285: Stop Planning a Black Friday Sale. Plan a Black Friday Season

Send us Fan Mail Most creators don't touch Black Friday until the first week of November, and then they're scrambling to throw an offer together and put a discount on it, hoping that one week carries the whole quarter. That's a lot of pressure to put on three days.  In this episode Ruth Poundwhite turns the tables and interviews me about how I actually plan Q4, which starts with treating November 1st through the end of December as one season instead of one weekend. In this episode: Why I have my promo calendar mapped out a year ahead, and how that changes what Black Friday even has to do The October work that decides whether your Black Friday offer lands, including the warm-up sequence people skip Why a pre-sale is one of the best things you can put out in Q4, especially if you don't have much to sell yet How to take an inventory of your offers and decide which ones are worth promoting, plus the out-of-the-box offers worth testing Using bonuses instead of cutting your prices, and how those bonuses doubled as market research for me The sale structures we've tested inside HobbyScool, from a one-offer-a-day week to a twelve day December run to a simple three day flash sale What I'm handing to AI this year, what I'm keeping, and the automation that puts a page live and expires it without anyone touching it Key takeaways: Black Friday is a season, not a day. Plan November 1 through December 31 as one campaign and the pressure on any single day drops. Your audience has to be warmed up before the offer shows up. If you want to pre-sell something in November, the free gift, the webinar, or the sequence that gets them ready has to run in October. You don't have to discount. Adding a bonus to the plan you want people to choose, like the annual or lifetime option, protects your pricing and gets people better results. Take an offer inventory first. List everything you have, mark what you want to sell, and give yourself permission to test something new. AI can build the pages, the emails, and the images. It can't tell you what your market wants. That part stays with you. Resources mentioned: Black Friday Profit Party workshop, run every October Newsletter Profit Club: https://lab.destinicopp.com/newsletter-profit-club The Creator's MBA AI Mastermind: https://mastermind.destinicopp.com  If you want to sit down and build your November through December money plan with me, that's what the Black Friday Profit Party workshop is for, and I run it every October.  You'll find it inside the Newsletter Profit Club, so come join us at https://lab.destinicopp.com/newsletter-profit-club and I'll walk you through it. It's also included if you're already in the Creator's MBA AI Mastermind.