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Episode 111: How to Run Black Friday Promotions
172 Plays4 years ago
Welcome to a special crossover episode of the Brands that Book podcast and a new Till Agency podcast, Stuff Marketers Say. We just launched that podcast through the Till Agency and you should be able to find it on iTunes.
This is a bonus episode covering Black Friday. A few weeks ago we sourced questions about running Black Friday promotions and then we answered those questions Q&A style on the Stuff Marketers Say podcast. So what you're hearing in this episode is a conversation between Vanessa Kynes and I chatting a little bit about Black Friday and the Stuff Marketers Say episode, and just the new podcast in general. And then, the full Stuff Marketers Say episode will follow. But like I said, you can also find the Stuff Marketers Say podcast on iTunes and other podcast players by searching Stuff Marketers Say.
It's a little longer than I wanted it to be and we're releasing it quite a bit later than I hoped, but I figure done is better than perfect. And even if this episode doesn't help you this year, hopefully it will help you think through next year's Black Friday. As I mentioned in the episode, it's never too early to be thinking about Black Friday.
For the show notes, visit https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-111/
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:05
Speaker
If you're globally thinking about your business and you're thinking about just growing it and scaling it for the future, you're not going to stop purchasing products that are going to help you do that now. In fact, you might feel even more pressure now that you need to up level your website or your marketing or whatever it happens to be. Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to a special crossover episode of the Brands of Book Podcast and a new Till Agency podcast, Stuff Marketers Say.
Crossover Episode Announcement
00:00:44
Speaker
We just launched that podcast through the Till Agency and you should be able to find it on iTunes. And this is a bonus episode covering Black Friday. A few weeks ago we sourced questions about running Black Friday promotions and then we answered those questions Q&A style on the Stuff Marketers Say podcast.
00:01:01
Speaker
So what you're going to hear in this episode is a conversation between Vanessa Kynes and I chatting a little bit about Black Friday and the Stuff Marketers Say episode and just the new podcast in general. And then the full Stuff Marketers Say episode will follow. But like I said, you can also find the Stuff Marketers Say podcast on iTunes and other podcast players by searching Stuff Marketers Say.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's a little longer than I wanted it to be, and we're releasing it quite a bit later than I hoped, but I figure done is better than perfect. And even if this episode doesn't help you this year, hopefully it will help you think through next year's Black Friday. As I mentioned in the episode, it's never too early to be thinking about Black Friday.
00:01:45
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands Network podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at DavyandChrista. Now, onto the episode.
Special Guest: Vanessa Kynes
00:02:07
Speaker
Welcome to a live episode of the Brands That Book Podcast. Sort of a special episode, I mean, not only because I have Vanessa Kynes back on the podcast and any episode with Vanessa is a special episode, but also because this is sort of a crossover episode featuring a new podcast that Till Agency is launching called Stuff Marketers Say.
00:02:28
Speaker
And so Vanessa and I are actually doing a sort of mini episode, commenting on that episode. So if you're listening to this, the recorded version of this, what you'll hear is our thoughts on basically that episode. And since we're streaming this live, anybody who is around that wants to chat about Black Friday, who has questions about Black Fridays, you can drop your questions in the comments
00:02:51
Speaker
and we'll try to get to them. So if we feel like they're on topic and kind of the angle that we want to discuss, if you are listening and you're like, oh, I would love to be able to listen to a live episode and drop comments in live, let us know one, because I think that this is how I would prefer recording podcasts in the future, streaming the episode live in part because then we can get questions live.
00:03:11
Speaker
So that will help me kind of make decisions on what we're using. Ecamm just rolled out within new interview mode so I can get rid of Skype. Skype has always been sort of an embarrassment. But anyways, Vanessa, welcome back. Hey, it's been a long time. We've been trying to make this happen for like several months. You moved. Well, I moved first. Yes. Same city, different house. You moved states. Internet was hard to get established. For like a month. It took us about a month to get the internet. Yes.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah. And you like moved into a whole different world, like whole different world and cattle. Yeah, that's right. So for context, for people listening, newest business is a farm business. It's a business with our friends, the powers. So not just Buddy and Jill who live nearby, but Buddy's brother, John and his wife, Kaylee. And that's been a lot of fun. And again, whole new world, whole new industry.
Davy's New Farm Business
00:04:02
Speaker
If you want to check that out, BigSpringCattle.com is where you can get a glimpse of that. That website just launched. Lots of fun, exciting things coming there.
00:04:10
Speaker
But like you said, whole new world, farming, pig farming, cattle farming, we have chickens and turkeys as well, all pasture raised. So we're learning a lot, learning a lot. Daily schedule looks a lot different. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm kind of wondering how you're enjoying that balance of having the farm life, which is usually early mornings. My dad grew up on a farm. You guys are early wakers anyway.
00:04:32
Speaker
a lot more physical labor. How have you felt? Has it helped you feel more balanced about having marketing something totally digital online? How do you feel? Yeah, it's been a lot of fun because one, I just like learning new things. So a lot of that's been enjoyable as well as just diving into something new. I don't know the balance I'm still working out because on the one hand,
00:04:52
Speaker
There's just been – I mean, it's a lot to manage, like you said. Typically, farm tours early in the morning and later in the afternoon and then sort of what my normal work schedule looked like in the middle of the day. So that's been a lot of fun. I think the pigs have been my favorite part of the whole experience. They're like dogs. They're just like little sausage dogs.
00:05:13
Speaker
But so that's been enjoyable. But yeah, everything's pasture-raised. We go down, we move the animals almost daily, certainly weekly. And it's been a lot of fun, a lot of work, a lot of learning. I love it. Well, I know you have a good guide. And this is kind of a small world, but my husband and my brother-in-law actually know the Powers family from where they grew up in Northern Virginia. So just really, really bizarre. Yeah, really bizarre connection there. Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:41
Speaker
Well, I want to make sure that we spend time chatting about Black Friday. Black Friday is obviously coming
Early Black Friday Sales Trends
00:05:47
Speaker
up. Some stores, I mean, November hit and they launched their Black Friday sales, so that continues to happen earlier and earlier, I think, every year, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I know people complain about the emails and the concept promotion and all of that, but at the end of the day, it is good for the consumer, right?
00:06:05
Speaker
We all have our eyes on things where we're like, man, if it would only go on sale, and this is the month, this is the season of taking advantage of those promotions.
00:06:14
Speaker
Well, I love Black Friday sales because I'm actually not a big purchaser. I really kind of am able to restrain myself. I can go in and out of Target and not buy extra things. But recently I've been really wanting to buy some fancy like high-end candles. I just have this desire because I have a new house and I'm decorating it and I want a great scent. And I am definitely watching some websites for Black Friday sales for candles because some of these things are like 60 to 70 dollars. Unreal. It's just crazy.
00:06:41
Speaker
Again, if you're wondering how you price your services and how you can justify thousands of dollars for offering a service, just look to anthropology and how much they charge for a candle. That's a whole separate podcast episode that we could talk about. For sure. I love Black Friday sales. There's so many things right now that me and my husband are just waiting to buy.
00:07:02
Speaker
We're like, no, we're in the range. So that's actually a good question. Like what do you think is too early? You mentioned that right now is okay. And I think November is probably okay, but I think October might be a little early. Like we're not really in the zone yet. Yeah. I mean, I think it has to be within November again. I mean, obviously I think there's some arbitrariness to that answer, but I think that just the mindset, like people are even early November, I'll tell you this, and this is funny, just having spent a significant amount of time at tractor supply.
00:07:29
Speaker
over the last few months, they launched their Black Friday sale or some sort of pre-Black Friday sale the minute November hit. And I'll tell you, the first thing I thought is like, well, I wonder if the discount is going to be better actually around Black Friday. And so I think that by launching it early, maybe it's not as impactful as launching it a little bit closer to Black Friday because maybe people are holding out for potentially a better sale.
00:07:52
Speaker
So I think if you do launch it earlier, you just want to make it clear like, hey, yeah, this is the Black Friday price or this is the best price that you can get this at. And just be clear about what they can expect. Are you also having a Cyber Monday sale? That sort of thing. I know a couple of people who are doing pre-Black Friday sales and just in my conversations with them, kind of asking them, well, are you worried about people not knowing that your pre-Black Friday sale is actually your Black Friday sale? And typically the philosophy there is that, you know, they don't want to add to the noise on
00:08:19
Speaker
Thanksgiving, so they want the shopping to have been done kind of like, hey, so you can enjoy that time with your family, here's this Black Friday sale early that you can take advantage of. But the concern becomes, well, do people just think that you're also going to have a Black Friday sale down the line and then don't purchase during that timeframe? Because even though that's explained on your website, it's explained in, you know, let's say maybe an FAQ down the page. So, only a certain amount of people are actually going to click in and then read every word on the page and figure that out.
00:08:48
Speaker
Long-winded answer, I guess, to a simple question. Yeah. And you definitely need to communicate that in your email marketing that, hey, guys, this is the best it's going to get. There's also quantity issue. I mean, if you're selling a physical product and you're waiting for that pre-Black Friday sale, maybe the Black Friday sale is even going to be better, but they run out, then you kind of run out. So it kind of gets into that whole scarcity perspective, making sure we're using those power words in our copywriting to communicate.
00:09:14
Speaker
Once it's gone, it's gone. This is the best it's gonna go because I personally would buy early I hate the stress of black Friday I remember the days where we would set the alarm at five and we would get to them all at six. I'm those I think that's exciting though I mean like I'm not a black Friday shopper, but I just think I mean I love that season it probably varies from person to person but for me it's like
00:09:35
Speaker
There's something exciting about getting up, finding a deal, seeing what's going on. If nothing else, I mean, one of the great things about in-person Black Friday shopping, not that there's probably going to be as much of that this year, is just the people watching. Yeah. We're missing a bit of that everywhere right now. Yeah. This year, clearly, we're shopping online. I think there's actually a tendency to overspend online because it's just so easy to just click that yes button or that submit button and not have the actual cash in our hand or holding all the bags, wondering how much we're actually purchasing.
00:10:05
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think for an online business, though, just more incentive to make sure that you're up and running online, that you're capable of handling online sales. Yeah, absolutely. So we should talk a little
Black Friday Email Marketing Strategies
00:10:16
Speaker
bit about that. What does that look like? Are we using emails? Are we using social media? What do you think the most effective thing to do is?
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the same things I typically hear, especially from around email marketing, it's like, hey, well, I don't want to be that person that sends a million Black Friday emails. It's like, you collected your emails for this moment. This is your moment. Especially if you're an e-commerce online business and you're running a Black Friday sale, this is the time to send email. So if you're not going to be sending emails now for some reason, when do you plan on sending email? So I wouldn't be scared to send more than the usual amount of emails during your promotional period.
00:10:53
Speaker
Obviously, there's always a balance, but in general, I'd say sending a few emails and maybe even a few emails the day that your promotion closes is a good idea. I do want to say though, and maybe this is just sort of another side topic because we do get into some of these questions in the stuff marketers say podcast, which will be released alongside this episode. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as well. But I don't know if Black Friday is for everyone.
00:11:15
Speaker
You know, it's like there's some questions out there. It's like, well, how do I make this work for my business? And my thought is some businesses, it just might not fit to run a Black Friday sale. I think if you are a photographer for instance, and you have a luxury brand coming out with like some sort of Black Friday promotion and using that language in particular, it just might not fit. It might not jive or be congruent with the rest of the language that you use to describe your brand. Does that mean you can't run a promotion?
00:11:40
Speaker
No, you could still run a promotion, but maybe it's not as Black Friday flashing lights, grab this at this discount type offer. I always appreciate Davey because I'm one of those people who feels a lot of discomfort in sending a lot of emails and past promotions that I've done. But Davey always encourages you to send one more or maybe a few more past your comfort level. And the other thing I wanted to mention is we are all going to be bombarded with
00:12:06
Speaker
50, 100, maybe if you looked in like all of your Gmail folder promotions. And if you don't send too many, you're definitely going to lose your audience. And we're all expecting it right now. We're probably looking for those deals. So this is definitely a time to get loud and feel a little bit, a little
00:12:23
Speaker
bit uncomfortable in the amount of emails that you're sending. So yeah, this is why you collect emails. Yeah. So Anne Marie's asking, how do you decide on how many offers to focus on? Is it more strategic to offer only one? What do you think?
00:12:37
Speaker
I mean, I would only have one checkout point, like one point that you're gonna send them to. I think there are a couple of things that you can do and you talk about this in the episode, bundling something together might be a great way to deal with multiple products, but also, you know, you check out the cart and you mentioned this doing like an up sale or a bump up offer where you offer them just an extra little product afterwards, just to increase that revenue since you've already gotten them to that point. But I think if you're sending them in a lot of directions, which clearly retail has to do, it can get a little more confusing.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good question too is trying to balance between overwhelming people as they're trying to evaluate the different offers that you have versus making sure that there are offers created for each of your client avatars. And so that's probably a good place to start is looking at your customer avatars, your ideal customers. And if you have a couple different types of customers that you serve, then maybe it makes sense to have a couple different offers.
00:13:33
Speaker
Also, you could have one offer that has different tiers to it. So for instance, maybe just for the sake of an example, maybe it's a course, but the course has three different pricing tiers. So ultimately, the offer is the same, but there's more value depending on what tier you go with.
00:13:49
Speaker
So that would be one way of handling that as well. I would say that there's probably some sort of, and it's going to vary from business to business, I'd say having more than one offer is probably okay. Having more than five offers, let's say, maybe a little too much, but it really depends on your type of business and how many services you have. So I'm just trying to think through what we're doing on Black Friday.
00:14:10
Speaker
We have some courses, we have templates, we have semi-custom brands that people can get. So there's probably going to be and by probably, I mean, there's definitely going to be a few different offers. But I think that they're very specific. There's not two offers too that look really, really similar to each other that might cause confusion between which one do I choose. And Marie, if you're still hanging out with us, feel free to ask follow up questions there if you feel like we haven't really answered the question.
00:14:35
Speaker
One of my favorite things though is if you do have like an e-commerce shop and that's an easy way to just offer like an overall either whether it's free shipping or an overall let's say 40% discount is I love it when the websites like literally have that little cross out the price you guys do this right where it crosses out the real price and puts in the Black Friday price and then probably a timer somewhere like creating that
00:14:58
Speaker
Scarcity. Yeah, the sense of urgency. I think that makes it really easy for the shopper that we're not like hunting down with the code trying to figure out what is and what isn't on sale. I love it when the whole website just basically transforms into the whole things on sale. So if you do have multiple products with an ecommerce setup, that's probably the easiest way to do it.
00:15:17
Speaker
Absolutely. And creating a page specific to your website, especially if let's say you're not a e-commerce business and you offer some sort of service, having a special Black Friday landing page that outlines exactly what that offer is. I mean, whether you're an e-commerce or service-based business, I think that can be beneficial for sure. But that way you have all the information on one page and so you can very clearly show people exactly what's being offered.
00:15:42
Speaker
Now, here's another question. How do you feel like ads play into Black Friday? You're the expert here. Everybody runs ads. Obviously, people spend more on ads during that time period. Ads tend to be a little bit more expensive, but I think it's still worth it. We've had conversations with clients over on the till agency side of things.
00:16:00
Speaker
Black Friday for an advertising agency is basically the busiest time of year. We started putting together Black Friday formation. It's tax season for you. Exactly. It's tax season for us. We asked our clients to have their Black Friday promotions back to us back in October, early October, so that we had time to get everything together. Because there is a lot that goes into Black Friday. And really, if you're just starting to think about Black Friday right now, it's a little bit on the late side. You can totally still throw something together though. All that to say, keep in mind, if this is your first adventure into ads during Black Friday,
00:16:30
Speaker
it might be a little bit trickier, it might be a little bit more expensive than what you're anticipating. With that said, people are in a buying mindset typically during the season. So just because things are a little bit more expensive, we're still looking for return on investment. We're still making sure that you're seeing a positive return. And typically, the return is higher than average, I would say, during the season, right?
00:16:50
Speaker
So that shouldn't scare you away from running ads. And it's a great opportunity to cut through the noise. I mean, to our earlier point about email, how many of us just archive emails before reading them during Black Friday? I mean, there's definitely a point of overwhelm in an inbox, I think, for somebody where they wake up and it's like, Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday. So there are people that are just going to be like unsubscribing and archiving those emails. This is another potential connection point.
00:17:15
Speaker
How do you feel, now we're talking all about Black Friday, which is really technically one day, the day after Thanksgiving, but how long do you really think the windows should be for the discount? Do you believe in like Cyber Monday kind of bonuses? How do you
Creating Urgency with Discounts
00:17:27
Speaker
handle that? I know you guys have done different things like that with DK in the past.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. And we actually, you know, just give people some insight into what we do over at Dave and Krista's. So our Black Friday sale starts pretty early. So it's going to start, might even start next Friday, typically the week before Black Friday. So maybe that's a week after next, all the days, all the days.
00:17:46
Speaker
But point being is it runs through the week of Cyber Monday and there's a few things that we do just again and so that I mean one so that anybody is interested in taking advantage of that sale can but then also just to give some insight into why we're doing certain things.
00:18:01
Speaker
We give people sort of like early action discount. So the steepest part of the sale is typically that first week leading up to Black Friday. So the risk you run, right? If you're going to offer a sale for three weeks, there is not quite a sense of urgency there, right? It's not uncommon to see a lot of your orders stacked in the last 24 or 48 hours of running a sale. But if you have a countdown timer, and that timer says like three weeks on it, you're like, you know, it's not like you go to that website and think, oh, I got to purchase right now.
00:18:30
Speaker
What we do is it's basically a few mini sales that make up a larger sale. So steeper discount in that first week up until Black Friday, let's say, still a pretty good discount Black Friday through Cyber Monday. And then we have sort of a, hey, just in case you missed Black Friday or Cyber Monday follow up after that. But again, we do try to reward people who purchase earlier, and it just allows us to run our sale a little bit longer.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, it reminds me a little bit, not exactly the same, but you could incorporate this in those doorbusters. Those are the people who are like there at six again. So those would be the earlier people, they get the best deals. And again, you've got a digital product, so you're never going to run out. But for people who have specific quantities and inventory, you know, you may lose if you wait out. So you can create that urgency. If you think that might happen with your product, you can create that urgency early on. Just communicate that to people.
00:19:21
Speaker
Absolutely. And there's all sorts of ways to create urgency. At least one of the companies that I used to follow, what they would do is have different bundles that were available each day. And so you would know kind of what those were in advance. And that would be like Monday, a certain bundle of their products was on sale Tuesday, another bundle, and allowed them to run a sale for a week, let's say around Black Friday, but feature different products.
00:19:42
Speaker
for service-based businesses since we've talked a lot about e-commerce. And again, I think that makes sense in the context of Black Friday for sure. But for service-based businesses, just looking for ways that you can sell to customers that have already bought. So for instance, no matter what you do, but I'm thinking photographers off the top of my head, albums is a big one that comes to mind.
00:20:01
Speaker
and offering some sort of discount on that for clients who have opted out of potentially having an album as part of their package. But any additional services you have, whether you're a planner, a photographer, an interior designer, a plumber, there's probably something else that somebody can add to their collection or what they booked for you.
00:20:19
Speaker
And now's a good time to go back to them and say, hey, I am offering a small promotion on this. And it's a personal email that you would send them. So it probably feels more personal. So it's, I don't think completely out of line with maybe a more luxury brand and has the opportunity to continue increasing customer value for people who've already booked and paid you. So just a thought there as well.
00:20:41
Speaker
That's a great idea, especially during a time when people aren't doing a lot of shooting. I mean, they're kind of dead season. They can work on those digitally. I love that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is a weird season. On one hand, I want to say it's sort of a slow season because of obviously the things going on in the world. On the other hand, I know a bunch of stuff that's been rescheduled for like late in the year. So I know there are people out there that are really busy right now.
00:21:02
Speaker
I mean, we were talking about this as a team at our latest team meeting, which was just going to be fascinating next couple of months. Typically, designers get pretty busy in the winter. I'd say starting in December, certainly by January. And I just wonder, this year, is it going to be busier? Is it going to be maybe not as busy because people had time earlier this year to work on their websites? But anyways, off topic.
00:21:25
Speaker
I don't feel like from a consumer perspective, I can't say from a designer perspective, but I don't feel like people are going to cheapen out on Christmas this year. I feel like we all need a little extra joy. So I do think that a lot of people are still going to be purchasing a lot. I don't know specifically in your field.
00:21:40
Speaker
But on the other hand, if you're globally thinking about your business and you're thinking about just growing it and scaling it for the future, you're not going to stop purchasing products that are going to help you do that now. In fact, you might feel even more pressure now that you need to up level your website or your marketing or whatever it happens to be.
00:21:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I do want to real quick transition to talk about the episode a little bit. Any thoughts, questions that you had about that. Again, I'm referencing the Stuff Marketers Say episode, which if you're listening to this live right now, you don't have access to, but if you're listening to the recorded version, that's what's coming next. So I do want to start wrapping up this just so that it doesn't turn into an hour and a half long episode, but definitely want to hear your thoughts.
00:22:26
Speaker
I mean, I love the banter between you guys. You all bring different experience. One of the things that popped in my head, like when I was listening to it, is I know that Ryan comes from an engineering background. And I love like his nerdiness that he brings to it, the nerdiness to the podcast, but I really appreciate that you guys run different types of businesses. I know Jesse's been coaching and you've done e-commerce and web design and photography. So I love all the knowledge that
Podcast Team Dynamics
00:22:50
Speaker
comes into it. And you just feel kind of confidence in listening to the advice that you guys give. So I love that.
00:22:56
Speaker
Plus, it's playful banter. It's pretty funny. Yeah, I mean, I think so. We have this episode in particular. We had to cut out the beginning of it because it just went. You'll kind of hear hints of it at the very beginning of the episode. But I agree. I mean, I really appreciate the banter with those two as well. I'm excited for some of the episodes to come.
00:23:13
Speaker
I also think, so you guys talk about this and then after the cutout part, you talk about where you stand on the ledger board for Settlers of Catan. And I think it would be really fun to continue that so that we can follow and just see like where the leaderboard is. We need to figure out a good way to play online, but the way that ended up, Ryan ended up with the most points from the weekend, maybe the most overall wins too, although at the time of recording the episode, I think I had the most overall wins. But Settlers of Catan, it's a staple over at the Till Agency for sure.
00:23:43
Speaker
So I will say there was something really interesting in the episode that I don't want to spoil if you don't want to spoil. I say just jump into it and people can listen to that. One of the questions that you asked, or maybe it was Ryan asked, you asked Ryan, which was, is it a good idea to launch something brand new during Black Friday? Yeah. Yeah. And there's a little bit of a spoiler there. So I don't know how much you want to reveal to us what that could be.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, so we will be launching something around Black Friday. So be on the lookout for that from Till Agency, something that we're pretty hesitant to launch at first, but just from demand and people asking us about it. So that will be available for presale on Black Friday at what I think is just a pretty unreal price. So be on the lookout for that. We do get into that a little bit more into the episode, but in general, probably not a great idea to launch something on Black Friday.
00:24:34
Speaker
You guys are experienced. Yeah, and it's not the thing that we do. It's not like the service, so we feel okay about it. But still, I wouldn't say it's ideal for us to do it either. Just kind of not listening to it, not heeding our own advice.
00:24:49
Speaker
Plus you guys are always willing to test. So test, test, test, right? I feel like maybe we'll come back and be like, yes, launch everything on Black Friday. I don't know. Well, that's what makes you guys good ad marketers because I do feel like there's this comfort level that exists or people like me who are really uncomfortable with big things and testing out brand new things. And then there are you guys. So you guys are never afraid. I don't know where it varies among the three guys. Like Ryan might be the safest of the three. Jesse's probably
00:25:14
Speaker
It's so funny. I think for different things, maybe that's a little true. But I think overall, it could be pretty surprising to people who's like, I don't know about that in different situations. It's definitely situational. And it's a lot of fun. I'm excited for people to get to know Jesse and Ryan a little bit more through the Stuff Marketers Say podcast, especially Ryan, just because Jesse, well, I mean, I guess Jesse's wife, Becky, has a podcast. And Jesse's been on this podcast at least
00:25:40
Speaker
at least twice, if not three times. And Ryan, I think has only been on this podcast once. So anyways, excited about that and what's to come there. And this is sort of off topic as well. But I also want to mention that both Davey and Krista and Till are hiring. So if you're listening to this episode, check out that maybe I'll include a link in the show notes just to make it easy for people to track that down. But yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
That's good news. We're excited to add new team members, especially over at Till. We're looking for a couple different positions, but for Davey and Krista and for Till, we're looking for a designer. So any designers out there, just head on over to the show notes or go to daveyandchrista.com or till.agency forward slash careers. It's forward slash careers on both websites. That's awesome. Cool.
00:26:21
Speaker
Well, I think that's about it. So if you have a question, feel free to ask it here and we'll get to it before we head into the episode. I hope that you enjoy the episode from Stuff Marketers Say and more to come over at the Till Agency as well. I don't think I've ever run a Black Friday sale that was like a complete flop simply because if you have a good offer and you have any sort of an organic reach as well, there are going to be people that were reaching that don't open your emails. Email opens are at a decline consistently.
00:26:51
Speaker
You're listening to the Stuff Marketers Say podcast. Be sure to download now. The price increases to $9.97 starting tomorrow from start to scale and beyond. Thank you. I mean, Ryan really set the tone here for the... Can't beat that intro.
00:27:07
Speaker
But for everybody listening at home, this is our third annual till retreat, not annual, semi-annual. I think we try to do it twice a year. Yeah, somewhere around there. Yeah, third or fourth. Anyways, Settlers of Catan is a big part of the retreat. As Ryan had mentioned, he is in the lead. We're not actually including that part in the podcast. Oh, we absolutely are.
00:27:28
Speaker
But anyways, whether we are or not, just to recap, so people can be left guessing at what we're talking about here. Just so people know, though, Ryan is in the lead with 48 points. I have 47 points. And Jesse has been a rough weekend for me. Yeah, it really has been. And so how we do this is that we're keeping track of cumulative points. Also, games won as well. So I'm not sure who has the most games won, but it's probably pretty close between me and you, Ryan. I think you got me.
00:27:57
Speaker
All right. But anyways, this is how we determine CEO. Anyways, we won't spend too much time here. We're going to move on and we're going to talk about Black Friday. That is quickly approaching. And honestly, if you're thinking about Black Friday, or if you're just starting to think about Black Friday, then it's probably a little bit on the late side.
00:28:14
Speaker
Not too late, but you're getting there. Black Friday, as everybody knows, starts earlier and earlier every year.
Launching Black Friday Campaigns
00:28:21
Speaker
This is really something that you want to be thinking about early in the year, but then certainly by July or August before fall rolls around in September. For planning purposes, not so you can start your Black Friday sale in July.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's a little excessive. But for planning purposes, for sure, just to make sure that you have everything in place. We ask all of our clients to have their Black Friday stuff to us by the middle of October at the very latest so that we have time to have everything together from an Addis perspective for them whenever their Black Friday sales run.
00:28:55
Speaker
Never want to be caught scrambling, especially around your biggest sale of the year, but might still happen in a few cases. As you can imagine for an advertising agency, busiest time of the year. We'll always be there for you. How we're going to do this Black Friday episode is we actually sourced a bunch of questions from people. We're going to do this. We're going to knock this out Q&A style. We're just going to go through some of these questions. A lot of them can be lumped into the same category.
00:29:20
Speaker
So I think a good place to start would just be timing of Black Friday. So at some point, Black Friday was just Black Friday, just the Friday after Thanksgiving. Now we see Black Friday sales starting earlier and earlier. So what are y'all's opinion on when a Black Friday sale or campaign should start?
00:29:41
Speaker
I'm indifferent to that. As long as you're doing a Black Friday sale, it's going to depend on your preference and your business model. I think that people that do a Black Friday to Cyber Monday sale, you're putting all your eggs in one basket for that weekend, which is great, especially for organic traffic. For ads, I like to see that sale go a little bit longer. That way, you have some time to get some data and really decide if you want to double down on some of your results.
00:30:03
Speaker
But we've seen great results for clients as well across Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Just knowing that we have this budget, we're going to spend this budget, especially if they have historical data on Black Friday. If they don't have that historical data or they don't have an approved offer for Black Friday, stretching that out a little bit longer can be helpful. But then again, if you have a good offer,
00:30:22
Speaker
It's a good offer and it's probably going to convert people who are in that mentality where they're ready to pull the trigger really at any given time. I'm not a huge fan of doing a month-long Black Friday sale, especially for a brand that is a little bit more conscious of not wanting to quote-unquote cheapen their brand by offering a big discount for a long period of time. But all of them can work just a matter of how it pertains to their brand and how they feel about offering a big discount like that for a longer period of time.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you were going to throw a standard on it, it would be for at least that week of leading up to Black Friday all the way through Cyber Monday from an ads perspective. But again, organic traffic, I think you can treat that a little bit differently. But if you're just looking at it from an advertising standpoint, it's good to give the algorithm time to learn, time to get your ads up and running. So that Friday or that Monday, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's a good target date.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would say occasionally we have, thinking about last year, maybe a company or two who's never run ads before. And in that case, I'd say we definitely want ads up, but the earlier, the better. Just in case we run into any issues, just getting ads approved or whatever, just because it is the first go around for them. That's a great point. During that time period, Facebook's approval process is going to be inundated with a ton of sketchy people trying to sneak things through. And so that approval process could be a lot longer. So that's a great point.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah. And we're going to see our most expensive results typically around those three or four days that are closest to Thanksgiving. Yeah. So getting started earlier better. And I would say that no one really cares if you start your sale earlier, if you're two weeks in or a week into November and you're starting a sale. I don't think we've ever seen somebody complain about a sale.
00:31:59
Speaker
People may gripe about it in the sense of like, let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving, let Christmas be Christmas, but they're still buying stuff. It's still a good deal. Never is anyone like, oh, I can't believe I just got 50% off this product that I've been having my eye on for a year. But man, I hate this company for having a Black Friday sale early. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
00:32:18
Speaker
Let the data speak for itself. If it works, it works. Let's do it. Yeah, for sure. I think that there are companies that really stick to that Black Friday to Cyber Monday sale. I don't think that they're missing out on anything by not doing it earlier. I think there's a couple companies that come to mind that do a really good job of telling people,
00:32:38
Speaker
we're doing a sale. This is coming. This is when the doors open for that sale. And this is when that sale is going to end. And they still get maximum impact just over maybe that three or four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Anyways, let's move on then. Talking about
00:32:55
Speaker
Let's see. We talked about when to begin promoting the sale. This is a good question, and this is going to tie into another episode that we're actually recording today while we're all together, which is how much should I expect to spend on Facebook ads during a Black Friday sale, Cyber Monday
Budgeting for Facebook Ads
00:33:08
Speaker
sale? We're just going to lump all of that together.
00:33:10
Speaker
As far as specific budget numbers, that's going to be unique to everyone's situation. Black Friday is a big deal because the customer intent is really high. People are looking to purchase, looking to buy. So if you have the money and you're looking to spend it, now's the time to do it, typically.
00:33:26
Speaker
We usually see ad costs go up, but those are offset even more so by, again, that customer intent. So, throw a specific number at it. Can't really give that to you, but I would allocate as much budget as you can towards this time of the year. Yeah, for sure. I mean, for people, especially who are just getting started, what would you say the minimum amount is per day?
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we love to see people spend at least 50 a day. That's kind of our floor to be able to test anything. But again, if you can spend more this time of the year, that would be the time to do it. Yeah. So if you've never run ads before, especially this time of year, just results being more expensive in general, dedicating anything less than $50 a day is probably useless.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah. You're looking at the strength of Facebook as well. This is your opportunity to get in front of a ton of people when they're ready to buy. Spending $10 a day for three days, you make a couple purchases. It's not really going to move the needle any significant amount. If you're going to take this opportunity to get in front of more people, take the opportunity to do it. Use the organic side of your business to hedge your bets a little bit.
00:34:28
Speaker
But I don't think I've ever run a Black Friday sale. That was like a complete flop simply because if you have a good offer and you have any sort of an organic reach as well, there are going to be people that are reaching that don't open your emails. Email opens or at a decline consistently. And so just another opportunity to get in front of you and just your warm audiences as much as possible. There's a lot of opportunity there that even at $50 a day, there's a potential that you're not even going to touch your whole warm audience.
00:34:52
Speaker
So if you have more questions about that, you should go check out our episode on scale, which will be released at the same time as we release this episode. So more around spending in that episode. So check that out. Another good question, I think, is basically how much a discount should be. And I don't think this person is looking for a specific number, but I think the question is, do I have to offer a massive discount for this to be successful?
00:35:18
Speaker
And my guess is it's going to be based on brand, right? So if you're a luxury level brand and you've never, or you don't want to maybe, or you're just not the type of brand that's offering discounts. So maybe what can you do so that you're not diluting your brand or doing something that really isn't, I don't know, or goes against your brand guidelines. And then also, you know, just that question around discount, does it have to be massive discount for you to see results?
00:35:44
Speaker
I think one piece that comes down to is like how big is the barrier to entry for someone or that barrier, the obstacle for them to purchase your products. If it's a really above a hundred hundred, you know, a couple hundred bucks for that product and you know, not offering a huge discount. It's not something that's like an impulse buy, for example, giving someone 10% off may not be enough incentive for them to pull off their credit card and make that purchase right then and there. And so that's something you have to think about as well as if it's a
00:36:10
Speaker
10% discount. You may get someone who's already been thinking about buying your product to get out and make that purchase, but you're not necessarily getting new people who've never heard of your product before, never heard of your brand before for a 10% off to be like, oh, I saw this ad. I'm going to interrupt my day, pull out my credit card and make this purchase right now because there's just not enough incentive to get them to do that. So that's something you have to think about.
00:36:31
Speaker
If you're a brand that has a huge audience, you have people that are buying your product organically all the time and you never offer discounts, sometimes that warm audience is just waiting for that 10% off. There's a handful of brands that do that really well. But if that's not something that you feel like you have this people that are just chomping at the bit for that product, then you may want to consider a little bit of a bigger discount or figure out another way to incentivize, whether that's like
00:36:57
Speaker
free shipping or bundling with other products that you have or kind of like increasing the perceived value of whatever it is that you're offering. But in general, I think the bigger that discount, the bigger the incentive that you're giving people to buy right then and there, the more successful at least purchase wise and purchase count your sales going to be.
00:37:16
Speaker
I think you hit on this, but I think it's all relative to your other sales that you have ongoing throughout the year. If you're doing 10% all year, 10% is probably not going to push the needle on Black Friday, but maybe 20% will. It's all relative to the remainder of your year. I think that people are looking for a sale. I think most people, even if they say they're not going to buy anything during that time period, if they see a sale that's good enough, they're going to purchase. They're anticipating large savings.
00:37:41
Speaker
I would say, too, if you are more of a luxury-level service provider, let's say, and you're thinking about doing a Black Friday sale, one thing that you have to think about, too, is just scale in general. If you're shooting 15 weddings a year, let's say you're a wedding photographer, do you really need to run a Black Friday sale to book 15 clients? Probably not.
00:38:00
Speaker
While this might be a time period where people are thinking about purchasing, you probably don't need to run a sale for your business in order to fill those 15 slots the following year. But maybe doing something where people get an extra service instead of a discount is a way to bridge that gap between feeling like, okay, well, I don't want to go the discount route because it's going to maybe discount my brand or it doesn't jive with my brand, but still being able to take advantage of that holiday timeline.
00:38:29
Speaker
Moving on, other questions. A lot of the questions are around how early I should start promoting products. I think telling people, just in general, just thinking out loud, that a sale is coming. I guess it can build hype without you having to launch your sale November 1st, let's say. What kind of promotion is most effective or most productive? See a couple of questions around that. Do we have any thoughts on that?
00:38:53
Speaker
I'm a big fan of just keeping it simple. Figure out what percentage off works, offer the percentage off, and hit it hard. Again, if it's testing a new offer, that's where getting a little bit more time in, whether that's the week of or potentially two weeks where you can really test that offer.
00:39:08
Speaker
And if it's something that like, man, no one's purchasing, all right, well, let's bump that offer up and see if we can move some products or get some people jumping in whatever offer you have. So, you know, in general, I think there are sometimes people that like it's you get this and you get free shipping and you get this extra product. And it's kind of turns into fluff because it's not something that people really want as business owners. We think like, oh, yeah, this is going to be the best offer. And you really have to sit back and think like, hey, is this something that one people actually want?
00:39:35
Speaker
And two, does it really add the value that you think is going to get someone to, again, all come down to incentivizing that offer and giving them enough reason to pull the trigger? I think that when you're making a decision between just a straight discount and something that's going to be a little bit more involved, you really have to answer those questions and weigh those questions to figure out, is it really worth putting in all that work or complicating the offer when it could have just banned a 30% off offer and it would have done great as opposed to adding all this extra stuff?
00:40:02
Speaker
That's where you can always test two of them, too, or more. If you feel like you can't narrow it down to the best offer that you want to give, you've got two of them. Facebook certainly has those tools built in to be able to test that, and most platforms do, to do some form of a split test. That's a great point. Probably a good opportunity throughout the year. This is why maybe you start thinking about Black Friday earlier than later. You can test some of those offers earlier in the year, maybe at a smaller scale, like if you're trying to test a BOGO versus
00:40:25
Speaker
to a straight percentage discount. I think off of that question, another interesting question is how to stay profitable while offering discounts. I think it's a good opportunity to talk about things like cart value optimization and different ways that, yes, you might get somebody in the door with maybe a lower priced product or a product that's on sale, but then at checkout, trying to increase the cart value through a well-placed upsell or bump offer.
00:40:50
Speaker
That's a huge opportunity I think a lot of people miss out on on Black Friday. Even just adding a simple upsell that's not necessarily even like a great fit for the, you know, it's not like a logical next step for someone buying one product. Just even if 10% of people buy it, that can increase, especially from a paid out perspective, you're already paying for the customer.
00:41:08
Speaker
You might as well try to maximize that as much as possible. Just straight money in your pocket. That's a great opportunity with an upsell. Also, thinking through which products you're really pushing on the ad can play into that as well. If you have a product that does really well throughout the year, it has a very high average cart value because people add where there's multiple of that item.
00:41:26
Speaker
or they go on to purchase other items, other similar items or things that bundle well together, there's a huge opportunity for you to offer a crazy steep discount, even like a 50% more on this one product if you know that a lot of people add on to that product or it's a really good compliment to you can bundle up with other products as well.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah. And maybe they're not making that additional purchase on Black Friday. Maybe it's a holiday sale that you've got coming up. Well, now you've already acquired that customer and you can remark it to them for free over the holidays. So it's knowing your long-term numbers to your lifetime value of your customers. That'll all impact what you can and should spend during Black Friday.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think another question along those same lines, moving into email marketing during that time, and one of the questions being, how should email marketing play into your
Email Frequency During Sales
00:42:15
Speaker
sale? And basically, how often should you be sending emails during this time in particular?
00:42:20
Speaker
I'm probably a little bit more like, just send them. People can ignore them. You're going to get people opting out during Black Friday the more that you send. But it's not going to be nearly as high as what you potentially think. People are expecting emails. Your open rates in Black Friday that time period will never be higher for a lot of people. People want to hear the offer. You have a really good reason to be sending those emails. So it's not like they feel like they're getting bothered because they're expecting it. And so I would say,
00:42:48
Speaker
raise your threshold for how much you think people are willing to read your emails or be okay getting your emails at least. But as far as frequency goes, again, some of this depends on like, if you have an email at your list in a year, and then you send 10 emails on Black Friday one, you're going to end up in spam for sure. So planning ahead. And if you haven't sent in a while starting, whether it's like a nurture sequence or some sort of re-engagement sequence leading up to that, to just set yourself up to actually land in their inbox on Black Friday can be helpful. But you know, as far as frequency goes, I think Davey, you're probably
00:43:18
Speaker
the best to answer that question. I don't know. I probably agree with you in the most part. First of all, if you haven't sent a single email and then you're going to send 10 in a row, great way to end up just destroying your sender reputation. Telling people, you definitely want to warm up your list again, but people are on your list because they opted into something. I think that it's just the weirdest thing where people are like, well, I just want to make sure that
00:43:42
Speaker
Everybody's happy. If somebody doesn't want to receive your emails anymore, they're going to unsubscribe. It's simple for them, or it should be simple for them to do so. I say during that time period, especially if you're doing a very specific targeted launch, let's say you are running a sale from Friday to Monday, and that is the sale.
00:43:59
Speaker
then sending emails just like you would launching a product makes a ton of sense. If you're running a sale for the entire month of November, then maybe sending multiple emails a day or even one email a day for the entire month of November or December or whenever, that just doesn't make a ton of sense.
00:44:16
Speaker
But people are going to unsubscribe. I think people treat it as if they're barging into people's homes, yelling like, hey, my product's on sale or whatever. And that's just not the case. People can manage their inbox. I think more and more people have a newsletter specific inbox. Oh, yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
I love getting emails, but I just make sure that all those newsletters, all those emails lists that I'm signed up for go to my quote unquote junk email. But it's not even really a junk email because I check it. Yeah. I think one thing too that's important to remember is if someone's going to unsubscribe when you're offering 50% off the product that they signed up to learn more about, they're probably never going to buy your products. So I'm thinking of it as a way to trim in the fat a little bit as well, which isn't a bad thing ever.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. Ryan, I think this question is for you. We had this conversation a little bit yesterday. Would this be a good time to launch a new product?
Launching New Products During Black Friday
00:45:07
Speaker
Answer carefully. Depends. Yeah, there may or may not be a new product coming from us around Black Friday. And so we had a little bit of a debate yesterday as to whether Black Friday is a good time to launch a new product or not.
00:45:25
Speaker
I think if you're a new business trying to launch a new product on Black Friday, you might run into some challenges just because there's so many other unknowns that you've got to figure out in addition to your offer and your sale and the timing of everything around Black Friday. I don't think it's insurmountable. If it's a great offer and it makes sense to offer it at this time of the year, then do it. But I would say, ideally, you're launching in some capacity before Black Friday and then able to just scale up during Black Friday.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah, if you have a new product, what Ryan was saying is, if it does well, it does well. There's a good chance it could do well. If it doesn't go well, you're not sure if it was the fact that there's just too much noise to turn black Friday in your industry or the product just isn't speaking the right language to the customer that the messaging isn't on.
00:46:08
Speaker
It could be that any other piece of the funnel was broken and you just didn't realize it. There's a lot of different variables if it's not something that's proven out yet, but if it's something that you feel confident in the product that you have and the market is something that they want, or if there's other competitors in your industry that are doing well,
00:46:25
Speaker
and you feel like you do it better, you do it a little bit differently, it's a great way to kind of get it out there in a way where people are in that mentality. But at the same time, you could also have a launch special three months from now or a month from now and kind of still use that same mentality without having to go up against Black Friday.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think the argument against really for me is that it could be a very expensive test, right? Great point. Yeah, it's going to be more expensive to market in general. You're probably going to set aside a healthier budget because it's a launch and then you're going into like a set of season that's just more expensive. So you're running all these tests in the midst of everything else going on and it just could be a very expensive mistake, right?
00:47:03
Speaker
One thing that may be good to clarify, when we talk about expensive during Black Friday, we're not necessarily talking about your cost to acquire a customer because those costs are typically really good. It's the actual cost that Facebook is charging just because the competition is so high, which is being compensated for by the amount of people that are buying. Clicks may be a little bit more expensive, but the clicks are converting at a higher rate typically and a good offer. That's something that
00:47:30
Speaker
that may be good to clarify yeah yeah for sure we should talk more about that especially when we talk about scale and just spending money on facebook so again if you have questions about that that episode should be available as well so i'm gonna take one more look through here and just see if there's any other questions that we should hit
00:47:49
Speaker
And if we didn't get to a question that you had, we will have comments enabled in the show notes. So definitely ask us a question there. We'll post about this on our Instagram account. You can ask us a question there and we'll get back to you. But we are happy to answer questions. Marketing is my nemesis. How do I win against it? That's one of our questions. I don't even know where to start with that.
00:48:10
Speaker
It's a big nemesis, but one that is important if you're going to be successful. At some point, you just start battling it and trying. I think that with anything in marketing, no matter how experienced you are, there's going to be a trial and error aspect to it. There's going to be an aspect of, hey, let's see if this works and you're going to have some winners and some losers. You just got to go for it. That's something that we tell all our clients.
00:48:35
Speaker
We've been doing this a long time. We have a lot of experience under our belt between everyone on our team. But there's always going to be an element of, hey, we're going to try this and see what the data tells us. And if it works, great. And if not, then go back to the drawing board and try something different. I think that, especially for perfectionists, that's going to be a little bit harder to hear and to deal with on a daily basis. But that's the best way to do it.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah, so the only other question that I see that might be worthwhile covering real quick is just the best way to create great hype generating a sale without reinforcing the idea that people should only shop that weekend. I just don't think that this is much of a concern for most businesses. Yeah, if it's October,
00:49:13
Speaker
and somebody knows you're going to be running a Black Friday sale, they might hold out purchasing until the following month. But if it's July and that person needs that product, chances of them holding out until Black Friday sale, especially if you offer some other sales throughout the year,
00:49:28
Speaker
probably slim. Definitely. And one other consideration for that is gaining new customers is not just about the money in your pocket. Like whenever you have a big surge of new eyeballs, especially new people that are actually purchasing and experience your products or services, people talk people like, Oh, where'd you get that? So I think that that's a huge opportunity that you have to think about as well is that even if a huge percentage of your people and a huge percentage of your sales happens during black Friday,
00:49:53
Speaker
that's only going to help you gain momentum going into the holidays or the new year or whatever, because you're gaining new customers. You can follow up with them, getting them to review your products or incentivizing them to add a review on your website or whatever it is. I think there's a huge opportunities there that you need to make sure you're taking advantage of. If you're really that worried about people only purchasing in Black Friday, if you have the historical data that people only purchase on Black Friday,
00:50:17
Speaker
then I think that you have some other things that you could be doing to maximize that that could start to offset that a ton. You really have to look at that as anytime you're getting a new customer as an experience to use that customer's network or get that customer to start talking about it, giving them the best experience possible, making sure that if you're shipping the product, it ships out on time and all of that.
00:50:35
Speaker
And I think that goes back to maybe why it's rough to test a new product on Black Friday. It could be a great problem to have, dealing with inventory. Maybe you sell out of inventory more quickly than you thought, and then you have a bunch of people who want to buy, that can't buy. That could be even a logistics issue, like how am I going to send out all this stuff on time if you're not using dropshipping or whatever. But then also, if you were launching a new digital product, let's say,
00:50:57
Speaker
There are some flaws with the product itself. The marketing is great, the message is great, so you have a great sale. But then the product may fall short in certain ways, and that's what people are talking about. It makes it harder to launch the next time. Well, I think that wraps up the Black Friday topic here. Again, if you have any questions for any of us, feel free to go to our Instagram.
00:51:17
Speaker
Find the post where we share about this episode and comment there or go to the show notes on our website at til.agency. You can leave a comment there and we will get back to you with an answer. Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.
00:51:51
Speaker
you