In 2025, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales reached an estimated $11.8B and $14.25B, respectively, making them two of the most profitable shopping days in history. Now, with the 2026 BFCM period just around the corner, small online businesses are starting to think of ways to make the most of this potentially lucrative period.
I’ve run several successful online stores over the last ten years, several of which have relied heavily on BFCM sales to drive a significant proportion of annual turnover. Below, I run through six tried-and-tested methods to drive bigger profits during the peak trading season.
Prepare marketing materials
Preparing marketing materials well ahead of the BFCM period is essential to sales success. Most businesses will be much busier than usual during this period; that means more picking, packing, and sending orders, more customer enquiries to deal with, and more time spent on stock management.
Don’t make your life harder by having to spend hours creating marketing materials amongst the chaos. Planning your key discounts and offers early means you can create BFCM marketing assets well ahead of the rush.
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Prepare email copy and images, and create compelling subject lines. Most email marketing platforms will allow you to schedule emails as well, meaning you can set them to send and focus entirely on other things during BFCM. |
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Create images and videos that push your key deals, and write captions to accompany them. You can also schedule these ahead of time, but don’t forget to check in over the BFCM period to engage with your audience in the comments section and answer any questions. |
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Create website banners and other assets needed to push traffic to your deals. These can’t go live until the launch date, but having them ready and waiting will mean they can go up as soon as the deals are live. |
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Create leaflets to go out in orders notifying customers of an upcoming sale event. |
Create product bundles
With big savings come big opportunities to upsell customers. This works well during the BFCM period for two reasons.
Firstly, many people are searching for gifts during this period. If you can offer gift hunters a bundle of products within their budget, it can save them time looking elsewhere. By setting bundles into cost categories, you can also make it easy for people working to a specific budget. This is a simple way to capitalise on making people’s lives easier.
Bundling products can be especially powerful for existing customers or those who have spent some time considering buying from you. Offering several products at a similar price to an individual product someone has purchased before can make people feel like they are getting a great deal. This can also be a smart way to convince people to try new products that they may not have considered before.
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Create product bundles exclusively for the BFCM period. Categorise them based on price, for example, bundles under $20, under $50, and under $100. Ensure these bundles are visible on your website when people are browsing and push them
Run flash sales
Running one continuous sale over the BFCM period can generate good results, but smart online store owners know that they can tap into the buzz surrounding this period by running flash sales.
This approach can also help you sell specific items that generate more profit or are at the end of their line.
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Offer a flat discount site-wide running from Black Friday morning to Cyber Monday evening. Then offer a one-hour-long flash sale on specific products for an increased discount during peak trading. Use your social media and other marketing channels to tease the upcoming sale and notify people when it starts.
Incentivize bigger orders
One of the hardest things about the BFCM period is getting people to visit your website at a time when all of your competitors are trying hard to do the same. Most small businesses focus entirely on getting that click, but fail to maximise the amount of profit they make from each visitor.
If you’ve done the hard work of getting someone interested in visiting your online store, incentivizing larger orders can be a smart way to increase the Average Order Value (AOV).
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Incentivize larger order values by using a tiered discount system, such as 10% off orders under $20, 15% off orders over $20, and 20% off orders over $50. You may also want to test offering a free gift with orders over a certain value or provide as an alternative to larger discounts.
Team up with other businesses
Competing with business behemoths like Amazon can feel like an impossible task for small businesses, but there are countless individuals out there who would rather spend their hard-earned money with you.
During the BFCM period, it can be a smart move to team up with other small businesses in your area, tapping into each other’s audience to reach more people who want to buy from small, independent businesses.
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Team up with another local business that shares your target audience but doesn’t compete directly with you. Develop a strategy for shared promotion, such as joint social media posts or even bundled products from both businesses.
Give out VIP early access
We’ve all been there, we see something we want to buy, we wait patiently to see if it goes on sale on Black Friday, only to find it sold out in the first few hours of the sale.
Solving this issue not only drives loyalty, but can increase sales.
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Create a dedicated mailing list for early access to your BFCM sales and promote it between now and Black Friday.
Then, set up a hidden page so your products can be purchased at the discounted rate before they go live on the rest of the website. Send out an email anywhere from 2 to 24 hours before your sitewide sale goes live, giving list members early access
Making the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday
The BFCM period can make a huge difference to any small business. However, failing to prepare for it can lead to stress, confusion, and a lot of money being left on the table.
Taking time to plan your strategy ahead of BFCM will have a huge impact on your ability to make the most of this potentially lucrative period. This guide is a great starting point; use your experience and unique understanding of your niche to pick the methods that will work the best for you.
