Black Friday Marketing Plan: What to Prep, Post, Email, and Sell (Etsy, Social Media, and In-Person)

I want you to start to think, what do I need to prep? What am I selling? Where am I selling it? What needs to get prepared for that? Do I need to create graphics for these promotions? Do I need to think about how I'm going to update product listings or descriptions, photos, banners? What needs to be created so that you're ready to do this when you switch over to the holiday season? Hey, hey, product bosses. Well, welcome back to another episode of the Product Boss podcast. And let me ask you a question. What if this year you didn't wait until November 20th to create your holiday promotions? What if this year, when you're listening to this and it landed in your earbuds at the perfect time, was the right time to create your holiday sales plan? Welcome back. I'm Jacqueline Snyder and I am your host and your mentor for all things product based businesses. So no matter what you're selling, no matter what where you are in the world, I help you build sustainable businesses so that you can sell your beautiful, amazing products in places like Etsy, on E Commerce, through your own website, in person markets, Amazon and wholesale, and even through social media channels. Now, no matter what you sell and where you sell it, we are here to support you. So what if this year you created a solid plan, one that I walked you through every single week of November? That's exactly what we're going to do today. Because every year I see way, way, way too many product bosses scrambling and feeling that burnout right before the holiday season. And this year I wanted to feel different for you because so much of what we do has to be about who we are, who we are being. Now, I've been coaching a lot in this, especially in one of my programs called the Collective, which is this concept of who's doing the doing. So my friends, I can give you the strategy, I can give you the plan so that you can have the results that you want. But we really have to work on is that being that version of you, the entrepreneur and the person that you are and how you are showing up in your business and in your day to day. And one of the things I know about you is that you want to have sales, you want to grow this business, whether it's a side hustle, a full time business, whether you want to make an extra $2,000 a month or you want to make $200,000 a month, anything is possible. But where it's going to start is really it's going to start with you. It's going to start with, have you created a Plan. How do you get to step up and step into your business in a way that feels like you are the boss of your business? So I'm going to walk you through a week by week plan for the month of November. And it's something that I share with my coaching students inside of the collective. And you can steal it. I even have a free download for you, which is going to be my entire Black Friday playbook. You're going to get access to all of this, so make sure you're checking a link in the show notes. All right, so let's talk about what Black Friday weekend is. I'm going to break it down for you in case you're new to this. So Black Friday is really this concept that was created by stores where getting in the black was that they were getting positive in sales and revenue again. So when Black Friday was created, I want you to think about this. So if you feel like your sales are just not where you want to be, trust me, historically, a lot of retailers and brands were not at the place they wanted to be come November. So they offered this early sale. It was Black Friday. It was before the holidays, where they thought, okay, if we offer discounts and promotions and can we generate revenue so that we get back into the black? So the cool thing about that was Saturday. Now, Saturday is Small Business Saturday. How did Small Business Saturday come to be? Well, American Express invented it as a holiday. They really wanted to create something where they brought people. If you think about what Black Friday was originally, before we were shopping online, before we had access to small brands everywhere. If you grew up like me, a child of the 90s or some other time, we, we were waiting in line outside of big box stores on Friday to buy DVD players and DVDs and big screen TVs and all this stuff. So Saturday was an effort by American Express to support small businesses to bring people back to Main street, to bring people back to small businesses. So that's where Small Business Saturday comes now. Sunday was always a sales day. Back in my day when you had the newspapers, there was a Sunday sale. So Sunday was just inevitably a sale day. And then Cyber Monday, Cyber Monday was created and called Cyber Monday because at the time when people were still transitioning to buying online, they went from in person, big box stores on a Friday, Small Business Saturday. However, they were buying on Sunday. And then they thought, how do we get people online to shop from us on a Monday? Hence Cyber Monday. But now it's 2025 going into 2026, and everything is different. Why? Because the whole weekend you can buy in person the whole weekend you can buy from small businesses the whole weekend, you can buy online the whole weekend, you can reference it as the Cyber5. You can reference it as Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, whatever you want. But what you get to know is that whole weekend is about promotions and discounts. So I want to step into that part next. The next part about that whole weekend being about promotions and discounts is, is that consumers are expecting the discounts. They're expecting a massive deal that weekend because it's just what the culture is bringing to us. It's what big stores are doing, big brands, it's what smaller brands are doing if they're participating in that weekend. Now, do I recommend that you participate in it? Yeah, I kind of do. Why? Because it gets you visibility. Why? Because it can get you sales. But I'm also going to say that I've coached other students. I have students that make multimillion dollars a year selling their beautiful, amazing products. And some of them don't participate in that weekend. Some of them have promotions and discounts at other times of the year, but they've got really well established businesses. So as the boss of your business, you get to choose. What do I want to do? Here's what I will tell you all the other days, you don't have to offer discounts if you don't want. But that weekend, if you think about your consumer behavior the way that you're gonna choose, what do you buy? Where do you spend your time? What's the purchase you're gonna make that weekend? Most likely it's going to be the ones with good offers, the ones that have promotions and discounts, the ones that you're like, ooh, I've been waiting for this thing to go on sale. I'm gonna finally buy it. I have people who work for me, they're some of my team members. And I remember last year we were talking about right before Black Friday, they're like, gosh, I hope Ruggable has another Black Friday sale. They had missed it the year before where everything sitewide was on sale and they wanted to buy a massive rug, which was over a thousand dollars. And they were hoping that the sale came because a lot of times throughout the year, Ruggable may have discounted products that don't move throughout the year, but this point they were able to buy anything at a discount. So customers are waiting to buy these bigger purchases or they're waiting to see what goes on sale to even make decisions about what they're going to buy for the holidays or what they're going to stock up on or what. What the goodies are that they're going to find. So think about that for yourself. Think about yourself as the consumer before you think of yourself as the brand. And think, well, what would get a customer to buy? My recommendation is that they are significant discounts. 10 or 15% is usually the offer we give people for opting into our email list. Not significant. It's a little bit, but not significant. I would say 20%, 25, 30%. Those all start to get into numbers that move the needle a bit more. You'll even see sales that are something like 70% off site wide. Right? 70%. You might be thinking, jacqueline, hold, hold, hold. I'm a small business. I can't offer 70%. But here's the kicker. If you see a promotion like that, go ahead and take a look. The whole website is not 70% off. It's up to 70% off. There could be one thing. It could be a Valentine's necklace that they didn't sell that was on the site. That was the 70% off product. And they're still saying it's up to 70% off. Most of it could be 20% off, 25% off. Your job this season outside of selling is actually to start to pay attention to your inbox and to the emails you're getting sent and to if you're shopping, looking at what the promotions and discounts are, that is your job as a business owner in this realm, selling products. You're a marketer. You sell. Your job is to pay attention to what's happening in the market. But you've also got me, so I'm going to support you through it. So that is the concept of the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend or the Cyber five. And then we talked about what the Cyber five is. So while you know, this is the season, we're going to create a rhythm, we're going to create a plan so that you're ready for that weekend. Now, again, you're the boss of your business, so you get to choose. Where do you want to participate, how you want to participate, what you're going to do, but we're going to really walk this through. We're gonna talk about your Black Friday promo calendar. Like, what are we going to do week by week, we're gonna talk about what you're gonna post, what you're gonna email and how you got to do this. Really feeling like in control of the outcome, really feeling like I've created a plan, and everything I wanna say to you here is, let's say you walk step by step through this and you start to see gaps. You don't make as many sales as you wanted to make, or you see things just kind of not working 100%. Your job is to just track it. This whole thing that we're doing in business and entrepreneurship is really a game we get to play. We get to create, we get to test and try. Some things are gonna work, some things are not gonna work. But you know what you get to do? You get to find the gaps. You get to find the things that are working and note those down and we repeat them. And the things that aren't working, pay attention to that. I would have made more sales if I had more people on my email list when I emailed them. Right, Great. So what feedback does that give us? That gives us the feedback that you get to grow your email list? Maybe it's. I tried to drive people to my website, but no one was there to buy. Great. That goes back to the same concept. Well, how do we get in front of other people's audiences? How do we sell where customers already are? And that's everything we dig into inside of my programs. Whether it's the product boss, sales accelerator, or the collective. We really talk about how can you utilize other people's audiences and how can you grow your business? There are so many other days in the year that we get to sell. There's so many other things that we get to promote around. But what you get to do is you get to take action. Imperfect action even, but you get to take action. So if you're ready, let's get into your week by week plan. So let's start with week one. In week one, I really want you to think about this in the time to prep. What are you offering? What are you selling? We worked on this over the last few months in several of my programs. But what I want you to think about is what offer are you going to make? I gave it to you a little bit in the very beginning. Is it up to 70% off site wide? Is it 30% off site wide? Is it buy more, save more, buy one, get one, Right? What is the offer that you want to create? You don't have to put everything on sale. You can, if you choose to, you can take your best sellers and create promotions around them. But you do want to create some sort of offer. And it can be one. It gets way too complicated if you try and do 12 days of crazy Christmas or 12, 12 days of promotions, or every single day you change it, just stick with one. Now if you're in different sales channels, different different sales engines, where you have your website and maybe you're doing an in person market that weekend, you can choose. Maybe in person it's a steeper discount because you want them to buy and be like online it's 25% off, but today when you buy, it's 30% off. You get to choose. But here's what I want to tell you. Pick one to two Black Friday Cyber Monday offers. If you're a more advanced business, you know already what you've done in the past and you can go a little bit further with this, but if you're kind of dabbling still in this or, or you feel overwhelmed by this concept, pick 1 to 2, not 10. Keep it simple seller. Then what I want you to do is I want you to start to think, what do I need to prep? What am I selling? Where am I selling it? What needs to get prepared for that? Do I need to create graphics for these promotions? Do I need to think about how I'm gonna update product listings or descriptions, photos, banners? What needs to be created so that you're ready to do this when you switch over to the holiday season? Now let's get into week two. What do we do in week two? Well, week two could be a time that you really start to build a VIP list or an exclusive list for people. You can invite people to join an early access list so they get early access to the holiday deals, early access to Black Friday Cyber Monday, you could really start to seed that out there. If you're an in person market, have a list. Hey, join this. I'll give you early access to these offers. You can come shop online even if you're not in person. You can do this on social. When you're doing social, let's at least be growing our email list or have a way that we can communicate outside of the algorithm. If you are selling on your website, you can start to say, join our list. Join our list. Join our VIP list. Ask your customers. What I really want you to do here is I want you to think, how can I create something exclusive? How can I create a way that people are going to opt in early because they want early access to something. I've coached. I have a student that has a massive brand, $2 million company. I was their one on one coach for years and years and years and she does an early weekend. She actually does an early sale so when you're on the VIP list, you actually get an early Black Friday shop before everything gets really crowded. Get it before things sell out. So you could really start to think about that. You could do a VIP preview. Now, this is a little bit of a side, but I'm going to add it in, is if you think about Amazon, Amazon is always like, Amazon Prime Day is coming. Amazon prime days are coming. And they'll tell you the dates. A thing I want you to consider here. Sometimes when you start to mention it, people might hold on purchasing for the weekend, which is fine because if they buy early, they might want to be price matched anyways. But let's say Amazon prime is like, Amazon prime deals are coming. We just don't know what the deals are. Some people might hold, some people might buy in the moment. The other thing I really like about Amazon is that in the last few years they've sent us physical catalogs. Let's go Back to the 90s again. Physical catalogs that have lists and they even have a section in it that has a place for kids. The kids get to create their own wish list. So we're kind of thinking about that here. How can we start to get people excited, paying attention, seeding your brand in their, in their brains so that when it gets closer to the time they're thinking about you, they're going to be inundated with promotions, they're going to be inundated with ads and family things and all the things. So how do you get them to start to be excited? Now? I want you to think about this. Exclusivity can create conversion. Exclusivity can create conversion. So when someone feels like they're part of an in group, when they feel like, ooh, I'm on the in and I better buy it before it sells out, they're actually more likely to buy than people who don't feel that. So I want you to treat your VIP list like gold. I want you to treat the people who are already buying from you like gold. Really pull them in, Say, hey, you're my people. This is what I want for you. All right, now let's get into week three. Week three, we're getting really close, really, really, really close to the week, right? We're getting really close to the cyber, Cyber five. So in this point, you get to really think, okay, I know what I'm selling. I've sort of been seeding and growing my email list. What can I start to build and create content around? Am I going to drop social media Posts. Am I going to send emails? What do the visuals need to look like? You also might start to sort of send emails posts even when you're at in person markets and say like, ooh, we're getting ready. We're giving you a sneak peek on the bundles. We're giving you a sneak peek on like exclusive things that are going to be coming out. You also, in this kind of week before, if you have anything in person or anything you're participating in, you could do an early sale. You can bring it out even before Black Friday Cyber Monday, just like exclusive this weekend only you can come buy this thing. You want to start to think about what your strategy is going to be and what it's going to take from you in that week when you start to make the sales. Are you pre writing reply emails? I want it all set up, okay? The email, set up, the content, set up, your listing set up, everything's ready to go. And that's what you get to do in week three. The other thing you get to do in week three is start to really educate and build desire. These sneak peeks, these urgencies, social proof questions and answers. You get to have something to talk about and get people really excited. Now a lot of my students, so if you're listening and you're a student inside of the sales accelerator or if you're in the collective, you know we've been talking about this throughout the weeks and we've been talking about how to fully plan and how to have those planning templates. So remember, if you're listening to this episode, I'm going to give you a totally free download for the Black Friday playbook. So a lot of support in there that's going to break this down here even more for you. So just make sure to click the link in the show notes, grab it, it's going to be awesome. Okay, so now we've made it to week four. Congratulations. Hallelujah. The weekend is here. We've survived dinner with our families. We're getting to that Thursday night and it's a go. So what do you do? You send emails and some people are like, what do you mean emails? What is this email thing you're talking about? If you're in any of my programs, you know that one of the things I push and push and push is that you get to grow your email list no matter where you are. If you're an in person market, you better be growing your email list. We talk about on Etsy how to grow your email list if you're Even just showing up on social, are you growing your list? So we always want to be growing our email list because in an event like this, how do you tell people the sale is on? How do we tell people come visit us at this market or the sale is on? Right. Because if you think about social media, and this is why I don't push social as like the number one tool. It is a strategy. It is not. The only strategy is because the algorithm chooses. The algorithm chooses who it's going to show your content to. But if you have an email list, you get to email your customers and say, this sale is on. Black Friday is here. Here is your offer. Here is your discount. I recommend you send at least five emails that weekend. One a day, at least. Okay. One of my students a few years back sells candles and wanted to make $8,000 in that weekend. Now when we downloaded what happened and how this person made $8,000 on Friday and not the whole weekend, but just Friday, crushed his goals. He said, I sent emails. I said, how many emails did you send? He's like, I sent five on Friday. Awesome. Think about this because some of you are like, ah, what do you mean five on Friday? I hate emails. Doesn't matter how you feel about emails. It matters if you love marketing. Think about us. We're all busy. We wake up in the morning, we've got, we're inundated in our inbox, we're getting text messages. Kids are asking us for things, families around. All this stuff is happening. Emails are just a reminder. They can choose to open them or not open them. But guess what you get to do? You get to do an early morning email. Black Friday sale is on. Shop now. Later in the day, Black Friday sale is on. Shop now. Next day, Black Friday sale is on. I mean, will she. With you and my students, you have access to subject lines. But the thing here is like you could even have the same email every single day and just change the subject line. But what it gets to be is it gets to be a reminder to your customers. It gets to be this reminder that's like, come shop from us. And you keep trying to pop up in the crowd. You keep trying to remind them about it. So what would it look like for you to send an email in the morning and a resend to unopens in the evening. What would it look like for you to send three in a day? Hey, what's up? Come by again. That is really the thing that's going to be the most effective tool if you're thinking oh, my goodness. I haven't even grown my email list now. You know, my sales accelerator students and my collective students. You have access to how to grow your email list. No matter where you're selling, you have access to templates and templates and templates that I've created for you to be able to use. If you're hearing this today, it's not too late to grow your email list. I have a student that at In Person Markets over the last few weeks, she's actually grown her list by 75 people. That's pretty significant for someone who Maybe only had 25 people originally. Now we have 75 people that opted in and said, yes, I want to be on your email list that she gets to email. And friends, the last three weeks she has emailed. She's messaged me and said, I've made sales on the weekend on my website. Do you know how it's. Cause she sent emails, promotional emails. Not newsletter emails, but promotional emails. So that's what you got to do right now. You got to start thinking, how do I grow? How do I grow an email list? And what am I going to email them? Now there's also social media. We're going to create the content. We're going to make posts, carousels, countdowns. You may put highlights. If they still have them at the time of this recording, who knows? They keep changing everything on Instagram. You're going to do stories, you're going to have links in bio. You're going to just keep thinking, how do I keep putting out the marketing material to remind people? And you remind them. Limited time, limited time, limited time. This is what it is. I want you to remember, you're not bothering people. You're just leading them to what they want to buy. You're just telling them what to buy. That's what your job is. If they opt out, that's them. That's a them thing in their inbox. Because they want inbox zero. Or if they're opting off your email list, they're not actually wanting to buy from you. Think about that. Think about how many lists you stay on. Even if you haven't bought because you don't want to miss a promotion. And if you opt out, it's because you really don't care about that brand right in this moment, that's totally fine because there's other ways they're still going to stay in contact with you and it doesn't mean they're not going to opt back in. All right, now let's talk about Post Black Friday week, we've completed it. Cyber Monday is done. We wake up on Tuesday and we're like, what do we do now? Now it is Giving Tuesday, which some people choose to participate in. I don't know if it's as strong with consumers, but if it's strong to you and your brand and your customers, then great, participate in it. But you want to know what else you're going to wake up to. The sale is extended Black Friday sale still on extended. This has been a trend and a pattern over the last few years. So what does that mean? That means that you, if you choose to, can extend your sale as well. You might say extended sale, or here's a gratitude offer, thank you for shopping. People will extend it and they actually won't tell them when it ends. Because what's good about the extended sale is we have so much information coming to us, we have so many emails coming to us. So what's going to be the thing? People may have just missed it. They might have been overwhelmed. It's happened to me. I'm sure it's happened to you. So waking up on a Tuesday and be like, oh my gosh, I could still buy at a discount. Great, I'm really going to commit to buy right now. They don't tell us when it's going to end. Usually it ends like, let's say they're starting at Tuesday. It might end Thursday. Maybe they take it to Friday. You'll kind of pay attention. But you choose what you want. You choose how long you want to extend the sale. It's just another way to market to your customers. It's another reason to send an email. It's another reason to show up in front of them. So that's a bonus, right? That's another promotion I just shared with you. It's this extended sale. The other thing that I'm going to take this even a step further is let's go into December. Who's ready to shift into December? So what do we get to promote now that we're moving forward? You don't have to offer another discount if you don't want. Between now and Christmas, you don't have to do it. You know what you got to sell. You know, you get to promote limited time to get your order in, to get it shipped on time to people for Christmas, right? Last day to order for the state. That is a promotion in itself. That is a marketing message in itself. You let people know last days to ship, get it in before we close off shipping, do to do to do. It's a scarcity of time. You'll see those emails as well. So now what we're doing is we have a reason to talk to them because it's like last minute gifts. Last minute, last minute. Get it in time for Christmas. And then as a side note, you all should be planning the last day that you're available to ship. Some people will do the 14th, some people will do the 17th, but it's the last day to take orders so that ground shipping will get it to them by Christmas. You also, as a small business, don't have to guarantee it because they can't control USPS or the Canadian Post or wherever you are. Right. I know I keep mentioning Canada, but we have students in the UK and Australia, New Zealand, South America. Australia. I already said Australia. Asia. So no matter where you are, just know what's possible for you in your state, your city, your country, whatever you're doing. Okay, so now we've hit that cutoff date. Can't ship to you in time for Christmas anymore. And you might be thinking, well, what do I do? Well, you can take this idea that I gave to one of my collective students. I was coaching her yesterday. She said, jacqueline, I make custom one of a kind products. People get to pick what they want, their kids, clothes. They get to pick it up, pick it. They get to choose whether they want a ruffle or, or a pocket. And there's no way I could even participate in the Cyber5 because I can't put them on sale and then make them and ship them in time. So the strategy I gave her is a strategy I'm going to give you for even that last week, that week after cutoff ship dates and right before Christmas. And now if this sounds familiar to you, you can use it in other places too. That's when you get to sell gift cards. That's when you get to sell gift cards. Instant. Imagine you have, you're having a holiday dinner and your uncle tells you he's bringing his new girlfriend. Oops, I didn't get anything. And we're doing a gift exchange. Let me hop online and buy a gift card. So easy, it doesn't even ship. It's downloadable. So which if you're thinking, what do I get to sell after that cutoff ship date right up until Christmas. Gift cards. You even said it Christmas morning, forgot a gift buy gift card. That is another promotion. You get to create another thing. You get to sell. So that takes us through Christmas. And that is the rhythm, that is the plan. Now I Want to talk to you about a little bit about the beliefs you might be holding around this. You might be someone who overcomplicates things or procrastinates, but you're listening to this episode, and what we started with was keep it simple, seller. Keep it simple. One to two offers, max. The other thing I want you to really think about is you don't need more products. That's why we really lean into what you get to be known for and your bestsellers. And you don't need to discount everything if you choose not to. But this cyber weekend, good discounts are what are. What are going to drive sales. But what you really need is a plan. What you really need is a rhythm. What you really need is support. When you have that and you. You pair it with focus. You pair it with strategy. You pair it with support, that's when you become unstoppable. And that's what I teach my students year over year over year. You do not have to guess anymore. You get to lead. You get to run a business like a real business owner. You get to step into ownership of everything that you want to create. I want you to think about this mantra, okay? The product boss who plans wins. And we're still early enough in the season that if you're creating a plan now, you get to win. This year is not going to be more about scrambling and flying by the seat of your pants. You get to say, I'm gonna sell with strategy. I'm gonna sell with a plan. I'm gonna sell with support. So, like I told you, I have this freebie download. It is the holiday sales playbook. Just click the link in the show notes. If this was really helpful to you, come over on Instagram, hang out with me. Let me know you heard the episode. Share with me what you think your promotion's gonna be. I'd love to hear that in the dm. So, my friends, I hope that this is supportive to you. Make sure you're listening to the show every single week. My students inside of the sales accelerator, my students inside of the collective, they get to be supported every week in their businesses. They get to be supported for themselves. Their businesses get to be supported, and they get to have strategy and a plan. And that's what I want for you. I want you to feel. Feel supported. So whether it's on the show or whether you take it a step further with me and join one of my programs, I cannot wait to see the results that you have. Because you started planning this early, you stuck to that plan, and you created it. I hope that this is your most profitable season yet. I'll see you in the next one.