Do you want to run a Black Friday sale on Etsy this year? Big box stores and boutiques alike run Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events every year, so why shouldn’t you? After all, it’s one of the busiest weekends of the year for commerce, and for a good reason. Everyone loves savings.
Here’s why it’s a fantastic idea to run a Black Friday sale on Etsy this year.
The Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend (BFCM) is insanely big. According to Adobe Analytics, online spending grew 8.6% over last holiday season and 44% over 2019. 2021 brought us the first ever $200+ billion holiday season in the US.
This makes it apparent that in mid to late November, customers are looking to spend their money, as long as they find the discount they’ve been waiting for!
Keep in mind, it’s easy to set up a sale in your Etsy shop, but it’s not so easy to effectively promote it and ensure the discounts don’t hurt you financially.
Know your profit margins before you run a Black Friday sale on Etsy
Pricing on Etsy is crucial. And calculating your profit margins is the only way to know for sure how much it costs to make, sell and deliver a product. What’s more, it helps you understand how much you make off each sale, and therefore how much you can discount an item.
To run a Black Friday sale on Etsy, you need to know your pricing inside and out. If not, you could be throwing away your hard-earned money, and just wasting your time.
So before you start slashing prices, stop what you’re doing and calculate your profit margin. To do this, you’ll need to know just how much your materials cost, your shipping costs, and all of Etsy’s little fees – it can actually get quite confusing pretty quickly. That’s why we created an Etsy fee calculator to crunch these numbers so you don’t have to.
→ Learn how to find your profit margin by adding up all those Etsy fees
Once you know your profit margin, start calculating your discounted price by lowering your overall profits by a certain percentage. Rather than pocketing 20% total profit, drop that to 10% or 5%. How does that affect your overall price? How does that affect Etsy’s fees? Most importantly, are you willing to make that amount of profit?
To run a Black Friday sale on Etsy, you need to know your pricing inside and out. If not, you could be throwing away your hard-earned money, and just wasting your time.
Narrowing your profit margin ensures you won’t lose money on a sale. Just keep in mind you’ll make less money from each individual sale. So it doesn’t hurt to try and get as many sales as possible this Black Friday.
Create bundled products when you run a Black Friday sale on Etsy
You can discount your products less and sell more value to your customers when you bundle your popular products together.
Take a look back at your sales history – are there any patterns or trends of products purchased together? Considering bundling these products together and selling them at a discounted price
If you can’t find any trends, consider bundling two of your most popular products together.
Add the current price of the two existing products together. That’s the price of the bundle you’ll sell. Then go back to the individual listings that already exist and add 10% to their price. This ensures buyers will see the value in purchasing two products instead of just one. This will also help increase your Average Order Value. We’ve taken a closer look at running a promo in your Etsy shop before, so make sure you check that out to know exactly what you should do.
→ If your Etsy promos are costing you money, use this shop trick
Leverage social media to increase your Black Friday sales
Of course, you’re going to use social media to promote your Etsy listings during Black Friday. But it’s essential to use the channel that’s worked the best for you in the past—not getting any results from Twitter? Step away and don’t waste your time on it during this busy sales event. Finding that Pinterest gets you the most traffic and sales? Double down on your Pinterest marketing.
Also, remember that social media, in general, is a visual communication channel. Use quality pictures to promote your listings.
If Facebook or Instagram is your preferred social media channel, use more videos. The algorithms of these social media platforms like it when people stay on their platforms, and video does just that. By using more video, you’ll not only get more people engaging in your brand, but the algorithms will also help make sure more people see your post.
Change your designs before you run a Black Friday sale on Etsy
You should update shop banners and image thumbnails to show anyone in your store that there is indeed a sale going on. If you’re using a Black Friday discount code across your shop, put that code in your shop banner as well as thumbnails. This increases the chances of someone clicking on your listing when it appears in a search result — the same way that YouTubers often put eye-catching text on their image thumbnails.
Your shop banner photos should also be updated to reflect your sale – not just the discounts, but the length of the sale. If you have multiple flash sales, mention that in your banner – but also provide links to your social channels so people can find your announcements of these flash sales.
As mentioned earlier, people are visual creatures. Update your graphic design to reflect the details of your Black Friday sale, and you’ll ensure that as many people as possible are aware of it.
Start early – if you want.
In 2021, some Etsy shops are starting their sales campaigns during Etsy’s Early Holiday Sales event. That’s four weeks before the actual week of Black Friday. Many of these brands also kept their sales going well into December, using Black Friday to kick off their Christmas marketing campaign.
If you want to do this, make the decision and stick to it. Plan, create a calendar of your sales (what you’ll do and when), and then stick to it. If it’s three days before Black Friday and you want to launch your sales today, well then it’s too late. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still have time to get ready for the rest of the holidays before the year is over.
Planning well ahead is essential, so make the decision now, plan accordingly and commit.
→ Here’s what you need to do to get ready for the holidays – and how Marmalead can help
Know your customers
People who only want to buy a Gucci belt when it’s on sale aren’t the kind of people Gucci markets their belts to.
On the other hand, people who are most interested in buying your discounted products are specifically looking to buy discounted products.
How often does Etsy show that 2 or 3 people have your products in their cart, but they never end up buying them? There are a few reasons why a buyer may put your product in their cart, but never end up making the purchase. One reason could be that the buyer just isn’t willing to spend that much money on your product. So, maybe they’re waiting for a sale?
In other words, these types of buyers are price sensitive.
But making your products as cheap as possible is only a race to the bottom. Instead, use the “discounted” feature on Etsy to show the “% off” next to your price in a search result. These price-sensitive customers are drawn to and incentivize by that “% off” symbol.
After you run a Black Friday sale on Etsy, keep your buyers coming back
It’s much quicker, cheaper, and easier to get a customer to buy from you for a second time than it is to convert a new customer, depending on the type of product you sell.
Etsy doesn’t let you contact your customer via traditional email marketing methods, but there are still ways that you can get them to come back to your site.
Include a thank you card with a discount code that’s valid only in the new year. This means that when your Black Friday sale is truly over, your customer will have a reason to buy from you again. Another tried and true method is to consider getting them to visit you on your stand-alone website if you’re also operating one.
Over to you
It’s now your turn to go out and do a little preparation for this year’s Black Friday sales event on Etsy. It doesn’t take a lot to get ready, but it does require some forethought. With so many buyers up and about hunting for a bargain, a Black Friday sale is something that your Etsy shop can definitely use advantageously!
Are you planning to run a Black Friday sale on Etsy? If so, which products are you putting on sale? All of them or just a handful. Let us know how you plan to take advantage of Black Friday in the comments below!
Good luck and happy selling!
