As a service business, WTF should I be doing for Black Friday?

Oct 22

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

Feeling confused about Black Friday? Wondering if you should jump on the bandwagon or sit this one out? Or maybe Small Business Saturday is a better option? And if you do an offer, should you use ads to promote it?! Don't worry, I've got you covered. Pour yourself a cuppa and let's dive into the world of Black Friday for service-based businesses.

Here's what we're sipping on today:

The great debate: To Black Friday or not to Black Friday? 🤔
Should you discount (and by how much?!)
Selling high ticket for Black Friday without devaluing your time
Should you use ads to promote your offer? (Spoiler: It depends!)

Whether you're planning to offer a cheeky discount, add some irresistible value, or launch a limited-time offer, this episode will give you the confidence to create a Black Friday campaign that's as enticing as a perfectly brewed cuppa on a chilly autumnal morning.

Ready to turn your Black Friday from meh to magnificent? Let's dive in! 🦁

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.

The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.

Okay, let's jump in. 

Hello, welcome to this week's episode. So this week we are talking all about black Friday. Now on the day, this comes out, we're about five weeks, just under five weeks away from black Friday. So this year it's on Friday, the [00:01:00] 29th of November, which is actually quite late because my daughter's birthday is the 25th of November. 

And often it's much closer to her birthday. Or this year, it's just a little bit later, which is fine by me. 

I always like a little bit extra time to prep. So, what I'm going to be talking about in this episode is as a service provider, Should you be doing black Friday or not? And if you are going to do it, should you be using ads? I'm also going to talk about some alternatives. if you don't want to do black Friday. And then if you are do it, we're really going to dig into. How do you price your offer? 

How do you sell it? Should you be adding value? Should you be taking money off? Should you be discounting your high ticket offers? Low ticket offers, mid ticket offers. How do we do black Friday without totally devaluing our time but also not putting a load of effort into, to creating an offer a Navy buyer. I'm taking advantage really of the fact that people are really open and are looking to spend money at this time of year. And then finally we'll really dig into should you use ads or not to promote your offer and if you do, [00:02:00] what kind of ads should we be using?

So let's first start with, should you do black Friday or not? Now this episode, just really clearly. I'm just going to focus on service providers because to be honest, it's totally different. 

If you're talking about e-com. So I'm very much talking about service providers who offer either done for you done with you. Do it yourself. Course creators. Anyone that doesn't have a physical product that you're sending out. Should you do it or not? 

Well, that's a really good question. Isn't it? I totally get that. Some people just fundamentally don't like black Friday and I do get it. It's hugely competitive. Often people aren't offering genuine discounts, especially when you look into more of like the e-comm and the big, big businesses where they're just trying to shift old stock. 

And there's not really huge discounts anymore. It's very, very commercial and I get it. If you don't want to do it, if you don't think it aligns with your brand, if you don't think it aligns with your values and if you don't think your customers are going to be like, oh my God. They should definitely be doing black Friday, then don't do it. 

I'm totally not here for you doing something just because, you feel like you need to jump on a [00:03:00] bandwagon. And the worst thing you can do. Is think I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. It's not for me. And then get like two days out and be like, oh my God, I'm feeling all the pressure. 

Like, I really feel like I should be doing it. I'm just going to throw an offer out there if you're going to do it, commit to doing it and make a plan. Because it's really competitive. And if you just Chuck an offer out there, the likelihood is, is not going to land in the way you wanted to, but if you don't want to do it, that's fine. 

Now there are some alternatives. There is a small business Saturday, which I think is the Saturday after black Friday. Maybe not the day after black Friday, but the one after that, I think. There's also colorful Friday, which is something Holly Tucker started. Which is much more about, celebrating small businesses and it doesn't necessarily then have to be a huge offer. 

So, if you didn't want to do like pure black Friday, you wanted to do something that really aligned with being more of a small business. Still do discount potentially still add additional value, whatever it is. We'll talk about that in a minute. But maybe align yourself with more of a small business movement that can work really well. 

But if you've decided that you're just [00:04:00] absolutely not doing anything, there will be no discounts. There'll be nothing. You're just going to. Continue to sell your fast normal, which is obviously totally fine. But whatever you decide, whether you're doing black Friday, Colorful Friday. Small business Saturday. Or you're not doing anything at all. The one thing I would really, really encourage you to do, maybe not yet, but probably like early November. Is to tell your audience, now if you are doing something, you can start building up. 

So you can start doing teasers and, sharing behind the scenes of what you're doing and what might be coming up and to get them excited, sharing dates, maybe if, when you're going to start the discounts, that sort of thing. And if you're not doing it, it's just as important to tell them. 

And the reason is that over the next sort of three to four weeks, 

You might find that sales slow or people aren't buying because they're waiting to see if you're going to do a discount. Now, this is probably more pronounced on econ, however you probably know from your own behavior, what you're looking at at the moment, like I'm looking at buying some things, my kids for Christmas and already I might that might be a black Friday thing. 

Or probably just wait a few weeks and see if it [00:05:00] goes in. And if it doesn't, that's fine, I'll buy it. And if it does then great. . They have a discount. So I think really starting to think about like, how can you take your audience on this journey with you? How can you share with them, whether you are going to be doing what you're going to be doing, 

you don't have to give them the exact thing like, oh, and you know, Thursday, the 28th, I'm going to be launching a 30% discount. But I would just let them know that you will be doing a black Friday discount and kind of doing the buildup. So that they start to know what's going to come, because what you don't want to do is for people to wait and wait and wait. 

And actually then if you're not doing any kind of discount, they may as well just buy now and you can encourage them to buy now. And you can encourage them to buy it now, like don't wait for black Friday, buy it now because I'm not going to be discounting. So I would just say that's probably my biggest tip is to take your audience along with you. Maybe not quite yet, but semi from like the beginning of November. 

Let's then get into, if you are going to do it, I'm going to just talk about black Friday, but it's kind of the same for colorful Friday or small business Saturday, whatever it is you're going to do. But if you're going to do some kind of discount. What is it that you need to be thinking about now? 

[00:06:00] For me, there are a few different types of offers that we need to think about. And how we do them. 

So the first place we're going to start is. There were three options, really? When it comes to black Friday. You've got discount. So decrease the price. Add value. So add some kind of additional incentive to buy over black Friday. All launched something new at that is maybe limited in value that you don't offer any other time of the year, that sort of thing. 

And now I've bought from all of these different types of offers. I'll give you a little bit of insight as well, because I love buying a black Friday. That's probably a nice surprise to those of you that listened to the podcast often because you know that I'm also loving toxic by ads. 

I'm just, I'm just a really great consumer. For small businesses. Let's start with decreasing the price. I would only ever really advocate, decreasing the price on something. That doesn't involve your time directly. I don't really believe in discounting high ticket offers. Where you are giving a lot of time is high touch. So for example my mastermind [00:07:00] or working with me one-to-one or me doing ads management for you. 

I wouldn't ever discount those for black Friday. Partly because they're not high volume offers, so they're not that I'm going to try and get loads and loads of people. And so therefore discount kind of makes sense because although I'm losing a bit of money on the discount and kind of making up for in the volume. It isn't going to happen with any of those offers. The second thing is it's my time. 

I wouldn't ever advocate for you to discount something that is a high input of your time. So for example like my mastermind mini mind working with me one-to-one and training with ads or if I do ads for you so my management, I wouldn't ever discount those in a black Friday sale. 

Partly because I only have a limited amount of time and therefore I can only take on a certain amount of clients. And I'm not looking for high volume for these offers. So really if you're discounting I guess the premise is you take an amount of money off, but you sell more volumes. 

So overall your revenue still grows. If I only have a limited amount of spots for those sort of high [00:08:00] touch offers where it's a lot of my time. If I discount it, I'm just going to earn less, but I'm still gonna have to put in the same amount of work. So I don't have advocate my clients. I don't for myself ever discount. 

The high ticket offers. What I will do is add additional value. And I'll talk about that in a minute. Oh, I would look at discounting and what my clients often discount is their scalable offers. So something that doesn't involve your time directly being impacted. 

So for example, my audience builder course is 1 9, 7, normally. Last black Friday, I did actually launch it last black Friday. So it was a new offer, but I launched it at 97 pounds. I talk to my head. I think I did it for about 48 hours, or I offered it for 97 pounds. So it was 50% off. 

So it was a really, really big discount. It really enticing, but I said quite few. And therefore the discount overall didn't impact like the revenue. So if you've got a scalable offer that you can add more people into That doesn't impact your time and overall would grow your revenue. 

If you've got more people into [00:09:00] it. Certainly for black Friday, but potentially then longer term. So things like memberships. Offering, one pound for your first month is a good incentive for membership because you've then got the recurring revenue going forward or even 50% off your first month. Anything like that really? 

Now, before we move on to looking at how you might add value as an alternative to discounting. I just want to address this idea of like, how much should I be discounting? No, it's really hard to say. It's really hard to kind of give a blanket amount. 

I was talking to an e-comm specialist last week. And she was saying that the kind of accepted. Benchmark for e-com is that kind of minimum 30%. If you're not offering 30%, you're going to really struggle to cut through and stand out and compete against the other brands. With service providers. As far as I can see, there's not like a standard percentage and that's because there's not such standardized offers. If you're buying I don't know, a candle, you can really compare like the different qualities of the candle and the price with more service-based offers. I think it's a lot more challenging to give like a [00:10:00] standard percentage that you have to give off. 

With service providers, it's a lot more challenging to give like a standardized discount. What I would say is it needs to be above and beyond what you might normally give. So if you give 10% off to every new email subscriber, it needs to be more than that. If in your maybe in your last birthday sale, if you have some kind of sale or the rest of the time of the year, have a look at that, did it work? 

Did it get enough people in that would be your minimum and then potentially you might look at adding a little bit of an extra discount as well. Because you really know that everybody is going to be discounting. , so when I did my birthday sale in July it was just for my birthday. 

I wasn't necessarily really competing with anybody else offering sales and therefore it was quite enticing to people who wanted the ad scores because mine was on cheaper versus maybe other ones. However it black Friday, if everybody is discounting, you need to make sure you're really competitive. 

So I would be really looking at a sizable discount. I would say again, I, 30% is probably a good benchmark, but I do feel like sometimes we can go [00:11:00] up to, I think, like 50%. Especially if it's not actually impacting your time, obviously with e-comm, you've got like the base cost of the actual item. The service providers often , if we have got a truly scalable course, there's actually very, very little cost involved. 

And therefore you do have a little bit more wiggle room in terms of the discount. So I would just be thinking like, what would make it a total steal for your clients without it being so cheap that it kind of devalues the product. And that really depends on where it is. If it's a regionally in a 30 pound product. Versus a 200 pound products, that's going to be. Different , in terms of percentage. 

But I would be thinking about how can I make this really exciting for people to , jump into. So that's discounting key principles are only really do it on , scalable offers that don't impact your time and give a discount that is really exciting for your audience and that maybe you haven't done before, or you wouldn't replicate very often so that it feels like a real exciting opportunity for them to jump in.

Now let's look at adding [00:12:00] value. So adding value, it would look like adding something extra to your offer. Now for this one, yes. You could do it on your scalable offer. So for my audience builder course, when I did my sale in July for my birthday. I didn't discount the price, the baseline price of the course, but I did add on additional resources. 

So I added on access to group calls with me for four months. And I also added on my lighthearted lead gen toolkit as well. The actual value of the ad-ons were more than the price of the course. So they've got a lot of additional value that they wouldn't normally get if they just bought it normally. 

And I really liked doing additional value, especially when I feel like it helps them complete or access the original offer even more. So with the audience builder calls, they then have access to the calls, which is going to help them actually ask questions and implement and get my advice and get their eyes on the ads and make sure that they actually get great ads up and running. And then the lightheartedly gentle care is is chat GPT prompts to help them write, copy. It's a whole module on [00:13:00] doing a great lead magnet that is going to appeal to a cold audience. 

If you're doing. Ads to grow your email list and it's a plug and play welcome sequence. So it actually. Not only is it going to help them get the ads up and running and support them that way, but also with the toolkit, it allows them to get even better quality leads as well. So overall, the additional value. Really improved the offering. 

What I would say is just, making sure that the value that you are offering. Really aligns to the original offer. So what you don't really want to do is offer two totally separate things that don't connect or align with each other. And in the same way how much should you discount? If you're only going to offer 10%, it's probably not going to cut through a black Friday and really make people be like, oh my God. Right. I got to get that. Similar sort of way. 

If you're adding something as a value add, if you're just going to add something, let's say so mine is a 1 9 7. Is that for the course? If you're going to add something that's worth. 20 pounds. It's probably not going to be like, oh my God, I must buy it now. Otherwise I'm going to miss [00:14:00] out on this extra value. 

That's worth 20 pounds. For me, the additional value was worth over the price of the actual course. So that was like, oh my God, I. , really want to get all this. I'm saving quite a lot of money here. 

I would be thinking about how can I make the value. But I'm adding either in monetary terms, you're like, oh wow. That's a really great saving. Or adding something that is exclusive and gives them more access to you. I wouldn't probably do this for a truly scalable offer because we're really going for volume. 

But if you have a mid ticket or a high ticket offer that you want to use in black Friday and you want to sell it by adding additional value, which I would recommend in a lot of situations. You could add in something that is. An exclusive opportunity to have more time with you. And obviously that becomes worthwhile because you're not selling a huge amount and it does impact your diary, but it's kind of worth it because it's that middle high ticket offer. So for example I mean the most obvious one is to add an additional one-to-one call with [00:15:00] you. 

So let's just say I'm not actually putting any of my high ticket offers in black Friday, but let's just say I was selling my one-to-one. Two months add training, which is called raw. That is 3000 pounds for eight weeks. So if I was selling that in black Friday, what I could add on as value would be An additional strategy call with me maybe after we finished. 

Cause they already get a strategy call when they sign up and then they get fortnightly calls with me. So an additional value add might be an additional call once we finished eight weeks so that they know they have their future support. It could be, maybe I offer three months support. So 12 weeks support instead of eight weeks support. 

So they get an extra month of my support for free. It could be that I offer a day with me, a one-to-one day on like slack or something, like an online day. To be used whenever they want to go deep dive into the ads. Potentially after we worked together. Or depending on how many I thought I might sell. Let's say I was thinking I [00:16:00] want aimed salad four or five of these. I could offer like a group coaching day or a online mastermind day or a slack day where they come in and they get like planning support, maybe like a Q1 planning day. It leaves the things I could add. Which involve more of my time, more of their interaction with me. 

I'm more of my kind of insight and focus on their business. That would be a really great value add for more of that mid or high ticket offer. 

And those are probably the ones that when I'm looking at black Friday, I'm likely to buy into , how do I get more time? With the person they really want to work with, because it feels like I'm then really getting that additional value from that person. And then finally I would be looking at whether you have a limited time offer or a new offer that you want to launch. 

So, for example, you could offer things like a VIP day on Voxer or slack or telegram or whatever you use. And you could say I've got five of these I'm going to offer in Q1. You could offer 90 minutes, deep dive sessions. If you don't do them already, you could open them up. You don't necessarily have to have a [00:17:00] discount price if you don't normally offer it, but you could have like a lower price. 

You could run an in-person event in January and open up the tickets and like sell it on black Friday for like a lower cost initially. So anything really where it's a one-off thing. You're just going to sell it for black Friday. So there's no other opportunity to get it. I mean, you might sell it after black Friday, but it's for a limited amount. 

So that stack 10 people, it's going to be an in-person day. I'm selling on black Friday for this cost, and then I'm going forward. I'll sell it for a higher cost or something like that. Anything really, that's got a limited amount of people that you're going to have a limited offer. Maybe you want to test an offer out like you haven't ever done a VIP day before, so maybe you want to sell that and see how it sells. That's another really great option for black Friday of being able to limit the number of people. 

Then it creates exclusivity and that incentive to buy over black Friday. So that's my thoughts on discounts adding value and launching. A limited time offer. 

So the big question then is, well, how are you going [00:18:00] to sell it? Should you be running ads? Now I'll just say really upfront. And really clearly, if you're not currently running ads do not run ads on black Friday. 

Black Friday is already a really, really congested time. Big businesses will be spending huge amounts of money. So suddenly there will be a lot more competition. In the ads. So you have to spend more to reach the same amount of people, just because there's just a lot more ads going out there. 

So, unless you've already run ads and established your audience, Facebook knows who it's targeting. You've built up a nice warm audience. I would not be running ads over black Friday. Use your organic. , the reason why you're doing a discount, adding value, you know, launching something for a limited amount of people is to entice people, to buy your best bat is to offer that to people who already know who you are, what you offer, and maybe even considering working with you. 

And they're just waiting for the right time. Activate your current audience. Go on email, go on your social media, do Instagram lives be really visible. Promote it and get those people organically. And absolutely you will [00:19:00] need to be really visible. 

Lobby so many other people doing organic as well. You will absolutely have to be really, really focused. So get out there organically. And sell it to those people who already know you and following you and have bought into what you offer. If you are already running ads and you have been running ads for a while, you think Facebook knows who you are. Speaking to. Then absolutely run ads. I did initially be looking at your warm audience. Depending on your budget, I'd probably start by looking at your warm audience. 

So, how do I get this in front of people who already know who I am So it's going to really support your organic content. And your organic marketing approach. 

These ads are then going to just push this offer in front of people who already know who you are. It's an additional opportunity to get that offer in front of them. 

Now, if you're wanting to sell, go for sales ads, a KC use a sales objective. Get people on that sales page and really, really make sure that you're optimizing that sales page. 

It's got to be really speak to the ideal client. You know, optimizing that sales page is going to be key. I keep an eye on those ads. If you're getting people on the landing [00:20:00] page, on the sales page and they're not buying. That's really gonna indicate to you that you need to review that sales page and tweak it and keep refining it until you start getting those sales. Now if you have enough of a budget and very hard to say, what is enough of a budget, Sophie? I mean probably a minimum of 15 to 20 pounds a day. Then you can go cold, go out to cold people, especially if it's a discount on a scalable offer where it's going to be relatively low cost. 

I wouldn't recommend going out cold for a mid or high ticket offer where you're adding additional value. The reason why the additional value is of benefit is because people know you and they trust you and they want your eyes on that business. If you're going up to someone cold and they don't know you as much more of energy on their part, then get to know you. 

Who are you? Should I trust you? It's quite a lot of money. Do I want the value add? If you're going cold audience with your ads, go for that scalable offer. Go for the discount. And try and go for that volume. That's the offer. That's going to be the easiest to sale on ads, but you are still going to need a really, really good sales page. To convert those [00:21:00] cold people really quickly in kind of this busy black Friday period.

So in summary. Discounts on scalable offers that don't impact your time and energy. Ideally around the lake, 30 to 50% mark. Add value, but make sure the add the value is either worth money wise, like really significant, or you get all, they get access to you and you are comfortable with the amount that you might sell and that it's not going to overload you and burn you out. 

If you offer too many and then have hundreds of calls in your diary. Or add something that's really limited something new, something exciting. And sell that for black Friday so that people who are already, even in your world and already your clients might also then have opportunity to buy from you as well. Don't use ads. 

If you haven't used them before. Or even if you're just kind of running like, three to five pounds a day, don't run them. Okay. Just focus organically. If you are going to run them. Start with retargeting your warm audience and then if you want to go for cold. Go for cold. Go for sales. But focus on your scalable [00:22:00] offer so that you can really go for volume as well. 

And I think the last thing I say is in terms of timings. So obviously black Friday is the Friday. Generally my clients will go from Wednesday through to the Monday or Tuesday after. You can go from Monday to Monday. That is quite common. 

That whole week will be full of black Friday. It. It's really up to you, how early you want to go. But yeah, I would go somewhere between the Monday and Wednesday before black Friday. Over to the Monday afterwards, which I think is called cyber Monday, but that's really such a thing anymore. Considering pretty much all businesses are online. So, yes, that would be my advice on timings. I hate that has been really helpful. 

It's a really, really busy time of year. And if there is one thing I could say is just focus on one offer. So choose one, whether it's the discount, the value, or there's something new. Pick one and just really go for it. Be really clear, be really specific and focused in your messaging. Tell your customers and clients, what you're doing in the run-up didn't have to would be all the details, but just let them know something's coming. And roughly , if [00:23:00] they might be interested, you've got this type of person. 

If this is your problem at the moment, then make sure you keep an eye out, all that sort of stuff. Lovely behind the scenes stuff, on stories, all that great stuff. And then really commit to it and go for it over that kind of seven to 10 days. And that will be where your sales come from. So I hope that was really useful. And I will look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.

Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.