Five ways to manage holiday promotions without killing your bottom line
Yes, small businesses can participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday without losing any money. Discover how to organize holiday promotions without hurting your earnings.
What is the first image that comes to your your mind when you hear the expression "Black Friday"?
If you're anything like me, you'll be faced with long lines starting at the time of Thanksgiving, massive crowds fighting over the cheapest televisions, and exhausted retail workers trying to keep pace (and maintain peace).
But Black Friday -- and its online shopping counterpart, Cyber Monday -- has changed over the last couple of years. Many are looking for discounts in the comfort of their sofas, and "doorbusters" have become more symbolic and not literal.
For small business owners and solopreneurs, the typical Black Friday and Cyber Monday discount can be a bit unreal. Slash your prices to a low level, and you could be just barely making a profit.
This doesn't mean that the sales aren't available for small-scale businesses. Just a of more imagination than relying on discounts that are the most hefty to increase sales.
In this piece, we'll cover five tips to make the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday holidays without destroying your profit margins.
Do creators have a right to take part on Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Short answer: Yes.
For 2020 Black Friday sales totaled $9 billion . Cyber Monday sales were more impressive with $10.8 billion, making the day the most popular on-line shopping day to date in U.S. history.
That's a lot of power spent in just two days.
The holiday sales on e-commerce are expected to surpass a record amount of $207 billion in the U.S. between November and 2021. This is a 10% increase over 2020 sales. And Cyber Weekend -- November through Cyber Monday will be the main event.
Shopping online has grown to be more and more a part of the Cyber Weekend pie in recent years. In 2019, 93.2 million buyers purchased something on Black Friday, and 83.3 million followed suit on Cyber Monday.
And since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of people shopping online is higher than ever before. The 2020 spending on e-commerce was $791.70 billion, which is up 32.4% from 2019.
The public is always looking for bargains online.
Maximizing the benefits out Black Friday 2021 Get the most out the most Black Friday with these dedicated guide, advice and techniques to make this the best year of sales to date.
and creators who sell digital items such as online courses, digital products, and memberships have an edge over those who sell physical products.
The reason is that you're selling an intangible product, meaning you don't have to worry about keeping sufficient inventory, or avoiding delay in supply chain.
Additionally, you can give your customers instant access to their purchase without the need to wait in lines for long periods or have to wait for their orders to arrive.
There's a chance that you will not have coupons for 75% discount or Buy-One-Get-One-Free promotions as large-box stores, but it is possible for entrepreneurs as well as small-sized businesses to take part at Cyber Weekend without breaking the financial budget. Read on for 5 tips to help you do that.
5 suggestions for Christmas promotions which won't harm your profits
#1: Offer discounts sparingly
The deep discounts are the biggest attraction of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Who wouldn't want to get a bargain?
In fact, coupons are scientifically proven to make people happy. The study conducted by Dr. Paul J. Zak , professor of neuroeconomics discovered that people who were given a voucher of $10 received a boost of 38% in oxytocin levels and were one-fifth happier than people who did not receive a coupon.
Smaller businesses are able to offer coupon or promo codes for the holiday season. But to keep from hurting your profits, you must take care to implement it strategically and sparingly.
Another way is to offer only coupons to celebrate special occasions or to a limited number of people.
Discounts on your merchandise constantly could damage your image as a brand's value . If you offer discounts year-round and people don't pay full price -They'll simply wait until your next sale.
When you only offer promos every few months such as Reuven, shoppers will be more likely to avail of these deals.
In the event that you offer those promotions available to a limited group of customers or subscribers and subscribers, you could leverage the scarcity concept through FOMO (the fear of missing out).
FOMO is an powerful tool
60 percent of consumers purchase items due to FOMO.
89 percent of Americans believe they would prefer an exclusive deal to encourage them to spend for a specific name.
48% say an exclusive offer would encourage them to buy earlier.
In the above example from Reuven the entrepreneur informs his clients "Hurry to get this deal, and it is only available until Cyber Monday." Customers only have a couple of days to redeem the 40 percent discount, which makes them more likely to use it.
There's no reason you necessarily have to offer 40% off.
If profit margins are limited, you can opt for smaller discounts, says Mike Moloney , founder of FilterGrade :
"If there are a few margins, I definitely recommend using smaller discounts between 10% to 20 percent. They are extremely effective at converting new customers."
The Rule of 100 says that for items that are less than $100, customers typically prefer to view discounts as percentages. When it comes to items that exceed $100, consumers prefer to see the amount actually that they have saved.
All in all discounts and coupons can be a great tool to increase sales during the big holiday sale days -- but they're far from your only choice. The next point is about improving value, without cutting prices.
#2: Make bundles of products
Anyone who believed that "less can be more" was not talking about the worth of the Cyber Weekend deals.
If you can't -- or don't want to provide discount coupons, then product bundles offer a wonderful option to increase an element of worth and improve your average order value (AOV) without offering a discount.
Patrick Campbell, Founder and the CEO of ProfitWell , explains:
"Price bundling " is which allows companies to bundle multiple goods or services in a package at a single price. They are generally offered at lower prices than when they are purchased individually.
Even though each item included within the bundle is sold at a discount, this strategy can potentially raise the your average revenue for each user (ARPU) and user engagement."
With digital products, it isn't as logical to conduct a traditional buy-one-get-one sale as you're selling access to something -- like an ebook or membershipand your purchasers just need to purchase one time.
Justin employed's bundle feature to offer all of his best content and courses to digital marketers for significantly less cost than it would have cost for each of the items individually.
This method not only increased sales, but helped Justin bring in new customers :
Explore's bundling capabilities and a lot more. Register here . (No need for a credit card!)
Overall, bundles are a great pricing strategy to promote holiday sales, but what if you just sell one or two items? We've got you and your clients' lists of holiday purchasesto cover this guideline.
#3: Help shoppers with shopping for gifts
Cyber Weekend begins the most popular time of the year for buying holiday gifts. The year 2000 saw shoppers spend the annual average of $311.75 on holiday purchases.
Luckily for creators (and your clients), online courses make wonderful gift ideas. The tech and shopping specialists at Mashable put an annual subscription to MasterClass as the top choice for this year's online gift options:
Guides to gifts are a great way to help people check every person off their holiday checklists. If you have a blog make a specific gift guide such as this entrepreneur gift guide of the business experts at Wandering Aimfully:
If you list your own products in the gift guide, make sure you include additional recommendations. In other words, it's simply a promotional post for you.
And, of course you can always use the traditional gift-giving fallback -- gift cards. If you're selling on the internet your website, you could make gift certificates that you can sell on your site, like these examples from Soul Food Talks :
However, the giving of gifts doesn't need to stop here -- Cyber Weekend is a great opportunity to give gifts to your customers, too.
#4: Make it sweeter by giving away a reward
Promotions are likely to influence the majority of Christmas customers as well as price reductions, free shipping, and gift cards are considered to be one of the best promotional opportunities.
Printables like worksheets and checklists provide great content for bonus items since they allow your clients to make the most of the purchase.
Marketing Showrunners accomplished exactly that by offering the following free gifts to students who signed up early for their Showrunners Sessions class :
With the offer of a PDF eBook from co-founder Jay Acunzo, Marketing Showrunners offered value in exchange to encourage early enrollment.
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Whether the Black Friday promotion is a offer for a free item, discount or product bundle No one is going to know about it until you inform them. That brings us to the final point -telling people regarding your sales for the holidays.
#5: Spread the word about your promotion
The best holiday promotion on the planet won't bring you any good if people don't know about it. If you are planning your Christmas sales, make sure you spread the word and let your clients be aware of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
A drip campaign - an email series- leading up to Cyber Weekend can help build anticipation. Be cautious about sending out excessive emails or bombarding your followers, however.
You've likely experienced it firsthand, people get a ton of emails from brands prior to Black Friday. The marketers of e-commerce launched more marketing campaigns in the days leading up to Black Friday than any other day in the year 2018.
Constant Contact suggests sending out three emails beginning about a week before the date the sale starts: "One that teases your sales, one that outlines an offer, and finally another that concludes with a reminder to make it last minute."
In terms of what you should include in your emails, Here are two guidelines:
Highlight your promotion within your subject line. Emails with percent-off discount offers in their subject lines have the mean conversion of 18.1% , compared to just 3.8% for subjects that don't contain specific promotions.
Create a sense of pressure. An experiment carried out by ConversionXL discovered that the addition of an alarm clock -- like the one from DataCamp below -- led to an increase of 147% in conversions.
In addition to emails, social media can be an additional great way to spread information out about special events for the holiday season -- especially if you're targeting a younger audience. 59 percent from Gen Z and 55% of young people are able to find your products via social media.
As with the drip-mail strategy above, make use of the social media posts to create excitement around your holiday deals. Like, for instance, travel writer Nele The Navigatio The Navigatio built excitement for a new product and Black Friday sale with this tweet :
A few days later, Nele declared that her much-anticipated book was available:
One benefit that social media has is user-generated information (UGC). All across industries, customers who look at UGC are converted to convert at an 161% higher rate . Send testimonials of students, members and happy customers to help advertise your Cyber Weekend deals.
And, if all other options fail, you could always use Black Friday as an excuse to post a beautiful photo .
Bottom line: If there is a Black Friday sale happens and nobody knows about the sale, it's not really happen. Don't just focus on offering the right kind of deal -- make sure that the right people see the deal, too.
Profit from Black Friday and Cyber Monday
More than ever before, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a fantastic opportunity for individuals, entrepreneurs and smaller businesses who sell their products online. With even low margins for profit it is possible to participate in this year's shopping holidays.
For a recap, here's the way:
Discounts should be offered sparingly and carefully. More customers believe that discounts are available and discounts, the less likely they will spend the full cost.
Make bundles of products with similar products for example, a collection of ebooks and online courses with other documents.
Let customers help with your holiday shopping needs by promoting your products as gift options by offering gift cards, or even putting together the gifts guide.
Entice shoppers with free gifts such as templates, printables and ebooks -- to help them get more out of the purchase.
Promote your holiday deals. Social media and email are two tried-and-true marketing ways to spread the word about promos and sales.
I hope that this blog post has added to your tools with the techniques you'll need to give your customers fantastic deals for the holiday season without hurting your bottom line. It doesn't matter if this is the first time you've been creator, or the fifteenth, I'm wishing you all the best for Cyber Weekend and beyond.