about there's something new I want to try. I do find there's something about the energy of Black Friday where it's like, why not try something new, why not pre-sell something. And if I'm doing multiple offers I'll often include one that's a pre-sale, as a lovely commission to experiment and try something new if you want to.
The other thing I wanted to ask you, and you mentioned this earlier, is that it's not always about cutting prices. Obviously Black Friday is very famous for these wild discounts and all of that, but in our businesses we may not want to put a discount on something, whether it's a service that takes up our time, or we just don't want to discount whatever it is we're offering. What do you suggest, and what do you do instead of discounts across the board?
Destini: I like to mix things up over the season. So sometimes I may discount, like do a 30%, 40%, 50% discount. But what I prefer to do instead, especially for what I call my meaty programs, is add bonuses in there.
This is where we can get super creative. Let's say somebody has a membership out there, and they have different ways people can purchase that membership. Maybe it's a monthly offer they have, and they have an annual plan also. What I like to do is incent people toward the plan I want to point them to. In my offers that would be either the lifetime or the annual plan, because that's where I can really get people results, when they commit to digging in. So a lot of times my bonuses will be for people on those plans.
13:30
And think about what would really help them get results. For my program that I did last year, which I was selling at around $2,500, so it was a higher priced program, I did some one on one sessions with me. Not only did that help them get results faster, it was also a way for me to dig in and figure out where people are really needing help, and it helped me determine whether I had the right thing scheduled for the workshops and the get it done weeks and the sprints I had coming up.
So it was market research for me, but it also helped them get results faster. I'm not saying you have to do one on one sessions, and that might not be something everybody can do, but think about bonuses you can add on that aren't discounts.
15:00 Sale structures: one offer a day, twelve days, three day flash
Ruth: So smart. I love what you said about the market research as well. All right, so key takeaways from that. Discounts are fine, but there are so many other things you can do. Pre-selling, and you've probably also got loads of stuff in your existing offers as well.
Let's talk about a strategy I know you use. You might have multiple offers happening around the Black Friday period, and you're not just dumping them all in one email on Black Friday and saying, here's the lot. You might be selling a different one every day. Can you talk us through that strategy and why you chose it?
Destini: I definitely think there are different ways you can structure all of this, and I've tested a lot of different things, and honestly they all work. There's not one thing that everybody should be doing.
For instance, last year in HobbyScool we did a couple of different things. We did the one offer a day during Black Friday week. We picked an offer every single day, and then come Monday, which was Cyber Monday, they all came back so people could get them. That definitely works.
The other thing we did was a twelve days of Christmas, and I'm using the wrong terminology here, I can't even remember what it's called. But we did it from December 1st through December 12th, where we had a free gift for them every single day that ran into a customer journey type funnel. I actually liked that. It was a lot of fun, and I'm probably going to do something very similar again this year. I'll have to figure out how we want to handle that.
There are a lot of different ways you can structure these. If you're saying, "Destini, that seems like a lot of work, I don't want to do that," do a three day type sale. You could do a three day flash sale. That's about as simple as you can get. You can start it on Black Friday, end it on Cyber Monday, and there you go. So if you're saying "I don't have time to do anything else," that's probably where I would tell people to start. But if you have the opportunity and you want to get a little more creative and do something fun, like what we did with the twelve days of Christmas, I love doing stuff like that too.
17:15 What AI changes this year
Ruth: I really like those examples, because again it's highlighting that there's so much you can play with across this whole season, not just Black Friday. But let's talk about the work involved, because I have done many sales myself that have been those daily deals, and it is a lot of work to set up. Last Black Friday I was thinking, oh my goodness, I wish I had started this a lot earlier, because it was a lot.
However, I know that I have and you have been implementing so many different AI systems in both our businesses now. What is different, and what are you potentially going to do differently this Black Friday? Because AI is changing all the time, even this year compared to last.
Destini: It's funny that you bring that up, because I wasn't even thinking about this. Yes, it was a lot of work for us last year, but I'm not worried about it this year, because I know AI is going to spit all of this out for me in no time.
I need to set up the skills, and that's something I'm going to bring to my workshop for the people in my program, so it's going to be super easy for them. I am going to build those skills, but I'm not worried about it at all. I'm going to be able to do that twelve days of Christmas we're doing in HobbyScool, and a five day of daily deals we'll do around Black Friday. I'm not worried about it, because I know AI is going to spit everything out for us in these beautiful HTML pages that we've never had before. Now that you're mentioning it, I'm really excited to get started on this.
Ruth: It is exciting. When you've got daily deals and you're doing it manually on your existing theme on your website, it's a lot. If you want to change one thing, it leads to a whole ripple effect of all these other pages that need changing. I've done a few of these daily deal sales now with the Claude system I've created for myself, and it's so much easier. It's so much less overwhelming, and I think that's such a great bonus you're giving everyone, your Claude skill. Because although you say, oh, it's going to do it all, the reason it can do it all is because you have already got a system, and you are training it on your system.
19:15 The automation that runs pages live and expires them
Destini: That's for sure. And I want to mention something I'm going to have it do, because this is really cool. I stumbled upon this in the event we're doing right now with HobbyScool, where we have the speaker pages set up. You're not going to believe this, Ruth. I don't even know how I got AI to do this, but we have it set up so that at 9:00 AM when that workshop goes live, it does it automatically. We don't even have to go in and touch anything. And when it expires, it puts up the expiration page. We're not even touching that.
So I'm going to take that system we've set up for these summits and put it into the daily deal system, so that it goes live at a certain time and then expires at a certain time, and that's going to be super easy with Claude and AI.
Ruth: So good. Don't even need Deadline Funnel or whatever to get it done.
Destini: We don't need any of that stuff anymore. HTML. Who would've thought we'd be going back to HTML pages? I love it.
Ruth: They're amazing.
20:30 What I will not hand off to AI
Ruth: Okay, is there anything you don't hand to AI? What will you keep control of yourself?
Destini: That's a good question. Going back to what we talked about in the beginning, my job is more of the strategy. I need to decide, okay, these are the offers, here's what the market actually needs. I have to have a really good handle on what my students and my clients are asking for. AI can't do that for me. I have to do that.
So I have to look at the product portfolio, the offer portfolio. I have to be able to see into the future and say, okay, here's where I think people need and want help in the future. That is definitely something I need to do.
Now, in terms of the images and the sales page and even helping me write the emails, I will definitely have AI help with all of that. But all of the strategy and the brain power, if you would, I don't hand that off to AI. I don't have AI tell me what I need to do, because quite frankly, that is where it goes wrong. When I've tried that in the past I've thought, this is slop that it's given me. This is not what the market wants.
Ruth: I totally agree. It has said things to me like, oh, this is the thing that will sell, or this is what people want, and it's not. It's not on the mark, and I guess that's because it's guessing from the average information it's trained on, and we are more on top of what's happening now, and speaking to our customers now, and AI is actually not on top of that. So yeah, really good point.
22:15 What to do in the next two weeks
Ruth: Okay, so just to wrap things up. Anyone who is listening now, we're late September. What do you recommend they get working on in the next couple of weeks to prepare for Black Friday and the whole of Q4?
Destini: It goes back to that brain power we were talking about. I would get a Google Sheet. I would start listing all of the offers you have today, and then I would create another sheet and start brainstorming, here are some things I'm thinking about, based on the tidbits I'm getting from my audience and the questions I'm getting from them. Here are some things I want to start testing.
This is a great time of year to start pre-selling or testing, and start teasing and figuring out what we want to be doing in 2027. That's what I would say people need to start with.
23:30 Where to get help building your Q4 plan
Destini: And of course we're going to have my Black Friday Profit Party workshop, which I do every single October. I do it in the Newsletter Profit Club and the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind. So if you want to put together your plan, definitely join me in one of those programs, and I will help you put together your Q4 November through December money making plan.
Ruth: Love it. Do you have a link to that, or is it just in the show notes?
Destini: It'll be in the show notes, and everybody can join there.
Ruth: It's going to be amazing, I know, and you're going to be in great hands with Destini. Well, that was great. You've got me thinking ahead as well, which is definitely one of my goals for this year, to be more on top of things and have AI do more of the grunt work as well. It's going to make it so much better.
Destini: Thank you.
Ruth: Love that chat, Destini. Thanks so much.
Destini: Thanks so much, Ruth.
Dr. Destini Copp
Digital Product Strategist · MBA Professor · Podcast Host
Dr. Destini Copp helps digital product creators build sustainable, systems-based businesses through the Creator Growth Flywheel framework. She is the founder of Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and has been teaching online business strategy for over a decade.
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