15 Best Black Friday Ideas For Service-Based Businesses

It’s another year’s Black Friday and you’re here wondering how to make the most of it (#amirite). As a service-based business owner, it can be tricky to think of creative promotional strategies for services. E-commerce folks have a million and one ways to promote products – it doesn’t feel the fairest.

But just because you might only have a handful of services, doesn’t mean you can’t be equally creative! Not to mention equally strategic. Stepping outside the box for this Black Friday will definitely push you towards breaking last year’s revenue record. While these 15 ideas can be highly profitable as is, feel free to tweak anything so it fits your business better – you know your business the best!

01. Flash Sale

The idea behind a flash sale is that it genuinely is a flash sale. That means no forewarning your audience and no promotion ahead of time. This is important to clarify right off the bat because I’ve seen so many service-based businesses promote a flash sale like 3 weeks beforehand, which completely defeats the purpose.

The purpose of a flash sale from a business perspective is to entice the people in your audience who are sitting on the fence of buying a solution to their problem (the solution you provide). They know they need a solution ASAP but up until now they haven’t felt like yours was the best one for them.

Offering a discount in a time-limited flash sale helps make it easier for these folks to buy by increasing the perception of value in their eyes. If you had a service for $400 and did a 24-hour 50% off flash sale on it on Black Friday, then it’s only $200 for the same value as was promised at the full price (which can be extremely attractive if someone’s already in a need-to-buy-soon mindset).

When running a flash sale, I highly recommend prepping some emails in your email service provider (like Flodesk – get 50% off your first year if you want to) that announce the flash sale, clarify why it’s such a good deal, explain who it’s for and not for, and offer a few reminders as the deadline nears.

02. Discounted Bundle

A discounted bundle is a great, typically highly profitable Black Friday idea if you sell digital products. If you don’t sell digital products, you can still bundle two, three, or four of your services together (they have to make sense together!) and offer them at a tempting bundle price.

While this is a more popular tactic in e-commerce, discounted bundling is a well-known practice in general to supercharge average order values (the average money spent per check-out). It works because someone might be on the verge of buying an additional thing, but maybe aren’t able to pay full price for it – that means they could be swayed if the price of that additional thing was discounted and bundled with something they already planned to buy.

Pro Tip: Don’t bundle an expensive service or digital product with an inexpensive one. Explained in a Harvard Business Review article, researchers at Pepperdine University found that customers valued the prices of bundles like this LESS THAN the original prices – whoa, right?!

03. Giveaway

Giveaways are like sliced bread. Ever since they came about, they’ve been done a million times yet are still loved by all.

Almost everyone loves the thrill of potentially winning something they genuinely want. If the barrier to entry is not high (i.e. still an effort but less than 5 minutes), you can find a nice balance between those who are seriously invested in it (and might promote it to others that it’s worth entering) and those who would like it but aren’t super pushed. If the barrier to entry is high, you’ll significantly reduce the amount of entries. And vice versa, if the barrier to entry is low, you’ll probably get a lot of spammers who just want to win something but who don’t actually care about you or what’s being given away.

The most effective methods of entry that I’ve seen include asking “why do you want to win?”, requiring them to tag a friend in the comments, and/or signing up to your email list. It’s also possible to tier people’s entries, like they get 1 entry for answering the question, 5 entries for tagging a friend, and 20 entries for signing up to your email list. While this incentivizes the more time-consuming methods of entry, it can get VERY difficult to keep track of how many entries everyone has. It’d probably be worth hiring a virtual assistant during the giveaway to help with that.

As a service-based business, I’d recommend promoting your giveaway from late-October or November 1 to Black Friday and then announcing the winner(s) on Black Friday. You can give away almost anything: a service, a digital product, a course, a 1:1 session, a book, movie tickets, a 12-month subscription, etc. Feel free to get creative with it, but make sure it’s something your target audience would genuinely really want. That’s key!

04. Paid Launch

Doing a launch for a paid service, offer, or digital product is easily one of the most popular Black Friday ideas that service-based businesses do. I believe it’s the most common because making a lot of sales (or selling OUT if availability is limited) is a high likelihood – of course, if it’s actually something your people want. As people are generally more likely to spend money in November and December, launching a brand new thing during this time tends to get more attention and ultimately sales.

As a service-based business, you could of course launch a new service. Or you could get a bit creative and launch something else – coaching, a course, a digital product, etc. It’s really up to you how you want to expand your offer suite.

For a paid launch, I recommend first launching a waitlist in mid-October or early November to drum up some excitement and anticipation. Offer a bonus or discount in exchange for joining your waitlist. And then promote the waitlist a lot (like 4 or so times per week) over the next few weeks, so ideally there’s more than 30 people on it (depending on your audience size, this may be too little or a lot – you’ll want at least 1% of your audience on the waitlist).

If 1% of your audience doesn’t join the waitlist, then that could be a sign that there’s something off about your messaging, the offer itself, what it helps with, and/or audience misalignment.

Important Note: Even if you feel nervous or scared to promote the waitlist, try your best to work through those feelings so that they don’t stop you. The more you do things, the easier they feel. If you’re REALLY struggling with it, give this book a read as soon as possible.

05. Daily Bonuses

Daily bonuses tend to work best within a specific timeframe. When it comes to Black Friday 2024, the timeframe of November 28 – December 4 would work well (Black Friday and Cyber Monday are included in that timeframe).

In 2023, I observed (MANY, but for the sake of this blog post) two Black Friday daily bonus campaigns that EACH generated mid 5-figures. The first was The Social Bungalow – they launched a collection of digital products (after a long, juicy ramp-up from mid-October). The second was Northfolk – they launched a few new website templates and other digital products (after a couple weeks of a ramp-up).

After analyzing their launches (and joining The Social Bungalow for a behind-the-scenes peek at how they did it), having the tech all set up and ready to go beforehand made a world of a difference. During the week itself, they were able to solely focus on content creation, promotion, monitoring sales, and were more able to make fast decisions on pivoting/changing things when needed.

Aside from that, they time limited the bonuses and made them very appealing for the target buyer. Bonuses had a hard start and end date (meanwhile, multiple emails were sent out to remind folks of the timing). And the bonuses were a mix of discounts, sometimes an extra digital product for free, and different types of free calls.

06. Freebie Launch

If you’re looking for something with a lot less pressure, then launching a freebie might be what you’ll want to do! Launching a freebie during the Black Friday hullabaloo can definitely be super strategic, especially if the freebie leads into a paid service or offer.

As there’s already a lot of ready-to-buy attention online during November, it might make sense to whip up a valuable freebie, hype it up in early November, and then release it on Black Friday. You could even attach a bonus something to it to make it even more desirable. This method can be a genius way to grow your email list quickly.

07. Mystery Promo Wheel

A mystery promo wheel is definitely one of the more fun things to do for Black Friday. Whether you do it live or automate it on your website, this is a highly engaging and entertaining way to give people promos. Not only does it bring mystery and intrigue, but it also adds surprise and delight.

The promos should be good ones though! Otherwise, instead of surprise and delight, you’ll add disappointment and annoyance. And you definitely don’t want potential customers to feel that way when interacting with your brand.

As a service-based business, I’d recommend promos like:

• 30% off a 1:1 consulting call
• A free 1:1 consulting call or digital product with any service
• 40% off a course or digital product
• A free <$1K service (limited supply)

08. Upsell, Downsell, & Cross-Sell Deals

Just in case you’re unfamiliar, an upsell is a more expensive paid offer you make available to someone during or right after they’ve made a purchase. A cross-sell is a highly related and complementary paid offer you make available to someone during or right after they’ve made a purchase. And lastly, a downsell is a less expensive paid offer you make available to someone during or right after they’ve made a purchase.

For example, if someone just purchased your email marketing course, an upsell could be 50% off a 1:1 consultation call, a downsell could be 50% off your email templates, and a cross-sell could be 50% off your sales funnel course.

Doing these on Black Friday should mean things are even more discounted (usually upsells, downsells, and cross-sells are discounted anyways, so during Black Friday you’d want to make the discounts even juicier like 50% off).

When it comes to setting this all up, you can easily do it in a cart management system (that’s native in Shopify and Webflow – otherwise you’ll need something like Thrivecart (the #1 option in my experience)).

If you’re in Thrivecart and totally lost on how to design a check out page with upsells, cross-sells, and downsells, you’ll honestly save SO much time with these conversion-focused Thrivecart templates.

To check out what a good cross-sell looks like, here’s an example.

09. Contest

Running a contest for Black Friday is another fun option! You’ll need to choose 1 to 3 attractive prizes, what you want people to do (i.e. what they need to do to enter), and other important details like how you’ll pick the winner(s). Ideally, the prizes will need to be highly intriguing for your target audience in order to get the most entries possible.

For example, if you’re a wedding florist/floral designer in Chicago, the top prize could be a $200 gift card to a super fancy, romantic local restaurant. That’s strategic in that people who enter would likely want to take their significant other out to a nice dinner (i.e. potential clients). Second and third prizes could be $150 gift cards to other couple-friendly activities, like a couples spa day and a couples cooking class.

10. Challenge

For a challenge, the structure could be: kickoff on November 1st, have daily or weekly goals and check-ins, and then it ends on Black Friday with a grand prize for a winner (for the most engaged or successful person in the challenge).

To turn up the fun, you could even give out awards to participants (like most spirited, most likely to keep going, most supportive, most funny, etc.). To distribute the awards, I’d recommend inviting all participants to a free Facebook group before the challenge starts so that everyone has a place to talk about the challenge, ask questions, get and provide support, etc. This way, over the 28 days, you can notice who’s doing more of what and more easily decide who deserves what award.

A challenge is a great win-win option because the structure of it keeps the people participating highly engaged, which ideally helps them reach a goal of theirs by the end of it. I’ve seen well-run challenges be uber beneficial for the business too, resulting in much more positive word-of-mouth, higher reach on social media, tons of social media engagement, and of course ultimately more customers/clients.

For example, if you’re a traveling dog groomer in Seattle, then a fun challenge for your customer base or social media audience could be 28 consecutive days of walking at least 1 hour with their dog (28 because Black Friday is on November 29, 2024).

For another example, if you’re a freelance social media manager for hotels and travel brands, then a fun challenge for your social media audience could be 28 consecutive days of posting on a social media platform of their choice. To support participants and encourage their success, I’d recommend prepping and offering a 28-day calendar of content ideas (which also helps prove you know what you’re doing, potentially leading to clients).

11. Limited Ladder Discounts

Limited ladder discounts have recently exploded in popularity because, in my opinion, they’re so highly dialed into human psychology and therefore generally VERY successful.

The limited ladder pricing method of launching a paid offer involves limiting low pricing to a select number of first-movers and then the price increases the more people buy it. For example, the first 20 buyers get it at $150, the second group of 20 buyers get it at $250, the third group of 20 buyers get it at $350, etc.

This takes scarcity to the next level. As a business owner who doesn’t like to manipulate people into buying, I have mixed feelings about this pricing method. In order to make it more ethical, I’d recommend having generous refund terms and conditions. That makes it so someone isn’t 100% locked into the purchase if they feel bad about it later, which has a higher likelihood of happening given that people are hardwired to want what’s scarce. You don’t want unhappy customers anyways, so it’s best to give people an out if they made a mistake being a first-mover. Of course, this could be abused so you’ll definitely want to double check why someone wants a refund and decide for yourself what you feel comfortable doing.

This pricing method can be super effective on Black Friday, as people are already eager to buy things they’ve been eyeing for a while and of course even new things they’ve never seen before. I’d recommend giving two forewarnings to your email list and/or on social media about a week and half before and leading up to Black Friday. This’ll help build excitement and let people know when they should be at their laptops to get the lowest prices.

12. Limited Bonus Service

A limited bonus service could be offering only five spots for a web copy audit if you’re a copywriter, or only offering the web copy audit in November, or offering a free web copy audit with any sales page copy purchase in November.

For the people in your audience and/or email list, a limited bonus service can be super attractive if it’s a no-brainer offer (as in, it’s always desired and makes logistical sense).

This is also a low pressure idea for Black Friday, as you can just tweak an existing service. But it’s still attractive to the right people! To make this a success, I’d recommend giving your people a heads up like two weeks before Black Friday, and continue to mention it leading up to the day it goes live. Especially if you go with limited spots, those who are super interested will want to jump on it ASAP.

13. Bundle a Service With Adjacent Partners

Bundling a service with logically adjacent partners includes reaching out to potential service providers, choosing ones that make the most sense for you and that you feel the best about working with (ideally after having many 1:1 chats), organizing the details of the bundled service, and then coordinating a marketing plan with your partners so it goes how y’all want it to come Black Friday. This one is relatively straightforward!

For example, if you’re a brand/web designer, partnering up with a copywriter and an SEO person (hello, is me!) makes strategic sense because your areas all closely relate to each other.

A brand/web designer partnering up with an email funnels specialist makes less sense.

Keep in mind that there’s a lot of different personalities, communication styles, and work styles out there! Be sure to truly vet who you’re thinking about working with. Because once contracts are signed, you’re legally locked in.

I’d recommend starting by asking yourself your own work-related preferences, so that it’ll be a lot easier to decide who’ll vibe with you.

14. Buy One, Get One

According to Shopify, 66% of consumers said buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deals are their favorite go-to deals. And 93% revealed that they had bought this type of offer at least once. That’s the power of BOGO!

For Black Friday, offering a BOGO offer could be very profitable if it’d make financial sense in your business. Of course, you wouldn’t want to lose money giving one of something away for free and you also wouldn’t want to raise the price of something only to offer it at a “discount” later on (that’s highly deceptive pricing).

For services, offering a BOGO would have to make sense. If you’re a social media manager, you could offer buy-one-month-of-management-and-get-one-month-free. Or if you’re an interior designer in Dallas, you could offer buy-one-room-design-and-get-one-free. The free thing should be an extra of the same thing, where it’d make sense that the customer/client would want more of the original thing.

15. Nothing!

While it can be tempting to do something special in your business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, sometimes doing nothing is actually the most strategic move. Like if you’re planning to launch something in December or January, you might not want to focus all of your November content on selling.

Especially if you’re a solopreneur who’s wearing all of the hats and doing all of the things, Black Friday might be feeling like a lot. Not going to lie – there’s usually a LOT of prep work that goes into a successful Black Friday promo. And that’s tough on any business, let alone one that’s run by a solopreneur.

Or, if your business ethos doesn’t vibe with the spirit of Black Friday, then it’s also perfectly ok to not do anything. We don’t all have to do something for Black Friday, especially if the thought of that doesn’t feel good deep inside your bones. Here’s your permission (not that you need it!) to release the pressure of organizing something for Black Friday.

Best of luck with what you end up doing!