Black Friday.
It's the day that we all hang around in crowds to get the best deal. Right?
Well,
it's safe to say that shopping in crowds may become an outdated idea really
fast. According to CNN,
Black Friday is losing its relevance more and more for two reasons.
One is that retailers are spreading out their deals over a couple of days and
not just running them on one day and, two, people are shopping online.
So if you're a small business owner and you're here because you want to take
advantage of the next Black Friday or Cyber Monday,
and you want to use Instagram as a way to funnel sales over to your business,
then you're in the right place because in today's video,
I'm sharing with you Black Friday strategy on how you can really kill
it in your next promotion,
as well as Instagram content ideas to really amp up the sales during your
promotion. And stay tuned until the end,
where I'll share specific Instagram Story content ideas so that you can get
started planning your next promotion today.
What I'm about to share with you has worked for my student who has sold over
$4,000 using some of these prompts. I'm Elise Darma,
and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
and creatives like yourself use Instagram to actually drive sales back to
your business. And today I'm sharing strategies for your next promotion,
including Instagram content ideas that you can use with it.
So before we dive into the strategies of your next promotion,
whether it's for Black Friday or Cyber Monday,
I just want to reiterate why we're here. The data is clear: in 2019,
Black Friday sales broke all records reaching
$7.4 billion in online sales.
So how can you get a small piece of that $7.4 billion pie?
That's what I'm going to cover next. First thing's first,
you need to decide on what your promotion is going to be exactly and how long
it's going to run for. In terms of your promotion, do you want to offer a sale?
A discount code? Do you want to bundle some of your products or offers together?
Do you want to create a new product or training that they'll only see if they
buy during this sale?
All those options I just listed are promotions I've run for either Black Friday
or another sale at any time in the year. And they do all work. Next,
you're going to have to decide the duration of your promotion.
Do you want to run it as a one day flash sale? Or,
do you want to spread it out over a few days?
The other thing to think about is if you do run your sale or promotion for
several days, how do you keep it interesting, right? The day you announce it,
it's going to be the most interesting, but on day two or three,
how do you continually show up and share a new message or a new angle
without burning your audience out? For my business,
I have run three Black Friday sales. The first one,
I just did a simple discount of 30 to 50% off my digital products
and courses.
That sale resulted in about $20 to $25K in extra revenue to the
business. The year after that,
I tried something different where I offered expiring bonuses. So again,
I put my course for sale,
but I also included extra bonuses that you got,
especially if you purchased on day one. So if you purchased on day one,
you got all the bonuses. And then one of the bonuses expired. Day two,
you would only get three of the four bonuses. Day three,
you would only get two of the four bonuses. So it was a big promotion,
as you can tell. Kind of confusing,
but because we offered so many bonuses on day one,
it really drove a lot of sales. And last year, what I did was again,
put my main course for sale.
But this time I set it at a rock bottom price,
it had never been so low. But there was a catch.
Every time a student enrolled,
the price of the course went up by $3.
So even though it started at something like $390, after student one purchased,
it was then $393 and then $396 and $399.
So it really drove urgency for people to buy quickly on day one,
because the longer they waited, the higher the price went.
When I look back on my Black Friday promotions,
they've all brought in anywhere between $25,000 and $40,000 in
extra revenue to the business.
So while I've tried a lot of things and some of them were more complicated than
others, at the end of the day, they were all worth it. Now,
as you're preparing for your promotion,
one key tip here is to optimize for mobile. Do not,
and I repeat, do not make it hard for people to pay you from their phone.
Any hiccups in the buying process when people are trying to check out on their
phone will result in you losing sales. In fact, in 2019,
Black Friday shopping was the biggest day for mobile shopping with
almost $3 billion in sales coming directly from smartphones. Alright.
So after you have decided what your promotion is going to be and how long you'll
run it for, the next thing is you need to execute.
So there are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to a promotion or a sale,
but for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to focus on Instagram.
How can you leverage your Instagram profile to get your sale or promotion out
there? Two things:
I like to preschedule all of my Instagram content before the sale starts
using one of my favorite tools called Later. So yes,
in advance of getting your Instagram content ready,
you're going to need things like graphics, copy, videos, gifts,
any promotional content that you're going to need to run your sale successfully.
You need to create and schedule it.
The next thing I like to do is change my bio. So once the sale drops,
I like to give my entire Instagram profile a makeover.
Here's an example of what I mean.
You can see that I even changed my profile picture to an image where I have
black lipstick on to, you know, ring in my Black Friday sale.
So take a look at my bio.
You can see that all it's focused on is the Black Friday promotion.
And once the sale ends,
I'm going to switch my bio back to its regular programming.
I know this can be a lot, especially if this is your first promotion,
but I hope that these tips have helped you get the wheels turning to make your
next promotion a huge success. Now,
I want to share with you some Instagram story ideas that you can use while
running your promotion so that you can get as many sales as possible.
And just a hint,
these story ideas are in the same format as the 800 ideas you get
with my product Story Vault. If you haven't checked out Story Vault,
I'll leave the link right below this video. So with these ideas,
I've divided them up into four categories, the categories being visibility,
engagement, lead generation, and sales. So let's start with visibility.
When you are getting ready for your sale or promotion,
you want to get as many eyes on your profile as possible.
So here's a story idea that you can use to do just that.
"Our three favorite Instagram accounts for [insert your niche] inspiration
are..." And then you're going to go ahead and find their handle name and tag
them in your Story. When you do this,
they get notified that you've tagged them and they can share your Story in their
Story giving you exposure to their audience. Next up is engagement.
So go ahead and use these Story ideas if you just want a little bit more
feedback and engagement from your current followers.
The first thing you can do here is actually tease your Black Friday campaign or
your next promotion, whatever it's going to be by showing a few sneak peeks,
or behind the scenes, at what you're working on.
You can even have your followers guess what you're working on by dropping in the
question sticker.
Another option here is to run a poll where you can ask your followers,
which team they're on, and the teams could be your products.
Maybe your two best sellers. So for example,
if you are in the essential oil business, you could ask your followers, "Hey,
are you team cinnamon or team peppermint?" and use the poll sticker to get
feedback from your audience. Next is lead generation.
So maybe your sale is almost here and you want to really build anticipation.
Maybe you want to build a list.
Here are some ideas to get leads for your promotion. Again,
you want to tease what's coming by sharing behind the scenes videos or photos of
what you're working on.
But this time you'll want to use the countdown sticker in your stories to let
people know the date and time of when this is dropping.
Another aspect of lead generation is talking more specifically about your
offers. So if you want to create leads,
one way to do this is to talk about your offer in three unique ways.
So if you're a product-based business,
you can share three ways to style your product.
If you're a service-based business,
you could share three ways why your service is different than others on the
market. And if you're a coach, you can share three ways to work smarter,
not harder to achieve your life goals.
The key here is to talk more specifically about what you offer,
but finish each Story with a call to action,
to either get on your waitlist or DM you for first access to what's coming up.
Lastly is sales. This is when your promotion has launched.
You want to be showing up in your Stories, talking about your promotion,
sharing testimonials, sharing product reviews, sharing happy DMs,
whatever it takes to be showing up and sharing that you're sale is on.
So while your sale is running, here are two ideas for your Stories.
"Who [your offer or your promotion] was specifically designed for." And then
go ahead and list out your main avatars.
"A big shout out to [go ahead and tag a customer's handle] who shared their
review of [your product or offer], check it out here."
Now you should be well equipped with ideas for your next promotion,
whether it's the strategy or your Instagram Stories.
If you liked the ideas for your Instagram Stories to really build up that
anticipation for your promotion and drive leads and sales,
then I think you're going to like Story Vault.
Story Vault is my answer to your question of, What do I post today?
I have written 800 Instagram Story ideas for your business,
all divided by business to business and business to consumer.
You get access to all 800 ideas.
And of course they're categorized by the seasons of business,
including visibility, engagement, lead generation and sales.
Head to StoryVault.co or I'll leave the link right below this video for you to
grab it today. To ease and revenue. I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for watching today's video on promotional strategy,
as well as Instagram content ideas. If you haven't yet,
go ahead and hit the subscribe button and the bell so that you don't miss any
future trainings just like this one.