As I sit here writing and scheduling blog posts for the next few weeks, it dawned on me that those of us who don’t buy into the Black Friday (Whack Friday, as I call it) craze can actually learn a few things to help us in marketing our own businesses.

1. Anticipation – Companies have been hyping their deals for weeks and have been strategically “leaking” their flyers into the social media stream. Can you imagine if you built up that kind of anticipation for one of your events and people were trying to crash the door down to get in?

2. Offer You Can’t Refuse – Yes, I know, most of those $100, 60″ HDTV offers are loss leaders and the quantities are limited, but that irresistible offer is what gets people to wake up at 3am to wait in line in the snow. What if you made an irresistible offer to your tribe that made them act like that? Price juxtaposition and scarcity are two persuasive tools you can use to make that happen.

3. Social Proof – I have no idea what the real stats are, but I’m confident that a large proportion of the people out fighting the crowds today are there because a friend or family member coerced them to. The conversation probably went like this: “Oh, you aren’t going out on Black Friday?! Why not? You’ll save so much money and get great deals!!” And the other person unconsciously agreed to go along because they felt like they would be missing something if they didn’t. This is what we call social proof. If people are indifferent to an offer or situation, they will look to their trusted peers and family members to help them decide. If prospects were to look at your LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream, or Facebook business page, what would they see? Would they see people recommending and endorsing your services or would they see a barren digital wasteland? Be conscious about building a great online case for why people should be doing business with you, it matters.

I’m sure there are other things we can learn, but these are just few ideas that come to mind. If you have other thoughts I’d love to hear them in the comments below.