5 Things Black Friday Can Teach You About Business That Aren’t Sales And Marketing

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey, Hey, so this episode is going out right before black Friday, but this episode is less about black Friday and the sales and what you can do in your business for it. And more about the lessons that you can learn from black Friday. That aren't just sales and marketing. At this time of year, we all being bombarded with people's offers with people's ideas. With people's marketing. And so we tend to get super focused on sales and marketing. But actually something like black Friday can really highlight a few key business principles for us to think about. So I'm going to dive into some of those in this episode. The first thing I want you to think about is what you have chosen to spend on, on black Friday. And I want you to reflect on how you made those buying decisions. Did you allow yourself to get swept away? By the marketing. Did you rely on yourself to get swept away by. A discount. That seems so good. Even though you never intended to buy the thing in the first place. Did you plan for it? And for the business, things that you bought. Did you stop and actually work out in advance? What does my business need? What skills am I looking for? What are my plans for 2024? And then base your buying decisions around that. Was there some kind of return on investment thinking. That was happening when you made a spending decision. Now I get it. I am not immune from an impulse. Shopping spree on black Friday. However, from a business perspective, We need to be much more careful about where our money goes. Because while making loads of revenue is exciting, making loads of profit is even more exciting because that's what goes into your back pocket. So maybe black Friday was a bit of a bus and we got really excited about something and we spent a little bit more than we thought. What can that teach you about buying decisions that you make in 2024? I want you to focus on a couple of things. We've spent money. One. Where does that decision [00:02:00] still feel good? Where does that decision feel? Not so good. Where did we go running for refunds? Where were we checking the fine print to see if we could change our minds? And then I want you to carry that into the future. As you start to use the things that you bought. And asked yourself, was there an actual ROI for that purchase? This is not about shaming you for the impulse purchase or anything like that. It's about getting you to think strategically. Before we lay out money for our businesses. Because great marketers are always going to be able to convince you that a discount or a time of year or that a particular offer is a hundred percent worth your time. So you need to think about what kind of data can you gather. To make sure that you make the right decision for your business. So the second thing I want us to think about from a black Friday perspective. Is revenue seasonality. So when I talk to people about their plans for let's say 20, 24, It's often a, I want to make X amount of money. And I'm going to divide that by 12 and that's how much I need to make every single month. What's something like black Friday highlights for you is that they can be seasonality to your revenue. So if you're planning for black Friday next year, how much of your revenue is going to come in November? Your revenue plan is no longer X amount of money divided by 12. It's X amount of money. How much I expect to make from each kind of launch event. So those big spikes, I'm not talking like small launches. I'm talking like when you do a launch twice a year or a live event twice a year or something like black Friday. And then what's the rest that's left over. And where are you expecting to make that over the rest of the year? This is really important for people to think about, and we really don't do this enough in small businesses. Let's say Q3 is your biggest launch of the year, or you go all in on black Friday, like it really works for your business. What happens when we get to the end of Q1 and then Q2, and we haven't made half of our revenue goal. That can feel [00:04:00] like we've got a lot of pressure on us, just suddenly you start thinking, well, I must offer new things and I need to pivot and I need to change and I need to do this. Versus being able to look at your revenue plan and know that for Q1 and Q2, you are on track because in Q3 you plan to make this much money. So understanding the timing of your revenue is vitally important to your peace of mind and to how you operate next year. And black Friday is just such a great way to highlight this. You can see how much money some businesses are making in November versus what they might be making in a standard month. And so if you don't have that built into your plan numbers, you can make the wrong decisions you could pivot when you don't need to. You could be subjecting yourself to an immense amount of stress that you don't need to have. So where you've got your revenue goal for 2024. Where is that going to show up across the year? The third thing I want to talk about is customer acquisition versus customer retention. So black Friday is all about attracting new customers about waving your arms at new people and getting them in the door. Right. It was traditionally on like consumer goods, right? That's when you saved up to buy your TV or whatever it was. we've kind of jumped on the bandwagon as online businesses. And I think it makes a lot of sense for digital products. but I think if you're selling something high ticket, Especially something that involves access to you. You really need to think through what your discount strategy is. And I'll give you an example. I have done a particular program. That cost. I think it was about three grand at the time. It was a while ago. And it's being offered. On this black Friday for around 1500. So I paid three grand to do it. And new customers are going to pay 50% less. It's a group program with access to the main person and a lot of support. Now. We've all walked into a shoe store and seeing the pair of shoes that we bought yesterday on sale and being like, oh, so annoying. These things happen. We expect this to happen. But when it's [00:06:00] something that's high ticket, and you then go. Oh, well, actually, I'm going to sell that exact same thing for way less money. It's your pricing. I don't get to come to you and go, how dare you discount the thing you sold me. But understand that the chance of me ever referring anyone to you or ever working with you again. Are very slim. Now, this is not the same as a back. I bought a a hundred bucks thing and you discounted it to 50. Or even if I bought a 500 bucks thing and you discounted it to two 50. So, this is really for high ticket offers where there's access to you included, especially. You need to think about what that discount says about the value of your offer. And what is saying to your previous customers? Who. You might be trying to retain who you might be trying to get referrals from. That doesn't mean that you can't add a little something, something for black Friday instead. So you could do a bonus call or an extra workshop or something along those lines. It doesn't mean you can't do any discount at all. It needs to be a really conscious decision because your customers are watching. I know this because somebody else who was in the program with me also had a conversation with me about the fact that it was so discounted. So your customers are talking to each other and they all watching so yes to discounts, but really think them through. Okay. The fourth thing I want you to think about in terms of black Friday is your return on effort. So if you are actually selling something on black Friday, You've done all the marketing. You've written all the emails you're doing all the reels. Did you calculate what your time costs? How will, you know, Did this black Friday event was a success that it was profitable. . A lot of times in small businesses. We as the CEO work, quote unquote for free. . So it's not like we're paying a contractor to do something. And then we're factoring that into our sons. We're not paying a contractor. So it's essentially free. The reality is that your time has value. And this is important in two different areas. One understanding right [00:08:00] now, how much time you put into the event. Versus the return that you got on it. How much effort you put in how much energy you wouldn't, how much time it took versus the money you're making off the back of it. And the other piece is to think about it in this way, because what if next time you want to hire a contractor? To do some of the stuff that you did. If you don't know whether it was profitable to start with. And then you start paying people like actually physically paying them out the door to do pieces of next black Friday. You don't want to be surprised when it's all over that actually you just broke even for all that effort or you only made a small profit for all that effort. The online world is huge on flashing big revenue, numbers, and big launch numbers. And that can make it seem that the only thing that decides whether a launch was successful was how much money you made on the top line. I want you to think deeper than that. And maybe this black Friday, you didn't and you just want to have like an estimate and you want to assign yourself an hourly rates. You can start to have a rough idea. And then you can start to think about, okay, well, when I do the next project, doesn't have to be black Friday. It can just be like next like launch event. That you actually track your time as well. And it doesn't have to be to the 15 minutes. You can just be like, it took me. Three hours to write these emails. Three hours times your hourly rates and act as if that is a cost to the business. And then ask yourself how profitable that strategy was. So don't make decisions on revenue numbers, make decisions on return on effort or profitability numbers. Finally, the thing that black Friday gives us that is probably the most fun part for business geeks. Is competitor analysis. You can see. What all your competitors are doing all at the same time. You can see how this. And this is a time of year where people love to talk about their black Friday strategies. People who aren't doing it. We'll explain to you in detail, why they're not doing it. People who [00:10:00] are doing it will explain to you why they're doing it, how they're doing it, whether they're doing a discount or a bonus or a new offer. Or combining an offer. There is so much that you can learn. About other people's business models. About the way other people think. About the strategy or lack thereof behind other people's businesses. And this is not so that you can then go, okay, let me go and copy it. But it's so that you can think if you listen to somebody, talk about why they don't do black Friday and it really resonates with you. Maybe that frees you from feeling obliged to take part in black Friday. Or maybe you've never done black Friday and someone explains to you how they do it in their particular business, in this really light and easy way that you resonate with. And you think, well, maybe next year I can add a little revenue doing black Friday. it Also allows you to watch people you might want to work with. And see how their brains work. See how they think through strategy. See what's going on behind the scenes. And there's not really any other time of year where this kind of happens all at once. Even when we're in launch season, you're not bombarded in the same way as you are in black Friday, right. So if you pay attention, you can learn so much about strategic thought. Yep about innovation, about new ideas. About. How to do launches about what you loved, that somebody else did in their launch. What you hated that somebody else did in this. To really set you up for 2024 to be thinking about, here are some things that I found so exciting about black Friday. I bought something because I saw a friend talking about it and then went and looked at it. That reminds me that comments and social proof. Are vital to a launch in a noisy environment. So that makes me think about what do I want to make sure I have. In 2024. In the same way I watched this other person. I don't think the offer that she was selling, that she sold to me for three K was worth less than three K. I actually think it's kind of a crime that she's selling it for 1500. But what that taught me is that [00:12:00] for me, from a values perspective, I don't want to go back on my pricing. For customers that I have a real relationship with not so much passive income, but that real relationship build that I've done. I don't want to risk that. For the sake of a discounted offer on black Friday. So it's highlighting for me, my values in business. So I want you to pay attention to what all of your competitors are doing to the offers that excite you to the offers that make you kind of throw up a little in your mouth to the offers that you saw. People say they bought, and you didn't even know they existed. If you can just step back from the marketing for a minute. and Watch what's going on, watch how people are behaving. And reflect on that. It's like a masterclass in business principles. So that's five things. A black Friday can teach you about your business that are not sales and marketing. number one, what is your buying behavior? All you focused on ROI or are you being tempted by marketing? number two, understanding revenue seasonality. If you're doing big events like black Friday or other launches, your revenue plan for next year needs to reflect that so that you make the best decisions in the future. Number three customer acquisition versus retention and referrals. What message is your customer acquisition strategy, giving to your current or previous clients who you want to retain or get referrals from? If you are doing something higher ticket with access to you think long and hard before offering a significant discount on your time. Number four. What was the return on effort for your strategy? If you took part in black Friday? Cost yourself in figure out if that was worth it before you decide to just tick a box and do it again. And finally, number five, what can you learn from watching all of your competitors in the black Friday space? How are they behaving? What are they doing that really resonates with you? What are they doing that completely turns you off? And what does that tell you about how you want to show up in [00:14:00] 2024? Again, If you chose to sell them black Friday, buy on black Friday, or to just ignore it completely. All of those are completely valid choices. But as the CEO and your business, don't miss this opportunity to dive a bit deeper, to think beyond the sales and marketing, beyond the flashy campaigns and the cute social media posts. Think about how you want to participate in things like black Friday In 2024.