5 Legal Tips to Prepare for Your Black Friday Sale

This week I've been finishing up getting all set for our Black Friday sale that is coming up. I cannot believe we are this far into the year. But Black Friday is only five weeks away. So it's time to get going on it, really. I'm taking two weeks off for my wedding, which when this comes out is like a week and a half away. So that meant that I had to be like totally ready for Black Friday before taking those two weeks off because I didn't want to have to rush when I got back. But this episode is not about my Black Friday, it's about your Black Friday. Since it's about time to get ready, I wanted to talk through some tips for running a Black Friday sale legally. Black Friday means more traffic to your site, it means hopefully more things being sold, different combinations of offers, discounts, all that kind of stuff. So you just have to navigate it a little bit more carefully. Let's get into it.

Hey, I'm Amy Nesheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in.

Alright, I have five legal tips for you for running a Black Friday sale that is profitable instead of risky. If you are running a Black Friday sale this year, send me a DM over on Instagram and tell me about it. I'm just nosy about what kinds of sales people put together because I know there are some service providers who are hesitant about jumping into Black Friday because obviously you don't want to discount your time, but there are ways that you can do it. Things like adding on extra bonuses that you've already created that don't make extra work for you, pre-selling spots for next year at this year's price, maybe bundling offers where when they're together they don't add a ton of time for you. Lots of options there. So if you're doing any of that, let me know because I'm just curious. But that was kind of an aside. So maybe Black Friday is a little bit more relevant for digital product providers. If you sell things like courses, memberships, templates, downloads of any kind, ebooks, all that stuff. But this is gonna apply either way. Okay, so here are your tips.

I already mentioned you're gonna have extra traffic going to your site, so make sure it's ready for it. That means having your terms and conditions and privacy policy in place on your website. That's not any different than any other time of year. It's just gotta check it off, gotta make sure you have it. And if you're building any separate pages for your Black Friday sale specifically, make sure you add the terms and conditions and privacy policy on those pages as well. If you have a separate opt-in for Black Friday, if you have like a deal rundown page, if you are doing affiliate marketing and you have a page that is a rundown of all of the affiliate deals you have going on, make sure you have terms and conditions, website terms and conditions, and a privacy policy on every single one of those pages, not just your home page.

Make sure you have terms of purchase for each product linked on your sales page and on your checkout page. Now, terms of purchase is the contract that you're entering into with someone who buys something from you. Generally a digital product, not a client because clients have a one-on-one contract. So terms of purchase is the rules for purchasing a product from you, and that is different than your website terms and conditions, which is the rules for engaging with your website. The purchase decision, the purchase relationship is different because there is actual money and goods changing hands. So you want to make sure you have the rules laid out for that. That's what terms of purchase are for. Most importantly, it lays out payment terms and intellectual property protection, which is super important for digital products. So have that. If you don't already, go grab my template and make sure you, for each product you're selling, you have one of those. You can have one terms of purchase that covers multiple products. Just make sure that they're all contemplated in that. And then you want to link that terms of purchase on the sales page for the product, or if you have a Black Friday sale page that has a bunch of products on it, link it there. And also on your checkout page or each checkout page if you have multiple. So you want to make sure that the terms of purchase are available and visible to the customer before they make the buying decision and during the checkout process. If they can't find it, if they don't see it, if they aren't able to see it and able to find it easily, then you can't hold them to it. If they couldn't see it, they couldn't agree to it. They don't have to read it, but they have to be able to access it.

Your refund policy should be in your terms of purchase, but it's a good idea to include it in other places as well because it's really important for people to know it ahead of time. That makes it so much easier to enforce. So put that refund policy right on your sales page, right on your Black Friday deals page, right on your checkout page. And if it is a limited time refund policy, like 14 days, 30 days, or something, it's great to have on your sales page anyway because it is a selling point. People like to know they have a little time to check out your product, especially if it's a digital product, you know, see what they're getting into before they're stuck with it, right? And if it's a no refunds policy, that's even more important for people to know before they purchase because then they're not gonna, they're not as likely to push back on it if they knew about it before they made the decision. So put it on your sales page, put it on your checkout page to make sure it's obvious and easy to see.

Use disclaimers. If you sell anything that could be taken as advice, professional advice that sounds like it's coming from someone licensed, like legal advice, financial advice, health advice, if you're a life coach or if you talk about meditation or diet, anything that sounds like it would come from a doctor, a dietitian, a therapist, anything like that, you want to have disclaimers that say this is not professional advice. This is for informational purposes only. Do your due diligence, consult your own professional, basically making sure that the customer knows how to appropriately use your product and that it is not a substitute for whatever kind of advice they might think it is. And that way you can't be held responsible if they go act on your advice and something bad happens, or if they think it's just bad advice. So disclaimer should go in the footer of your sales page and also in your terms of purchase, as well as actually in the product. If you post on social media, it's also not a bad idea to include it in your either in your profile in a highlight or inside the post itself.

Be really clear on any limitations on your sale. So, number one, before you publish anything, figure out what the boundaries are around this sale. When does it start? When does it end? How do people access it? Are there any special steps that they have to take to take advantage of a deal? Is there any limit on who can access the deal or how many deals per customer, that kind of thing? So get really clear on that and then make that clear to your customers. So that might be something like in the footer, of course, throughout your page, you're gonna make that clear too as well. So put it where it would go naturally on your page. You know, our sale runs November 20 through November 27. Use the coupon code Black Friday at checkout to get your discount, things like that. I mean, that's already gonna be on your page, in your promotions, in your emails, all of that. But if there are any additional details, any additional limitations or restrictions, you can put those in the footer of the sales page that you're using for this deal or your specific Black Friday page if you have one. And it doesn't hurt to put them in the footer of your emails as well. And that's gonna be like things like specific times when the sale starts and ends, and then any limitations that they might not be aware of. Like in order to get their extra bonus that goes along with this deal, they have to send you an email. If there's anything like that, any extra steps to take, put make sure that those are clear on that sales page. If you know only people who are on your email list can take advantage of a deal, that has to be clear. If there is a limit of two products per customer or something, that doesn't make as much sense for digital products, but you never know. Any limitations like that, just make sure that they're written out on the page somewhere. And then probably a good idea to summarize it all in the footer as well.

Alright, happy planning. Black Friday is one of my favorites. It's so fun. I love offering good deals, I love getting good deals, so I can't wait to see what you guys come up with and what you put out there. Again, feel free to send me a DM. Tell me about your sale. I'm so curious. And of course, keep an eye out for the Artful Contract sale. We're not announcing it yet, but we will be doing a rundown on the podcast as it gets closer, probably a week out. So stay tuned. Alright, I'll see you next time.