Ep. 143 This Black Friday Could Ruin Your Brand: Here’s How to Stop It

In this episode, Trevor and Mark tackle the looming question: Is Black Friday 2024 heading toward disaster or opportunity? They break down consumer confidence metrics, government shutdown impacts, and the "show-rooming" phenomenon where shoppers wait for deep discounts. The hosts reveal data showing 72% of consumers expect 30%+ discounts, discuss why some problem-solution brands should skip aggressive Black Friday spending, and explain the critical difference between chasing revenue versus variable profits. They share unconventional tactics like tripling ad spend during high-demand periods and why turning off discount codes when slashing prices prevents margin erosion.

Connect with The Unstoppable Marketer on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube @unstoppablemarketerpodcast, and share your thoughts on channel diversification strategies!

Transcript

Open: Spend More If It Works

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Always be ready to spend up to 50 to 100% more than you thought. Don't have a spend limit and just say we're done.

Early Black Friday And Market Mood

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Why would you stop spending when your conversion rate is 2% and you're at a 7%? Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast with me as always, Mark Goldhart. Mark, how are you today? Uh doing well. Tired, but well. We're in the prime season right now for e-commerce. Like it's officially we're seeing our first Black Friday deals and sales, emails, text messages, ads going out. Not just for our clients, but just as consumers, you're seeing it. Yes. This is the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

This is the place.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

And it's and it's Utah. It's all working together. It seems like this also at the same time, like this is the best time for e-com. But also it sounds like it couldn't be happening at the worst time. Does that make sense? Uh yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Potentially, I guess. Um my hot take is I don't think it's potentially. I think it is. Yeah. We're facing Unless you get a Christmas Black Friday miracle. Miracle. I don't believe any of the things. I think projections. I think your company's projections should be tempered.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of been fair almost for the whole year though, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Well like every answer, it depends, but the year has been fine for most. For some, it's been harder because of what the we've talked about it. There's been organic reach problems, there's been you know, things happen with the algorithm and quote Andromeda, you know, kind of the the boogeyman in the closet that everyone blames everything on.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And then you have AI that's kind of changed how people are consuming content.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

And all the AI updates in ad platforms that have been garbage. Yeah. Like have you seen the old people?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

What do you mean the old people?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Oh my gosh. So we're we'll give you a clip of to stitch into this, but um brands are seeing AI. So AI optimization is turned on, auto on.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

But if you have static images, it's turning your models into old people.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Oh yes, I have seen this.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

And our clients have seen it. Yeah. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

If your spend in your older demographics is going up, or a or older uh age groups is going up in meta, make sure you uh go check your AI optimizations because they are so bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

They're so bad. I can't even emphasize that enough. They're so bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Like they'll they'll take them like if your target demographic or females 20 to 30, it'll take one of those models and make it into like a 78-year-old grandma.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

And then shoot up your spend in the 65 and plus.

Shutdown Ripples And Confidence

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah, because they're all sitting and clicking on everything but not buying. It's it's nuts. They're window shoppers. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, so a lot of interest, a lot of interesting stuff happening, and then you've got, you know, we've got a government shutdown, which I I realize doesn't necessarily impact like how everybody spends their money and and makes money.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

No, but it impacts confidence in the economy. And there's uh there's downwind effects. So you have a million people that essentially don't have income right now. Right. More than that. But yeah. But like you said, I think the most important thing is there's like a million federal workers, but then you have contractors, and then you have so there's a lot going on with the government shutdown that is impacting business. And I don't it's a little bit of a downwind effect because you're not going to see it immediately, but it'll start building up over time. And then you have SNAP benefits that might expire. And so there's going to be other income going towards food for certain income brackets that otherwise would have been going towards probably consumer spending. Um so yeah, there's a lot of like, I mean, when you think about the economy, I think it's just important if you're a business owner, if you're a marketer, you can't think of it as, well, this is just a small drop in the bucket. It's like, yeah, that's true, but just like a stock market, if you look at a stock price and if you see a big sell-off, that's not because 50% of people sold. It's a very small percentage of people that ended up selling or panicking or buying. And it's it's just the supply-demand, right? Like if the demand or the supply outpaces the other one, that's where you get those price volatilities.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Highs and lows, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

So the same thing with your business is you don't have to have your entire income bracket decimated. But if they're seeing on the news every night that the government's shut down and they're seeing stocks go down, and they're seeing you know, uneasiness in their own jobs, and they they're seeing all the doomerism of AI, what is the consumer confidence?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, and consumer confidence is what correlates the most with what they spend. Right? Yes. So the lower the consumer confidence, even though they may not be they might not be losing money, the less likely they are to spend on things that they don't need.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, it's the fear. Yes. The fear and pride cycles of a market.

Stimulus Memory And Demand Swings

SPEAKER_00 6:01

And we're going into a time where there are some brands, a lot of brands, who w one month represents 25% of their overall revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes four days represent 25% of their revenue. Yes. So the question is, you know, could could this be there's two there's two Well, can I can I go back? You can do whatever you want, please.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

What happened four years ago? I just wanted I just want to like make sure everyone understands the actual gravity of the impact that these kinds of things can have on their business.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Four years ago between um COVID and coming back from COVID.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So what did everybody get in the mail?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Oh, they're those uh the STEMIs. Yeah, yeah. The STEMI checks, right?

unknown 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

How much were those STEMI checks?

SPEAKER_00 7:04

I can't remember, a few grand. Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

A few grand? Yeah. Not that much, really. Per person. Sure. What happened to everybody's e-commerce store? Had the best years ever. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And then what happened a year after that? Part of that supply, you know, the the supply chain and impacts there in China and when tariffs, whatever. But those STIMI checks, in all reality, did not raise everybody's income much.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

No.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

But it gave every store one of their best years. Yeah. A lot of stores were like, this is we're just going up from here. And then the next two, three years.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Over order for inventory, they because they thought they were gonna have an amazing 2010.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

And also just demand dried up. You know, there's demand there. There's so that's just I want to emphasize that that like it it's not like everybody's disposable income went up tremendously because they got a stimulus check. Yeah. But the consumer spending went up dramatically.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah, because that was a confident thing, right? Their consumer confidence went up because, hey, we all just got the money we need for Christmas presents, for you know, whatever the justification of it was, right? Um and and you know, a few thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Out of principle, I sent mine back to the government. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

I mean, a few thousand dollars is a lot of it is a lot of money for a lot of people, right? For the average American, that's a yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

I'm not saying it's not a lot of money. It's just if you think of in the terms of household income and whoever your target demographic is as an e-commerce store, it did not raise that household's income substantially. Yeah, if at all. So it's the reverse is of that is almost happening right now. Right? Like we're not, it's not like the end of the world, but we're not saying everybody's disposable income is dropping by$30,000 a year.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

But what we are saying is it's not going up. Sure. And confidence might not be great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

And people are spending more to get less right now. Like brands over the last 12 months have been spending more to get less often. Like their dollars are going, their dollars aren't going as far. So if it used to cost you ten dollars to get, you know, uh or you know, I don't know, five hundred dollars to get a thousand clicks, now it's costing you a thousand dollars to get a thousand clicks or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Um, and maybe maybe not that bad, but you get the point that I'm trying to make. So the the big question is are we are we in for one of the worst Black Fridays in the last five, ten years? In for a while.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

And can we define what worse means? Yes. Worse is year over year growth.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Just so everyone understands.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, yeah. So if if you did a million dollars in November of last year, are you gonna do nine hundred thousand?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Or if you were projecting to do one point three, yes. Are you gonna do one point one? Yes.

Will This Be A Tough Black Friday?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

So the question is, is it gonna be the worst? Or could it actually become one of the best for the same reason? Right? The worst is because consumer confidence is down, so people aren't gonna be putting their dollars into Black Friday the way they normally would, or on the flip side, if the year has been down, is it going to be actually much bigger this year because more people have been waiting for great offers on the things that they don't need?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, that's a really good question. So a lot of people have their holiday forecasting down post-shutdown, their holiday forecasting is down 35% growth. So that doesn't mean 35% your store will be down 35%. It's just your growth will be down 35% year over year. Sure. In your sector, right, in your industry, right? Now, what's interesting though is from surveys about consumer confidence, there's something called showrooming. When consumer confidence is down, people start to do more showroom shopping, which is a fancy word for saying shh browsing. Sure. And waiting for a deep discount. Yeah. So growth projections are down, but we do know that people are kind of waiting for deep discounts.

Showrooming And Discount Expectations

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Well, and we've seen this with a few of our brands where we, you know, brands that we've been working with for a long time or brands that we have a good amount of data on. So let's say um, you know, abnormally high return on investments over Labor Day sales or Memorial Day sale or Mother Day sale or something like that. These periods in which brands tend to have deals. What we've started doing with some specific brands was saying, hey, what if we were to triple or quadruple what we would normally think to do? So let's say let's say average spending on in a day was$5,000 and over a Memorial Day sale we would spend$10,000 a day or something like that. What if we spent$20,000 or$25,000 a day during that time frame where people have been waiting? And as we've done those things, it's really, really panned, like panned out really good for those brands to say, you know, you got such a demand, you got this group of people that are waiting for specific offers, especially like I said, on things that are not totally needed.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Um that's worked well for the if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably not needed, but there's variations of that. Your product is not needed. Yeah. Well, nobody's product is actually needed.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

For sure. But what I mean by needed is like problem solution versus and I don't mean product solution like clothing.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Correct. Well, that's what I wanted to emphasize though, is like if you're a baby brand, new moms will still buy baby clothes.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yes. Now, will they buy certain kinds and will they skew towards not spending as much? Sure. Different questions. But they will still buy, they're still buying baby clothes.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah. Because but but will dads who are facing struggles earning income go spend a ton of money on themselves?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Right. Or will a middle class family maybe lean more towards hand-me-downs than keeping their six-year-old in certain types of clothes that they're gonna ruin anyways? Like that's where you you kind of start gauging where your brand is on the essential list. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So the big question is like, okay, cool.

When To Go Heavy Or Hold Back

SPEAKER_01 14:31

So showrooming's up, browsing is up, deal waiting is up. Yep. Which means deal waiting is up. Same thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, so so you know, make sure you're doing something this season. I I just put out our most recent poll. Um, not that this is meant to be a full-fledged Black Friday discussion. Um, but nor is this like fully scientific, but yeah, but I I just I just put out a poll that had, I think, a you know, I can't remember, had like 500 people who responded to it, but I said, what do you consider a worth at Black Friday discount? 15, the answers were 50. You can only put four answers in a LinkedIn poll. 15%, 20%, 25%, or 30 plus percent. And only 2% of people said 15, only 4% of people said 20. 21% of people said 25%, and 72% of people said 30 plus percent. Is it worth that discount?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Which is in line with what we have seen forever for the last uh eight years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

The 21% on the 25 is a little higher though this year.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yeah, that is.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah, like normally the 30 plus percent would represent 80% or more.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Um, but still a LinkedIn poll.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Not a consumer poll. And just so everyone knows, where we get these numbers is we have run extensive tests in emails, so not surveys, email A B testing to see what the difference was in click-through rate and conversion rate, right? Based off of certain discount levels, which is the 10 to 20, 20 to 30, and 30 plus. And the the bump you get in each one is the same. It it represents the same of people's perceptions of them, which is if you're gonna get a cost per, like a cost per purchase, if you're running a uh ad campaign and they're signing up for emails and then buying off of a off of an offer, let's just call it like if it was 50 bucks for the 10 to 20, it drops down to like 35 bucks for the 20 to 30 and then drops again down to like 20 bucks for the 30 plus.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

It's like an incremental 50% improvement. Improvement every time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Up to like 45% off. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Like once you have to be a little bit more than that. And even 35 over people start, then there's like this kind of weird 50 range depending on your product, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So um, so okay, so what what do you what do you do in preparation?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

So number one, I think people should be realistic about their expectations.

Variable Profit As North Star

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yeah, yeah. I think you set two different expectations, right? I think you project based off of people going nuts over this time period. And then I think you take uh like what I generally like to do the last four years, from an efficiency perspective, I've generally seen about a 10 to like 17% decrease in efficiency every year over Black Friday. Personally, like when we look across brands, um you it just is what happens, right? Because there's more competition, there's more demand, so the supply, you get overcharged, you know, whatever those reasons are. So um I think that it's always a good idea to project and and put potentially a 10 to 20 percent decrease in efficiency. So so meaning like for every one dollar you spend, if you were, you know, last year getting nine dollars.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Maybe plan on six.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, maybe plan on, you know, that's a that's a pretty big one, but it's better to plan on that versus you know hoping to be at 10. Yeah, you should be planning on worst case. So maybe, yeah, maybe you're at a seven. Um, but you're still also saying uh with under the same breath of maybe lowering your expectations, but you're also saying, okay, cool, I can still be very profitable at a seven, even with a 20, 30% discount. So instead of me spending$50,000, what if we spent$100?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

You know? So yes, we're gonna be down on efficiency, but last year I profited when I spent$50,000. I profited in variable profits$150,000. Maybe you spend a hundred grand and you profit$220. So you so you see what I'm saying? It's like that efficiency is significantly less when you think about it that way, but you just made$70,000 more in variable profits.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Yes. So we we preach this a lot, but your North Star should be variable profits.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah, variable profits meaning revenue minus your cost of goods sold, minus your shipping, minus your fees, minus your ad spend.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

You know, that's what we mean by if you want to get really granular, you can add an opex, but yeah, I mean, well, that would just be your profits at that point. But your variable profits is a good way to measure, especially in this time of season or this season.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Um because it's so variable.

Sponsor: BFF Creative

Inventory, Cash Flow, And Cohorts

SPEAKER_00 19:58

This episode of The Unstoppable Marketer is brought to you by BFF Creative. Let's be real, hiring designers and video editors can get super expensive. And that's why I'm excited about what BFF Creative has done. They've built a subscription design service that gives you the feel of an in-house creative team, but at a fraction of the cost, which I'm sure we all could use right now. From ad creatives to social media posts to video edits to full website designs, BFF gives you unlimited designs and unlimited requests starting at just a thousand dollars a month. The best part about this, their custom app makes it super easy to submit projects, give feedback, review work, and store all of your creative in one place. As a listener of the podcast, you get 25% off your first two months with code Unstoppable25. That means unlimited creative for as little as$750 a month. Go check them out right now at BFFcreative.co. Yes, now I I do want to put, I do want to throw something out there, not to get like too nitty-gritty, is some people go big on some discounts over Black Friday, and so your variable profits actually might not look as good, but that's simply to get rid of product that you is a sunk cost. Yeah. So just be aware of that too. Like like last year we had that, like where variable profits was like like actually pretty low for a brand, but they were super psyched because they got rid of they'd gotten rid of this stuff that they had, you know, they had been out of that cash for the last 12 months that wasn't selling. And then they had but they got it back, you know what I mean? So it was just it was it's cash flow in their pocket, even though the numbers from a you know variable profits didn't look as good. So not to get too i in the weeds on that one.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

But yeah, no, that's a good point. And so define what your North Star actually is. It's not always just revenue. No, and it shouldn't be. And for some brands, I know we're talking about this a little late in the game, but what we've done with a lot of our clients is we're starting to identify in the last year who should really be going really hard during Black Friday and who shouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Because we have a lot of brands that capture so much profit in quarter one and quarter two and quarter, you know, going into quarter three, because they're more problem solution-based items. And so quarter four has just never been great for them. Like it's okay, like it's not something that is bad, but they're not a brand that people like want to line up for and they're waiting for a discount for. And usually they just don't see the impact other brands see. And so what we're saying is, hey, we're actually not gonna increase spend a whole lot for this particular brand during Black Friday because the the impact on profits becomes negligible with the the discounts. Yeah, and trying to push for new customers and and and for this particular brand, their worst cohort is new customers in November.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah, yeah. Because oftentimes those are the type of people who aren't gonna come back and buy again when it's a problem solution style product.

Seasonal vs Problem‑Solution Brands

SPEAKER_01 22:58

And so everyone should be doing this kind of analysis for your company. Is like, are you a are you a seasonal brand that people want to buy it in the spring? Are they are you a problem solution that you should be taking advantage of quarter one better?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Or are you just waiting for quarter four because that's just what everyone told you to do because you're an e-commerce company?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Problem solution would be like a shoe cleaner. Yeah, you know, like you you're this phenomenal shoe cleaning product that can get these Nikes back to pure white. Yep. You know, like you're not a brand that needs to capitalize um and and give up margin potentially over this time and compete, right? Um, with some of the others versus a clothing company, you know, like these are the times that generally are a little bit or if you're a potty training solution. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

If you're helping kids resolve nighttime bed wedding or potty training, like that's not a and also if you are a repeatable that is problem solution.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Also, if it's problem solution and repeatable problem solution products, right? So on the flip side, like diaper bags, problem solution does does great over Black Friday. Correct. Because it's it it's usually like a you know, you're not returning that that that that's like a hey, I need to be profitable on my first purchase. So that's another thing, you know, element to look at. So thing things to be done to be done, dial in, dial in your discounts, um lower expectations, I think go bigger on spending personally, because once again, and we say this to our clients all the time, is like you should be spending chase conversion rates, right? So if your conversion rates are doubling during this time, chase it. Spend more money, allocate more.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yes, and be ready to spend.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Like I know we just talked about maybe not spending big, depending on what kind of company you are, but always be ready to spend up to 50 to 100% more than you thought.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Like don't have a spend limit and just say we're done.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

No. No.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

What a like if you see it working and you can keep doubling such a 2017 thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yeah, you go after you go after that. This is what my budget is, therefore, once I've spent it, it's gone. Yeah. You know? Um, yeah. Like if you why would you stop spending when your conversion rate is 2% and you're at a 7%?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

You wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

But we do all the time. Right?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Now inventory and there's yes, of course. Yes.

Founders On Social Build Trust

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Barring inventory, chasing and not only inventory, but you know, maybe it's your warehouse doesn't have the capacity to fulfill orders in a timely manner. So there's little things like that. So don't don't chase us on that. But so okay, things to be done. Dial in, uh, reduce expectations, spend more potentially. Um, what what one thing that I came across, and it's an older, it's an older study, but one of the studies I came across was like there was a survey that entrepreneur.com did that was that said um, you know, uh consumers are 77% more likely to buy from you if the founder or executives of a company are more uh active on social media. And so I think that that's something that you can like, it's never too late to start doing is whether it's you know, your founder creating story like uh, you know, reels or you know, in the feed, I'm not necessarily saying that, but maybe it's just they're in the stories more frequently, you know, and and you're getting to know, like, let the let the people get to know you more. What is the saying? Beat a dead horse. Beat a dead horse. Yeah, like we we've done that a lot where we say founders should be more involved socially, or just under like getting to know the team a little bit more. I know there's so many people who get so fearful of that, like, well, what if I go to sell? And but most of you aren't gonna sell your company, and I think a lot of times people will stop themselves from doing something that can help them in the now for something that like most likely is not gonna happen in the future. Um, so I I think get more involved. You know, like competition is so high. If you're selling, you know, shoes, are you gonna buy from the guy who's talking about why he's building the shoe? And you know, yeah, is there trust? Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's there's trust, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Well, I think when consumer confidence is down, the only way to mitigate that is by building increased trust.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Exactly. Exactly. So I love that one. I think um, you know, we talk about this all the time, but like emails sucking lately, so you need to sell send more out there. It's probably too late for you to do anything with like a postpilot, which is direct mail stuff. Maybe it's not, um, but look at postpilot and see what kind of opportunities you can to get to get in front of people. Like you just need to get in front of more eyeballs. And so if you were only planning on sending out, you know, three emails, you know, or maybe it's one email a day, uh, maybe you're sending three a day. You know, if you were only planning on sending out a text every other day, maybe you're sending out one a day.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Um crazy. Just send ten a day.

Send More Emails And SMS

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, yeah. I mean, exactly, right? Like, what is the whole purpose of getting somebody uh as a subscriber? It's to get them to buy. And if they're not gonna buy over Black Friday, are they ever going to buy from you? My guess is no.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

No.

Update Ads And Website For Deals

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Right? Like if they haven't bought from you and they're not gonna buy when you're when you're at your deepest discounts, then who cares if they unsubscribe? Um, what else? Don't turn off your evergreen stuff, you know, keep all your evergreen ads up and going. Update your Google ads to, you know, in the search, especially branded terms, to represent the the deal that you have going. Um like that's super important. Make sure to plaster, plaster for the love of all that is mighty, plaster your Black Friday and your offers all over your website. I can't tell you how often we talk to people who are like, um And if you use discounts. Well, I don't want to, I don't want to put it like if somebody comes to my website and doesn't know we're not doing a deal, like I'd rather have their full price. We hear people say that all the time. But the amount of people that is going to that's going to like get to get there and not see that you're doing something and leave is going to much more outweigh the profitability you would get on those people buying at full price. So just like have it everywhere. Put it in every collection page. Yes, put it on the collection, put it everywhere, plaster it so that nobody does. Don't know that you're offering your best deal imaginable, just do it. Right? Like, just do that.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Uh and uh last but not least, if you're slashing your discount price on the the pages, turn off your discount codes.

Avoid Stackable Codes And Friction

SPEAKER_00 30:19

What he's meaning by that is like if you're not using a 35% off automated discount code, but you're slashing the price, so it's just automatically putting the 30% off, but you have like using Shopify's launch pad. Yeah, you have your welcome 20% off, then people are gonna get 20% off that 50% off that you're already discounting. Another thing we talked about is like turn off your pop-ups during the sale. Like some people have uh unruly pop-ups to try to get information. Turn off your pop-ups, like you're you're you're just you're you're they're buying anyways. So, like, why are you putting a an element of friction in place? Um there's some arguments to be made on that one that I'm like that we listen to. So sometimes like it's okay to have them on, but it just depends on how you're doing it. But for the most part, like we just went through one of our clients today who had this like pop-up that made them go through like four steps and we're like, you we gotta shut this off. Like this is this is hurting you. You know, we don't run their email for them, but so great potential to be an amazing year, but also you know, be prepared for things to not go as great as you hope that they should go. 100%. Kind of a gloomy episode. I actually think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be good for a lot of people. I just think you need to spend more.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yeah, but you gotta be aware of the storms. Yeah. Like we're not we're not saying you're gonna have a a worse Black Friday, because it it everything depends on your your company. Everything is individual. But just be aware. I mean, consumer spending macro economy the macro economy impacts your business. Yeah, so much more than you think it does. Like you're not not everyone is a unicorn, you know? Like I know we all think want to think that we're not gonna be impacted by things, but and it's good to have an optimistic approach, but you just be realistic about certain expectations. Yeah. Because if you set the wrong expectations, then you're gonna set yourself up for more failure.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Yeah.

Set Realistic Goals And Avoid Overreacting

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Right? Yeah, for sure. But if you set the proper expectations, then it's a lot easier to measure. You can measure your success, your wins, your l your losses. But if you're setting an expectation that might be unrealistic, then you're gonna start pointing fingers at people that might not have had anything to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Or start changing things that were actually working good for you. That's the thing that hurts me the most, is like you'll see somebody like wreck their entire ad account based off of a macro change.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Like we we preach a lot about false positives and false negatives. And oftentimes trying to fix a false negative in your marketing will do far more damage to your account than setting proper expectations and knowing when to make the change.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

So don't throw babies out with bathwater.

Closing And Listener CTA

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. All right. We'll see you guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast. Whether it's good or bad, we want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the TrevorCrump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.