The Black Friday / Cyber Monday Playbook for 2024 (#189)
Now let's go to the true hero of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It's what we love and we hate. Like, everyone's email is about to explode, and I apologize in advance, but it works. Email and SMS works.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Huffman, and this is If I Was Starting Today, a collection of conversations about half baked startup ideas, growth tactics, and stories from founders, including my own journey as a business owner. All of the content is centered around one question. What would you do if you were starting today?
Speaker 1:Jordan, we're doing it. We made it happen. We're a few minutes late, but we are prepared and our audio is working. So I'm excited to get into it. It is September 12th, and what that means is if anybody does anything in marketing, the clock is ticking for black cyber Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Speaker 1:As far as for a lot of businesses, especially the ones we work with, this is where they're making, like, 40%, 50% of their sales and revenue. So it is essentially, like, do or die time. So we thought we would put together a little segment on how you can survive this holiday season, but also how to maximize it. So we have a lot we wanna get into. One thing we're talking about is, does it even make sense for your business to compete this time of year?
Speaker 1:Right? Because it is a competitive cost per impression. CPMs are going up. By the way, we have a very hot, political race that'll be heating up. A lot of ad dollars will be going into that you have to compete with, and you might have to discount.
Speaker 1:So does it even make sense to compete in this red ocean that we're about to get into? How do you think about that, Jory? Because we're having that conversation with clients right now. Like, do you even compete right now?
Speaker 3:I think the answer for most brands is yes, but the nuance is in how. We generally avoid telling anybody, hey. Just discount everything in your store by 40% because it's gonna tank your margin, and it's the most expensive time of year to do paid acquisition. So when we're just thinking about economics of our costs, it's very high. But in addition to that, it's very noisy.
Speaker 3:So there's also a lot of other things competing out there just in terms of mindshare. So it takes more effort, more money to really get in people's heads and get their attention than it does other kinds of year. January is kind of the opposite. The cost to get in front of people is low, and people actually generally have a open mindedness in q one for trying new brands. So there's a lot of arguments to to say, maybe you wait.
Speaker 3:But I think even for brands that aren't q 4 heavy, you know, there's ways that you could do something Black Friday or holiday related, but doing it a way that makes sense for your p and f.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We are kinda going like why you should and why you shouldn't compete. Right? So why not super expensive? Most businesses, yes, your top line will look great, but your margins are really gonna pay the price.
Speaker 1:And also one thing you hit on, you're training your customers to wait because you're always gonna be discounting, and and that is a slippery slope to go down. But on the flip side, like, the reasons why, you know, people have their wallets open. They are ready to buy. It could be an amazing time to find new customers and introduce them to products. It could be a great time for expansion revenue with existing customers.
Speaker 1:And it's, you know, just a way to really give people another reason to kinda fall in love with the brand and in what you're doing. So it's really kind of balancing where you're at. And even like with us, with the needs, we have inventory problems. Need is the the company that we acquired selling sweat proof shirts. So we we'll get into why we're doing it and and how we're doing it.
Speaker 1:But I think the first thing is, like, is it worth competing? Because if you don't have a giftable product, if you don't have a product that is really made for this time of year, it could be worth waiting and going big in q one or or getting creative. Yeah, I think that's the the first thing to think about.
Speaker 3:There's several projects we work on where we decide we're not going to do anything block Friday, cyber Monday weekends. Typically, though, most brands are doing some type of holiday reach outs. Sometimes, it's with their VIP customers. It's really just focused on deepening the relationship with the people they already are, you know, bringing into their swirl. In other cases, you know, it might be something longer term, so we'll get into that into the tactics section.
Speaker 3:But in general, I think there is a shift at least in the online world away from hyperfixation on that 3 to 4 day window of the Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, and more of a shift and a season long strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Having that long term view, I think, is also key with this. And so I wanna get into the offer. But first, before we we hit on that, one thing to think about, like, it's let's say it's all of a sudden December 20 and you're like, ask yourself, what made this successful or not? So, like, what's the end goal of this?
Speaker 1:So one thing we're talking about with clients is, what's the goal here? Is it to maximize profits? Is this a time to get new customers, or is this a time to sell through some things that weren't moving through throughout the year? Right? And so it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Like, with some clients that are VC backed, they're like, game time, new customer acquisition, don't care about profits. Let's go. Other companies that that are maybe more bootstrapped, they're like, oh, man. This is a time to make a existing customers have that haven't bought in 90 to a 120 days. Let's get them.
Speaker 1:And, candidly, with Neat, we're trying to do both. Like, with our our ads, it's very focused on new customer acquisition, marketing products and packages and offers that align with the first time to experience a brand. Whereas with existing companies that are in our CRM, in our email, we're trying to hit them up with things that they maybe haven't had before, so some of the new products and new colors. So we are definitely trying to have our cake and eat it eat it there too on on on what the goal is. I mean, anything to add on that before we get into the offer once you know the goal?
Speaker 3:I just like that you're pointing out that the goal is going to vary business to business. This is what makes it very difficult to take random advice off of Twitter or wherever or whatever listicle and apply it. I think what really keeps you and I in business, Jim, is our ability to really go deep on the business model, understand what is actually required to not only keep us in the game, it profitable within a year, but also set us up to succeed on that 5 year or even ambitious tenure roadmap. Because as you said, every business has different constraints. Some have tons of cash, and so what you're going to do in those cases is very different than when you're working on a business where every single dollar we put into any type of advertising is coming right out of the net profit from the prior month.
Speaker 3:They're completely different. So I just really love emphasizing that anytime we get into a strategic conversation to really urge everybody to consider what are the strengths, the competitive advantages, your unfair advantage in the marketplace, and then what are the things that maybe are not your strengths and maybe perhaps weaknesses in the business model to make sure that you're doing things that are going to help you succeed because success in business is very context dependent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We all wanna make money, but we all have different ways of doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Definitely not a one size fits all solution. Okay. So after you've nailed your goal, you're like, alright, profits or new customer acquisition. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Then I think the most important thing to start with, we're gonna get into tactics on ads and email and landing pages, but none of that matters unless you have the right, like, go to market strategy, the right offer on what to put in front of people.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:So, Jordan, I think we have some data where we can talk about offers. This is very exciting. Is this the time we wanna do the slide share?
Speaker 3:Just got a second.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'll I'll confirm with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'm pretty sure on the podcast, you've already gone through how to craft offers. There's tons of resources in the back catalog of the if I were starting today on and and with these the, I'm blanking on the name, the GMO.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We have so many tools on the website and in the YouTube channel that get into the offer specifically. So today is gonna be a little bit high level, and know that you can always go back and go deeper and do more homework. But when we're thinking about the offers, just a TLDR on all of that, it's all about what are the costs to your prospects, what are they having to consider giving up, and then what is the dream that you're selling them. And at the end of the day, every good offer has to have a dream that feels attainable, that outweighs the cost. So that's really what we're talking about in terms of crafting an offer.
Speaker 3:When it comes to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, there are a few considerations that are unique potentially compared to other times of the year. We've already talked about the margin. So most of the time, we're coaching clients to think about offers that can actually increase the average order value rather than decrease it. So instead of, hey, we're gonna give you 40% off for hero products, which might sell anyway. Why don't we think about bundles?
Speaker 3:Why don't we think about ways to upsell so that we're actually covering the additional cost to acquire customers during this expensive time?
Speaker 1:Oh, I think that's a huge point. Like, don't just do, like, 30% off-site wide. I wanna be strategic on what we're giving discounts on, and, ideally, it's bundles, things that move the average order value up. And I know a lot of people listening. It's like, I don't discount.
Speaker 1:It's not what we do. Instead of discounting, you could do the buy one, get one. So, yes, you're still taking a little bit of a hit, but you're also doing it in a way where you're still not training customers to discount. So the BOGO, the buy one, get one is one that is really smart and maybe just doing your deals on things that are the bundles and the the higher AOV.
Speaker 3:Yep. I love that. Or really pushing people to explore more of your products, you know, if there's one product most people typically already experience. Is there a way to introduce them to something else that you think they would find equally awesome but doesn't move as quickly on its own for whatever reason. When we're thinking about the offer too, I really wanna encourage everyone to think about what type of offer is going to bring in the type of customer that has a good lifetime value or a lifetime value that is consistent with the customer that I normally bring in during q1, q2, q3.
Speaker 3:What can happen during Black Friday is we can acquire a high volume of customers who behave completely differently from all of the other customers we acquire throughout the year. Mhmm. This may not be a bad thing. You may have the ability to segment these people out or, you know, maybe that works for your business model. But for a lot of higher, like, luxury brands or apparel brands, things that are more lifestyle, this can make it really challenging to accept a higher cost per acquisition because the LTV that you've baked your models and projections on might be higher than the person who comes in on that Black Friday offer.
Speaker 3:So always I'd be thinking about, is this offer appealing to the type of customer that makes sense in the model I've built?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Are you doing a smash and grab job for money, or are you like building relationship with a long term customer? And then the right package or offer could could set you up for a success on that. That that's a really good call, but especially with brands where it's about recurring revenue or repeat purchases. If you're doing anything with a lot of SKUs and apparel or in any, consumables where there's a subscription component, that's that's huge.
Speaker 3:When it comes to subscriptions too, as a side note, I'm a big fan of the longer duration sign ups when it comes to these offers. Ecamm I think it's Ecamm. It's an editing software that allows you to livestream a competitor of the tool we're using right now. But, anyway, they got me on a Black Friday offer a few years ago, but it required me to buy the whole year. And so, you know, they still got, I think, over a $100 in that order, but it was heavily discounted.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I probably wouldn't have tried that tool otherwise. So I think for SaaS companies or things that are subscription based, I would always think about how can we pull people in for a duration of time that at minimum is enough time for them to really get the value out of it. I'm noticing this more and more even with Patreons. I'm noticing people kind of shift their content offers to be more 3 months or quarterly Yeah. Versus a month to month.
Speaker 3:Because the amount of effort that goes into acquiring a new customer may not make sense if someone's gonna come in for 30 days and bounce.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if you're discounting on it for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the discount will look that much bigger, so the perceived value is better. Exactly. It's good on both ends. Now that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So the people are like, alright. Fine. I'm a discount. I'm a do bundles. What number should they be discounting at?
Speaker 3:So in general, the higher the number, the more likely someone is to be attracted to it. We have found in our tests, 15% and below is really not even worth doing. I love this data from 2022. I couldn't find 2023 data. Otherwise, I would have updated it.
Speaker 3:But this showed the percentage, and this includes retail, by the way. So this isn't just ecommerce or digital. I know that's the space Jim and I work in most of the time. So, you know, take it or leave it like anything. But I really appreciated having these comps of what was the average discount applied to different industries.
Speaker 3:So overall, it was 25% over and over.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 3:If you're going to advertise a number, advertise the higher one. So if a percentage is higher or the, like, up to $300, pick the one that feels the biggest because people are reading really quickly.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And if a percentage is confusing or if your offer has too many components to it, if you're making people really do math to understand that it's a good deal or not, you're gonna lose. So sometimes I see people try to do sales where, like, if you buy 2 things, it's 15%. If you buy 5 things, it's 20%. And now you have somebody doing all this math to decide, well, do I buy 2 items or 5 items? And then they get fatigued, and then they get off the website, and then maybe they don't buy.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. I'm
Speaker 3:not saying you can never do that, but in terms of new customer acquisition, you wanna keep it super simple. Go with the highest number. Candidly, I wouldn't do anything for Black Friday that's below a 25% or $25 value because they're gonna be hit with so many. The sweet spot I often find is, like, up to 80 is often a great way to go. So maybe maybe there's a bundle that's a really high price point and you heavily discount it, but your margin is still okay.
Speaker 3:You know, you could say up to x percent off or x dollars off is how I would normally approach it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then the thing that's nice about that is you're able to market the best offer to get their attention. And then as they come to the website, they may actually go to the thing that they really want, and it's only, like, a 20% discount or something. But use that as the kind of tip of the spear to get people in the door. It is something that is key.
Speaker 1:We play around with the the percentage or the dollar amount, and really the bigger number is the one that wins. So that's another thing because it might sound nuanced, but it's huge when you get into the ad copy and strategy on how you get them to your to your website.
Speaker 3:So to be clear, even if $30 is more than than 40% off. Go with 40% off.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We've got the discounts. I think we got ideas on how to do the discount.
Speaker 1:We've got the bundles or the offers we wanna do. How much to discount? It's kind of interesting because it's a world where CPMs are gonna go up, but also demand goes up. So it can kinda offset itself a little bit. Like, what are people gonna feel from a ad spend level on the the CPM side?
Speaker 1:Is there something they should and that's cost per impression. Like, how much more competitive and expensive will it be?
Speaker 3:So 2023, 2022 data. There's a few trends to note here. 1st, I think Jim already mentioned this, but we are in a super fun election year. And what that means is it totally changes the landscape on 2 variables. 1 is the actual cost per impression in the ads platforms, and it also heavily impacts consumer sentiments.
Speaker 3:The economy is a huge topic every election cycle, and you can see as that gets more and more talked about or more and more emphasized, that does translate into fluctuations and conversion rates for consumers. When we're talking about b to b, we're dealing with a cycle that includes an election and some I'm not a macroeconomics expert, but from where I'm sitting, not the best macroeconomic environment I've ever seen in my career looking at q 4. So just some things to note that might be a little bit different from total 23. But very consistently, we do see CPMs increase mid October. As we head into the holiday season, this is when we start to see larger retailers dump a lot of cash into Google, Facebook, TikTok, etcetera.
Speaker 3:And they peak around November of 22nd. Interestingly, when I analyze our own portfolio, Jen, and I looked at the clients who are truly in the ecommerce space and actually advertising Black Friday, Cyber Monday versus the brands that were more not in the consumer space. So for example, like large b to b sale items, a lot of b to b stuff. I actually didn't see the CPMs arise nearly as much for, like, the non Black Friday relevant brands, which was really interesting to me because I in the past, everyone's CPMs, from my experience, other people's datasets may be different. But from what I saw, often the CPMs would go up for everybody astronomically.
Speaker 3:Now they were higher for everybody on actual Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But we didn't see, like, this huge week to week shift. But we did see it for the brands that are, like, in the consumer space. So this tells me that Meta and Google are kind of understanding the industry you're in and pricing it somewhat appropriately. On the non Black Friday, Cyber Monday brands, we either pulled back or we didn't scale.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So that also helped CPN. So if you're a brand that Black Friday just isn't as relevant for you, you might just wanna turn the spends down that week or even pause for a few days. I think you can pause up to 5 days without really wreaking too much havoc on anything
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And then reactivate it. That might make sense for you. That was super interesting to me.
Speaker 1:So, Jordan, 2 questions in one. This is awesome to see the timing on how CPMs are gonna go up, during this peak season. So 2 questions. I'm a brand, and I'm like, hey. When should I start, like, advertising my promotion and, like, really pushing it out there?
Speaker 1:I I know some brands, it's like November 9th or 4th we're seeing. But will you also pair that with, hey. I wanna double my ad spend. How should I think about launching the discount and increasing ad spend in a way where it's not gonna tank things?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's very individualized, but I would start as early as possible. And the general
Speaker 1:Give me a date, November 3rd. Yeah. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah. The the very beginning of November, I don't think it's too early. In fact, it might be wise to start testing your offers within your existing audiences either via email or other ways. So what you could do is start to AB test your email sequences and see which it now there's some things here to consider, right? Is your current audience the same behavior wise as new prospects?
Speaker 3:This is the eternal struggle in testing things in marketing because we constantly have a replication issue and the issue of our our samples similar to the populations we're actually going after. But all methodological concerns aside, I think it's a great time even now and in October to start testing things in a smaller way. So if you're on the fence, are we gonna do this type of offer or that type of offer? Well, start to collect data now in a lower risk way. I would start to launch, your prospecting efforts for new customer acquisition with an offer.
Speaker 3:Ideally, I would run-in a month.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:What having these longer time frames of sales is going to allow you to do is lean in and dial down depending on the market response you're getting. When we really only focus on the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekends, we're putting all of our eggs in one basket, and there's a lot of variables that can go wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think ask them early.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think there's a big call out there that I would think a lot of clients said maybe haven't scaled and paid. It might be hard to grasp. One is, obviously start early. I think a lot of people already know that.
Speaker 1:Like, early November, November 3rd, 4th, 9th, whatever that is. The second component, you don't wanna all of a sudden pump money into if it's Facebook and Instagram. There's a a gradual increase to your goals, so you're doing it the right way. And the other component as we kinda think of, like, tactically how we deploy this, we'll start with ads. You could be running lots of different promos.
Speaker 1:Like, we have brands like, okay. On Black Friday, we do this. On, Saturday, we do this. On Sunday, we do that. And then on Monday, we're doing a new one.
Speaker 1:And the thought is, oh, new ads launch every single day and new custom landing pages. We would not recommend that, at all, actually. You can absolutely, on your website, have more dynamic offers you're updating, but it's a constant landing page that all the traffic is going to. Yep. And and, like, as far as, like, that and we'll get into, like, ad creative, but, like, one advice you could do on the ad creative because you're like, crap, Jim, but we have different offers and packages.
Speaker 1:That's fine. Go to our website. Check out all their things we're doing this holiday season, and do a carousel swipe of, like, up to 35% off loungewear, up to 20% off of not just subscription or or whatever that is. So you're teasing it, but you're not committing to this one thing. So the up to phrase is crucial for this.
Speaker 1:But any thoughts you wanna give on that structure of scaling and with those kind of hero creatives that you can learn upon?
Speaker 3:The reason Jim is saying this is because it's a machine learning game, and machine learning outcomes rely on large datasets. If you are launching a new ad every day, it's unlikely that they're going to have a large enough dataset for it to find the best people to get that ad in front of to convert. That's where this is coming from. It's really just a statistics game. If you are Procter and Gamble, if you are Walmart, don't listen to me.
Speaker 3:Different game. Right. Right. When I work on those types of projects, I don't do what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that's okay. So, you know, if you are dumping a lot of cash into a brand awareness campaign and you're just trying to capture a lot of mindshare and and you're not a startup or you're not a d to c brands that has to hit a certain efficiency in a short time window to call this a success, it's a very different program. And I've run both types of campaigns. So I don't want people to misunderstand. Oh, net like, this is always a bad idea.
Speaker 3:I should fire my marketing VP. No. Like, it's a different situation. As far as advertising multiple offers or using the same landing pages and things like that, people love a mystery. So if you can tease people and you could run ads of, like, click to find out
Speaker 1:It's
Speaker 3:what our offer is today
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That can be super fun.
Speaker 1:I've seen that work. Mystery packs work. We had one brand where I was like, how are these mystery packs flying off the show? I would not buy a mystery pack. I'm like, what's in there?
Speaker 1:You're gonna give me the polka dot one that I don't want. It's people love a good mystery pack, and it does help whenever you're doing a head creative.
Speaker 3:So even if it's like a different deal every day, you could have a general ad that runs over a longer time period that entices them to come. And maybe even you get an email capture of, you know, only our people on this list are going to, like they're gonna find out about the offer 24 hours or you know, anyway, you can gamify it and make it fun. Yeah. SMS, email, go for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You
Speaker 3:know, time sensitive stuff does work well. So I don't think flash sales are off the table. I just wouldn't expect an ad campaign to thrive in a less than 72 I mean, really, I would wanna run it 2 weeks. Yeah. I mean, like, spending less than 5 k a day.
Speaker 3:It depends on the situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If I if I'm normally spending, I don't know, $500 a day and I'm wanting to scale it to $1500 per day, what are my scaling in increments on Facebook, Meta, Instagram? Should I
Speaker 3:Great question.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What percentage should I be increasing every day or week? And assuming I'm running this campaign for a month.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because you're gonna have options, and you're not going to feel pressured into doing things that set you up to fail long term.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Ideally, we never make increases on Meta beyond 20% at a time. If you are exceeding your CPA targets or your ROAS targets or MER targets, this is a whole different side tangent.
Speaker 1:Acronyms. People might not
Speaker 3:I'll break them down.
Speaker 1:So, yeah,
Speaker 3:I mean, this is a 5 hour conversation, and you can go take my class and watch all the lectures you've added on clickminded.
Speaker 1:Clickminded.com, Donna. Please tell me.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah. Thanks, Tommy. You can go there and hear all of my rants about attribution and why it's all wrong, yada yada. Taking a step back, thank you, Jim, for for forcing me to.
Speaker 3:If you are meeting your business goals and you don't feel like you're overspending to meet those business goals, then you're in a position to scale. So the way I generally look at that for a somewhat simple d to c example is, okay. What is our Shopify revenue or WooCommerce revenue? How much are we spending? Are we comfortable with that ratio?
Speaker 3:If we are comfortable with that ratio, then you could increase your budget up to 20%. I would probably not do it more than 4 times a week, but you could. If you're like, this is tight, but I'm feeling greedy, and I wanna scale anyway, I'd bring that down to, like, 15%, 10%, and do it fewer times.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So on the max 20% a few times a week, you could go down to 5% a few times a week too. Obviously, how big these changes are going to vary dramatically based on your budget. And if you're spending less than $100 a day, you can exceed these temporarily because if you're just making 10%, you're not gonna get anywhere.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So until you hit 500 a day, I'm a little more comfortable with putting more in. Just know it's gonna be volatile, and volatile means up and down. Truthfully, meta usually has some good days and some less good days that average out to your desired outcome. Google, even more so the case. So don't let that scare you, but that's that's my general rule
Speaker 1:of thumb. I I think that's helpful for people that are looking to do above average spend and doing it the right way. And to kinda end off on ads, I wanna give some other just quick tactical, like, thoughts on your ads. Some of my favorite ones are when you do the positioning of who the gift's for, like, the perfect gift for mom, the perfect gift for your girlfriend, boyfriend, or your partner, or, like, the gift they didn't know they wanted but will love. That way you're, like, making it easy because a lot of people that are buying gifts right now, they're overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:They're busy. Like, just tell me something. And as far as the actual graphics, obviously, an unboxing video with someone crying is ideal. If I can get a picture of someone's dog and throw it on a mug or a quilt, game over. Right?
Speaker 1:So but, again, that's very niche for a category. Don't forget people, when they're in buying mode, they will throw something in the cart for themselves. So to treat yourself, if you have something that isn't giftable, you can kinda play to that. Here's the other thing, though, is, like, do not lose sight of the point. If you're doing, like, the best offer of the year, don't get too cute with your copy and your creative.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the best ads are just the most direct ones. So, don't lose sight of that.
Speaker 3:Keep it simple. I always go back to the accessorizing rule that somebody taught me as a kid, which take the last accessory you put on off, meaning, you know, simplify it, like, make your end result, and then really push yourself. Okay. What can actually be stripped out that isn't adding to the customer understanding what we're doing and really getting straight to the point. So yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's funny. I tell I thought it was the opposite. Always add something to my wife. So I was like, no.
Speaker 1:It is the complete opposite of what you think is right. So we've got your ads figured out. You're spending money like a scroochoping duck. You've got the perfect creative. We've gotta land these people somewhere.
Speaker 1:So let's talk landing pages and websites. Yeah. Do not make people have to even think what offer you have. Have the sitewide banner saying what it is or to link to the page. Have a sticky footer.
Speaker 1:The hero section of the website, have it there. They should never be confused on on what you're offering up.
Speaker 3:Even this is high effort, but if you are an overachiever, here you go. Something that includes a badge in it that tells them what the offer is. I think there's apps that will do this for you, but we've manually done it before.
Speaker 1:The other thing is, like, don't get too cute with the actual code. Make it super simple, like, v f c m 20 or you know what I mean? Don't make us say, like, wait. Is it to the number? Is it to the word?
Speaker 1:Or, you know, it's fine.
Speaker 3:Even better, auto apply it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think that's it. Put it in the URL. Even if you were like, hey. What if they don't know about the code and they still buy, like no. Put it in the URL so it's included in there.
Speaker 1:It's add cart. And you also wanna put that messaging in there, like, we'll be applying it cart. So people are like, oh, crap. Where'd that ad go? I can't find it.
Speaker 1:What is it? These little things, they could cost you money if if you don't do it the the right way. Yeah. So that that's one other thing. Another thing on your website, create a little bit of urgency.
Speaker 1:If you literally only have a 100 units left, or in our case with Neat, we have, like, 34 larges, let people know, like, low supply. This is going fast. Or, hey. We will end this offer in 6 hours. We'll get into email and SMS.
Speaker 1:But, like, that stuff is key, and that's where I like to have it on the product pages or on the Black Friday, Cyber Monday specific collection pages. Yep. Or if you're able to do it, if you're on Shopify, Shopify Plus, you could put that at the cart.
Speaker 3:They do. I love a a timer. I'm not ashamed to put a timer on a website.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And by the way, your navigation, if you have a drop down in your collection, make put a section for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and make it red.
Speaker 1:Make it bold. We do not wanna make people have to work. And, I mean, everyone's shopping from mobile, well, whether they're on their commute or they're in bed. So absolutely start mobile first.
Speaker 3:This is Shopify's data. 73% of Shopify sales came from mobile, and this is 2022. But even still, I think this is super relevant. We cannot afford to ignore the mobile experience, especially if you're going to do any type of paid traffic. But even if you're sending people SMS, you better have an awesome end to end experience if you're gonna text somebody so that they can take action immediately from their cell phone because that's probably where they're opening it.
Speaker 3:Super duper important.
Speaker 1:That's a great call out. Yeah. With with a lot of our clients where we do conversion work, we're thinking through right now, hey. We have 7, 8 weeks to have your site dialed in to be a conversion machine. And we start at the bottom of the funnel.
Speaker 1:How's the card? How's it on mobile and all that good stuff.
Speaker 3:That's right. You alluded to collection pages. I think they're super valuable. And if you can really speak to the personas, you know, here's gifts for dad or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Those those are good ones. Yeah. Good call out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. Alright. We got you covered with the website. Now let's go to the true hero of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It's what we love and we hate.
Speaker 1:Like, everyone's email is about to explode, and I apologize in advance, but it works. Email and SMS works. So where you might send an email a day or 3 emails a week, you're probably gonna be doubling your output. In those emails, it's really the prelaunch, launch, postlaunch strategy with a lot of reminders in there. Because people are busy, they forget, and you wanna be top of mind.
Speaker 1:So what that means is to be proactive, schedule out all your deals, have the prelaunch email that's coming, have the launch email that's there, have the reminder, have that all going. 2nd, you wanna have all of your flows dialed in from an abandonment perspective. That is huge. But those are, like, the kind of table stakes that I'm thinking through on email, and then I have a maybe a tactic or hack to do. But what else should people be thinking about with their email strategy this time of year?
Speaker 3:My brain immediately is going back to paid. Now's a great time to do some email acquisition tactics. Maybe be careful that you're not over indexing in people who are very unlikely to convert. But do you have a pop up enabled currently on your website? If not, get to it because those are people who are high intent, who you wanna have in your flow.
Speaker 3:Are there educational emails for things that you can start doing now to kind of precede and just start to be top of mind even earlier? So by the time you get to that high conversion rate window, they're not annoyed by you. Like, I wouldn't go crazy in high frequency because people might opt out, but they're aware. So is there some type of value that we could be providing them earlier in the season just to build that relationship? Those are things I'm thinking on short term.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. As
Speaker 3:far as the holiday, I mean, again, on those normal flows and abandonment, cart flows, just like we talked about for CRO, now is the time to do your AB testing and dial it in. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You've got, like, 7 more weeks to do testing. And then 2 things on the email side. 1 is they actually work with the gift card email. As you hit a shipping day where it's like, crap.
Speaker 1:It's December 19th. We're not gonna hit get it there by Christmas. Do the last minute gift card email. Right? That's kinda one thing you can do.
Speaker 1:They they still work. They can print it out and give it to them. And then the other one is you have the oops email. You can do this probably, like, one time in your business career or with your company where you basically do a text based email, like it's from, like, the leadership team to a marketer, and you're discussing discounts. You're like, oh, wait.
Speaker 1:Should we do a 40% discount? This will be the biggest phone we've ever done. And then you somehow accidentally send this text email to your customers.
Speaker 3:That's not the thing.
Speaker 1:And then you send a follow-up like, oops. We didn't mean to send this, but by the way, we will honor this discount for the next 24 hours. You will get, like, the best open rate because the subject line has, like, re internal email. But, yeah, I don't think you can do that every year. I think that's
Speaker 3:Probably not.
Speaker 1:That's a one and done.
Speaker 3:It's a good one. If you segment, maybe you could. Yes. Right. It's all deceitful.
Speaker 3:It's deceitful. But I that's the other thing. Make sure you're segmenting if possible where it makes sense. I think apparel is the number one place. I can't tell you how many emails I get for nail clothing that I'm not in the market for because of my name.
Speaker 1:Lululemon would get so much more money from me if they knew I was a guy. I get, like, their email from them and Yori too. They're they're segmenting me. They need to up their game. I'm like, why are you trying to sell me leggings?
Speaker 1:I was like, you would have so much more money from me.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's not foolproof, but I think segmenting your emails even segmenting by I mean, Triple Whale has tools for this now. I think Clavio does too. Segmenting between your VIP people who spend a lot with you is worth thinking through different holiday flows for these different groups of people because their needs are different and their relationships with you are different.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And if you had SMS going, I mean, it's such a a better open rate and, conversion rate if you have that going. So maybe it's too late, but start getting, phone numbers now even next year. Like, start thinking through, hey.
Speaker 1:Let's get, SMS cooking for us. I have one last I don't know if this is true, but toy companies, they might still do this. They would really advertise, get, like, the Lego Star Wars set or the Lego Iron Man set for Christmas for your kids. Mhmm. And then leading up, it would be sold out, and you couldn't get it.
Speaker 1:But guess what? The kids sold on Nickelodeon. That's all they wanted from Christmas, so you can't get it. So you have to get, like, the LEGO, I don't know, like, Lion King set. But then in January, they had that in stock, so you go buy, like, the Lego Star Wars set.
Speaker 1:So they're able to basically double their revenue by withholding products and having them kind of fake sold out, which a part of me is like, that is wrong and horrible. Another part is like, that is interesting. So that's an aggressive tactic you could do as far as really deciding what you withhold and what you don't. Have you seen that or heard of that? Have you done that, Jordan?
Speaker 1:Is that is that you?
Speaker 3:We've done things like that, but, truly, we were out of inventory. So similar to Neets. Like, we would sell the Neets shirts right now if we could. We actually cannot.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 3:it it's interesting and definitely these bigger players
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:With their supply and demand a lot
Speaker 1:more. Yeah. So I think that the last thing to end on is the Black Friday, Cyber Monday hangover and not having anything in the tank for January. So just one thing to really think through as you're doing all this, like, all of a sudden, it's gonna be q one, and it's like, oh, we have goals. It's like, I'm exhausted from the whirlwind of Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Speaker 1:How are we gonna hit there? So just some seeds to plan. Like, if you can leave things in the tank for q 1 or start to think through what are the marketing moments you can do in q one to create demand and and excitement. But that's another thing that I'm thinking for you. So maybe if you're doing a big product launch that's ready for November, December, hold it till January because you can sell 3 of the the core stuff during Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Speaker 3:Then you can upsell the new offer to all the new people you acquired.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That makes That's a great point.
Speaker 3:January, February is the cheapest time to pay for traffic as well. Also, Jim, there's a lot of marketing teams and really big companies that get kind of sleepy during this time. So if you're scrappy and in it to win it, you're going to have less competition for mindshare and just consumer attention compared to the rest of the year. So I think if you're a really go getter founder, January February is not to be snoozed on. In fact, I've ran many summer oriented brands and I was always surprised how every year we could pull up some of our summer launches earlier into February and even January and make more money.
Speaker 3:Our net margin was great. We weren't scaled, obviously, to the same point as we would be during peak season, but I was always shocked that we could do things a week earlier, 2 weeks earlier, 3 weeks earlier, and get new customers in the door. The openness people have in q one to try new brands is very high, historically, and this is beyond just ecommerce data. This is in general. People have an openness.
Speaker 3:They wanna try new things, whether you're in the health and wellness space or not. But if you are in the health and wellness space, p one is your time, so don't snooze on it. You really should have a game plan going into it before Christmas. But, yeah, that that 1st week between 25th and 1st is probably gonna be pretty sleepy in terms of conversion rates. That's normal.
Speaker 3:But if if you're ready to, like, go after it ASAP in January, I think there's a lot of gains to be had.
Speaker 1:Well said. Jordan, this was awesome. We'll see if we can deploy some of this on needs. Our other amazing personal needs is on maternity leave. So I'm trying to not inundate her with Black Friday, Cyber Monday stuff, but it's coming.
Speaker 1:Well, cool. Well, thank you, Jordan.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thanks for having me, Joe.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Alright.
Speaker 3:Bye, everybody.
Speaker 2:I'll give a few plugs. 1st, I send a weekly newsletter each Thursday featuring 5 articles or tools that have helped me. You can sign up for these weekly updates at jimwhuffman.com. 2nd, for anyone running a start up, if you need help growing your business, check out Growth Hit. Growth Hit serves as your external growth team.
Speaker 2:After working with over a 100 startups and generating a quarter 1,000,000,000 in sales for clients, Growth Hit has perfected a growth process that's hell bent on driving ROI through rapid experiments. Plus, you'll get to work with yours truly. So if you wanna work with a team that's worked with startups that have been funded by Andreessen Horowitz or featured on Shark Tank, then check out growthhit.com. And finally, I wrote a book called The Growth Marketer's Playbook that takes everything I've learned as a growth mentor for venture backed startups, and I've distilled it down to a 140 pages. So instead of hiring a growth team, save yourself some money, get the book, and you can just do it yourself.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'd love to hear feedback. I'm on Twitter at jimwhuffman.
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