A Buzz Worthy Black Friday

The theme of this is you don't really have to have a great reason. People's wallets are open. They're looking for any reason whatsoever to buy. Now.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table, because this is Business Lunch with Roland Fraser and Ryan Dice. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. I am Roland Frazier, and this is Ryan Dice. Ryan, how are you doing today?

I'm doing well. My wife, on the other hand, is incredibly frustrated. Sorry. That's literally what I was looking at.

What's going on?

So our. This is utterly worthless. But here we are. She. She wanted to go to the. She needed to pull some money out of the bank. And the, The. The bank that is closest to our house. Apparently somebody backed up a truck, threw a chain around the cash machine, around the ATM that's outside, and ripped this thing out of, like, the concrete they had and. And stole the cash. To which I say, you earned it. I mean, that person pretty much cashes in an atm.

It's got to be like a few thousand bucks, right?

It's got to be thousands. Yeah. I mean, it's not worth prison or rip, even ripping off the back of a truck. So anyway, this happened a while ago and it was like a big deal was in the news because I guess it's somewhat comical as well. It's been like three weeks and they still haven't gotten a new atm. So she went by, she's like, if our bank doesn't get a new atm, I'm going to be. And so I'm looking at this text thread from her. I haven't responded because obviously We've been talking. Our bank doesn't get a new atm. I'm going to move banks. I got to go to the other one like you know, up the street. So she went to. So I just got back from the one up the street and it doesn't have any cash in it either. I'm going to have to go in and talk to somebody. I'm going to die because my wife does not like talking to people. So again, this, this conversation is utterly worthless to anything. But there's a little glimpse into, into my life and the text that I sometimes get from my wife during the day.

I wonder, I know you're very, very strict with her on what you allow her to spend, but I wonder if she might go to another bank in the participating network of ATMs that was closer and pay the extra couple of dollar fee. It is going to be two or three dollars. Ryan.

She is so cheap. I, and you know, you've seen this. My, my value.

Very value.

It's Darvit. Yeah. Value. It is. I gotta like drag her into like buying nice things like that. But no, she's literally has probably burned up $15 worth of gas to save $2. That's her thrifty, her thrifty nature, which I guess I'll take it to the alternative, but yes, yes.

Of banks, ATMs, spouses and thrifty nature. Go ahead.

Yeah, what a, what a good segue. What a good pivot. Yeah. Because we're going to talk about Black Friday, right?

Yeah, that's, that's what I think would be fun to talk about. So we got that coming up. So we are hoping that our, our super talented team is going to release this episode very, very soon. Because it is October 30th, I think as we are recording this to you. Black Friday is coming up in a few weeks and one of the things that I was always. And you can tell me the origin, tell the origin story of how we got to doing Black Friday in the digital world. Because I think that we were the first people to do it and I'll, I, I don't want to get the story wrong. Would you share a little bit about that? Because when we talk about doing an offer for Black Friday, it's a lot of people are like, that doesn't apply to me unless they have at least a physical product and very often a physical store. But it's much, much bigger than that. So. I know and I think that, I think that digital marketer was one of the first to ever do that. Do you mind sharing a little bit about the story and the thoughts around that?

Yeah. So this would have been probably close to 10 years ago now. Black Friday was a fairly new concept. Obviously, Black Friday has been around for a while now. If you don't know, you probably do. But if you don't know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. And historically for international people might not know, right? Yeah, for international people like in the States. And I believe that as we are off to do in America, we are very good at exporting our consumerism. And so I think we've managed to do this as well. But Black Friday, historically, like I remember growing up as a kid, we. It was like the day after Thanksgiving, we'd have family in town and then some folks would like wake up at the crack of dawn to go stand out in front of the Walmart so that as soon as the doors of the Walmart open, they could be there to get all the, all the deals. And it was called Black Friday because it officially kicked off the Christmas buying season. And that was when retailers would put on all their best sales. Right. And so they'd have this big sale. So as soon as Thanksgiving is over, it's now the Christmas holiday season. Go and get your shopping done. If you got your early shopping done, you saved a lot. And so it kind of created this culture of consumerism, this culture of let's go out and do a bunch of shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. So Black Friday, it's going to get these retailers in the black, in the profit. This is where they were going to make, you know, make their money. And so when this happened, you know, the Internet became a thing. You started to see Internet retailers also doing Black Friday. And Internet retailers were smart. Then they created Cyber Monday. So Friday was for the brick and mortar retailers. Monday was going to be for online. In reality, it was all for Amazon, you know, too long. So. But as a digital company, as a company that didn't sell physical products to retailers, more B2B courses, events, those kind of things. We believed for years that just, that wasn't our thing. Like nobody was thinking, I want to buy a digital marketing course for Black Friday. And so we just, we never participated. We would generally be like, happy Thanksgiving, everybody. And wouldn't even do an offer, try to do anything. And one year, I remember we were having a really bad month. I don't remember what it was, but, but I don't remember why, but we were hurting. We had had a particularly bad month, sales wise I don't remember who. Whose idea it was, but they said we should do some kind of Black Friday something. And. And so we decided to do the Black Friday boot camp. It was a day long. You know, the. The subject line was, you know, put that leftover turkey down, put that turkey leg down. Like, you know, while everybody else is out shopping, you should be here learning. And. And so we did this boot camp. We charged for it. We gave all the money to charity. And then while we were on the boot camp, we made some offers, and it did incredibly well. And so we did that for years and years and years until finally we realized that, you know, the team sort of hated working on the Friday after Thanksgiving. And so we decided to give the team the full Thanksgiving break. And what we did instead was do what everybody else did. We decided, what if we just run a Black Friday sale? And again, at the time when we started doing this, no other, like, B2B type people were doing Black Friday sales. It was almost considered to be, you know, undored.

It was weird.

Yeah, weird. Like, how dare. Like, oh, you're not very sophisticated. But I think the thing that we figured out is humans are humans, buyers are buyers, consumers are consumers. And that is just a point in time where everybody's got their wallets open. They're just in a mindset of buying, they're in a mindset of investing, they're in a mindset of wallet out. And so whether you're B2B, whether you're B2C, this is your time, this is your season coming up. So I haven't done it yet. This is your warning.

I think, too, if you experienced, as many people that we talked with across physical digital SaaS, everything July, August, and even September were difficult months for a lot of people, were slower than usual. You've got the combination of all the crazy stuff that's happening in the world with even more stuff recently happening that's even crazier, and economic uncertainty and the expiration of all kinds of benefits from the government and general economic unease that's out there, interest rates up, housing prices up, et cetera, et cetera, pretty much everywhere. And that caused a lot of people to have tough months in July and August. Revenge travel also, and September. And so going into October, which we've seen be significantly better than those months, by the way. It is a good opportunity to give people an offer at a time when they have given themselves historically permission to spend money. And so if you haven't thought about it, now is definitely the time. So this is our friendly reminder. Hey, there's this big opportunity for your business that is only a few weeks away and it's really hard on you and your team to pull one out of the hat at the last minute. And so we thought maybe we'd talk about it a little bit and talk about what kinds of offers might you think about and what are some maybe good ideas and some ideas that have some pitfalls that you might not be thinking about. And also what have we seen that's working out there? And one thing I want to ask you, Ryan, did you see when you guys switched from the boot Camp, which was kind of an online all day product that was anti shopping to the traditional. Did you see that one seemed to perform better than the other?

We definitely generated more revenue when we just did an outright promotion to the, to the list when it was just.

A pure promotion as opposed to like an event.

Correct.

But I don't know that we would have gotten away with it had we done it when we did it. Yeah, and I think that that's important. I think that there, that there are still some business. I mean, you think about Black Friday is a reason to do something right now. The something historically has been to run a sale.

Right.

To discount your products. We did not want to do that at the time. For a variety of reasons, we did not want to do that, but you should still do something. And so we did a special event. Now we then did decide, let's go ahead and run a, you know, a sale here. And so what we now do, and I think there's lots of, there's lots of businesses where it makes sense to do sales. There's a lot of businesses where you should probably never discount and never do a sale. I think understanding which one is most appropriately appropriate for you at Digital Marketer, because we do sell products and because we do run discounts and sales from time to time, twice a year, one time being Black Friday, another time over the summer we run a site wide sale and there's a, you know, there's a reason behind it and here's why we do it. And then, and then the sale is over and things go back up. And so I think discounting is, is one option, but it's not the only. And for most business, I would argue it's not the best option. So maybe we should talk about some options that are better.

Before we do that, I have to point something out.

Can you take a screenshot?

This is, this is. You're going to enjoy this because knowing who you are Will you send that to Ryan? So in your background right now, there's a line that appears that there's a bar that's going in one of your ears and coming out the other as you talk. I keep looking at it and being distracted by. I am, I am sorry for that, but I had to mention that to you. So if you guys are watching and you see that and it's driving you slightly, I knew that you would appreciate it, Ryan, because of your, your obsessive compulsive tendencies. So.

Absolutely.

Anyway, okay, so let's, let's talk about that. We're talking about really, what do we think about discounting for what kind of.

What Black Friday offer should you make like? So we're talking. There's probably lots of businesses out there. You've done this. You got your Black Friday offer in the can. You've done it. We're not really talking to those folks. I think this episode is for people who you haven't thought about a Black Friday offer yet. We're telling you you should. And it's all, you're almost out of time. So here are some kind of last minute Black Friday offer ideas, you know, for you to, for you to peruse from.

Okay, so you talked about discounting. That's one thing you can just basically say, hey, the thing you normally pay X for, now you pay X minus Y.

Right.

Another thing would be bundling. Right? You want to talk about that?

Yeah. So what you could say is we're running this, you know, incredible Black Friday sale and we've got this exclusive, and it could be one bundle or it could be a couple of bundles. And, and so it's a form of discounting in that the bundle is less than the things would be separate. But unlike just an across the board discount, it's not perceived as like a show of lesser value. It doesn't get your list and your customers into this mindset of, you know, okay, if I just wait for this time, I can save money. They're technically spending more. Right. You're saying if you bundle these things together, you'll get a discount on the whole, come up with a fun reason to do it. So bundling is definitely a good way to do it. Okay, what else do we have in addition to that? What you could do is come up, do a discount on or a crazy deal on just one particular product. And so pick something that, and this can be really effective if it's something that maybe it's something brand new that your list hasn't seen before. And so it can be a good time to launch something because again, people are out there spending but as opposed to having it be this site wide instead. And you know, and this could again be a variation on the bundle, but come up with, this is our one thing that we're doing for Black Friday, you know, to get, to get signed up. And so that can be effective for service type businesses. Sometimes where you're like, we will just do this one thing for you. You can buy it now, cash it in later kind of thing. So a singular discount on just one thing, especially if you can build some kind of a story around it.

Is that, is that just a discount though? I mean really like it's a discount.

But it's not a site wide discount or store wide discount, which is historically Black Friday has been a store wide site wide discount.

Okay.

Okay.

And what do you think of door buster type things? The like crazy. I mean, I guess it's a loss leader.

Yeah. You can have something like normally 800 bucks for that. So that's kind of like what I'm referring to here is sort of the online equivalent of the door buster. Okay. Right. Okay. It's. There's this one thing that you can get at a really good, at a really good deal.

Do you like limiting them like they sometimes do those things, or do you think that that is not as effective or, or works as well?

I, I. Scarcity is always going to work better than no scarcity. But I think you need to be clear on what is your actual, you know, what is the actual amount that you're gonna have available. I mean, if it's a physical product, then you probably do have a physical. You only have a certain amount of inventory in stock. If it's a digital product, then I think there needs to be a reason why you're limiting it.

And then it's cohort based. Like we can only have a small group of people. I know you're doing some stuff like that right now. That would be, that'd be a good reason to do that, right?

Yep. It could be we're only doing this many because everybody's starting at the same time. It could be we're only doing this many because that's just all you get. It's only this. You just have to stick to it and you have to signal when it's selling out and then let everybody know that it did in fact sell out. You can't, nobody else can buy.

So one thing that I like, and you mentioned it a lot, is I like it for launching things because I hate training our audience to wait or that there's going to be a discount ever. I like the opposite of that, which is training them that this may be the lowest price that you'll ever be able to get this. And one of the best times to do that and we do it consistently is on a launch. And so I know two Black Fridays ago we launched Consulting for Equity and it was launched at, I want to say, half of what it was going to be immediately after. And you have to stick with that, by the way. You can't like we're going to do it and then you lie, then it's not going to work. But, but I think that's a really good thing. So if you even, if even you could do this with a bundle too. But it's kind of a way to, to get around to, to have a discount without really training everybody that they should wait for sales. And so I think that's a good, a really good thing that you mentioned there. And, and I know we end up selling like 800 and some thousand of that during that just, I was, yeah, truly blew us away.

And I think this is important. You sold it on the back of it. So it was a launch, but it was a launch on the back of an event. Yeah. And I think this is important. People generally the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, even oftentimes Monday after Thanksgiving again in the States in particular. But I do believe we've managed to export this to other places. They're not doing anything, they're bored. Like the Friday after Thanksgiving is one of the largest days for the movie theaters. Like movie theaters are packed because nobody has much to do. And so if you put on an event, people will show up. You might be thinking like, you know, but I'm B2B or I'm, you know, like nobody's going to want to show up because everybody's hanging out, they're on vacation, they're relaxing with family. Most people want nothing more than to have a reason to go to a separate room away from all their freaking family.

Okay?

So if you can give them a legitimate business reason to go somewhere else on that Friday or Saturday, you can have actually incredibly high show up rates, incredibly high registration rates. The downside again is you're, you know, you're working on the Friday, Saturday after Thanksgiving. But hey, so are plenty of other people who want to make money.

And you can, you could prerecord also. Right. You don't, doesn't have to be you, but, but somebody, somebody's got to hit the machine, somebody's got to hit it.

And somebody needs to be there to answer the question.

That was my.

I always felt bad. I was like, God dang it, I feel bad asking my team to work. And I'm not. That's maybe some of my own stuff, but I do think an event is a good way to do it. Another thing that I've seen be really effective, if you want to do a Black Friday but you don't want to do some kind of a, you know, door buster site wide sale, is to do essentially a secret Black Friday sale. And we've had some clients of ours, they did this years ago and repeated it. We've done it to certain degrees. It's really effective. What you say is we're running a Black Friday sale, but it's only for people who register for it. And so they will promote ahead of time to the list to get people to opt in for the Black Friday deals. And so they'll have people opt in. They might even have them take a little bit of a survey to find out, you know, the things that they're interested in. And they will essentially do this build up of, you know, it's coming, it's coming. And, you know, now they've got these people on the sub list who have basically said, yes, I want to be sold Black Friday stuff, I want to receive these discounts. But they're only sending the discounts out to a sub list. It's not being broadly advertised. It's not going out to the list as a whole. It's only going out to those most engaged people. And the Mastermind members, clients of ours that did this, they made more revenue than they had from the open Black Friday sale from a much smaller list of people. And they didn't take tell a whole bunch of folks that these products were at a discount who had no real intent of buying. When you opt in for a Black Friday sale, that's showing intent. Yeah, that's intent to buy. And the conversion rate of the people who opted in was like, I don't remember the percentage, but it was insane.

That's cool. I like that. The other thing would be to bonus. So I like creating bonuses rather than discounts so that you can say, what are the things that would help the people who are buying the product or service to consume it, to get more out of it would be complementary to them. What are those things that you could do? Particularly high perceived value things like additional trainings or things like that. What are complementary things that you offer that you could that you could throw in. That is a form of bundling. But I think like as bonuses, if the bonuses can be the sex so sexy that they would like to just have the bonus, then that gives them again a good reason to buy. The other thing would be to include a bonus to raise the price and include the bonus that they would want to maybe treat that they've been wanting to treat themselves to but but haven't been able to rationalize. So that would be something like an iPhone, an iPad or something like that that you could bundle in, particularly if it goes with it. If it's like a digital product would be easy. It's an iPad so that you can watch your new program on how to blank on the, on your brand new iPad or iPhone. Or we're going to show you how to make sales calls and be a better networker and we're going to give you the best tool on the planet to do that. A brand new, you know, Google Pixel or iPhone or whatever. Those kinds of things I think are really good Black Friday offers as well. Do you have any thoughts on those?

Yeah, I think especially if it's the kind of thing that they could re gift to somebody else. Yeah, right. I think again, like the theme of this is you don't really have to have a great reason. People's wallets are open, they're looking for any reason whatsoever to buy. Now the reason is Black Friday.

That's already been created for us. Yeah, exactly.

Like there, there's already. There are certain seasons in the calendar that just people are ready to take some kind of action. At the end of the year, you know, new year, new you, people are just ready to invest in anything related to improving themselves, whether it's health, fitness, weight loss, personal finance, fourth quarter, start of first quarter, new resolution time. That's when people are ready to do that. Going into the summer, people are ready to invest in again. Health, fitness, swimsuit, travel. There are just certain seasons when people are ready to take certain actions. And yeah, now is just the season when people are just ready to buy. They just are. And there's a lot of predictions about how this Black Friday will be, you know, terrible compared to previous Black Fridays in terms of total spend. I don't know if that'll be true or not. Here's what I know. It'll be better than just your normal Friday. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, whatever it is, I think the only unacceptable action is to do nothing. Like the only thing, the only way to mess this up. You don't get any Brownie points. You don't. Nobody in your list is going to be like, I just think it's so great that you didn't do what all those other people do and you know, they're all running sales, but you didn't. And so I like you better now. That's not going to get you any points for anyone. And so if you think.

And the people that say that you would rather have them off your list.

Oh dear. Of course. And so many people are like, you know, you're basically saying that I'm too lazy to come up with an offer and I would rather virtue signal instead.

Yeah.

Okay, so don't do that. Yeah, don't either say, I'm too lazy to do something. We'll get it next year. But don't pretend like you're quote unquote better than everybody else because they did something for Black Friday and you opted out. Okay, you don't have to run a site wide sale. You don't have to do a door busters. You know, you could do something that is on brand. Just make sure that you acknowledge the season and make sure that you give people a reason to take some kind of action because if they're not doing it with you, they're going to do it with somebody else.

Agree? Cool. Well, hopefully that was helpful to you guys. Definitely a big opportunity that's coming up. It is coming faster than you might imagine. Don't wait until the last minute to pull the rabbit out of your hat. Think about what the offer might be. Hopefully you got a lot of good ideas for different ways to do it here. Figure out the one that's right for you. Let us know how it goes too. Let us know what you decided and how it worked out for you and we'll do the same on a post Black Friday episode. If you like this and found value, please share it with everybody that you know and we'll see you next time on the Business Lunch podcast.

Hey, Roland Frazier here.

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