In this episode of the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast, host Carly Hill delivers a comprehensive Black Friday strategy tailored for online coaches, consultants, and service‑based entrepreneurs. She begins by highlighting consumer data showing that 60% of shoppers start holiday buying in October, emphasizing the urgency for early preparation. Carly argues that Black Friday should not be about discounting flagship high‑ticket programs; instead, it’s a window to present strategic offers that capitalize on buyers’ heightened purchasing mindset. She outlines five practical offer formats that avoid price cuts: (1) low‑ticket digital products or mini‑courses with limited‑time pricing or order bumps; (2) bonus stacks added to the core high‑ticket program; (3) special payment‑plan promotions; (4) limited‑availability intensives or power‑hour sessions; and (5) bundled collections of existing assets. Carly stresses the importance of a robust email‑list strategy and a sequenced promotional cadence—awareness, teaser, launch, urgency—to convert the audience, while also leveraging social media and collaborations for early awareness. She addresses common mindset blocks around selling during the holidays, reframing the sale as a service to clients ready to invest. Finally, she invites listeners to engage her done‑for‑you Black Friday service, directing them to show notes for further collaboration.
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Hey, hey, welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Carly Hill. Today's episode is one that you're probably gonna wanna come back to because we are talking Black Friday strategy. Before we dive in, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, do that right now. It is the easiest way to make sure you never miss a new episode. We drop fresh content every single Wednesday. Subscribing means that this is just gonna show up automatically, no hunting for it. So wherever you're listening right now, Takes two seconds. Just hit subscribe. Okay, Black Friday. And I know some of you are thinking, well, this is far away, or does Black Friday even really apply to me? Black Friday is one of the most powerful revenue opportunities of the entire year for online coaches, consultants, service-based entrepreneurs, and most coaches either ignore it or they completely. Wait until the week and then they just scrappy throw something together last minute and then they're wondering maybe why it didn't work as well as it could. So today I'm giving you a heads up. I am giving you the full blueprint, the data, the strategy, the timing, some offer ideas, all of it, so that when Black Friday comes, you're ready. Everything is already planned out for you. Let's dive into a stat that genuinely stopped me in my tracks when I read it when I was doing some research for this episode on Black Friday. 60% of consumers now start their holiday shopping in October. They are actually Googling Black Friday sales way early, like September, October. Not November, not the week of Black Friday. This is 60% of consumers, and 44% of shoppers, they're planning their Black Friday purchases more than a week in advance. So this means that only 4% of consumers are actually starting their holiday shopping in December. So if you're waiting until the week of Black Friday to start thinking about your Black Friday promotion, if you're waiting even until end of October, November, you've already missed a significant portion of your buyers. They've already made their decisions. They've already been in research mode. They've already been on somebody else's email list warming up to somebody else's offer. So the question really isn't whether Black Friday is relevant for your coaching business. It is. We already know that. The question is, are you going to capitalize on it? The question is, are you going to prepare for it? Are you going to be positioned and ready when your ideal client is in buying mode, which they will be? And the good news is you have time to get ready because you're listening to this episode, but the clock is ticking. So I need you to take some action. All right. We're not going to discount your high-ticket offer. Black Friday should not just feel like a massive discount. Okay? Black Friday is not about discounting your flagship high-ticket program. It is about capitalizing on the fact that your ideal client is in a heightened buying state and they're actively looking for an opportunity. They do have their credit card in hand. They are making decisions that they've put off all year. They're at the edge of their seat. Buyers are primed, buyers are ready, buyers are looking for reasons to say yes, and it is your job to give them one. But you're not running a Black Friday sale because you're desperate or because your offer isn't good enough to sell at full price. You're running a Black Friday promotion because it's a smart business move to capitalize on a buying window when your audience is already in a purchasing mindset. This is the strategy. Okay, so Carly, what do I actually offer then if I'm not discounting my flagship program? And this is where we're gonna get really practical because I think the what do I actually sell question is where people get stuck and then they do nothing. So here are a few options for you. Of course, options are endless, but I want you to notice that none of them require you to discount your flagship high-ticket program. So option 1 is a low-ticket offer with a limited time price or bonus. Think digital products, any courses that you have, especially like a mini course, some guides that you have. These are perfect for Black Friday. Offer them at a special price, or you can bundle them together. This is a very low-friction entry point for people who have been lurking you for a while. They need a reason to say yes, and if your ascension plan is built correctly Then they're gonna come in at this low ticket price. Let's say $197. You can even have a $47 order bump. This is a beautiful price for Black Friday. So they're gonna come in at this low ticket price. You're gonna earn trust. It's gonna be like a taster, a teaser, an appetizer for them, and then they could move through your ascension plan and become a high ticket client in January. The second thing you can do is a bonus stack onto your core offer. So keep the price of your signature program the same, but add limited time bonuses. Let's add things instead of subtracting and making a discount. A limited time bonus package for anybody who enrolls during this window and this window, whatever your Black Friday window is, because your Black Friday window doesn't actually have to be on Black Friday. You could do an early Black Friday sale. You could do the beginning of November. You could shut it down the Wednesday before Black Friday. And this is a smart thing to do actually if you are running paid advertising, because when you're competing with mass marketing and everybody and their mom who's running Black Friday sales, ads are going to get very expensive. So you may want to run the Black Friday sale early, and this is something that a lot of online coaches and entrepreneurs do for this exact reason. So again, option 1, let's say, uh, $197 product, and then you have a $47 Order bump option 2, just add on a bonus stack to your core offer, whether that be bonus calls, guest experts, private session, like a done-for-you asset. That's a really good exclusive resource. The price stays intact. The perceived value is now going way up. And this is a beautiful strategy that you can execute. Know too that you can run your Black Friday sale early. All right, option 3 is a payment plan promotion. So instead of discounting something, you could offer a special payment plan that makes your high-ticket offer more accessible during the holiday season, and you're only offering it limited time within this window and this window. So a pay-in-full option at the regular price, a special extended payment plan for the Black Friday window only. Okay, now we're capitalizing On urgency, sales psychology. Again, it's not a discount and it removes the financial friction for the right client who has been on the fence. This is also not even something that you have to promote publicly. You could have more than one Black Friday sale in your business, so you could have the low-ticket offers on the front end. This is what you're promoting to your email list. Maybe you're running ads to it, organic or paid advertising. Then you have that $47 order bump, but on the back end You're also on sales calls offering your secret Black Friday offer that's not even promoted anywhere, which is this bonus stack, this limited time bonus, or this payment plan promotion. You can actually do option 1, 2, and 3 so far. Option 4 would be a limited availability intensive or power hours. These work well because they usually convert into a higher ticket client. So open a small number of spots, open done-for-you sessions, open a hot seat call, open like an audit of some sort or a VIP day, an intensive at a special Black Friday price. Cap it so you can capitalize on sales psychology with urgency here, like only 5 spots, only 10 spots, whatever it is that you can take. So create that real scarcity. And this is gonna generate revenue very quickly. It's gonna put you in direct relationship with your perfect fit ideal client who then can become long-term clients. This is a good option for you if you feel like you don't have anything in your bank, you don't have any resources, you don't have any digital products. It would be too difficult for you to whip these up. Okay, well why don't you just offer your time then? That is a beautiful option. Another thing that you can do is bundle all of your existing assets. So take like 2 to 3 to 5 things that you've already created— lead magnets, mini course trainings that are in the bank, templates, recorded workshops, any of these mini courses that you have, whatever you have, okay? Bundle them into a Black Friday collection at one single price point. So you're not creating anything new, you're just pulling from the bank. You're repackaging what already exists. You're stacking them on top of each other and they're like, well, I'm getting all of this for this. I'm getting this whole entire bundle. And then you're giving them a reason to grab it all at once. So the through line in all 5 of these options is not cheapening your offer. You're just creating a strategic entry point at the moment that your buyer is ready to say yes. And again, is in that buying behavior and buying mindset. When you're offering any one of these or all of the above, you definitely need to focus on your marketing. Email marketing is going to be crucial when it comes to this. Your Instagram, your Facebook group, okay, possibly promoting this early on your podcast, recording an ad for it, doing some collaborations, letting indirect competition know that this is what you're going to be offering. How can you get the word out ahead of time? Your social media is for awareness, but your email list is really going to move the needle forward. Your emails is the best place for conversion. So how can you be proactive and try to build up your email list ahead of time so that when you run your Black Friday sale, your flash sale, then your email list is built for conversion? So really focus on doubling down list building strategies. I have episodes on list building strategies. Focus on that now so that when November comes, you've already been nurturing your list and they're going to wake up and they're going to have the Black Friday sale and they already trust you. They've already been lurking you for quite some time. Also know that it's not just one email and done. You need to dangle the carrot. You need to let them know special announcement, special sale coming. Promo the promo. That's Marketing 101. Then you make the big announcement. Then you send another email assigning value to why they should get in. Maybe you have testimonials. You're sending another email Black Friday morning if that's when you're running your sale. The afternoon you're saying urgency, cart closing, last call, time to get in. So these emails need to be sent with intention. There is a sequence, and that sequence can generate significant revenue. If they are properly nurtured. There's also the mindset piece, not only the marketing piece. If you feel like it's weird to sell during the holidays, you feel like maybe your audience doesn't have money because they are spending during the holidays, and you're saying, well, you know, Black Friday isn't for me and my business, it's for these bigger brands, it's not appropriate for this, or I don't have anything to sell, maybe I'll just do it next year. Then you're missing out. You're definitely leaving money on the table. This is an opportunity for you to show up with something valuable during a window when your ideal client is actively looking to buy. You are being of service. You are meeting her where she is, or him. You are giving them permission to invest in themselves and push them off the edge of the seat. They've been in your pipeline for quite some time. This is smart. This is strategic. So show up, make the offer. If you need help with your Black Friday blueprint, reach out to us. We would be happy to hop on a call with you. We can do a done-for-you service. We can whip up a Black Friday offer for you. Okay, this is what we do with our clients all day, every day, is help them in the trenches of building their business, not only with the strategy but the execution. So if you want to check out ways to work together, you can look at the show notes. My love is with you. Happy selling, and I will see you in the next episode.
