Why you should not offer big sales during the holidays
19 Feb 2021 · 1 min
Mark Simpson argues hospitality businesses should skip heavy holiday discounts because they train guests to wait for sales and tank direct-booking value. Instead, offer discounts only for new launches or limited local partnerships, and use early-bird applications and product launches as alternatives.
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Having a blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better but direct.
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Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.
Welcome to the Brucely podcast. My name is Maximus and I give host just like you, the tools, the tactics, the TR training and most importantly, the confidence to go and get your own direct bookings. And today, as you can see in the title is I'm encouraging everybody to think again before you go and do your Black Friday deal. Now, it doesn't matter if you're watching this live with me or if you're watching back on the replay Black Friday Boxing Day sales. There's always some form of event coming up, but most importantly, I recording this a week before Black Friday sales properly begin and you're going to be inundated with hundreds of emails, messages, Facebook ads, you name it, trying to get you to buy their products. And most importantly, as a business owner, you're going to be tempted to do a sale yourself. Whether it's something that you've already maybe planned a couple of days ago, or maybe it's something that you're just going to go ahead and do. But before you do go and do this, please make sure that you tune in to this and you watch it or listen to it. And most importantly, make sure that you don't make any rash decisions. So all I ask is that you do me one thing. Whether you are watching it live or in the replay. Share this video Share this audio with one person and also as well, make sure you subscribe and turn on the notifications so you never miss a live video or never miss any free training again. So this is part of the Booster podcast podcast series. We're in season 10. If this is the first time that you have listened, then you've got a lot of episodes to go and check out. Go to boostle.co.uk podcast to do so. So as you are tuning in in the comments and if you especially are live in the comment section below, I want to know what Black Friday deals you've done in the past or any sales that you've done in the past, any offers, what has been successful and what haven't worked and what have you learned. And also as well, give your business a bit of a pitch because you never know who's going to be watching in with you, whether it's live or in the replay. So hashtag live, give your business a pitch and promote and talk about your past experiences. And if you're on the replay, please do so the same. So why shouldn't you get involved? Well, number one, specifically when it comes to accommodation, just imagine if you're a guest, you know you're a guest and you've booked to go and stay a property, you've handed money over and then literally a week or two weeks down the line they start posing up on social media where you can get exactly the Same stay but 50% discount. You're going to be a little bit annoyed and the customer is going to get a bit pissed off at this as well. And this is literally what I see so many people encouraging. And I've seen it on social media this week. I've seen it on Instagram, I've seen so many people promoting their Black Friday sales already for a product that you could literally a week ago go and get at the same price. And if you are constantly doing it, then what you're doing is you're training your followers, training your customers, your guests that they shouldn't book with you at any other time, but they should wait for the holidays, wait for the, wait for these sales because you're going to adopt this sales approach. So it's going to, it's going to harm the long term ramifications of your business. You're not going to get people wanting to book review in January or February because they know if they wait a couple of weeks, you may be doing a spring sale, an Easter sale, you know, a Valentine's sale, and you know, which, which is something that you don't want to be getting into. So don't train your audience, train your customers that you're only here to offer major discounts. And also as well, don't try and offer something out a week ago was exactly the same price. It just doesn't bode well. Now there are a couple of circumstances that you may be able to offer and I'm going to give a shout out here. Brittany Bailey. So I started following Britney since watching her do an interview on Gavin Bell's podcast. And Brittany's a copywriter, she's got a really good social media presence. But over the course of the last couple of weeks she's been creating a product, a brand new product, and only yesterday, so this is being recorded on Tuesday the 24th or Monday the 23rd. She put some out on social media for a brand new product to say that she is going to have for the launch of her brand new product, a Black Friday deal. So this is a brand new product nobody's bought before and she's going to launch it on Friday. And you can opt in to a specific email list or a specific notification when this deal is live this week, which is a really good way because what, what she's done here, and this is what so many people can do is you can maybe for hospitality, if you're a property manager, you may have a new unit coming up that needs bookings that you want to show it off as. Maybe this is going to be one of your signature properties or you may have closed down for most of the year for what, for whatever reason, Covid or whatever, you're going to be looking to reopen in January and February and you know you want to, you haven't got any bookings and you want to relaunch it. Maybe you've redecorated, maybe you've changed the building around or whatnot. So for a launch of a new unit or for a launch of something new, maybe. I've seen a couple of people in Team Boostly that this week they are creating cookbooks and they're creating cookery class classes and courses and whatnot, because this is like a new pivot for their business. So a really good thing that they could be doing for Black Friday could be opening up early applications for the cookery course. I'll be given a sneak peek, a heavily discounted rate on the cookbook. So again, these are the type of situations when you can do this. And Ger Jones mentioned a member of the Boostly Academy. He has got hopefully still on track to have his a glamping site business launch very soon. So we can use Black Friday and the sale of that for the launch of a product or a service for accommodations. So that's a good time to do it. And you know, I've signed up to Brittany's email swipe file launch because I'm really excited about it because of how she's done it. And again, this is the, this is the message that I want to spread, is that the people that do this well. And Noah Kagan of AppSumo, guest on the Boosted podcast. He has talked about this in the past and he's just done a video on YouTube this week which has said that his company AppSumo, has been planning for Black Friday because this is one of their big weeks for six months. You've got people that are planning for three to six months for just this week. So again, those of you that are thinking last minute, you just sort of get that FOMO and you just think, I'm just going to put a Black Friday offer out there. And you haven't planned it properly and it's something that somebody could have literally purchased a week ago. You're going to annoy a lot of people, so please, please don't do that. The other instance where you could do this could be where you team up with other local businesses in your area. So you offer the accommodation. You could partner with a, with a local restaurant or a pub or something to offer, maybe a gift voucher or something. Maybe there's a local chocolatier. You could partner with them and build up a little hamper. Then, yeah, something like that. You could definitely sell as a bundle and put it up for a Black Friday offer. Because again, you're going to be supporting local business, which is really, there's a real big movement going towards this, supporting local businesses. You're building up good local relationships with other businesses. But also as well, it's something that you couldn't offer a week before. So again, partner up and do a partnership bundle, which is again, something that I see a lot of people doing online and they've done it really, really well. So the main takeaway that I want for you to take from this, wherever you're watching live with me right now, and please let me know if you are watching live or if you're tuning back on the replay. If you've got the audio on, on the podcast, this podcast episode won't go out until maybe February or March 2021, is don't get sucked in with the FOMO. Don't get sucked in with the peer pressure thinking that you've got to do a Black Friday deal. Make sure you plan it properly. Don't offer something that literally a guest could have got a week ago for exactly the same price. Try and create something that's new or create a service that's new or uses as a chance to launch a new product. And if you as well try and partner up and build up some local relationships. Okay, so thank you so much for tuning in to this boosted podcast episode. Whatever channel or whatever style that you are watching on, I really do appreciate it. If you please could go to Apple iTunes Store and leave a review. If you're an Apple user, it really does help boost the algorithm so more people can discover it. And if you're a host who is wanting to increase your direct bookings but doesn't know where to start, just go to boostly.co.uk Five Steps There's a free Five Step video guide on how you can get started with direct bookings. Please go and check out all of the other Boostie products. Boostie website content creator. We've got Boostie Academy and also as well Boostly Podcast. So please do go and check them out. Thank you so much. And all I ask for all of these free videos that I put out there is that you share this video. So share it in a Facebook group, share it with a friend, email a link to a buddy text message, somebody just send a link to another hospitality owner who you think will benefit from this help and advice. So thank you very much for tuning in and I will be back again very shortly for another episode. But again, keep direct booking. Thank you so much and I shall speak to you all very soon.
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