7 ways to sell your course on Black Friday

Black Friday is a promotional opportunity course creators don’t want to miss. Everyone with an email inbox is aware that major businesses use Black Friday to bring in new customers, sell products, and connect with an existing customer base. But, just because you’re a small, online business owner doesn’t mean you can’t get a piece of the Black Friday pie, too. We’ve put together 7 tips to up your Black Friday course sales.

Black Friday is a crucial time of year to sell to your existing and potential customers because it’s a time when your audience is used to engaging with their favorite products and are excited about buying. What’s more, your audience has likely saved up for extra holiday spending and are ready to pull out their credit cards—for the right offer.

We know it’s a busy time of year, so we wanted to take something off your plate and put together a list of 7 fun Black Friday tips you can try with your audience this season. These seven tips can be used as-is, or you can give them your own special spin—as only you can! We can’t wait to hear how you use them!

1. Get a department-store-level rush on your sales page with a coupon

Go beyond a classic discount this Black Friday by using coupons and by building in some of the same excitement of a department-store rush into your Teachable school—you know, minus the bickering with other shoppers over that one last pair of shoes. But how do you build a frenzy around your course sales page, even though it’s not a brick-and-mortar store? With coupons.

Who should try it:

Running a discount with scarcity is a great strategy for Black Friday if your course is at a premium pricing point, and you do not normally run a lot of discounts throughout the year.

Offering one great discount a year lets your audience know you’re not devaluing your product, but rather that you’re trying to give them the best deal you can during an expensive time of year.

How to do it:

Create a coupon for the course you want to promote, and then mix and match the strategies below to create added buzz and excitement:

1. Tease your discount in advance to let your audience know a sale is coming—this’ll have them “waiting outside the door” when the sale goes live.
2. When creating your coupon, make only a limited number available and let your audience know they’re limited.
3. Add a countdown timer to your sales page to let people know when the discount will be available, or when it will expire (note: This isn’t a native functionality of Teachable sales pages—but you can embed a third party tool pretty easily. This one’s simple and free).
4. Ask your buyers to share their purchases on social media with a special hashtag and add screenshots of their posts to your sales page as social proof in real time as the sales come in.

2. Get “bundled up”

A bundle is a collection of two or more courses. Bundling courses is a great low-lift way to run a promotion on your Teachable school that’ll make old content feel fresh.

Who should try it:

If you have a few standalone courses already launched on your Teachable school and don’t have much time to create new content this season, this is the strategy for you.

How to do it:

Use Teachable’s native course bundling feature to create a special bundle of courses from your Teachable school that you’ve never sold together before. Set the price on your bundle so it’s a better deal than it would be if your audience bought the courses separately.

To make the deal a no-brainer, consider creating a seasonal theme for your bundle or creating some never-before-released bonus content to include in your bundle.

For example, if the courses in your school focus on personal finance, you might consider creating a bundle called “The Ultimate End-of-Year Personal Finance Toolkit,” and including an end-of-year personal financial health checklist. Even if the majority of content (your existing courses) isn’t new for the season, selling them in a new way can help your audience understand why now is a good time to buy.

3. Create the “group gift” of online course promotions

Making enough content to put together a compelling bundle for Black Friday is a lot of work, so consider a partner to contribute to your bundle.

Who should try it:

If our previous bundling tip sounded good to you, but the idea of making enough content to create a bundle sent you into a cold sweat, try teaming up instead. Teaming up with another creator gives you all the benefits of bundling but with the added bonus of helping you build your audience as you cross-promote with a partner.

How to do it:

Put together a list of other online course creators who would appeal to your audience and reach out to the creators asking them to build a special bundle that you’ll both promote to your audiences for Black Friday. Just like before, set up the bundle so that the final price is a better deal than buying the individual courses as stand-alones.

A couple of pro tips:

1. Your partner’s course doesn’t have to be in the exact same niche to be a good fit—it just has to also appeal to your audience or target audience. For example, if your courses are on fashion illustration, you might look for a course from an adjacent niche, like online makeup tutorials.
2. Not sure how to find other courses in your niche or an adjacent niche? Make your Googling a bit easier by typing “site: teachable.com” followed by the keyword you’re targeting.
3. As long as one of the schools is on a paid plan with Teachable, write to our support team for help transferring a course from one school to another to create the bundle easily.
4. Use Teachable’s native author tools to share revenue with the partner easily while you’re both promoting the course.

4. Add a ribbon to it

Adding bonus content to your course is like the virtual equivalent of tying a bow to the outside of a wrapped gift. Everyone loves the extra flair, and just like a ribbon, the bonus doesn’t have to be anything crazy in order to delight your audience.

Who should try it:

Adding a bonus is a great fit if you don’t want to run a discount. Whether it’s because you already offered a big discount this year or because you’re generally not a fan of sales, adding bonus content is another great option to favorably change the value-to-price ratio for your audience.

How to do it:

Up the value of your core offering by adding a special one-time bonus for Black Friday purchasers only. The bonus should be something small and thoughtful, like a PDF guide, a mini course, an extra video, or section in your course.

5. Give your audience a gift

‘Tis the season after all. Your audience will likely be shopping for gifts this Black Friday, so show them you care by giving them a gift instead.

Who should try it:

This is a great Black Friday tip for those who may not even have a course published yet but still want to tap into the Black Friday excitement and build their audience or drive traffic and engagement to a new course.

How to do it:

Drive traffic to your email list, sales page, or both this Black Friday with a giveaway. Choose a physical item you think your audience wants. For example, if your course is an intro to baking, a holiday cookie cutter kit would do the trick and would incentivize them to enter to win by buying your course, joining your email list, or referring a friend.

6. Check off your audience’s wish list

Try a content series that’s all about fulfilling your audience’s wishes.

Who should try it:

This is a good Black Friday tip for creators with an engaged audience who are looking to “give back” to their audience in a sea of sales emails or who may be preparing for a sale in the new year and don’t want to exhaust their audience with too many offers.

This is also a great fit for those thinking about developing a new course soon and want to test a few different types of content to see what resonates with their audience.

How to do it:

Go through all of your interactions with your audience—comments on your course lessons, comments and DMs in your social channels, notes from your email inbox, etc.—and make a “wish list” from your audience’s perspective of FAQs and requests. Then, create a content series just for them to address their “wishes” and share it on your social channels or via your newsletter throughout the Black Friday weekend.

7. Spend quality time with your audience

The end of the year is all about spending time together—and the same holds true for your audience. For this Black Friday tip, offer a limited number of a super high-value bonus—your time.

Who should try it:

This is a great Black Friday tip for those who want to offer a bonus without creating any new content. It will work especially well for those who are considering adding a coaching upsell to their business and want a test run.

How to do it:

Let your audience know that when they purchase during Black Friday only, they’ll be entered to win a limited number of hour-long, one-on-one coaching sessions with you in addition to their course purchase. You can choose the winners randomly or make it so the first five buyers win, the choice is yours. During your coaching calls, take the opportunity to get to know your audience even better.

{{schooltips-component="/blog-shortcodes/popups2"}}