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#86 Black Friday 2021 Prep Episode 1 of 2

#86 Black Friday 2021 Prep Episode 1 of 2

It's time again for what should be the best sales day(s) of the year for e-commerce brands. If you're not prepared already, you better get a move on. In episode one of this two-part series, we'll go over crafting your promotion and how to get the best out of online traffic.

It's time again for what should be the best sales day(s) of the year for e-commerce brands. If you're not prepared already, you better get a move on. In episode one of this two-part series, we'll go over crafting your promotion and how to get the best out of online traffic.

 

 

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TRANSCRIPT

It's the Ultimate Marketer podcast!

What is up, everybody? Welcome to the Ultimate Marketer podcast. I'm your host, Orlando Rios. Welcome back. It's been a little bit since we've done a show here. Things have been a little bit busy, but we have to do one. You know why? Because one of the most important sales events in the entire year that everybody looks forward to, Black Friday, Cyber Monday is just about a month away, so if you haven't yet already, typically you should do this a little bit more in advance, but if you haven't yet already, now is the time to spend these next two weeks really honing in and getting things ready for your sales.

Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty, I want to let you know that right now, if you need help getting set up for Black Friday with your Facebook ads or your Google ads, dropkickads.com, get a pro setup. We will go in, we will set up the audiences, the creative, everything ready to go, so you can just press play when it's time to launch your sale and not have to worry about it and know that you have an amazing pro setup for your Facebook or Google ads.

If you're going to get this, I recommend doing it sooner rather than later. We at Dropkick tend to get a lot busier those last few weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday as everybody tries to get some new creative and pro setups at the last minute, so if it's something that you're considering, please go and do it now. You can go to dropkickads.com. Look under the pro services, find the pro setups. If you don't need a pro setup, you just need some new creative for your upcoming sale, again, I suggest getting them as far in advance as possible. We can do that for you, too, so check that out, dropkickads.com. Of course, if you use the promo code "Ultimate" because you're a listener of this show, you will automatically save 10%. Awesome.

Time to get ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. This is going to be a two-episode thing. Episode one, we're going to focus more on what our sales should be. If you haven't figured out what you're going to put on sale, what kind of sale you're doing, et cetera, how to choose things, this is what this episode's going to be about. Next week's episode's going to be more about the traffic driving, the ads, all the organic traffic, all that other stuff. That's going to be next week's episode. But for this week, we're going to focus on crafting what our sales should be.

I have a lot of experience in this. Before I started with Dropkick Ads, probably about what, when did I start that company? Well, four years ago, something like that. I worked for other e-commerce businesses for many, many years, so I have a lot of experience when it comes to crafting big Black Friday offers the at that just absolutely kill it and when you can make sales all in one weekend that rival other months of the year if you do it correctly.

With that, I am going to share all the knowledge that I have to try to help you first craft your sale, what to do, what kind of thought process you should be in. Number one: You really, really need to think more extravagantly when you're coming up with your sales. There's so much competition. Everybody's going to be doing this, so think outside of the box of just 20% off here, 15% off site-wide. Think what other things you can do to excite your sales message. Put together some really attractive core offers that will make customers eager to spend, both new customers and the customers you already have.

If you're thinking about the customers you already have, they're not going to get that excited with the discount that they can at any other time of year, right? You need to really come up with something a little bit better. Maybe it's buy one, get one kind of thing, or maybe it's a combination of things like free shipping plus the discount, package deals, specific package deals of products that go together. Think if you're an apparel company, maybe you have a special shirt-and-hat combo with an accessory that's discounted very well, but the combo's already there put together for you. Things like that, those are the things you should think of.

Other things that have been really successful in Black Friday sales that I've done in the past is having some kind of exclusive item that you can only get Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. Obviously, we're running a little close on time here, but if you sell apparel, maybe it's a T-shirt that you can only get that weekend. You do a small run and make that just something that's a little extra to add to the cart, something that'll draw your past customers back in, and also maybe pique some interest from new potential customers. But when you do things like that, that's what really gets your past customers to come back. If it's something that that's not always available, that's a really good idea to make your current customers, who are actually more likely to spend with you again, come back during that weekend and get in on those sales.

Some people don't have a lot of margins when it comes to what they can give a sale on and they might be a little bit nervous or scared to really pump up that percentage discount or the sale, whatever you're going to do, because just the margins don't won't work out and you might just break even, you might just lose the money here. I mean, you may think it's not worth it.

Well, one other thing that I always try to get across and things I've done in the companies I've worked for in the past is to use this as a clearing of warehouse space. Whenever you store anything, whether it's at home, whether it's at a storage unit, or if you actually have a warehouse with inventory, anywhere you take up space, even though it may not necessarily, if it's your own home, whatever, that's costing you money. Having inventory on hand is money that's just sitting there taking up space. If some items, and there's going to be those items that don't seem to move as good as the others, Black Friday/Cyber Monday is an excellent opportunity to clear that warehouse space, cut your losses. If an inventory product is causing you to have losses, this is the perfect time to do it.

A lot of times, some of that warehouse space stuff that you heavily, heavily discount, maybe that's your doorbuster. If you bring the price down all the way to cost, and you're okay with just saying, "You know what? This product ain't moving, I'm going to bring it all the way down to cost just to reclaim the money that I spent to get this product in inventory," that's a great doorbuster right there. You can use it as a way to upsell on things if you have a product that's not moving and you don't think a discounts going to do it, clear space, give it away. Give it away with a purchase over a certain dollar amount. This will help draw customers in. It's a compelling offer and the customer's going to be happy because they get something for free and you can just cut your losses here, say, "This didn't work out. Fine, clear the shelves."

But a lot of times, it'll cause people to spend more, too, so think about those items that you have if you have them that just don't seem to be doing well. You put work into it. Maybe you don't even have a tangible product, but you put a lot of work into a digital product and it's just not going well. Think about giving it away with a purchase over a certain amount or think about heavily discounting it all the way to cost if you can. I think that usually does well.

When I talk about doorbusters, and I mentioned this before, it's important to have a dramatic discount. If you're not familiar with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the term "doorbuster," it's exactly what it implies. Usually, doorbusters for retail stores in-person, they tend to be things like huge televisions that are going for a really big discount or stuff like that, computers, et cetera, and they're used to exactly that, get people to beat down the door, to bust them right open because the discount's so dramatic and it's some kind of exclusive deal.

Those are your core offerings. Those are the things that are going to be the best to offer to customers that don't know who you are, to prospective customers. That's the draw in because you can't sell an entire brand in one weekend. If you can, if you have one really sexy product, that should be your doorbuster product, that's what you should use to get people in. It's okay if it's dramatically discounted because if people come in on that, more than likely, and this is the beauty of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, when people come in, they already are looking to spend, so they might come in for that heavily discounted doorbuster product, but then they might add an extra thing or two to their cart, which will make the whole thing worth it, so think about that because you're going to get multiple sales from that one customer more than likely, so you have to get creative to get them through the door first. If you don't have those big doorbuster offers, whatever it is there needs to be, you're going to have a harder time bringing in brand new customers.

I know a lot of people that listen to the show don't necessarily have tangible goods and maybe they want to do some kind of sales on digital products or services, so you can think outside the box here and have, maybe it's a new, extra part of the service. I don't know, if you're a tree-cutting company, maybe for Black Friday, in addition to the discount for your tree-cutting services, maybe for this weekend only, if you get your tree-cutting service, maybe we'll trim your bushes, too. I don't know. Maybe we'll cut your lawn all also, fertilize, whatever.

I know this is kind of funny and I'm joking around here a little bit, but these are the thoughts that you should have in your head. What are the little things you can add and sprinkle on to make the deal sweeter that's not going to be that much more of an inconvenience for you or your business, or that much more of a cost for you or your business that'll cause somebody to make the decision to come in and make the purchase? That's what we're trying to get here.

Once you've crafted your offer, you know what you have, your core doorbusters, and you know what your general sale is going to be, you might want to think of possibly getting multiple sales in the same weekend. That means you get somebody to come in on Black Friday, make this purchase, and then maybe they come back Monday and make another purchase.

How do you pull that off? You're probably thinking, "Orlando, that's not really possible." Well, I've done this before with past companies that I work for. What you do is you offer specific things on specific days. This is a little bit more complicated, but you can totally do it. You can have certain products or certain bonuses, certain major discounts, doorbusters, whatever, on days one and two, like Friday and Saturday, and then maybe you have a different offer on Sunday and Monday. Of course, you can just have the deals go all weekend and still do really, really well. However, if you get a ton of traffic, you have a huge customer base, you might want to consider breaking up some of those events, or just add something additional on the last two days. Something to think about.

Now, after actually getting the offer together, you really don't want to, in most cases, just have a discount code and send people to the site and let them figure things out on their own. You can do that and be successful, I've seen it, but if you want to go the extra mile, I really recommend creating a dedicated traffic lander. Have a specific landing page made for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers that's easy to scroll and shows the deals easily in a carousel or just laid out. Think about it like you remember those old ads used to get in the newspaper when you're a kid, like Toys 'r Us and all that stuff that showed all the deals. Think of it in that kind of fashion.

You can use landing page builder apps, like Unbalanced, Leadpages, Instapage, and you can use it to just drag and drop. Shopify makes things incredibly now if you are on a 2.0 theme to really make a custom landing page. I've never used Zipify Pages. You can use those. There's all type types of options here you can do. If you're on Shopify, you can integrate collection pages, all that kind of stuff, so you have a specific URL, whatever your domain is dot com slash bfcm or Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever it is, it's great to be able to send all traffic to one page.

Additionally, what's great about that is if you have this page set up before the sale, you can tease what some of the deals might be. Maybe you have a email field on there first and before the sale starts, you start sending traffic there so that people sign up to your email list so that they know is soon as your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale is live, that they will get it. They'll get an email letting them know that the sales are on and they're good to go. A dedicated landing page that shows all your offers, a preview if you can do it, it gets people to sign up for your email list to make sure they don't miss out on anything. It's an amazing thing to do.

Another thing you want to might consider is to have a little fun with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. Think about possibly theming your Black Friday sale. Have a type of theme where you use certain colors or imagery, whatever it is. I mean, you can go backwards, I guess, and have a Halloween-y theme, you can have a Christmas theme. Maybe it's your favorite movie and then all the headlines and stuff are puns of a certain movie you like. I think you get where I'm going here with this, but you can really build out a whole theme for your Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Make it memorable. Make it something that's fun and memorable to stand out from just the standard, "Well, we're just giving 10/15% off site-wide for Black Friday/Cyber Monday." Make it stand out. You're going to have to. People are going to be bombarded with all types of ads and offers galore going crazy. You're going to be going up against Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, all that kind of stuff, right, so make yourself stand out. Think about theming out your sale.

Another thing you might want to consider is to maybe you have a Facebook event specifically for your sale. Collect reservations and use the event to share offers, build hype. Build hype around what is going to be this big sales weekend. I would also mention one thing we used to do is we used to actually tell our customers two weeks or a week before the sale, we would email them and we would tell them, "Don't buy anything right now because we have a huge sale coming next week," and you'd be surprised. Some people still buy, even though they know a sale's coming next week, because they want it now, they're not willing to wait for a discount.

Yes, this might make your sales really suck for a two, but what this really does, this builds a lot of trust with your customers and it allows you to connect with them. You're telling them, "Hey, don't spend any money with us. Just hold on. If you can hold on for one more week, you're going to get amazing deals on what we have to offer." Think what that does for your customers' thoughts around your company. They're going to think, "Wow, this company's awesome. I really trust them. They're trying to save me money. They're telling me not to buy from them right now because I'm going to get better deals next week."

Think about how awesome that is. Tell the truth. It is pretty awesome. But also, your sales are likely not going to be that good the weeks leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday, because everybody's already expecting some kind of sell, so why not just be upfront about it and straightforward? Build that trust. It's going to be great for future business. Get your customers hyped up and then deliver the goods when it's time.

That's the core part of crafting a great Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale for your business. Just to reiterate really quickly, go the extra mile. Think extravagantly how you can rise above just the plain percentage-off deals and really put out an attractive offer for your customers and potential new customers. Doorbusters. What are your big dramatic discounts or limited edition products that you can offer? Maybe it's stuff that's sitting in your warehouse that you can't get rid of. Maybe take a draw on that and just try to get rid of it here with the most you can.

Create a dedicated space for your sale on your website. This isn't a must, but if you can do it, I think it'll help you to create a dedicated lander that perhaps maybe has some kind of email sign up and you can tell people to sign up because you're going to have the best deals, and then when that deal goes live, that page is where all traffic goes to from ads, everything, that shows all the sales on one page, scrolling up and down, so there's limited page loading going on whenever the sales going on, you don't want a lot of different new page loads. Then finally, be upfront with your customers that you have already. Maybe let them know a week or two in advance not to buy from you because there's going to be an awesome sale on the way.

All right, perfect. That's part one of our Black Friday/Cyber Monday episodes here. This one's about crafting your offer and your sale. Next week, we're going to get more into the campaigns you should have set up in Facebook, Google, what to do with email, all that kind of stuff, to make sure that you're getting the most out of this sale. Yes, we're a month away. Right now is the exact time where you should get be getting all this stuff together if you haven't yet already, so I'll look forward to talking with you guys next week, week. Again, if you need help, you want some help, professional help from Dropkick Ads, we are doing pro setups. We've been doing a lot this last week to get customers ready for their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. If you need help, come to us, use promo code "Ultimate," save 10% at dropkickads.com.

All right, everybody. It was so great to be back on the mic here. Stay tuned for next week's episode for the part two of this Black Friday/Cyber Monday prep. I hope you have an amazing week and we will see you.

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