Black Friday is approaching! Should you put out an offer as a health or life coach? In this post we’ll be exploring whether or not doing a coaching Black Friday deal is a good idea for your coaching business. Let’s dive in…

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Before I get into the detail of this post, I wanted to share that I’m writing this from a UK perspective. Black Friday as a ‘thing’ began in the United States as the day after Thanksgiving and the first big shopping day in the lead up to Christmas. It’s grown in popularity and more and more businesses are using it as a reason to offer deals to their customers.

In 2023, Black Friday falls on 24th November, however, what we generally see is that people sharing Black Friday deals are often sharing them over a few days rather than just on that specific day. There’s also the connected ‘Cyber Monday’ although most deals incorporate the two days and over that weekend.

Here in the UK, Black Friday wasn’t really a thing until the last 5 or so years and now it’s a pretty big event for most retailers and many other businesses.

So, with all that being said, should you offer a deal or sale?

How does Black Friday sit with you ethically?

The first question to ask yourself before offering a Black Friday deal in your coaching business is whether or not you feel that Black Friday and everything connected with it, feels ethical to you.

Black Friday, for many, is a ‘symbol of overconsumption, reckless spending, irresponsible production by brands and companies, and adds a significant amount of waste to our planet’

Quote taken from Sustainable Baddie

For many of us coaches, participating in Black Friday is simply not going to feel aligned, and if that is you then feel free to sit this one out.

Even if you have some ethical concerns, you are not a large multinational business who is flogging unethical and unsustainable mass produced products that harm the planet. You’re a small, heart centred business that helps others.

Doing some kind of Black Friday offer also means that you will be using urgency in your marketing – which is a separate ethical consideration in its own right.

Another aspect of this to consider is affordability – many people are struggling with the cost of living right now, and offering discounts and offers could make your products and services more affordable to those people.

Read the rest of the points below to weigh up whether or not the benefits of running an offer outweigh the downsides.

Do you have suitable offers or offer structure?

To participate in Black Friday you’ll be likely offering some kind of time limited discount (or time limited bonus) on one or multiple offers in your business.

I tend to think that Black Friday or any kind of short ‘flash sale’ type thing is best suited to mid to low end offers, rather than your higher ticket coaching offers.

There’s nothing stopping you offering a discount on your 1:1 offer, but generally a higher priced offer like this requires more consideration than a mid to low price so converting people who weren’t already ‘warm’ in 3-4 days is less likely to get results.

Digital products and courses and perhaps smaller 1:1 offerings like power hours can work really well as Black Friday deals

How does Black Friday sit with your brand and messaging?

This is kind of similar to the ethical considerations, but how does Black Friday sit with your brand and messaging? If you have a very ‘high end’ brand and your prices are all at the higher end then participating in Black Friday could ‘cheapen’ your brand (and it might be that you don’t have any offers that work anyways). 

However, if you have offers at different price points and your vibe is a bit more experimental and you often run flash sales and launches then the whole thing might sit better.

It’s also worth mentioning that your Black Friday offer doesn’t need to be a discount, it could also be an added bonus if discounting doesn’t feel aligned for you.

Does the reward make the effort worth it?

Black Friday is a very noisy time of year, lots and lots of people will be emailing and promoting offers and depending on the size of your business, you’ll need to decide if it’s worth writing and sending those emails or posting on social media for what you might generate in income.

A rough guide is that you’ll convert 1-3% of your email list to paying customers – however it can be higher than this if your list is newer / smaller.

However, even if you don’t make a lot of income, there are other outcomes from emailing more over that period – greater visibility, more eyes on your offers (including the ones you might not be promoting), you might feel more confident selling and writing sales copy etc

If you have decided to offer a Black Friday deal, here’s a few tips / ideas / things I’ve observed that might be helpful:

• Let people know what the deal will be in advance of Black Friday.  Now I tend to go into Black Friday with a bit of a ‘wish list’ of things I would like in various areas of my life and business which helps me be more intentional with my spending. This is a nice way to support your audience and community to also be intentional and gives them more time to consider the offer before it goes live
• It’s ok to experiment with these things! I’ve experimented with Black Friday offers and some have worked better than others but I like to try things out
• If you have affiliates in your business (this is something I need to work on in my own business!) or perhaps you are an affiliate for others then now’s a great time to look at how you can use those affiliates to promote your offers and perhaps increase your affiliate income by promoting others too.

I’d love to know if you’re going to run a Black Friday offer this year in your business – leave me a comment and let me know!

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