Is Black Friday everything it’s cracked up to be?

The biggest sale weekend of the year for many retailers and internet marketers has just finished for 2022, and I want to give you my take on this crazy sale event that seems to amaze me every year.

When I started digital marketing in 2016, it was very evident that digital marketers from across the world would put a lot of effort into making Black Friday a success.

For us at Execute Digital, we had a record Black Friday weekend, creating more than $4million from the online products we sell for our clients. That’s right, $4million from selling digital-only products and online courses where the only overheads is a little time from the client, and the advertising costs.

While the urgency created around Black Friday can give you massive results for your brand and business, it’s not always a golden ticket to millions and here’s a few reasons why.

1/ Advertising Gets Super Expensive At Black Friday

With so many brands and companies putting together sale events, ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube sure can get expensive over the Black Friday period. Everyone is competing for the same attention online, and therefore your costs per click, and cost per acquisition definitely increase.

Many see this as a negative as they have to pay more to get more attention, but I see this as a massive opportunity.

See, if you have an amazing offer, and follow a specific plan for engaging your audience leading up to Black Friday, you’ll negate the increased ad spend with a much bigger result.

Many digital marketers and agencies focus incorrectly on ROI for ad spend, but this is a floored strategy especially during a sale event.

While it might stroke your ego to get a 5x, 10x ROI, if your ad spend is only $5,000 during the sale period, a $50k revenue isn’t going to move the needle for most people.

Instead, the ability to scale your advertising budget to tens of thousands of dollars a day, with a 2-3x ROI is going to have you smiling all the way to the bank. 

It takes some guts to spend over $100k in ads over one weekend, but it’s well worth it!

2/ Your Offer Blends Into Everyone Else’s

Now firstly, if you have an offer that just sucks, no one will buy it at the best of times… 

But the extra competition on Black Friday is for sure going to hurt you if you just have an average offer.

For example, if you’re selling a real estate investing course, chances are there are a stack of other people selling something similar to your audience too.

For us, your offer is everything come sale events. And if it’s not “sexy” enough, if people aren’t shocked at how good your offer is with all the value you are adding, (not neccesarily discounting the price), you aren’t going to win at Black Friday.

One of our partners for example, actually DOUBLED the price of their course at Black Friday, but stacked the value so high, the perceived benefits of paying more for WAY more, was enough to get this client an all time high result for their online course.

3/ You Didn’t Hit People Enough

One thing my advertising manager screams at us nearly every day is, “I need more assets”.

If you think doing one video and 2 promotional call to action posts is going to be enough to get you a result on Black Friday, you are absolutely kidding yourself.

All sale campaigns and launch campaigns require meticulous planning on your asset creation side.

They take hundreds of pieces of assets, videos, call to actions, carousels, emails, text messages, posts, stories and loads more to get the result you’re after.

We like to create over 250 variations of Facebook and instagram ads alone to give you an example.

Without a team of people behind you, you can’t do this yourself.

4/ Not Preparing Early Enough

Black Friday isn’t something you just put together a few weeks out, create a landing page, put a few ads together and say your prayers.

I’m a firm believer that the strategy and plan has to be in play at least 3 months prior to Black Friday to get massive results.

We all know it takes people a long time to make purchasing decisions, that’s why using a 12 week campaign that includes awareness, brand building and expectation is the key to winning.

In closing, Black Friday was and for many years to come will be, a complete cash cow for course creators. The key is to do it right, avoid these common mistakes, and be ready to spend your advertising dollars and then some.

And yes, myself and the entire team take a well earned vacation the week after Black Friday weekend. 

Work hard, play hard, love what you do!

Dave Benson