“Any time you can give your customers a reason to buy your product, it’s a good idea”
On today’s episode, I am sharing the thought process behind our first ever Black Friday Sale. If you don’t know what Black Friday is, it’s the day after Thanksgiving and it is known for its insane sales; kind of like an opening day for the Christmas gift buying season.
I had never done a Black Friday sale before, so I wasn’t sure what the results would be. My business partner and I put together a simple catalog-style page with our products, their sale prices, and a timer on top of the page. You’ll have to listen to the episode to hear exactly how it went, but I’ll tell you- it was a huge success.
The idea behind a Black Friday sale (or any other special one-day sale) is not about making a lot of money. It’s about playing the long game. I want to use discounted products as an entry point for customers who may not otherwise be able to afford our products. I’m giving those customers a chance to experience our products, fall in love with our company, and become customers for life.
Listen to today’s episode to hear more about playing the long game and how to pull off successful promotions like our Black Friday Sale.
Do you wanna keep being an underachiever, or are you willing to do what it takes to go pro? Most entrepreneurs are constantly looking for the next best thing, the new traffic source or the latest sales tactic, but that approach isn’t going to get you to your goal. It has the opposite effect. It leaves you stuck on the sideline watching everyone else play the game. It’s time to go pro, and step onto the field.
Hey everybody. What’s going on? It’s Brian. Uh, happy almost Thanksgiving. It’s been awhile since I talked to you guys. But, um, I was thinking about something to day, and I actually in the middle of putting together our own, uh, Black Friday special offer, coming up this Friday. Uh, as I record this now, it’s Monday afternoon.
Um, and I know a lot of people writing in, was talking with a lot of [Sancar 00:00:48] customers. A lot of, uh, our new one page funnel customers, and they been asking like, “Hey. What- What what should I be doing on Black Friday? Should I put together a sale? Should I offer a new product, an old product? Should I even do anything? And, how do I actually put it together? What do I need?”
Um, and- and it, it’s a good question. It’s one of the those things that I actually did not take advantage of um, for my first couple years online. Did, never did this with, uh, trainedbaseball.com in 2008, nine, or 10. Even gettenthousandfans.com, my next business, uh, where we sold, uh, training course on how to use Facebook and Facebook ads. Um, I don’t think we did this for the first, like two years.
And, I think in 2012, um, which is the, at the time, we had a- a pretty big business. I think we, at that point, we were doing, you know, a million or two million a year in sales. Um, and I for- I think I was talking with my wife. She was like, “You guys should … Do you guys ever do Black Friday sales?” We’re gettin up early. We’re going out and buying, you know, DVDs back then and like, t, uh, TVs and all kinds of stupid stuff we didn’t need, but it was all on sale. Everyone’s going crazy.
You know, and if … I’m sure most people probably understand what Black Friday is. If anybody’s overseas, Black Friday here in the states is any- the day after Thanksgiving and it’s a- across the entire country. Stores are putting things on crazy discounts, uh, for just that day. And a lot of times it extends over the weekend and into what is now called, cyber Monday.
Um, so she was like, “Hey. You guys should just, you know, you should do a Black Friday sale.” And I immediately realized how dumb I was, that I had not taken our courses, uh, which was the product we were selling back then and made some sort of special offer in the past on Black Friday. Any holiday, any reason that you can give your customers for buying your product is a good reason. Um, and what’s awesome about f- Black Friday’s is you get to deliver a ton of value and un- undersell or under price. You can discount your stuff and really blow your customers away.
Um, so it was that week, that me and Scott uh, my brother here, we just threw together a page. I think we stuck, it was kind of like a catalog type page, where we put on like, 10 or 11 of our products and we put ’em all like f- 30, 40, 50% off, um, and we put a timer at the top of the page and we let everybody know, “Hey. On Friday, we’re gonna do something we’ve never done. We’re gonna put all of our stuff on sale. So, if you haven’t bought any one of our courses, and you still wanna learn Facebook ads, or building fan pages, or any of that stuff, um, go to this page and for 24 hours, you can get everything, you know, at a huge discount.”
And, again I think at the time, we were probably doing about 100 to 150, maybe $180,000 a month, uh, in sales and by the time this little promotion had done in a 24-hour time frame, I think we had made $190,000 in sales. Literally doubled our month, because of one little sale and all we did was give everybody a discount.
Um, so anyway, that’s kind of the backstory. The- now that I’ve done these, you know six, seven, eight times, and we do sales on almost, you know, as many holidays as we can, whether it’s Memorial Day or Fourth of July, or Black Friday, or Christmas, or New Years, you know, we don’t hit every holiday, every single time. Obviously, you know, at some point you gotta step off the gas a little bit, unless you have tons of stuff, you can, you know, put different things on sale every holiday, then I would do it.
Um, but the number one thing that has caused these promotions to succeed or fail for me and the biggest mistake I see beginners making, is not playing the long game, and one of the reasons, or, the- the thing that I tried to do the most, um, specially in times like Black Friday is, I try to not focus on making as much money as we can. Um, there are other times were we can do that, um, but it- this is usually not one of those times.
What- What I’m focused on in times like this, is, how can I get the most customers, and absolutely blow them away and create someone that’s gonna get a customer for life. Focus on the customer lifetime value of that- of that person. Um, so Black Friday is known for things being on sale, so what do we try to do is take some of our best content, make it extremely affordable for even the most humble beginner, and then just absolutely blow them away with the content that we provide, uh, with, you know, we throw in bonuses and extra trainings.
Sometimes we give hands on training, um, just really really try to get them the end result, so that we get this huge wave of new customers, that then falls in love with us as a business. Um, and if you guys have been, you know, selling stuff for any uh, period of time, you know that a customer that’s in love with your business is worth so much more to you, than someone that, you know, maybe they bought, because you know, there was a great deal, but the- really in the end, there wasn’t really that much value, what they bought, and you know, maybe they buyers remorse and in the end, that person’s never gonna buy anything ever again. Um, so that’s really what we’re trying to do this week.
Um, If you guys are on my Live, or um, follow us and Facebook, you’ve seen that, um, you know probably I guess a couple hours ago now, before we, you know, sent out everything, so maybe you- you- you haven’t seen it or have yet. If you haven’t, go check your email, um and look for an email from us and you’ll see kind of what we’re doing. Um, I’m, kind of starting off the week by telling a cool story about something that we tried a couple months ago, uh, something that we call, the Facebook Messenger launch, which was this crazy test we ran, me and Scott ran uh, back in February, that absolutely blew me away.
It was one of our most successful launches ever, um, and was the simplest promotion we had ever put together. We didn’t use email, we didn’t use landing pages, we didn’t use affiliates, we didn’t use any fancy video. We literally used uh, this simple video that I published to Facebook, uh, and a Facebook Messenger bot. Um, and the results were just crazy. It was a ton of fun, um, and I think we’re actually gonna be using a lot of what we did back then, in this Black Friday promotion, which it- this is kind of like a super meta type of thing.
It’s, so, uh, forgive me if I confuse you, but what we’re gonna be doing on Friday is releasing a brand new course that teaches this, how we did- pulled off this launch back in February, uh, using just Facebook Messenger, how we added thousands of people to our Facebook Messenger list, almost overnight basically for free, and we didn’t really leverage our own list, so if you don’t have a list, you don’t have a business … Honestly, if you don’t even have a product, this- this can work.
Um, it- this simple process that we use where we put a specific type uh, and length of video up on Facebook, shared it with a couple people, kind of took a life of its own and then we set up this, uh, Facebook Messenger bot, um, that just made things go crazy. This video got shared, uh, I think it was like hundreds of times, uh, and last time I checked the other day, has been viewed over 205,000 times.
And, we don’t run ads to this. We don’t email our lists there, um, and it’s put now thousands of people on our Facebook Messenger list, which uh, if you guys know anything about Facebook Messenger, the open rates are about five times higher than email. Um, we’ve seen the buying rates, higher than email, um, so even a little couple hundred person list on a- on Facebook Messenger can be more powerful than a 10 or 20,000 person list, via email. Um, I’m not saying, go abandon email, or any of that stuff.
I’ll explain all that as the week goes on, but uh, this strategy that we learned back in February, and that we’ve used a couple times since then, and that we are now using this week, um, is- is a ton of fun, it’s super different, uh, and I think it gives you a chance to build a- a really, really powerful small group of people, um, that you have an amazing connection with and that can lead to you, uh, selling a ton of your stuff.
Um, so anyway, the- the moral of the story is, play the long game with promotions like this. If you’re putting together um, a Black Friday promotion, um, this week, if you’re not, you should. Um, and if you have- have one put together, I would encourage you to look back over that promotion and try to orchestrate in a way that means you’re playing the long game, that you’re just trying to get as many customers to come into the door, give them the best deal you can, offer the most value you can, stack the bonuses, throw things into this offer for free, that if they buy, they also get those, and make it your best.
Put your best foot forward. If it’s a service, give ’em the best service they’ve ever had and that you’ve ever offered. Um, in- in the end, it will pay off. I can promise you. You will go into 2019 with the healthiest business you’ve ever had, ’cause you’ll have this massive group of brand new, fresh customers that are in love with you and your business and your brand and your products, um, and that is a great place to be. Um, so anyway, uh, that is the moral of the story. That’s where we’re up to this week.
Uh, keep an eye on your email. Um, you can go over to, I think it’s brianmoran.com/blackfriday and I think it’s black-Friday, uh, or hyphen, whatever you call those things. Uh, but you can find it. If you can’t find the URL, um, go check your email, uh, you should have an email from us. I think the subject line, something like, 81,000, eight, uh, 127 views in 48 hours, which is kind of tells a story of how we use this new tactic, um, to get uh, like I said, now it’s been 205,000 views uh, basically for free on this video. It’s been nuts. Um, so go check [inaudible 00:10:35] on that story, uh, and keep an eye out.
Uh, if you guys are interested in how, you know, learning how we pulled off these promotions, how we use Facebook Messenger now, in our business and how it all stemmed from back in February when we did this crazy test, uh, from a hotel room, keep an eye um, on your inbox, for uh, for Friday. And if you wanna be first in line, um, and I- we got a special gift for you too.
If you go over to brianmoran.com/blackfriday, uh, we have this special recording from um, the tracking conversion summit, uh, which I’ll tell you that whole backstory, uh, over in your email inbox, if you got that email today, so. I won’t do that now, but anyway, um, if you’re not running a Black Friday promotion, do it. Focus on getting customers. Play the long game, and you will be happy that you did. So, that’s it for today, and I will catch you guys in the next episode.
Do you wanna take your life and business to the next level? Then, get my new book, The Going Pro Manifesto. Inside this new book, you’ll discover the secrets that most entrepreneurs overlook, that will help you scale your business to the seven figure level, and beyond. You can grab your copy at brianmoran.com/pro.
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