← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Your Black Friday Game Plan: How to Create an Offer That Actually Brings in Bookings
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I'm so excited about today's episode because we're talking about one of my favorite annual episodes of the entire year, which is all about your Black Friday strategy. Now, I know what you might be thinking. I'm knee deep in full sessions right now. I don't have time to even think about Black Friday. But that's exactly why I'm airing this episode early. So that way you have time to plan your offer and your promotion and you'll be ready to hit Go in November. Instead of scrambling at the last minute, I'm walking you through how to brainstorm your Black Friday offer, giving you five different ideas of what you could offer and build a simple plan to launch it without burning out. If you're ready, let's dive in. Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mom at a 2 and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast, we're covering the most asked about topics and including pricing, marketing, client experience and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in. Let's start with the why of Black Friday. Even though photographers don't always sell physical products, Black Friday is still the perfect time to bring in cash flow before the slower winter months. Your clients are already in spending mode. They're scrolling, they're shopping, they're planning ahead. So when you show up with a Black Friday offer that makes sense for them. It's an easy yes. This isn't about discounting or being salesy or losing out on money. It's just about getting creative and giving people a reason to book with you right now rather than later and more so spending money with you during Black Friday and then they can book their session later. We're going to talk about that when we talk about these offers. If your brain immediately went to crap, I'm going to have to discount my session or I'm going to have to run mini sessions for this. Take a deep breath because I am not talking about any of those this year. I've got way more creative ideas than that. You can breathe a sigh of relief. Okay, so let's talk through five different types of offers that you can consider offering this year. The first one is what I'm calling a bonus bundle. So here is what that means. Book any session and receive a fill in the blank. Right. So this could be a complimentary photo, it could be a mini album, it could be a print credit, it could be an ornament, it could be 10 additional images, it could be whatever you want it to be. Okay, so here's an example. Book your 2026 senior session and and get a free 5x5 mini album as my Black Friday gift. Okay, so these seniors already know that they were going to book a spring session with you. They just haven't done it yet. And so now you are giving them a reason to book you at full price, whatever they were originally going to book you for. But now they're getting a bonus. So you're getting the money in advance. Or you can split it up. Usually for Black Friday. I do 50% on Black Friday, 50% for their session in 2026. So that helps me close my revenue for 2025 and generate my revenue for 2026. Okay, so that's an idea. So take any of your sessions or packages and then throw in some kind of a complimentary bonus. Idea number two is to do a gift certificate extravaganza, if you will. This works really well if you're someone who you don't ever give gift certificates or it's very rare that you give a gift certificate. So you're kind of giving people a reason to get a gift certificate. Use it as a Christmas gift for someone and then they can come back and then they can actually do the session in 2026. Another way that I've seen this used, and this is totally up to you if you want to do this. It's where if they spend, let's say, $200, you're gonna add $50 extra, which that would make sense if this was going towards prints and products. It may not make sense for your business model, but just something to think about if you wanted just to add a little bonus to it. What I would really encourage you, no matter which one of these offers you choose, is to limit, have some urgency with limited spots. So don't just have it as a free for all. Be very clear, I only have five, I'm only offering the first 10 people, etc. Etc. So maybe for your gift certificate sale, you're going to do like no more than 10 people. And then that gives people time to prepare, get their money ready, get excited for the day. You're going to release it and then you have people basically like running to the checkout line. Offer number three idea. And this one I've never said before, so I'm very excited about this. But it is a priority booking bonus. So what you're going to do is you're going to have a set amount. It could be 24 hours, it could be 48 hours, it could just be an entire Black Friday weekend. Or you could do it sooner in November. We'll talk about that in a minute. But what you're going to do is you're basically going to say anybody that books their 2026 session during this time frame, you guys are getting priority booking, meaning that it's first come, first serve. I'm going to be releasing my calendar on this date. And you guys, everyone that pays now for their session, you're going to get priority booking. So it's kind of like a race for the best date in 2026. So this would work really good for, really, for any industry, but specifically for people with like a deadline. So this could be seniors, newborns, weddings, etc, so that, that could be really fun. So it could say something like, grab your 2026 slot now or session now. Priority booking is open only to those who pay in full this weekend or something like that. Okay. Number four is session upgrade. Deal. So this is different than the first one. So remember the offer number one was they book any session, they kind of get like a complimentary gift. This one's a little bit different. This one is a session upgrade, meaning that if you have different levels of packages, so you've got a small package, a middle package, a large package. This one is going to be book any session automatically, get upgraded to my top tier package pretty much. Okay, so you are allowing people that book your regular session to go ahead and get upgraded to your premium package for no extra money. Okay. So maybe it's like they get more images, longer time, and maybe an outfit change on top of what they're paying for. So it could be book a classic family session and I'll upgrade you to my signature package for free or on me or something like that. Okay, so this one's really good. If, especially if you struggle for bookings in the first three to four months of the year, this is a great way to get people excited about it because they're paying, you know, whatever they were willing to pay. Let's say they were going to do a $300 package and you're automatically upgrading them to a $400 package. Basically, who wouldn't want to book that? Do you see what I'm saying? So while it could feel like you're discounting, it's a little bit different. Okay. Number five is print or product sale. And I want you to be really specific this year. If you do this one, don't just leave it open to just like 30% off site wide. You can still do that, but I want your marketing to be very specific. So for example, your print sale is for the purpose to help your clients get their Christmas cards and go ahead and get some stocking stuff for gifts that are photo based. Okay. So you could say maybe it's 30 off all items that fall into the stocking stuffer. And you could like create a little image where it says, you know, prints 4x6 and 5x7 are included. Maybe you've got like a mini album. Anything that's like smaller than you could discount because you still should be making some profit on it. You could also take it the other route. Maybe it's 30% off any wall collection and then you put together custom collection. So it could be like a. My gosh, I don't even know the dimensions off the top of my head. But let's just pretend like maybe it's like 124 by 36 canvas, 216 by 20s, 211 by 14s, et cetera, et cetera. You see what I'm saying? You can custom create that and, and then you would go place the order manually for them or you would have a coupon code that works on your site. Okay, so that's an example. So just to recap those ideas before we move on to the the promotion and the planning, number one was book any session and receive a complimentary fill in the blank. Number two was a gift certificate sale. Number three was priority booking. Four was session upgrade, meaning that if they bought your classic, they automatically get upgraded to your signature. And then five was that print or product sale. Be really specific on what you are discounting and the purpose of it because it helps people clearly see what they're going to do with it. You only need one solid offer. Do not use all five of these. Do not offer every single one of these. Don't even offer three of these together. Focus on one. What fits your business the best and what will actually excite your ideal clients. So now we're going to move into the Black Friday plan. And here's what I recommend doing over the next few weeks. Step one, you've got to choose your offer, decide on one thing and commit to it. Do not over complicate it. Step two, you're going to write your promotional details. So you need to be thinking, what is the offer? How long will it last? When will I be offering this? What are the dates and the times? How can people book it or buy it? You want to have three to four days max. I recommend one to four days and I will tell you, the shorter the better. So typically your 24, 48, 72 hours sales are going to do great. 24 hours is exciting if you're doing it before Black Friday, but you don't want to compete with with all the other things going on. And some people are going to be busy Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the Saturday after because they're with their family celebrating the holiday and they may not even check their email. And so if you're going to do something super, super short, like a one day only, you, you might consider doing it the week before or the week after. Just giving you a little tip there. Okay. One other thing about the win is I want you to pay attention. If you ran a Black Friday sale last year, whether it was good or it was bad or whatever, go back and look at it. Did you like the dates? Did you sell what you wanted to? Did you align with your offer? Did you not go back and look at all those things? And then I want you to take notes this season and you're trying to do this every year until you find your sweet spot. Now if you're someone that's like, yeah, I don't know, this is the first time I'm ever gonna try Black Friday. Or I tried it last year, I wasn't impressed. Give it one more go and see and you might just decide that Black Friday is just not right for your business. And that is okay too. Moving on to step three. You need to prepare your content. You're going to want at least two to three emails. This is going to be, you need a teaser email, like, hey, this is coming up. This is your announcement, a reminder email, a launch email, and I would even say a final call email. So you're going to need an email sequence for sure for Black Friday. You're also going to need some social media posts. You've got to have a whole week of teasing your audience of what's coming. They have to know it's coming. You cannot surprise people on Black Friday with a Black Friday sale. It does not work. It will fail every time. Okay, so you need to go ahead and like use countdowns, get people excited, create urgency, get them on your Email list. You need to have an entire week where you are getting people excited. Then you need your actual social media Post stories, etc. Or where you are actively promoting your active sale or whatever it is you're offering. Okay? Those are bare minimum. You can add as much marketing as you want to that, but that is the bare minimum. Step four is to decide on your timeline. Okay. Does not have to be on Black Friday. It could be before, it could be after. It could be Cyber Monday, it could be Small Business Saturday. It could be whenever you want it to be. It could be the second week of November. But you need to decide what you're going to do. And then step five is to set it up tech wise. If you can make your entire Black Friday offer and your checkout process, make that automated and where you don't even have to look at your phone or computer, you are going to win in life. Okay? It is going to be so cool for you to really be present, doing what you're doing and, and then like forgetting about it and then getting on your email and seeing, oh my gosh, I just made Black Friday sales. Like it's just, it's the coolest thing ever. So make sure that you have a booking link ready to go. Coupon codes activated. If you're using any of that. Emails, this is confirmation. Emails. Next step, emails. Everything needs to be ready and automated before your sale goes live. Okay, to round us out, here's what I want you to remember. Black Friday isn't just for big box stores. It is a perfect chance to infuse cash into your photography business before winter. And stay top of mind with your clients. Your offer does not need to be massive or super discounted or complicated. It just needs to be very crystal clear on what you're offering and it needs to align with your profit business model. So go grab a notebook, pick your offer, brainstorm. Start writing now. While your brain is going, give yourself some deadlines to finalize each of these steps. That way when November hits, you're not scrambling, you are prepared. You are ready. You are like, I am so excited for this year because I am ahead of the game. All right, friend, that is your Black Friday game plan. I would love to hear what you are planning. Send me a DM on Instagram, tell me what you decided to do for this year and if you found this episode helpful, it would mean so much if you would share it with another photographer who could use a little marketing inspiration this season. All right, until next week, go make that Black Friday plan happen.