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Preparing your business for Black Friday success starts early. And, it all begins with a solid list of ideas you can apply to your own business and more specifically, to your Black Friday marketing campaigns.
But don’t worry. You’re probably already used to the common Black Friday marketing tips you can find everywhere else. I promise you this is going to be a list of unique ideas (different from those I shared for Cyber Monday) and advice you can apply to drive more Black Friday digital product sales.
Note these actionable tips are tailored to the digital product space but can be adapted depending on the type of product you sell. But first, I want to clarify why Black Friday marketing is unique when it comes to selling digital products.
Black Friday 2023 saw a record $9.8 billion in online sales across the U.S., highlighting the growing importance of digital and online sales channels.
Globally, online sales surged by 8% year-over-year, reaching $70.9 billion, pointing to a strong shift towards e-commerce store interest. All this well before the holiday shopping season started. This growth significantly outpaced the modest 1.1% increase observed in traditional brick-and-mortar sales during the same period.
This included the digital space. Digital products include any item you can sell online without the mandatory need to physically ship the product. Examples include ebooks, online courses, software, and memberships.
Selling digital products offers a unique advantage during Black Friday due to their lack of inventory requirements, enabling sellers to avoid the costs and complexities associated with physical goods. Digital downloads are highly scalable, allowing businesses to sell unlimited copies without worrying about stock depletion.
Additionally, these products provide instant delivery, ensuring customers receive their purchases immediately, enhancing satisfaction, and encouraging impulse buys. This combination of factors makes selling digital products particularly attractive during the Black Friday rush, maximizing sales while reducing logistical challenges.
Let me show you how you can make the most out of your digital products this Black Friday.
These 19 savvy marketing tips for digital products are designed to optimize visibility, drive sales, upsell, try retargeting, or even experiment with cross-selling.
Tip 1: Host a Live Online Shopping Event
You can stand out by organizing an engaging live shopping event where you can showcase your digital products in real time. For instance, if you offer online courses, you can run live group sessions with LearnWorlds to showcase key lessons and student success stories.
Alternatively, consider providing exclusive discounts or coupons for attendees. If you sell digital art, on the other hand, a live painting session or tutorial on diverse techniques can work. This helps you build a community around your product and encourages participation to potentially drive immediate Black Friday digital product sales.
Tip 2: Bundling with a Twist
Offer unique product bundles that combine your digital product with a charitable donation or exclusive collaboration. This not only adds value but also fosters goodwill and a sense of community among your customers.
Humble Bundle has successfully implemented this strategy by offering bundles of digital content at a “pay-what-you-want” price. 5% of the proceeds go to charity and shoppers can choose how much of their payment goes to the game developers, the company, or various charities.
Tip 3: Consider Gamification for a Unique Customer Experience
Create an interactive game or quiz where participants can unlock bigger discounts or bonus content for your products. By gamifying the entire purchase experience (potentially even beyond the buying stage), you engage potential customers in a fun way and increase their excitement around the purchase.
Dropbox uses gamification to reward users with extra storage by completing tasks like inviting friends, linking social media platforms, or installing the app, encouraging deeper engagement with the platform’s features.
Tip 4: Surprise Offers Changing Every Hour
Roll out hourly surprise deals or “mystery discounts” to keep customers engaged throughout the day. This works best if you want to create a sense of urgency as it gets people to check back frequently to see what the new offer is.
Steam, the digital distribution platform for video games, used to organize “flash sales” and limited-time “mystery deals” that changed every few hours. These surprise discounts and gift cards were popular and well-received, as users now miss them.
Tip 5: Tiered Discounts for Loyalty
Offer increasing discounts or exclusive bonuses for returning customers or VIP members. You can consider setting up points-based rewards, launching VIP memberships, establishing spending milestones, or providing subscription discounts to loyal customers and brand fans.
The University of Sussex, for example, offers a 20% discount for their alumni as an incentive for one really good Black Friday marketing strategy:
Tip 6: Early Access with Contests
Run a pre-Black Friday contest where winners gain early access to your sale and additional discounts. Consider social media challenges on Instagram or TikTok, encouraging your community to share photos of your product with a specific hashtag for a chance to win early access to your Black Friday offers.
Or you could run contests through Black Friday email sign-ups, referrals, trivia, or exclusive previews to reward participants with special discounts and create excitement around your upcoming deals.
Tip 7: Personalized Black Friday Promotions via AI
Use AI to send personalized Black Friday deals based on browsing history, past purchases, or user experience behavior. You can also use artificial intelligence to analyze customer data from multiple sources, segment audiences, implement dynamic product recommendations, use chatbots for real-time assistance, and more!
Tip 8: Create a Limited Edition Digital Product
Offer a special, Black Friday-only version of your digital product, such as an exclusive module, ebook chapter, or course. This course creator, for instance, sells an offline version of their game development course:
Tip 9: Time-Limited Access to Premium Content
Give customers free or discounted access to premium content (like a course or membership) for a limited period (24-48 hours). I like relying on exclusive content (such as a downloadable gift guide, templates, or tutorials) for this since I feel it adds more value. Other options include flash sales, a countdown timer, or exclusive trials.
Tip 10: Offer a “Pay What You Want” Option
Let buyers choose their price within a certain range. This often leads to higher engagement and surprise purchases. To run safe “Pay What You Want” campaigns, establish a minimum price that can at least cover your expenses. You’ll also want to be clear about why you’re offering this option. Is it because you want to build goodwill with your target audience, test a new product, or support a charitable cause?
Tip 11: Collaborate with Influencers
Partner with influencers to create limited-edition digital products or bonus content that’s only available during Black Friday. Now here’s how to do it differently this year:
Such strategies are guaranteed to get you noticed by your target audience and drive more traffic to your online store or school.
Tip 12: Cross-Promote with Other Creators
Another idea of working with an influencer or partner is to bundle your digital products with other creators’ offerings to deliver greater value and reach new audiences.
Audible has collaborated with authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Stephen King to promote their audiobooks. They offer exclusive content and discounts through social media promotions, leveraging the authors’ existing audiences to drive subscriptions.
Tip 13: Black Friday Treasure Hunt
Hide discount codes or special offers across your website, emails, and social media to create a digital scavenger hunt.
Think of this as a complex campaign that requires its own promotion strategy. Invite participants to join by visiting a dedicated landing page that outlines the rules, provides tips for success, and explains how to redeem their finds. Encourage engagement by offering prizes for early participants and promoting the hunt through email campaigns and social media posts.
Tip 14: Flash Freebies
Black Friday for books is a thing so why not go down this route? Offer limited-time, free gift digital products (such as short ebooks or mini-courses) for those who sign up or make a purchase within a set time frame.
Years ago I was lucky to receive one of the 2000 copies of the SEO Book for Beginners Ahrefs gave for free. Today, you can only buy this but the move was extraordinary for loyalizing users. In the course space, Amy Porterfield ran a Buy One Get One digital course offer on Black Friday during a 48-hour promo window that got them to hit 140% in their goal of promoting a program.
Tip 15: Charity-Driven Sales
Donate a percentage of Black Friday sales to a charity, encouraging buyers to shop with a purpose. Communicate the donation percentage clearly, and promote the initiative across marketing channels, encouraging buyers to shop with a purpose while making a positive impact.
Tip 16: Exclusive Subscription Upgrades
Hear me out. This is one of the most common marketing efforts but also one people are highly looking forward to: Offering an upgrade to premium or annual memberships with a Black Friday discount or bonus features.
This is something your customers are more likely waiting for as well. Tip: Create a bold message with strong yet simple visuals for your holiday sales offer like the example above and you are ready to go.
Tip 17: Crowdsource Black Friday Deals
Let your customers vote on which products will get the best discounts or exclusive bonuses. Ok, I’ve never seen this in practice myself but I think it’s a brilliant way to stand out and actually get a feel of what your target customers want. An easy starting point would be asking your audience if they want a specific discount on a course or product. You can also host a poll with product pages linked to it for faster results.
Tip 18: Create a Social Media Challenge
Launch a Black Friday-themed challenge where participants share content related to your brand for a chance to win exclusive deals or products. And you can do this at any time. For instance, I was a big fan of Canva’s Design Challenge from its first campaign. It’s not specific to Black Friday but Canva still organizes these roughly once a year and allows winners to get their hands on a free Canva Pro subscription or exclusive design assets.
Tip 19: Offer “Early Bird” Discounts for Email Subscribers
Give your email list or community members early access to Black Friday deals with additional perks. You can start these whenever. Two years ago, I received this email marketing campaign with sneak peeks of what was in store for the upcoming discount from the digital marketing course provider, Acadium, well ahead of Black Friday:
While you are at it, make sure you offer a quick and easy checkout process in your emails to help reduce abandoned cart rates. It’s a win-win!
💡Looking for more Black Friday promotion inspiration? We’ve prepared a list of the 55 best Black Friday marketing ideas. Find them here.
So this is it! These are the ultimate best Black Friday marketing tips you need to drive success, foster growth, and boost your sales this year!
Here’s a quick recap of the learnings from this resource:
Ready to do more this Black Friday without the extra effort?
Come up with your own holiday marketing strategy for this big event and make use of our versatile platform packed with powerful tools for course building, popup creation, marketing automation, and secure payment processing.
Try LearnWorlds today to elevate your sales strategy and run successful course promotions tailored for digital creators!
Further reading for Your Online School’s Black Friday marketing:
Alexandra Cote
Alexandra Cote is a SaaS growth marketer and online instructor who's worked with dozens of brands in the MarTech, HR tech, and productivity space. She's also a strong supporter of staying happy at work and choosing a healthy career path.
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