The biggest sales event of the year in 2023 is fast approaching. It is time for your Etsy shop to get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). 2023 Black Friday is on the 24th of November, and Cyber Monday is on the 27th.
The quality of your BFCM campaign can either skyrocket your profit, or lose your potential sales to your competitors.
So how can you capture customer’s attention and convince them to buy from you during this big shopping event?
Here are 16 Black Friday promotion ideas for you to attract more customers and make more sales this shopping season:
Before we start, let's look at Etsy's home page during the promotion period:
Tiered discount is when a shop offers a higher discount for customers who spend more. It is used as an incentive for customers to buy more and save more.
The tiered discount can based on minimum spending amount or minimum number of items. For example, a minimum spending amount tiered discount can look like this:
Because customers may buy an extra item (that they otherwise wouldn’t) to take advantage of a higher discount, this strategy can increase the average spending of customers. In most cases, more items sold mean higher revenue and profit for your shop.
Black Friday Cyber Monday sale is the biggest sale event of the year, and many shoppers are looking to find deals they can’t find at other times of the year. To build up excitement for this event, you can offer larger discounts than you usually offer during the year, which can create a sense of urgency for shoppers to take advantage of them before it's too late.
It's a good idea to offer a higher percentage discount during BFCM. Many shops offer at least 20% discount:
Creating new products to launch during the Black Friday sales event is a good way to create extra buzz. I would recommend launching them after your sales announcement. This way, it gives you more opportunities to promote your sale.
Make sure to let your social media followers and email subscribers know about your product launch. It’s a good idea to emphasise that it’s a good idea to buy the new product during the BFCM sale so that they can save money.
A small free gift is a great way to surprise your customers and give them a memorable shopping experience. This makes them more likely to come back in the future for repeat purchase. When it’s sent out during Black Friday, they may be tempted to buy again during Christmas.
Here are some free gift ideas for your Etsy shop. It could be a sample of your best selling product (for example, a mini candle of your best-selling scent) or a complementary gift (for example, a pen for your handmade notebook).
The free gift doesn’t have to be big. Make sure it doesn’t overshadow your main product or cut into your profit too much.
Creating special BFCM product bundles is a great way to increase order size and generate more sales. They are also a good way to sell your less popular items. Usually bundles are offered at a discounted price compared to buying the items separately.
Two of the common ways to bundle your products together are: Bundle popular products with some less popular ones to move inventory, or bundle a product and its complementary products (like refills).
Before Black Friday, you can update the titles and tags of your best-selling listings to include related long-tail keywords. For example, you can include keywords like “Black Friday Sale”, “Cyber Monday Deal” and “BFCM Sale”.
This gives you opportunities to target shoppers looking for BFCM deals and show up on Etsy search for relevant keywords. Reaching more shoppers mean more chances to get sales.
Posting on social media platforms to announce your BFCM sale can create extra traction for your campaign. Don’t forget to use some relevant hashtags like #blackfridaysale and #cybermondaysale to reach more people.
Try to focus on the platform that you have found the more success in the past. During BFCM, the social media platforms become extremely competitive. It’s hard to experiment with new platforms that you don’t have a lot of followers on.
One of the ways to announce and create excitement for your BFCM sale is to create eye-catching posts. Creating them from scratch could be difficult, that’s why I’ve created some designs that you can copy and customise for your Etsy shop in minutes. You can find the design in the Etsy Holiday Promotion Guide.
Etsy ads are a great way to reach more holiday shoppers and make your products visible to the right audience. They are cheaper to run compared to Facebook ads and Google ads, especially during the BFCM period.
Etsy ads are pay-per-click, which means you only pay when a shopper click your ads and see your product listing. You can control the how much you spend on ads by changing the daily budget.
To read more about Etsy ads, click here to read this article.
Similar to the tiered discount mentioned earlier in this guide, offering free shipping over a certain spending threshold can increase the spending of customers. You can do so by setting up a sale on Etsy by choosing “Free Standard Shipping” in the “Discount amount” section:
It can also improve your shop’s conversion rate as shipping costs is one of the biggest reasons why shoppers abandon their shopping cart according to a study by The Baymard Institute.
Getting featured in popular Black Friday gift guides can be a game changer. Many magazines, bloggers and influencers look for handmade products to create gift guides to recommend to their followers.
Although getting on a gift guide can be highly competitive, it may still worth a shot to pitch your best products to publications. The best time frame to pitch is around mid-October to early-November. Keep your email or DM short - Focus on who your product is for and what makes it special.
If you have a blog or social media accounts with a decent following, you can create your own BFCM gift guide. This way, you can feature your product in a more personal and authentic way.
Other than including your own products, you can include other cool handmade products that serve a similar target customer. Just make sure they are not your direct competitors. For example, if you sell handmade bar soap, you can feature other Etsy sellers who make bathroom and self-care products, like bath salt, candles and essential oils.
When people think of influencers, they only think of big names that have over a million followers. It would be amazing to get featured on their feed, but getting them to notice your product is difficult.
A better way to get exposure for Etsy sellers like you, is to approach micro-influencers, which usually refers to accounts with around 1,000-50,000 followers. Although they may not be as big, their followers usually have more trust in their opinion.
One good way to have a chance to get featured by them is to send them free product. For Black Friday promotion, do that early to allow shipping time and time for the influencer to create quality content. Be sure to communicate with them beforehand and come to a mutually agreeable terms (e.g. free product in extra for a post on the main feed).
A social media contest or giveaway is a great way for brands to get new followers and increase engagement. The goal of it is to increase your reach on the platform. Usually you ask people to follow you, like and comment on the post to enter the giveaway.
However, this method is not perfect as running a giveaway could hurt your engagement rate in the long run. That is because your new followers (who follow you just because of the giveaway) may not interact with your content, and the lower engagement rate would decrease the reach of your content.
Creating Black Friday specific Etsy shop branding can help you visually communicate with shoppers that your shop is running a big sale. Not only that, a well put-together Etsy shop gives a professional first impression to shoppers. Some of the graphic assets you can create:
Donating to a charity that you and your target customers believe in can be for your Black Friday promotion. Doing so can improve your brand image in customers’ minds.
You can donate a percentage of their revenue during the Black Friday - Cyber Monday period. Usually it’s 5-10% of the earnings. Posting a receipt of your donation afterwards on social media or your Etsy shop update is a good idea.
This marketing strategy allows you to offer discount on specific products or category of products for a limited time, which can give your customers a sense of urgency to buy.
This is best used with email marketing or social media, as this will allow you to send out the daily deal to your customers at the time of offer. The daily deal can encourage your customers to return to your shop and shop for more products.
To set up your Black Friday sale on Etsy, go to your Dashboard and find “Sales & Discount” under “Marketing”.
You can choose to run a sale or create a promo code (coupon code). After clicking either of them, you can choose between a percentage discount or a fixed amount discount. Usually a percentage discount is better for lower priced items, and a fixed amount discount converts better for expensive items.
And then you can set an order minimum to qualify for the discount; it can either be a minimum order total or minimum number of items.
Yes. It is pretty common nowadays for online retailers, including Etsy sellers like you, to run Black Friday sale for more than one day. Some retailers offer their Black Friday deals for 4 days (Black Friday to Cyber Monday), but an increasing number of shops run BFCM promotion at least a week before Black Friday.
Running the sale for more than one day gives you more opportunities for promotion, and starting early has the added benefit of capturing shoppers looking for early Black Friday deals.
As mentioned, starting your Black Friday sale early can help your Etsy shop get ahead of competition and capture early sales. I would recommend begin your sale a week before Black Friday and extend it until Cyber Monday.
