E-commerce trends show that Q4 is the most wonderful time of the year for e-commerce. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday season are the perfect time to focus on maximizing sales.
Everyone is shopping for everything on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the focus is generally holiday shopping. Be sure to prioritize your NWT (new with tags) inventory that can be gifted.
Here is how to make the most out of Black Friday by hosting sales and promotions.
How to Host a Black Friday Sale
Here is your ultimate guide to hosting a Black Friday or Cyber Monday Reseller Sale on Poshmark, eBay, Depop, Etsy, and more!
1. Name The Sale
First, you will need to determine which type of sale you’re going to host. While your options vary by marketplace tools, you might also choose to create your own sale via messaging or advertisement.
Generally, simpler is better. If your sale is too confusing, buyers will not understand. Here are a few different types of Black Friday sales I’ve hosted over the years:
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50% Off Everything. This is self-explanatory. It is a blanket discount on everything you have for sale. You can choose any percentage, but the higher it is, the more enticing it will be.
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BOGO: Buy One, Get One This is another very popular sale! Sellers often do “buy one, get one free” (equal or lesser value), or “buy one, get one half off.” These sales are great because they require the purchase of more than one item to participate.
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$10 Sale! Variations of this sale are simple: You slash the price of qualifying items, and you can advertise that you have “hundreds of items marked at $10 while supplies last”
💡Tip: Make sure you can honor your sale. Be sure you don’t have special items or consignment items you cannot make eligible for these promotions. You can always raise the price before the sale.
2. Advertise Your Sale
A good sale takes some careful planning and advertising. If you’re not yet on social media for your reselling business, here is your sign to create accounts today.
Social media is amongst the most effective ways to advertise, using paid advertisement and just posting about your sale and showing your items!
💡Tip: Have you considered paid advertising on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more? Most allow you to establish demographic goals and set a budget. This can be very effective for driving traffic to your stores.
If you’re willing to familiarize yourself, Google Ads is also a valuable tool for paid advertising across the internet!
Of course, there are also in-app tools and promotions. See below some things you can do on different marketplaces to notify shoppers of your sales!
💡Tip: Feel free to screenshot and use these graphics for your sale! They’re generic, so you can always add some text! You can also create and customize your own for free on Canva.
How to Host a Black Friday Sale on eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, and more!
Here is the step-by-step to hosting sales, promoting your items, and using the marketplace tools to promote sales on Black Friday!
How to Run a Black Friday Sale on Poshmark
Poshmark is booming during the holiday season. Here is how to host a sale on Poshmark!
Note that there is no official “sale” tool or feature on Poshmark. However, there are many Poshmark tools and features that you can use to strategically host a sale.
💡Tip: The new Poshmark Promoted Closet feature is a great way to promote your closet. You might choose to allocate a decent budget between Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get the most eyes on your listings
Whichever type of sale you choose, here are the ways to promote it and inform potential buyers.
Make Bulk Offers to Likers (OTL)
Making bulk offers to likers is probably the simplest way to offer a discount to those who have already expressed interest in your items. You can make individual offers on each item, or use Poshmark’s Bulk Actions (or a tool like PosherVA) to make bulk offers. The bigger the offer, the more chance of sales. 💰
💡Tip: Don’t forget to comment in bundles to encourage multi-item sales!
Create a Closet Sale Sign on Poshmark
You can create a closet sale sign by creating a listing, the way you would for any other item. You’ll use graphic images to promote your sales, and explain it in the description. You will want to select the “brand” for this listing to expand your reach; perhaps select one similar to the types of items you sell.
You can use graphics like the ones above for the listing photos, and be sure to share the listing as often as possible!
Use the My Shoppers Tool on Poshmark
The My Shoppers tool enables sellers to interact with buyers in bulk. With the feature, you can do things like add likes to bundles, add bundle comments, and message former buyers.
Thus, you can send a message to a mass number of users who have interacted with your closet to promote a sale or deal!
Here is an example:
Any combination of the ideas above can be used to run a sale on Poshmark. For more information, Check out this video about How To Host a Successful Sale on Poshmark.
How to Host a Black Friday Sale on Mercari
Frankly, you can’t. There is no sale or promotional feature on Mercari. There also aren’t too many tools on Mercari to use as work-arounds…
That said, you can do a few things that might increase your chances of making sale.
💡Tip: Don’t forget to also create a Mercari Shop sale sign!
Promote Your Listings on Mercari
To promote your listings, go to your profile, tap Selling, and select “Promote.” You’ll be prompted to select whether you want to promote your listing to everyone or just send an Offer to Likers.
Promoting your listings requires that you drop the price, boost them in the Mercari search feed results, and notify all likers about the price decrease.
Making Offers to Likers (OTL) on Mercari requires that you make an offer of at least 10% off, and the platform then sends this special offer to all likers.
Check out this chart to see how to promote your Mercari listings to make more sales.
Image courtesy of the Mercari Help Center.
Message Potential Buyers
You might consider what I call “Buyer Outreach.” This includes browsing your Mercari inbox, and reaching out to the buyers who have ghosted you after initial inquiry, to say something like:
“Hey! Are you still interested in this item? I’m running a 50% off sale today for Black Friday! Feel free to make the offer, and I’ll accept.”
Note that this method is a little spammy; use it sparingly.
While there is no official way to run a sale, discount, or promotion on your entire Mercari shop, the steps above are the best ways to run an unofficial sale.
How to Run a Black Friday Sale on eBay
eBay provides sellers with so many tools, including promotions, offers to watchers, bulk price adjustments, coupons, and official tools for discounting store items with a sale event. Note that some of these features require that you have an eBay store.
Tools to Make More Sales on eBay
First, you can send offers to watchers from your eBay seller hub. You can also promote your items in various ways, through paid promotional tools (and you only pay the promotion fee when your item sells as a direct result of the promotion). You can also create promotional coupons, with your own terms and conditions, in the eBay promotion manager.
In addition to these basic eBay selling features, you can have an official eBay Sale Event:
How to Run An eBay Store Sale
You can create sales in your eBay promotion manager dashboard. eBay allows you to customize your sale details, eligible items, and markdown price here. eBay also allows you to promote your sale via ads and mailing lists.
There are so many advanced tools and opportunities for sales on eBay. Learn more about creating and managing an eBay sale here.
eBay can seem intimidating, but those complexities are opportunities with advanced tools to make more money. For a full guide to eBay, check out the blog How to Get Started Selling on eBay.
How to Run a Black Friday Sale on Depop
Depop also does not have an official sale option, but it does have a discount feature. When you use the Depop discount tool, you can apply a discount to your entire shop (or select items) with just a few clicks.
Note: To notify likers, you must discount your items by at least 30%.
When you use Depop discounts, your items are tagged with yellow sale stickers. Click here to see how to use the Depop discount feature in the Depop app.
In addition to the Depop discount feature, you can also try the “shop sign” and “buyer outreach” ideas explained above!
How to Host a Sale on Facebook Marketplace
FBMP has many tools for resellers in lieu of an official sale feature including: offers, renewal, price drop, FBMP Ad Promotions, and Facebook Boosted Listings.
While none of these are a simple sale option, collectively, you can promote your listings strategically to effectuate a sale.
💡Tip: Before you host a sale, check if any of your marketplace listings are eligible for renewal. If they are, you’ll see a " renew " button below each on your listings screen. This feature essentially refreshes your listings to broaden your reach. Similarly, your older listings might be eligible for price drop, where you can reduce the price to notify likers and viewers. These tools only apply to the eligible listings, which will be indicated in your marketplace manager.
You can send offers on Facebook (with a comment advertising your sale) from your marketplace manager. You can also choose to boost your listings and personally select your desired audience, listings, duration, and details of your promotional ad (this is a paid promo, but it’s worth it). Facebook Marketplace Ads work similarly, and you can personalize the sale type and language to reflect your sale!
How to Run a Black Friday Sale on Grailed
There is no official sale option or mass discount feature on Grailed. But, Grailed does provide a few promotional features that you can use strategically to host a sale event on Grailed including offers to likers, bumps, and price drops.
How to Make More Sales on Grailed
You can also make offers to likers on Grailed. You can make offers to likers by selecting the item, and creating an offer price (at least ten percent below the current price). In fact, you can make OTL on Grailed four times within a month, so long as you reduce your offer by ten percent each time. Sending mass offers with a steep discount is the best way to host a sale on Grailed.
💡Tip: On Grailed, you can bump your items after 7 days; when you look at your listings screen, the “bump” button will appear under each eligible listing. Bumping your items will refresh them in your shop and the search. After one month, you’ll have to price drop by at least 10% to boost your listing in the search feed.
How to Run a Sale For Your Shopify Store
Shopify is a unique selling marketplace; it is less of a peer-to-peer marketplace and more of a tool to power your very own e-commerce website. Shopify provides so many tools and resources for sellers, including running a sale and creating a discount code.
On Shopify you can create discount codes, set up automatic discounts, or set sale prices for individual products.
You can host a sale on Shopify easily by manually adjusting your prices, and opting to keep the original price present, to demonstrate the sale. This is called the compare price sale; learn more here. You can also apply an automatic discount to your entire store.
Even better, is the ability to create a discount code in your Shopify store.
You can create a discount code easily, and establish rules for when and how it can be used. Examples include a discount code for a dollar amount, a percentage discount, or a buy something and get something discount (Like BOGO style), or a shipping promotion discount.
Visit the discount page to create your code and its terms. Remember that because Shopify is your own website, there is not necessarily a built-in audience. You will have to do your own marketing to drive traffic to your store. Shopify provides all of the tools and resources you need to make sales happen.
💡Tip: For a full guide to how to sell on Shopify, check out the article What You Need to Know to Start Selling on Shopify.
How to Host a Black Friday Sale on Kidizen
On Kidizen, there is a shop discount feature that works as a tool to run a sale in your Kidizen shop.
💡Tip: Many sellers don’t know you should share your items daily on Kidizen!
You can set up a shop discount to automatically offer discounted shipping. This effectively creates a sale that applies to bundles. The best part is, it creates a banner at the top of your store! Check it out:
This is how you establish a shop discount, and how it appears on your shop page. Image courtesy of the Kidizen Help Center.
How to Host a Black Friday Sale on Etsy
Etsy offers multiple official sale techniques, and the holidays are by far the busiest time of the year on the Etsy app!
Etsy provides sellers with three methods to discount items: Sales, promo codes, and targeted offers.
Running a Black Friday Sale on Etsy
With the official sale feature on Etsy, you can offer a discount on (some or) all of the items in your shop for a set audience for a certain period of time.
In your Shop Manager, in the Marketing Tab, select Sales and Discounts. There, you can choose a percentage off, shipping options, and customize the details of your sale.
💡Tip: You might also consider targeted offers and Promotions on Etsy!
How to Host a Sale on Vestiaire Collective
While Vestiaire does not have an official sale feature, it provides sellers with many tools to increase visibility and sales: namely sending offers to likers and doing flash price drops.
💡Tip: Vestiaire has site-wide sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so they’re already working to help you make sales!
How to Send Offers to Likers on Vestiaire
Sending offers is simple. In the newsfeed, you will see likers, and you can click the notification to send them an offer.
How to Do a Flash Price Drop on Vestiaire
Flash Price Drop is a feature that you can use as a “last chance” to make a sale. If an offer that you have extended is rejected or times out, Vestiaire gives you a chance to honor that offer price, making it available to all of Vestiaire for 48 hours only. During this time, your item will be featured in the Best Deals feed on the app!
Maximizing Black Friday and Cyber Monday Online Sales with Vendoo
There you have it! This is how you host a sale on the reselling marketplaces!
💡Tip: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are also excellent times for you to source inventory and supplies. Be sure to check out sales at your local thrift store and online!
Be sure to take advantage of major holidays, ecommerce trends, and days where consumer shopping is prominent such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
Did you know that with Vendoo you can crosspost your inventory to all of the marketplaces above? You can also delist/relist for daily sales, manage your inventory, and even more! Try Vendoo today with the no-risk free trial! Happy selling!
Have you hosted a sale? Tell us how it went! 👇🏽
