Are you thinking about launching a course for Black Friday? Are you thinking about launching a course in general? Either way, this episode on Black Friday Trends for 2024 is definitely for you. I brought you Mara Kucirek, who is an online course designer, a launch strategist, and host of the Create a Better Course podcast. She has helped over 150+ entrepreneurs launch online courses and digital products. She lives in Tampa, Florida with her husband, two dogs, and brand new baby girl.
I’m also just low-key, obsessed with her.
I feel like one of the things that we don’t talk about enough in the online space is HOW TO literally create a better course. There’s so much content out there is “how to sell it, how to sell it, how to sell it,” and I just love that her focus isn’t necessarily that and instead talks about things like student experience and education styles.
She also really believes in transparency in the online space (and so do I). She even releases monthly income reports, which we talk about briefly in this episode, but they’re linked below if you want to check them out!
Today we talked about Black Friday Trends for 2024 (you can watch a webinar she put on here!). That was kind of the topic, but really what the conversation evolved into, which I love, was just course trends in general course and digital product tips. She just shares so much value and honestly, you guys, she’s so brilliant. So let’s just get into it.
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Table of Contents
Who Is Mara Kucirek?
I am Mara, and I am a course creator, but when I say course creator, there’s a huge caveat because I don’t actually sell that many of my own online courses. What I do is I help other business owners set up and create online courses. So when someone has a course idea, or maybe they already have an online course, but they’re like, “Hey, my students aren’t finishing the course”, or they say things like “People aren’t buying my online course,” I’m the person that helps them go in, poke around, and figure out how to make your course more interesting, figure out where people are falling off, and then also figure out the sales and the messaging campaign. Also, I say online courses, but I’ve been in business for over six years now. So this has definitely also evolved into workshops and digital products.
What Are Some Black Friday Trends You’re Seeing?
I love this question because I am such a Black Friday nerd. So when I very first started my business, I knew about Black Friday. I know Walmart and Target exist. I knew this was a thing, but I did not know it’s also a thing in online business. I had just quit my full-time job. My business was going great, but I had no idea that what was about to happen was on Thanksgiving, a bunch of clients and then a bunch of past clients, and then a bunch of people who just had vaguely heard of me started texting and emailing me asking if I could help set up their Black Friday sale. And I said yes to way too many of those people. While I’m eating pie on Thanksgiving.
I have since learned to start bothering every single person I know, to tell them that if you want to do a Black Friday sale, please start thinking about it now. Please, please, please. Otherwise, you will ruin your Thanksgiving. You’ll ruin everyone else’s Thanksgiving when you’re scrambling trying to get something set up in time. So just think about it now.
And so on that note, every year after Black Friday, I take notes about what people did last year. I’m talking literally the day after Black Friday, I’ve got a Google Doc and I’m like, okay, this person did that sale, this person did that sale. I started a Google Doc that’s like my master document of all the Black Friday stuff that happened last year. And then I also pay attention throughout the year.
Black Friday Trend #1: Black Friday Sales Will Start Early
I think one big thing that’s going to happen is that there’s going to be a split and some people are just going to run their Black Friday sale early. I think all of us are tired of hearing about the election, and so I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be a marketing thing. I think it’s going to be I am exhausted and tired thing, so let’s just run the sale the first week of November, and then whatever else happens the rest of November, we’re fine. I have multiple clients where we have already decided to do this.
I think it’ll be 50/50 for running your sale early vs. on Black Friday. The thing I would say though if you do run yours early, stick to your word. Do not say your Black Friday sale is like, I don’t know, November 5th, and then you get afraid and scared and you still run a Black Friday sale later because people hate that.
Black Friday Trend #2: Having Support & Accountability Will Make You More Sales
The other thing I think that’s going to be really big this year is providing some sort of support or accountability for whatever your product is. And this looks like a lot of different things. So when I say that, don’t get freaked out and think that I’m telling you that you have to give everyone a one-on-one coaching call. You really don’t have to do that, but could you maybe host a one-hour coworking session that’s totally silent? I’ve done this multiple times where we just play music and I post in the chat, “Hey, this is what I’m working on” related to whatever your offer is, and everyone just works for an hour, and that works for accountability.
Or you could have a Facebook group, or even an email accountability sequence of like, “Hey, if you buy on Black Friday, I wrote this cool email sequence that has some gifs that I think are hilarious, and you’re going to get that”. That sounds really silly because most products include an email sequence anyway, but highlighting that and just literally anything that is going to help hold people accountable helps. The end of the year is so busy this year especially, so I’m seeing this huge objection to buying things and very specifically online courses, but this goes with everything. People are like, “I already own too much stuff that I have not used,” so you need to help them USE it.
Now, do not overpromise and make it something that is going to make you hateful and just really angry if you have to support everyone do it. What you offer needs to be scalable. Ideally, tons of people are buying your Black Friday deal, and so I have had people who they offered something really big like, oh, I’m going to do a one-on-one coaching call to everyone that buys, and then 200 people bought and it was just a disaster.
Black Friday Trend #3: Low-ticket Offers Will Be Everywhere
When it comes to Black Friday trends, I think low-ticket offers are going to be all over the place on Black Friday. So I’m talking the $9- $20 offer range. I see this every year, but this year more than ever, I think a lot of people are going to be pushing some sort of low ticket offer.
It feels hard to get people to say yes to higher-ticket things right now. The economy is so weird right now, and especially as you get towards the end of the year, people are more conscious of their budget. They’re just thinking about all the money that they’re going to spend on Christmas presents. So I think there’s going to be so many sales that are like, “Hey, it’s my $5 sale”. People will probably do that with the intention that the people that buy later buy something higher ticket. But I think most of the sales are probably going to be lower ticket things this year.
As an added tangent about that: Just because it’s a trend doesn’t mean you should do it. Low ticket is so all over the place. I feel like we started off the year with everyone being like “The $9 offer is where it’s at”, and some people did it in a good way that was really strategic. They used it to get people into their buyer’s pool. They over-delivered. So people went on to buy their other things. Then, I saw the flip side of that happen where someone gave away something for $9 and it’s not sustainable to always make $9 in your business, and it didn’t lead anywhere. So you’d have to sell a ton of them for it to make sense. And sometimes you sell them and then it leads to people blowing up your inbox with questions and it can get out of control really fast.
Want to dive deeper into these Black Friday Trends? Watch Mara’s FREE Black Friday Trends webinar.
Shifts Happening in Online Courses
It used to be everyone was making their signature course and by signature course, I mean the eight-module thing. So in depth, it’s going to take your students 14 weeks to go through it. And there’s a time and a place for that. I’ve taken several of those, especially early on in my business and they were super helpful and covered everything. It would be like how to name your business, how to start it, how to get your first client, how to market your business. There has been a shift though where that just feels like so much for people to consume that they don’t end up going through it.
And also, people really just want the shortcut. I’m not going to buy a course about social media strategy that tells me how to create the outline and write the caption perfectly and the hashtags because when I’m posting, I just want to know where the one button is. People want courses like that. They want the shortcut. It used to be that you should include everything you can possibly think of in your online course, every single thing. You should have 500 bonuses. And nowadays that tells people, “Oh, you’re never going to have time to finish this.”
Black Friday Trends: When Creating Your Course, Don’t Do This!
Two things happen. They don’t think about Black Friday and then Jenna Kutcher or someone sends their Black Friday email. Then, it makes you panic and feel like you need to do that too. On the flip side, I’ve also seen people want to do a Black Friday sale and all you do is brainstorm your Black Friday sale between now and Thanksgiving, and you never write the actual email or do anything. You never decide what’s going to be on sale. I want to say: that it is such a power move, and it is so peaceful, to schedule your Black Friday emails ridiculously early.
And the longer I’m in business, it doesn’t really matter what the plan was as long as we did something. Of course, yes, strategy in online business has its time, and I’m a huge pro of it, but planning out all of these bonuses and all of these fancy things, isn’t the most important thing. This happens a lot with online courses. Someone comes to me and they’re like, “Hey, I want to launch an online course, and then we do a strategy call or I work with them or whatever it is, and they want to spend the whole time talking about the launch and they’re going to have expiring bonuses and they’re going to have this fancy webinar,” all of which is great. And then I’m just like, “okay, but have you started making the course?”
And they haven’t! So I always say, “let’s not talk about all of these fancy shiny object things.” Because people get weird about launching, and certainly there’s this level where you get to do cool launches and you brainstorm all these fancy things, but you know what also counts as a launch? Just putting it for sale and being like, “Hey, you can buy it.” And a lot of people never do that.
Setting Realistic Expectations Around a Launch
I have now worked with so many clients that I have this unique privilege of being through many launches where we launched something and two people bought, and then four years later there are now hundreds and thousands of people in their course. But I saw the beginning, so I don’t get that weird block around thinking a launch has to be huge the first time. You have to launch it once to ever grow it.
Personally, I am thinking about doing a Black Friday sale on something that I have not made yet, but people have been asking me about for years. And so it’s not so much that I want to make money from it. I’m kind of like, it’ll force me to make it and talk about it if I offer it for Black Friday. So that’s my hack for you. If there’s something that you just need to get out there, just put it on sale for Black Friday and start telling people about it.
If you want a shortcut, make sure to grab Mara’s Black Friday Tool Kit!
What Should You Sell For Black Friday?
Black Friday is a really good time to test some messaging. And I would also say, don’t say you’re going to make a signature course before Black Friday. It is the end of September when we’re recording this. You’re never going to have time for it. So I always just tell people with the caveat, if you make something new, just really be mindful that you might not get it done. I think it’s way better to experiment or put something that maybe exists up for sale, but you don’t currently sell it.
So if there’s a template you use in your business personally, if you have a bookkeeping template but you don’t sell it, you could do something like that. Sell something you’re already using, and that’s a really low-effort, low-hanging fruit thing you can sell. And then also you will know if people want more of it.
For me personally, I talk about online courses a lot, but you know what? People want me to talk about money. For example, I publish these monthly income reports on my blog. I just started doing it on a whim, and I’m always like, what online course questions do you have people? And my audience is always like, we want to know about your bookkeeping, or we want to know about your goals and what you failed at. So it’s funny, but my point is sometimes it’s good to know what people want to hear from you that you don’t normally talk about.
Ready To Put These Black Friday Trends Into Action? And Connect More With Mara Kucirek?
I recently had an Instagram DM message with a couple of friends, and we were talking about Black Friday, and so we decided to make a Black Friday Simplifed Tool Kit that’s like sales emails, so all of the emails, what you should send, when there’s Instagram captions, Instagram posts, and there’s a detailed timeline of exactly what to do. We really tried to make it copy and paste Black Friday.
Then you can always find me on Instagram or my website here. I’ve also got a podcast, Create a Better Course, and I’ve got tons of blog posts, and every once in a while I post some random thing on Instagram. Come find me there!
LINKS MENTIONED
- Watch Mara’s FREE Webinar On Black Friday Trends
- Grab Mara’s Black Friday Toolkit
- Follow Mara on Instagram
- Read one of Mara’s Kucirek income reports
- Learn more about working with our marketing agency here
- Follow me on Instagram
