How to boss Black Friday

In 2021, customers spent $8.9 billion online on Black Friday, $21 billion on Small Business Saturday, and $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday – and that's just in the US. Wherever you are in the world, you can bring the Black Friday rush straight to your business this year if you play your cards right.

Here's our step-by-step guide to turning Black Friday weekend into a win. 

Pile on the deals

Use these ideas to create irresistible offers for your clients:

Gift cards – over 50% of items bought during the Black Friday Weekend are Christmas gifts for others. Factor this into your promotions, then take it up a notch by giving customers a reason to return to you for a pre-Christmas treatment. For example, buy a £75 gift card, and get a complimentary festive manicure or trim.

Subscription memberships – create bulk packages that give customers hefty discounts; for instance, 12 treatments for the price of 10. This kind of deal gives you a handy upfront payment and ensures return custom. It’s also perfect for self-gifting and gifts for others.

Top tip: with Fresha, you can set up Membership offers directly from your Business Settings.

Rewards for referrals – offer rewards to clients who refer a friend during Black Friday Weekend. It helps build loyalty and brings in business.

Offer bundles – pair under-performing products with more popular ones, showcased in a gift box or as a special gift package. For example, combine a £20 gift card with a 15% discount off a facial, or shampoo with 20% off a colour treatment.

Bargain baskets – some stock is harder to shift than others, so use Black Friday Weekend to get it moving. Find any low performing products and services, price them individually, and present them in an exclusive offers basket by your reception desk or as a feature in your window display.

Top tip: some ecommerce platforms let you track your sales by products and services. Fresha’s sales reports take this to another level, allowing you to filter by product, service, type, and date so you can spot trends, best sellers, and under-performers in an instant. Use it to identify which products you could put on offer for Black Friday Weekend.

Perfect your presentation

This is how you make sure your Black Friday offers are a cut above the competition.

Get visual – build up the Black Friday Weekend buzz by compiling a visual gift guide that makes your offers irresistible. Apps like Canva and PhotoRoom can help you create professional sales imagery instantly, allowing you to customise sales templates with your own photography and messaging, ready to download, print and post to your social channels and website in just a few taps.

Add a sense of urgency – when you’re prepping your visuals, think about the language you use. You could just stick to simple statements like ’Black Friday Sale’ or could ramp up the excitement with language that compels customers to act now or miss out. Phrases like ‘Exclusive offer’, ‘Black Friday Weekend Special’, and ‘Limited time only’ can work a treat.

Pick the perfect location – think carefully about where to position your offers and accompanying signage. Which areas are best suited to catching your customers’ eyes: in the window, by your reception desk, on your Fresha storefront, your website, your social?

Launch early

Everyone loves an early-bird offer, so why not kick off Black Friday Weekend by launching a sale preview that begins on Thursday 24th? It adds a sense of exclusivity and there’s nothing like getting in early to beat the competition.

Plan your communications

You can go all in on one marketing campaign, or run several – but whatever you decide to do, start as early as possible.

Paid ads and posts – Google ads, social campaigns, and boosted posts are a low-cost, surefire way to get your offers in front of your target audience fast. Google, Facebook, Instagram and other paid options have created set-up wizards that walk you through the process, making advertising super easy to put in place. Set your budget, create your ads and let the algorithms do the rest.

Text messages – send texts to clients that tell them exactly what you’re doing for Black Friday Weekend and any codes they’ll need to access discounts and special offers. Not sure how to do it? Fresha’s Blast Campaigns make it easy.

Email – Black Friday Weekend is one of those times in the retail calendar year that customers are actively seeking out bargain notifications. Give them what they’re looking for, and drive more email sign-ups by promoting sale preview access via your social media.  

Social media – upsell your deals and discount codes on social and on your online platforms, but consider building extra anticipation by adding a countdown to your social media stories announcing when your Black Friday Weekend deals begin and what you’ll be offering.

Top tip: increase your reach by using hashtags #BlackFriday #SmallBusinessSaturday #BlackFridayWeekend #Offers

Now that you’re armed with our best marketing tips for Black Friday, there’s only one thing left to do: start planning!