S2E14: Black Friday: To Launch, Or Not To Launch?

Have you ever thought about launching your business on Black Friday? It seems like a good idea, right? Biggest shopping weekend of the year. Everybody's looking to spend, everyone's looking to support. There's a good chance that some people might have end-of-the-year bonuses from their jobs. It makes sense. Here are a few things that you, as a potentially small business owner, should keep in mind if you are considering doing a launch of your brand new business or offer on Black Friday. If you're new here, I'm Taylor B. I am the brand and web designer behind TV Design Loft, a brand and web design studio that is dedicated to helping more women, especially moms, build sustainable businesses that flow with their life instead of control their life. If you're a returning listener, hey there. Thanks for tuning in. Glad to metaphorically see you. So let's get into it. Now, logically, you would think, hey, Black Friday is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. It makes sense that this is the best time for me to launch my brand new business. It's not a bad idea. It's the logic is sound when you think about it. But when you look at the details and the logistics of it, when you actually zoom out a little bit, then it's like, well, wait a minute. Maybe I should rethink this. I'm just gonna give you a few things to think about if this is something that you are considering, whether this year or next year or whenever. Just a few things to think about. One, does your business already have awareness? Do people are people aware of your business? Do they know what you sell? Do they understand the quality? Do they want it? All these things. Or is it like brand spanking new, like you've been building quietly on the back end, and then you're just going to come out and watch it? Because if nobody knows who you are, that means that the trust has not been built. That means that it has not been developed. They don't know if you're a real person, they don't know if you are a scammer, they don't know if they can trust to spend their money with you. So that's one thing to consider. Does your brand have an audience or awareness around it? If it doesn't, here are some suggestions of what you can do. You could create content talking about why you started your business, what pushed you to it, why you're doing it now. Of course, talk about your product, talk about the journey, the behind the scenes content. Show up and talk about these things. Because that's going to build awareness, it's going to help build trust. I think we've talked about how there's how we are in a trust recession with the AI boom. And now people are looking at content and half the time they're not even focusing on the content itself. They're trying to determine is this real or is this AI? Is this fake? Is this a real person or is this AI? So if you establish that trust a little bit beforehand, it I genuinely believe that it could make a big difference in whether you see success or not. And success is relative because that could mean, hey, I made one sale on Black Friday after I launched my brand new business. For others, that could mean I made a hundred dollars. You know, like success is relative. And it could also mean maybe you just maybe you didn't make any sales, but maybe you got a bunch of followers and maybe you got a bunch of support from people who are interested in continuing to watch your journey and then eventually are going to purchase from you or recommend you to people they know. Again, success is relative and it's relative to your goals and what you're trying to achieve in your business. So build up that trust and that awareness in your business first. I would highly recommend that. You can start by, like I said, by doing content that's showing up either with your face or your hands, like doing the thing, creating the product, packing the product, using the product, talk about it using your voice. Even if you hate how your voice sounds, trust me, I hate how my voice sounds, but look at me, I'm doing a freaking podcast. Who knew? Anyway, show up and build that trust and awareness. You could, depending on your product, depending on your budget, you could look into partnering with creators to have them create content for you, such as an unboxing video, you know, like a PR box, I think they call it, where you send them product and then they create promotional videos for you. There's different ways to go about that. I know I've seen different things on YouTube. You just find a creator that resonates with your values and your business and that you believe would actually like your product, and you can just ask them, hey, do you do you want to partner for some content? And then y'all work that up together. Because if you utilize their audience and the trust that their audience has in them, that's also going to help with again the awareness and the trust. So creating content, partnering with a creator in order to create content for you. You could go to markets, local markets in your area, in order to get in front of people in your area, get awareness out for your business. If you do go to a market, I highly recommend, of course, creating content, like recording the setup, recording interactions with people. Of course, asking permission if you can use the video. You could also just make sure that their face isn't in it so that way you don't have to worry about anyone being put out there publicly. Just be careful doing that because you know, some people might be like, Well, wait a minute, I didn't give you permission to post anything that I said or anything of my likeness. Okay, just be careful with that. I don't know how all that works. I am the wrong person to ask. You could do markets, you could. I've heard a lot of people say start with the people that you know. So you could also just tell your friends and family, hey, I started making lotion or candles, cookies, donuts. I started making this thing. Tell whoever you know about it who would want it. Boom. Start there. That's another way to start as well. Building up some awareness and brand recognition. Just getting your name out there. So build up the awareness. That is honestly my biggest recommendation before Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. Keep in mind that everybody is selling. Like it's not just everybody's buying, everyone is selling. Everyone is pushing out sales content, everyone is pushing out their deals, everyone is pushing out their new products, new product lines, their exclusive product lines, especially for the bigger companies. So that's that's why I would caution you with launching on Black Friday. However, if you want to, that's you. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying keep that in mind is that again, it is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. So big businesses and small businesses alike are putting out their sales. Your best bet if you're going to launch on Black Friday weekend or around there is to build up the awareness before you launch the business. And even if you don't have like a huge, oh, I made a thousand or ten thousand dollars in a weekend success story, even if you don't have that, keep going. That doesn't mean you failed. It just means there's a good chance that nobody saw you or they weren't sure if they could trust you yet. And that's fine. You build on the momentum with the way that things are going right now in society with technology and all that. Marketing is, I would say, more crucial than ever. But it always depends on what your goals are. If you are only looking to stay small and stay local, then you might not need social media as heavily. You would probably benefit from more in-person markets, from just simply handing out business cards, going to local businesses and giving them business cards or even asking them, hey, can I give you some business cards for your customers? Think about salons and barbershops, the library. You can go there and ask them, hey, is it possible to leave my business cards here? Boom. Now, when people are coming to these services, if they see your card and they're interested, they can take it, they can contact you, they can go on the website, they can get on your email list, all those things. You can attend local markets. You can shoot if you really want to thug it out. You can sell out of the trunk of your car. I mean, that might look kind of creepy, but it's okay, you know, if you can. I feel like someone should at some point do like a like a pop-up shop event where the you just sell out of the trunk of your car. Like, hey, you don't have to have a fancy tent, you don't have to have a table and all this other fancy stuff, unless if you want it, we're just renting out this parking lot, and then you bring your stuff and you sell out of the trunk. Someone should call it trunk and dunk. I don't know. That sounds so terrible. Because what's the dunk part? Whatever. Anyway, but marketing is is more than just getting your brand in front of people. It's helping people understand one, why they should care about your brand, and why your brand is trustworthy. You know, word of mouth is always king. Whenever you can get a direct referral or recommendation from someone, that is ideal because someone was told by someone they trust that this business or this business owner is trustworthy, and that speaks volumes beyond just seeing an ad on online that says, hey, we can do this for you, or hey, we sell this. You know, I really would recommend getting out there. Just just get out there, do the thing. You had this idea for a reason, and I know you can do it, whether you launch on Black Friday, or if you wait a while, or if you decide to launch months before, or maybe you launch later. Holiday season is a difficult time to be seen, I would say, online. It's a really difficult time to be seen. It's not necessarily a bad time to launch or to sell or to market. I mean, again, it's the biggest shopping season of the year. It's just harder for a smaller business to be seen. So if you're going to do it, you have to be strategic about it. And honestly, I would say if you're especially just starting your business, you gotta hit the ground running. Like you really gotta boom, boom, hit the ground running with getting your business, getting eyes on your business and on your products, talking about it, getting real life referrals and reactions, things of that nature. Be creative, don't be creepy. Be creative, be persistent, don't be creepy, and don't be a stalker. I think I'm gonna wrap it up there. I can't think of anything else. I feel like there was more that I wanted to say, but you know what? If I think of anything else, I'll maybe write a blog post on like Substack, or maybe I'll make a reel. I'll do something. I don't know. Follow me so that way if more ideas pop up, then I can share them with you. And feel free to message me on Instagram to tell me what you thought about the the episode. I really love hearing what you guys think and any suggestions that you guys have. But anyway, for now, I'm gonna end this little ramble. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you in the thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye.