If you’re a small business looking to end your business year with a bang, Black Friday is where it’s at. It doesn’t matter if you’re an established company that’s been running for years or if you just launched a new venture a couple of weeks ago; planning your Black Friday activities should start now.
As soon as September starts, everyone talks about fall, pumpkin spice lattes, sweaters, and upcoming holidays. It all makes sense because time does fly the last couple of months of the year.
So in case you’ve been postponing your marketing plans while everyone else was already knee-deep in preparing everything for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas holidays, we got you covered.
Here are 4 Black Friday contest ideas you can reuse in a heartbeat.
Pre-Black Friday Contest
Why wait for the actual Black Friday to start if you could start with the festivities earlier?
The genuinely successful merchants on Black Friday have one thing in common: they started marketing it weeks before. They don’t wait until the very last minute because they would get lost in the flood of Black Friday discounts.
So what’s the best way to get this show on the road without being too early for the Black Friday party?
Using a Prelaunch Waitlist to promote your Black Friday gifts!
Here’s what we recommend: Prepare a list of items you’re willing to give away with every purchase in your store. It doesn’t need to be something expensive; a small gift would do. For example — if you’re selling gym accessories, your gift could be a hair tie. Or a small towel.
Next, create a Prelaunch Waitlist people can sign up to before Black Friday. By signing up for this waitlist, they would enter a contest for the best gift with their Black Friday purchase.
The higher they would get on the waitlist, the better and more expensive the gift. Your customers would be able to move up the latter by sharing your contest among their friends.
And to make things even more exciting, add a countdown timer to your page as well that counts down to Black Friday! Ooooh, the suspense!
Discount Raffle with Email Opt-in Bribe
If the above contest sounds too complicated for you, here’s a simpler idea!
You can host a Discount Raffle using our Email Opt-in Bribe in the weeks leading to Black Friday! When your customers sign up for your email list, they will enter a raffle for Black Friday discounts!
The discounts will be randomly generated and automatically sent to your customers on Black Friday. But the festivities can start weeks before when you start promoting this special offer.
You must follow two general rules with discount raffles if you want your raffle to be successful.
First, everyone who enters the Discount Raffle should win. Not everyone needs to get a 50% (or higher) discount, but everyone will be a lot more excited to sign up for the raffle, knowing they’ll win no matter what.
Secondly, use an enticing offer when promoting. Simply offering a 10% discount won’t do it for Black Friday, so we recommend giving out at least one 50% (or higher) discount.
This will also make promoting the raffle much easier. Here’s an example of the wording you can use:
“Black Friday festivities start today! Sign up for our Black Friday Discount Raffle and get up to a 50% discount on your entire purchase! Every entry wins.“
Black Friday Month With Daily Special Offers
Black Friday means special deals that you typically can’t get in the middle of the year. But why limit yourself to one day of festivities?
Instead of celebrating Black Friday just one day, make it a month’s worth of discounts instead!
One thing your customers will definitely be thrilled about is having a Black Friday Month that starts a month before the actual Black Friday. Think of it as an advent calendar, but for Black Friday.
Every day people that sign up for it get a special offer, special deal, special discount.
Here’s an example of the offers you could use: Day 1: Small gift with every purchase Day 2: 15% discount on all items Day 3: Free shipping for every order Day 4: Buy 3, Get 1 Free Day 5: 30% off on all black products …
Similar to the example before, this would put you ahead of your competitors because you’re not limiting yourself to one day of discounts, but you’re making a whole event out of it.
And people are here for it.
Black Friday Gift Basket
Who doesn’t like a big gift basket full of goodies? There’s no such thing as “too many gifts,” that’s why the last contest suggestion we have is to run a Black Friday Gift Basket contest.
Here’s what you need to do.
Buy a couple of baskets (literal baskets) and load them with several of your products. You can also have other merchants joining this contest to make it more fun and diverse and make the baskets even bigger.
We recommend preparing at least 5 different gift baskets in different values.
Then, create a Leaderboard Giveaway contest where people can sign up to receive that gift basket. The whole contest can run for a few weeks to make it even more fun and competitive.
Get people to share the contest with their friends to move up the leaderboard and secure their chances of winning the big prize. The more they share, the better their chances are.
With this viral component to your contest, you’ll get great marketing as well. People will be visiting your landing page, getting familiar with your products. Plus, you can always run a Facebook Advertising campaign later, retargeting them all with a special offer.
Win-win.
What are you waiting for?
Preparations for Black Friday are already at full speed. So what are you waiting for?
Sign up for KickoffLabs today and start building your Black Friday contest today!