It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiiime of the year! 🎶

That’s right...it’s time to prepare for Black Friday!

If you’re like me, you usually put it on the back burner until the week before it happens, and then you scramble to come up with something special to offer clients.

Well not this year, my friend!

This year you’re gonna be so prepared and profitable it’ll make your head spin - because today I’m gonna share how you can set your business up for some serious Black Friday cash-moolah to flow in.

The best part? All of these things can be done without needing to work harder behind the chair, pulling crazy hours, or spending a ton of time planning.

Here’s the deal: your clients and followers are gearing up to spend an average of $400 USD each this Black Friday...and you deserve a chunk of that spend!

Since the pandemic, people are spending more money than ever on online shopping.

And last year, beauty products sold faster than any other category of product, with a 46% boost in sales!

This is all great news for you...and you definitely want to cash in on that! So today I’m going to show you how.

Let’s get into it! Here are five ways to prep your beauty business for a profitable Black Friday/Cyber Monday!

#1: Plan out your promotions

Ahhhh Black Friday, the most insane day for sales of the year.

The mad dash to spend spend spend makes people go bonkers. And it’s the one time of year that you can offer crazy good deals and offers without feeling yucky and cheap, because people are looking for those deals!

However, you want to make sure that you’re not discounting your services or products in a way that hurts your pricing integrity. This can attract the wrong kind of client and cheapen your high-quality business rapport.

(To learn more about how to create irresistible promotions that don’t hurt your profits, check out my blog post on profitable promotions!)

Instead, here’s what you’re going to do for Black Friday. You’re going to plan out 4 different promotions:

1 that lasts one week, leading up to Black Friday
1 that is a Flash Sale, occuring on Black Friday
1 that is for Small Business Saturday - where you can partner with other businesses for a contest
And 1 for Cyber Monday.

Now, you can obviously feel free to keep it simple and just do one of these, but if you want to create lots of excitement, offering all four deals will definitely give you a mega boost in sales!

But what kind of things should you offer during this holiday? The big sellers for you will be gift cards or certificates, and retail products.

I’ll share more details about how to offer both of these, later on this post.

Here are the juicy details about each of the four promotions I want you to try out leading up to and happening on Black Friday!

A one-week event leading up to November 25th (Black Friday.) Maybe that’s a crazy good promotion on retail products, like BOGO (Buy One, Get One), or a little bonus gift for every retail product sale. Choose something popular to get your clients stoked to buy!
A 24-hour flash sale for Black Friday. This can be whatever you want, but make it juicy and fun. 20% off all retail products, a free gift card for services with any retail product purchase over $100...anything that you know your clients will love and go crazy for.
A Small Business Saturday event! This is a holiday that’s really taking off. Clients get a chance to support local small businesses, and you get to collaborate with fellow businesses in the beauty space. A really fun way to do this is to run a joint contest or giveaway with one or two small businesses. You can each contribute something small to a gift box or basket, and then promote your contest on Instagram. Because lots of businesses are participating, you can get so much more exposure with this event. It's a win-win, my friend.
Cyber Monday! This mega holiday is all about online sales, which we’ll talk about in a minute. What do you want to offer to boost online sales on Cyber Monday? Free shipping on all orders? A bonus pack of trial products with every order over $50? You get to decide! Think outside the box and get creative about how you can offer a deal and sell lots of retail or gift cards!

As with everything in your business, it's best to plan ahead. So please, start creating your Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday promotions today so you’re all ready for the madness when it hits.

#2: Get your content ready

Although I used to be a mega procrastinator, I now thrive on having all my promotional content planned weeks ahead of when I actually publish it. This will make your holiday promotions so much easier! So, what should you start working on?

First, photos! If you’ll be promoting certain retail products, gift packs, or gift cards, get photos done of them. You’ll also want some fun photos of you with these products, to make it more personal.

Plan out a photo session day, either with a friend or team members, or with a professional photographer, and make sure to write down ahead of time all the photos you want taken, so you’re ready. This way, you’ll have dozens of photos to use in your social posts, emails, and ads. You can get tips about setting up an amazing photoshoot here.

Next, plan out what kind of social posts you want to make! I like to open a Google Doc and brainstorm all the Reels, Stories, and fun posts I can make during a promotion.

The most effective promotions are videos where you show off your favourite products and gift cards available during Black Friday madness, so start brainstorming and filming some! They can be short and sweet, to the point and fun. Don't overthink it!

And last, pre-write some emails to your list! Your biggest buyers during this season will be existing clients, so be sure to reach out to them several times to tell them all the exciting stuff you’re offering.

#3: Set up gift cards or gift certificates

If you don’t have gift cards or gift certificates set up in your business yet, it's really time to get moving on that! Now’s the perfect time, because gift cards can boost your revenue by several thousand dollars over November and December. They’re one of the biggest sellers over the holidays!

If you want to keep it simple, you can sell gift certificates that are literally just printed pieces of paper with your signature on the back, and a gift certificate “number” you can double check with your own records to make sure it’s real. This allows you to verify who it’s for and what the dollar amount of each card is. You can design some really cute cards with Canva (for free!) and print them out for sale at your salon.

However - my favourite way to offer gift cards is digitally (hurray for saving the environment!)

If you use an app like Square for booking, you can sell plastic or digital gift cards that clients can purchase and use for in-person services or online retail product purchases.

Many other booking apps like Gloss Genius also let you sell gift cards to clients (and they're also super cute.)
To get ready for this big season, decide your game plan ahead of time for how you'll offer gift cards, and then come up with some fun promotions to offer!

One of the most profitable promos you can do is to offer a bonus $25 gift card for any purchase of a $100 gift card, for example. Those sell like crazy!

#4: Get ready to pump up retail sales

Your next step is to get ready for retail product sales this holiday season!

Many successful salons and spas have over 50% of their income from product sales.

Have you heard the phrase, "Survive on services, retire on products"?

It's 100% the truth.

So it’s time to get ready to sell a WHOLE lot of retail products this Black Friday!

Well, first up, check yourself: how do you feel about the retail products you have? Are you confident in how well they can sell? Do you know all of the benefits of each product really well, so that you can confidently promote them to clients?

(For a quick burst of mindset boost in selling confidence, check out this video from Daniela Woerner of Spa Marketing Made Easy here!)

Decide on which products you want to put a focus on this holiday season, and if you’ll be offering new products.

You can create some gift kits by bundling up a few of your favourite products, or put together some mini gift bags for every purchase over a certain $ amount spent.

Or maybe you want to create some extra spicy Black Friday buzz by offering some new products! Get in touch with your beauty distributor or supply store and see if they recommend anything new and exciting for you to try.

Remember: people want to spend money this Black Friday. Be confident, put together some cool and buzz-worthy packages, and watch them fly off your shelves.

#5: Build an online shop!

I saved my favourite for last, because I truly think that this is a game changer for Black Friday: having an online shop!

As I mentioned earlier, during the lockdowns of the pandemic, your clients started turning to online shopping more than ever before, and this is kind of the "new normal" for a lot of people now.

If you want to build a new revenue stream that can literally make you money while you’re sleeping, you need an online shop!

Check out my video here about how to set up an online shop, featuring a bunch of genius online marketers in the beauty space. Don't worry...it's soooo much easier than you're imagining - watch the video and get started today!

I love Square because it’s free and so easy to get a store set up in just a couple of days. And once your store is set up, you’re able to offer all these amazing promotions for retail products and gift cards to clients… all online!

To get more ideas of how to actually make sales online once you’ve got an online store, I’ve got an amazing video and blog post about that here.

Don't sleep on Black Friday madness - be prepared and ready to cash in!

Black Friday 2022 can be one for the books!

With a little bit of planning and some creativity, you can double your sales from last November.

People wanna shop; let them shop. And make sure they shop with you. Bring out your coolest promos, most popular retail packages, and every bit of personality you can muster, and blow your clients away.

Have fun, and enjoy all the extra revenue!

Xo,

Stephanie