621. 5 Discount Offer Ideas to Boost Sales Right Now

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, hey product Boss. And welcome back to another episode. All right, today I'm excited to dive deeper into the concept of offering discounts to your customers. I know gas so many times I hear people say oh but if I offer discounts, if I give them sales, if I do this too much they're going to come to expect it. Then I have other people that are like I can only sell my stuff with discounts by putting things on sale. Now I think there is this in between for everybody. This is something, you know, we, we really do dive deeper into this in inside of multi stream machine. And the idea in that is that what I know and the difference between what I will teach you as your product based business expert coach versus what service based people will say. Service based people, when you're getting service based advice they're going to tell you give a freebie like have a download, have an opt in. And so if you've been listening to any of those people and some of them are my friends or like they're huge, they have millions and millions of followers and they talk to all about how to grow an email list or get people to buy from you or whatever and their opt ins are a different way of doing business than it works for product. So it's just different, you know, and that's what I want to dive into with you here. I do not believe that you need to offer a discount to make sales. Now what I want you to know is that there are discounts created at different times of year for different reasons. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday. But the concept of Black Friday was to get Businesses back into the black before the year ends. What does that mean? The red is your negative. So if you're in negative right now, there is an entire marketing slash holiday created for businesses all over the world to try and get back into the black. Okay? Because that is just how business works. It's high and then it's low. There's lots of sales, and then there's no sales. Like, you're not alone in any of this. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday is really to get people to shop, to get them to shop a bit earlier than perhaps they used to. Now patterns have changed in sales and buying things. Right? It used to be you had to wait and get things ordered. If you were shopping at a regular brick and mortar or. All we had were brick and mortar. So if you think about the concept of Black Friday, for my friends out there that used to do this, you know, we used to go to the malls early or camp out at Best Buy the night before to get DVDs. Why, I have no idea. But we did it. And then Cyber Monday popped up because we're like, oh, okay. People are out shopping in real life on Friday. On Saturday, American Express created the holiday Small Business Saturday to get people shopping. Sunday was a typical day where things went on sale. So the newspaper. Yes, back in the day with the newspaper. Sunday newspaper was the bigger newspaper, and it had all of the sales inside of that. And so then Monday was called Cyber Monday because as we were getting people to start to shop online, which has really only happened in the last, I think, like, truthfully, 10 years, it really picked up 15 years. You know, I would say people started to do it. But truthfully, the last 10 years has been this, like, massive amount of people where I always talk about my grandma, but, like, my grandma switched over to buying things online. Like, it's not always going to the store anymore. So. So this way of being of that weekend was this concept of getting people out of their houses to get them spending to get them buying. And then things went back to normal price. Okay? That's like the history of it all. Now when we go back to sales and discounts, whether it's Labor Day, Labor Day sales are clearancing summer inventory. They're moving into new product. They're getting rid of product on the shelves, the inventory that is of the summer months so that they can start to move in. Fall and winter stuff. We have after Christmas sales, let's get rid of everything. Christmas after Halloween sales, we have. You know, every time a season changes, there's another sale and there's, there's Memorial Day sales. Right. There's all these different like holidays that we link sales and discounts to and that's to move out inventory, that is to liquidate stuff that hasn't moved so that you have cashflow and you can move things back in. And this is definitely something that we covered. I was just running a five day bootcamp for how to really get more customers, get more sales, create a plan for the holiday season. And we also have our rock your holiday promotions challenge where we built out our offers and our promotions for the holiday season. Because like I just kind of explained to you, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the expectation is that they're going to be buying things on sale that weekend. They're not buying stuff full price most likely. Okay. So if you want to participate in that, that's something to be aware of. Some people choose not to, but it's just something to be aware of and that's just like culturally how it's driven. So let's talk about five different types of discount codes or offers that you can use that will drive sales. So one of the first things I want to talk about is first time shopper discounts. This is what I was talking about. Coaches that don't know how to coach product people are going to tell you to do some sort of opt in, some sort of freebie, some sort of download giveaway that works for my business, that's not going to work for your product business. So what works for product businesses? Well, first time shopper discounts. So what does that mean? So ultimately you're more likely to sell more to people who have already bought from you than you Being able to get and convert a new visitor into a customer, that is the hardest thing that you'll do in your business. Now you're doing it and we do it every day. But it's not as easy as maybe we all wish that it was. One of the best ways to reduce that barrier of like that doubt or that barrier as to why a new customer isn't going to buy from you because they're a first time buyer and maybe they haven't fully experienced like the no like trust factor with you. You know, they have to go get their credit card like whatever reasons it is, a small discount can help reduce that kind of barrier that's in the way of them making their first purchase. So you'll see this so often. You go on a new website, you'll get the pop up you'll get. If you do opt in, you're going to get the email about it. A lot of companies will offer get 10% or get 15% off your first purchase when you sign up for our newsletter. So go and opt into a new website, go take a look and see like what that pop up is and how they phrase it. And then it's like, and really the next level version of this is text messaging. So a lot of places will be like 10% off. Your first like put in your email and then the second thing is like to get it put in your phone number. So they're actually not even giving you the discount code without getting you on their text messaging list. But even if you can't do text messaging right now, I just want you to pay attention to what's happening. So that first percentage off is not only a way to get their email, they don't use it in that moment. You're following up with emails that come to them after. That's like, don't forget your 10% off now. Inside of Multi Stream Machine, we have templates for you that are all about these like automatic emails that you can send and the cadence in which you do that. And so for this whole welcome sequence type newsletter, we have all the templates. So a lot of you have been joining, actually hundreds of you have been joining over the past few days. I think we have almost 6,000 students in that program. It's so exciting. If you're listening to this in real time and the doors are open, all you have to do is head to multistreammachine. Com and you can get signed up. If you're like, oh my goodness, like doors are closing, I want in. Come. I've got like all these templates for you. So you're covered there. Okay. But that would be that first time shopper discount. All right. A second type of discount offer or code that you can offer would be the other part that I was talking about, which are seasonal or holiday discounts. So you know, these are prime times to offer them because the expectation is that there will be a sale. So you know, and you know this as a customer yourself, I'll bet that leading up to Black Friday Cyber Monday, there's a bunch of stuff that you're not buying because you know that there's sales coming, there's gonna be the like need to buy. But for example, with Labor Day sales that at the time of this recording, like Labor Day has just passed, you know, furniture and electronics go on sale for Labor Day. So my mom bought a fridge, right? I was like, we need to our Outdoor fridge is broken. And so we bought a new. And the outdoor fridge, as the guy said, is basically a rat's nest. And so we need a new one. So, yeah, I can buy that at any point. But I was holding out because I know that appliances, for example, go on sale during Labor Day, but appliances aren't necessarily the thing that's, like, on sale on Black Friday maybe, but it's not the thing that people are thinking of buying. People are thinking about buying things for themselves, for their homes, as gifts. All right? So we have to think about all these different holidays and seasons as different times to offer different things. Like I just said, Labor Day has a different kind of feel to it than Black Friday Saturday every Monday. Okay. Another great reason why seasonal sales, holiday discounts after holiday sales are really great is exactly what I said earlier, which is clearing out seasonal inventory and boosting cash flow. Because the thing is, my friends, is if you have inventory sitting on your shelf that's literally cash sitting in the form of whatever you've made, when you're like, I have no money. I have no money to invest in this. I have, you know, the I have no money type thing you do. It's just all tied up in either goods that you've made that aren't selling or raw goods that are sitting around your space. I know a lot of you are feeling kind of, like, called out, and you're like, don't look at me. Don't call out, call me out. But it's true. We spend a lot of money on the making process. We spend a lot of money on our raw goods. But are you investing into ways to sell more? Right. That's why I think so many of my students in MSM have such, like, a amazing experience because they finally flipped, like, where they're putting their money. They could clear out of thousands and thousands of dollars by, like, just buying more raw goods to make more things that they're excited about, but they're just spending money. There's no return on that investment versus when they finally make that investment in a different way, where it's like investment into education to know what to do with the product that they have. That's what actually gets them starting to figure out, how do I clear out inventory? How do I boost my cash flow? How do I turn this product back into cash? And one of my bonuses this time with MSM was basically one of our bonuses is how to get rid of inventory that's sitting on the shelves. Because I know that that's such a big Pain point. So my great, let me just come up with all these different ways to teach you to move inventory. So some examples of this could be, you know, 25% off of all of our summer items during the end of season sale again after Halloween, after Christmas, after Thanksgiving sales. Anytime that there's like an after sale, that's when you're getting rid of that inventory that you just sold out at. Now I know inevitably I'm going to get this question and I do get this question. What if I can sell it next year? So what if you can sell it next year? There's some stuff that you're like, yeah, it's not going to age. Like someone that I know has aprons and she's like, what if I can sell these next year? Okay, if you want to. It's not like you're putting money in a bank that's earning a lot of interest, let's put it that that way. Right? So we can wait, we can hoard and sit on our products and see if somehow next year we know how to do it better. Or we could figure out ways to just move the product now and turn it back into cash. Because as they say, cash is king, or in our case, cash is queen. And so we really want to make sure that we've got cash that can keep building our business versus holding onto something. It's not an investment, it's not earning interest. Right. In fact, it's aging. So the whole point in selling is how fast can you make sales and how fast can you clear through inventory to, to then replace with new inventory? We just want to make money and that's through selling our stuff. Hey, hey product boss. Okay, so we all know that building a product based business isn't easy, is it? But here's the truth. It also doesn't have to be so hard. In fact, when you have the right systems and support in place, you can skyrocket your sales and finally create the product business that fits your life and your lifestyle. So that's why I'm so excited to announce that the doors to Multi Stream Machine are officially open and we have a killer 500 off discount for a limited amount of time. So if you're a product based business owner who's ready to build a sustainable and thriving business that can support itself and pay you the salary that you deserve. And if you want a clear roadmap that shows you exactly how to create a plan to sell more so that you can stop guessing and start knowing, I want you to know that this program is in place and you can go through this course at your own pace. And my friend, you're satisfied. Action is guaranteed. Our thousands of alumni can tell you there's no other program like this for product based businesses in the world. Now I've taken my 20 years of experience in building product based businesses, including my own business which we've, we've created this completely turnkey system to help you scale your business and create the revenue you've dreamed of. Or if you're looking to get more customers, right? Customers to find you easily and to buy from you. And I want to do all the of this without you spinning your wheels. And also I teach you how to do this without being stuck on social media or spending money on paid ads. So that's why you're going to want to head to multistreammachine.com and grab this really special limited time offer and I'll see you inside. Okay. All right. The third type of discount offer that you can create is minimum purchase offers minimum purchase discounts. So I see this a lot during the holiday season where it's like, you know, if you spend 100 or more, you're going to get $20 off, which is 20% off, right? Or spend 100, you know, get $20 off, spend 200, get $25 off. They like tier how much you spend to get a certain amount off. And ultimately it's really just another way of saying get 15% off, get 20% off, get 25% off. It's just a different way of saying it. And sometimes the dollar amount get $20 off when you spend $100 or more sounds more beneficial than, you know, 20% off your purchase of a hundred dollars or more. Okay. But sometimes that $20 sounds more significant to them. So you could really play with this example. I also see people do that. If you want to talk about like a flip side to this is that minimum purchase for free shipping. We talk about this inside of multi stream machine. I have a whole bunch of offers that students can make to their customers. And one of them that I share, and we just shared it during our free challenge and five day workshop was the idea of, you know, when you spend $75, get free shipping, right? So we teach you inside of the program how to what your average order value is and then your free shipping threshold so that you can get people to spend more with you and then offer them free shipping. The whole point is we want people that are buying to spend more. We need them to spend more and have better margins. Okay. So that's another thing you can do is that minimum purchase discount. So get $20 off when you spend $100 or more or a version of that. Okay. Another offer that you can create are flash sales. In fact, if you haven't heard it yet, Zulily is coming back. Some of you know Zulily, some of you don't. But it started off as a flash sale discount site. And they used to have a lot of these. There were Zulily Pick youk Plum Gilt Group. There were certain things like that. Like Guilt Group had designer stuff like Burberry and it would go on sale for 48 hours and you'd buy it or it wouldn't be there. Things like Zulily had was more for like the mom, customer and kid product. So it was like, actually I sold 1200 units of cuffs Couture on Zulily when it existed in like 48 hours. I sold 1200 pieces because they're like, normally it's this price. So this is how a flash sale works. It's usually a significant sale to move slow selling items quickly. So on Zulu, for example, it used to be like, let's say it was $25, get it for $15, get it for $12, 50% off, right? So flash sales are a significant discount that are really put there to move product. Like it's not necessarily for you to be profitable, but it's to turn your cost back into cash. So flash sales have an urgency to them. Right? They actually help drive impulse purchases. I know that sounds sort of. You're not sure about it, but we've all done it. We've all seen something and been like limited quantity or like limited time. Get it all 50% off right now for the next 24 hours, we've bought it. That's an impulse purchase, right? They can, like I said, flash sales help to move slow selling items because sometimes when you get it at the right discount, people want it. So an example of that would be like flash sale, 50% off for the next 24 hours. And it could be like 50% off all blankets for the next 24 hours. So it can be whatever you want. Sometimes people will do this because they've gotten too much inventory and so they may have over ordered and they're like, I need to move this stuff. Or you're like, wow, I still have a ton of fall scented candles, but everyone's moving into Christmas scents. I need to move this out. Let's do a flash sale. All right. Now I love this because depending on how you sell, you could be selling on multiple sales channels. So you could be doing in person, you could be selling on a social platform, you could be selling on E commerce. This doesn't work for wholesale because we don't offer sales for wholesale. You sell them at their price. Unless you're participating in like a Amazon prime day, which is kind of like a flash sale sort of situation. But if you're going to create this yourself, you can choose to do it on multiple sales channels like our students do an msm, or you can choose one and it could be like a flash sale only on Instagram or, or a flash sale on your website, but you're going to have to drive traffic there. Okay, so just thinking about that. And then the fifth kind of coupon offer discount that you can give to people would be a customer loyalty discount. Okay. And we all know that we've done this in some version. So whether it's like punch card at our coffee shop or like I'm at Nordstrom's at Bloomingdale's and every time I spend a certain amount I get like, I get a naughty note which is I earn dollars back. Even home goods is doing that now. Like, especially if you get their credit cards, they have a loyalty program where you get like a certain amount back. So there's lots of ways to do this. And in this podcast I'm not gonna necessarily tell you like what are the loyalty programs, but I know that our multi stream machine students, especially inside of our community, are talking about this. So if you're an MSM student and you're listening and you're like, this is pinging your ears, or if you're a new student, jump into the group and start to chat about customer loyalty discounts and what software or programs you're all using to create this. Because I think it's a really great thing to talk about in real time. So why not reward your repeat customers? There's proof that if you give, you know, someone comes in for a punch card, you're going to a coffee shop and they punch three punches for you, they give you more than just one, you're more likely to come back because you're closer to earning that reward. It's the same way that like when you join a credit card and they're like, join, you know, get the credit card day and earn 30,000 miles, you know instantly when you spend $2,000 in the next 30 days, whatever it is, they're emphasizing you to spend and to use it because the more you start to do that, you start to build loyalty and you start to get those rewards. And the thing is is the faster that they earn the rewards, the better it is. So what do these do too? Loyalty programs, they increase your customer retention and it's way easier for you to sell to a customer that's already bought from you than to convert a new customer. We talked about that at the very beginning of the show. So, so an example could be earn points with every purchase and redeem them for discounts. Right? They can put in a loyalty number and they can start to earn points. There's lots of ways in which you can do this and there's lots of software to help you with this. So this is really great. This is something that if you're in our community, you're an MSM student, go in there, chat about it. We talk about raving fans and loyalty inside of the program. But to really dig into what's working now, that would be my suggestion here because ultimately it helps create this customer behavior and this idea of loyalty and rewards which really helps you grow your business faster. So in conclusion, to kind of go over the five things that we talked about, we talked about the first time shopper discount, the seasonal and holiday discount, the minimum purchase, the flash sale, and the customer loyalty discounts. Right? So instead of feeling overwhelmed, I'd love for you to think about just one of these that you might try. Okay. Some of the easiest ones would be the first time shopper discount or the seasonal holiday discounts and even that minimum purchase discount, those ones would be easiest. Flash sales. If you can manage a flash sale and you have the customers to drive to that, you can try that. And then of course the customer loyalty, that's something that will take time to build. So don't necessarily build this during the holidays. Do this during a down point where you have more time to work on your business versus in the holidays you're working in your business. But that would just be like a bonus sort of situation if you feel like you've got return customers and that that would be really great for them. All right, so I'm so excited for those of you who have signed up for Multi Stream Machine. Again, if you're listening to this in real time or somewhere in the Future, head to multistreammachine.com if you're like, let me see if it's open. Let me see what's happening over there. I'd love to see you join. But either way, I hope that these discount strategies are helpful. And this is why I'm you know, inside of my group, always paying attention to what, like, my students are talking about. This is why I'm going live on Instagram. That's why I love the reviews you're leaving for the podcast because I could really see where you're at and understand also all the coaching calls that I've got going. I really get to get my feet on the ground or, like, boots on the ground. Get into the muck and figure out what you all need in the moment to help support you in growing your businesses. So absolutely loving it. Absolutely loving seeing all the reviews. So thank you again if you've done so for leaving. Review for the podcast. If you haven't yet. I would be so honored if you would. And make sure you're subscribed to the show, that you follow the show, because Apple made some weird changes, and they may automatically unsubscribe you if you don't listen for, like, two weeks. So if you're like, where's Jacqueline? Where are these coaching calls? Make sure you're following the show and you're subscribed. All right, my friends, it's been awesome. I'm so stoked to work with you. I'm so excited to keep supporting you through the rest of this year as you're moving through this busy time of year and making sure that you are getting customers, making sure that you are making sales, that you feel like you have a plan and that you're not overwhelmed. I'm here with you every step of the way. All right, I'll see you in the next show.