The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
Embracing The Basics & Dominating Q4: Your BFCM Playbook
Every Q4 people start panicking on how they should handle Black Friday/ Cyber Monday... Which makes sense because for some brands BFCM can make up over 50% of its annual sales...
In this podcast episode, we discuss the importance of seasonality for businesses, particularly the significance of planning for upcoming trends and investing in marketing. We present strategies for maximizing success during the critical fourth quarter, especially on Black Friday. And we don't stop there, touch on the advantages of offering discounts and free gifts to boost sales, as well as potential pitfalls to avoid. We dive into an in-depth examination of how strategy can impact retail brands, using the example of Ron Johnson's failed customer acquisition branding at JCPenney. Don't get left behind, tune in to become part of this enlightening conversation!
On a less serious note, but still from a marketing perspective we peel back the veil on the mystique of Halloween and haunted houses. We also delve into the distinctive world of Tim Burton, debating his style and whether we're fans of his work.
Moving from the supernatural to the natural, we turn our attention towards the wild new show 'The Golden Bachelor,' a senior citizen version of the popular show 'The Bachelor.' We tease apart the fascinating exploration of love and relationships among this older demographic. And what type of success its having and why it is happening in 2023.
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the unstoppable marketer podcast. With me, as always, is my co-host, mark Goldhart. Mark, what's up, dude? How are you, what's up?
Speaker 2:Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:You're always happy to be here.
Speaker 2:I am happy to be here. I'm tired, but happy.
Speaker 1:Tired for any particular reason.
Speaker 2:Kids or work kids, kids yeah they just wake up. Yeah, they just kept waking up right here last night, really, yeah, I don't know why. Maybe it's the moon, maybe Mercury is in retrograde, or whatever they say. Yeah, that's usually the phrase. Yeah what are those what? What is that?
Speaker 1:That's astrology dude.
Speaker 2:Abby, Are you an astrology girl? No, no.
Speaker 1:I I took. Speaking of scary, I took my kids to. So I like Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love haunted houses. My wife does not like Halloween. My wife does not like haunted houses. She doesn't like dressing up. Good job, kenzie. Yeah, and I. I grew up in a house like where Halloween was Like the pinnacle holiday, so, like my mom is diehard Halloween.
Speaker 2:Why is that? Why do some families get so into it?
Speaker 1:I think my mom, my family not into it well, my mom, just in general, is a Host. She loves hosting.
Speaker 2:She goes all out for everything Christmas same.
Speaker 1:Thing right you know she decorates like crazy for Christmas, but I don't know what it is. My parents just love dressing up like they. They're super, super into that. Halloween parties are just like. They love it, and so I grew up with that. So I love it, in fact, and all my kids love it, and we're like this year is the year that we get my wife to love it, and I don't know if it's work or yet, but this is the plan.
Speaker 2:This is plan is to get her to love, and we told her she knows she's in on it.
Speaker 1:Okay, but anyways, my daughter's 10 and my son's eight and I have a five-year-old. But I was talking to my wife. I'm like I think our 10 year old is old enough to go to like a legit, like haunted house, like if I, if my memory serves me, I've I went to one when I was 10 and I was nervous, but at 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so really and so my mom was taking to us, to those at like six she was.
Speaker 1:I mean I could have been earlier, yeah, but I just was telling my wife I'm like I'm pretty positive, when I was a 10 year old I did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my mom did not care, she just took us young.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, anyways, we took, we took my daughter, we took my daughter and my son, two of my daughter's friends and one of my son's friends. So there was Five kids. It was me and five kids last night to haunted house and it was last night last night and it was One of the kids I'm not gonna say who which of the kids. One of the kids was sobbing Before we went in in the line before in the line, just the anticipation, uncontrollably.
Speaker 1:Trevor, please don't make me go in and I'm just sitting there like I can't leave all these kids. I can't let all the kids go by themselves. Yeah and we drove all the way out here and we paid. And so I just which one was it?
Speaker 2:I just made him go in is it true that Utah's known for having good haunted houses?
Speaker 1:It is in fact, I think, nightmare. On 13th it was voted like one of the best haunted houses in America top 500 houses in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and that's when you went to know we did not go to that one.
Speaker 1:We went to the corn bellies one that's like it's called insanity point Okay, and so it's not like To that level. But I think that my daughter and my son, like they, were champs and it was the other kids that were a little bit nervous, so it wasn't even my kids that I'm sorry you got to do this is that cuz their parents weren't there. It could be, it could be, but it was. It was a blast.
Speaker 2:They're all brave until they get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah. All of them were just like talking it up, like oh yeah, like second the chain goes off as when most kids freak right. Yeah, my son had like the defense mechanism, like where he would like, oh Nice haircut dude, like when somebody would pop out make it, so he wasn't scared, but it was, it was fun and Halloween, halloween's fun for kids.
Speaker 2:I mean, my kids are little. I like Halloween because they're little, but I've never loved Halloween I Like, like I liked him when I was little and the trick or treating, and then once I became a teenager I just didn't love it anymore, really, yeah, probably because I don't like getting ready. So, yeah, this whole effort of dressing up is just too much effort.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah, I like it Like.
Speaker 2:My kind of costume is give me a hat and I'll be whatever the hat is, you know alright, so it's scary movies.
Speaker 1:Are you scary movie person? No no, not even a Tim Burton fan.
Speaker 2:Oh no really. No, why not? Just not my, it's not my thing, you know. It's nothing against him or his style. I just think his style is very Particular and I'm not really into it now, however, I'm a quiet taste. I wouldn't even call it a choir and I mean, I've tried, I have tried to acquire the taste. I just don't like anything.
Speaker 1:I have a theory about Tim Burton I, because I actually like a few of his films. Yeah, I like two of his films. I Know I can guess one of them. Yeah, big fish. Yeah, that was the one I was gonna say, which is the perfect amount of like the Tim Burton Effect yeah it's weird and it's got some oddities in it, but it's not all.
Speaker 2:It is is like the Tim Burton white face paint. Yeah, yeah, vibe. And then, interestingly, I like Beetlejuice. Yeah, beetlejuice is good.
Speaker 1:Beetlejuice is good. You know that is like one of the only PG movies that has the effort in it.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, beetlejuice, yeah, well, that, that's true. However, you're talking about. You're talking about be it when Beetlejuice was made. I believe, abby check this Beetlejuice was at 1987, 88.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I know these weird things. Abby's gonna fact check for us. It was 19 March 30th 1988 release date. Wow, okay, now look up, I was two months old. 16 candles, oh yeah, and tell me what the rating is 1984 you're gonna talk because there's a nudity scene in the rating is PG right and there's like it's PG, yeah, yeah and there is nudity. Yeah, full frontal female nudity in a high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they and you watched it. Did people watch it in high school? Wasn't that a fair?
Speaker 2:I watched it at a I watched it at a friend's house because they're like, oh, it's PG, and I was like whoa. So yes, it is PG, beetlejuice, but you have to remember that the rating system in the 80s was different. They swapped it in the 90s, but oh, In the 90s, when was Jaws?
Speaker 1:when was Jaws then? Because Jaws was rated R and Now I was in 1976 or something but now it's not what it was, what it was released. It was rated R. Yeah so why, then? And why is it it's not now?
Speaker 3:So it was 1975. It received a PG rating about a day. Oh, I'm wrong then yeah, and then they changed it to PG 13 After. Let's see, due to depicted drug scenes drugs in the opening scene.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll scrap everything I just said about Jaws. Yeah, yeah, you're right, I'm wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see. So yes, beetlejuice is still rated PG, but it should not be PG.
Speaker 1:Got it is 16 candles, still PG.
Speaker 2:I yeah, I'm pretty sure like, if you find it, it still says PG on it Wow, sir but it shouldn't be PG interesting. I remember being shocked. I was watching that as a teenager and A parent was like oh, you like 16 candles and we're like what?
Speaker 1:It's like some daddy's like oh yeah, I watched this in high school. It was weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was weird so anyways, tim Burton.
Speaker 1:Rating system has changed. I have a theory about Tim Burton. I just think that Tim Burton is just he's different enough that he gets a lot of Talk because he's different enough. And I just think people think that they're cool when they like Tim Burton and that's why they Obsess about Tim Burton. Yeah, it's cuz he's not that amazing.
Speaker 2:I mean I would agree, but it's because he has a particular style and taste that I don't know. Maybe you could say that he's, uh, halloween and Carnot or something like just. His vibe is always with the ghoulish and the weird and just I don't know. But because of that if someone loves Halloween, coalition weird is such a Terrible way to describe human beings.
Speaker 1:He he vibes with the ghoulish and weird. Yeah, but he'd probably be down with that right, well, but would the people who like him be down with you calling them ghoulish and weird?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so Maybe just uh the same way that a nerd different is. Uh, more of a compliment now. Right, like in the 80s and 90s, maybe nerd was a bad thing, but like people like to be nerds, yeah, I don't. Yeah, tim Burton, yeah, his style is just so unique. He's been able to hone that in, he's perfected that thing and he stays in his lane. Yeah so because he stays in his lane. I think he has this cult following, that know and kind of expect what they will get out of him.
Speaker 1:It is a cult following, for sure, isn't it? Yeah, yeah definitely so.
Speaker 2:I don't know how big he is. I think he was really big back in the day when he first emerged as, like, the Batman director and but I don't think his movies are that Big anymore. Is he coming out with? Well, I don't even know what his last movie was. He's done some stuff with disney. I think he did Alice in Wonderland or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, those are. Those are pretty old man, are they? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, those are at least six years old. So tim Burton, yeah, he's got this thing about him, but I think rated.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'd call him overrated. It's just like he knows what he does, he likes what he does and I think he stays in that lane. And because of all of those things combined, he he has this cult following where every halloween it feels like all of his movies reemerge.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah, I remember, before Christmas We've already watched a couple of them in the crump household, see so, like every year, he reemerges at this time and everyone starts watching his movies again. Yeah, speaking of this is a completely different.
Speaker 2:He's very seasonal. He's a seasonal guy.
Speaker 1:Speaking of shows and movies and stuff, have you Been keeping track of the? You heard of the golden bachelor. No, you know what this is.
Speaker 2:You never heard of it. I've never heard of it. Do you have any?
Speaker 1:sort of guess, when I say golden bachelor, what it might be.
Speaker 2:No, I mean I, I guess I would lean towards maybe the bachelor, yes, the show which you understand, the show which you don't watch.
Speaker 1:That Do you know? That is not your vibe. No, it's very much my vibe and I'm okay to admit that hey, millions of people watch reality bachelor in paradise is better, though. I don't watch just fyi, but golden bachelor.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Do I want to know? Yeah, you're gonna tell me.
Speaker 1:anyways, even if I'm gonna tell you this, Yep, so for probably two years, because my wife and I we watch the seasons and every what they'll do is like after a commercial break, that there will be like a screen of roses that will pop them say, if you're over 50 years old and you're single, apply to be on the bachelor. And we're like what in the world? Like?
Speaker 2:who's to watch golden girls?
Speaker 1:Make out and like golden year old make out and stuff like that, and so we just thought it was a joke. But it happened for like two or three seasons. We're like what in the world? And then they announced that they are actually going to do like a senior citizen bachelor called the golden bachelor. Ah, so that was my first initial take as well Was ah, what? Like I said, because the bachelor is full of how old are we talking?
Speaker 1:He is 70 or 72 or something like that. See, abby's got it. I mean, he's a, but he's, he's in great shape. I was gonna say he looks he looks fantastic, but anyways, that was my first thought is like you're so used to them being at Exotic beaches and people are in bathing suits and they're dressing up, you know, and you just don't, naturally you don't. I hope I hope this doesn't sound rude you just naturally don't think that way Of people as they get older.
Speaker 2:That's not quite as old as I was thinking.
Speaker 1:Well, hold up. Some of them are 70 80 years old. Some of the contestants contestants yeah, 60 to 80, I think, is kind of the and he is and he's, I want to say like 72 or something.
Speaker 2:Okay but anyways. So none of them are in the a senior citizen community.
Speaker 1:Well, seniors, I'm sure they are. Yeah, I think so. A lot of them live in that senior citizen communities.
Speaker 2:They do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. Senior citizen community 65 and up.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, well, what about the? Uh? So there's a difference between a senior citizen community and a Old folks home. Old folks home, right, yeah, what do you call it? What's the? What's the actual?
Speaker 1:term for a night. Folks Assisted living assisted living?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think none of these people are in an assisted living.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. I think assisted living is you need help In your day to day life or you need more support. Uh-huh I, I don't know anything about this.
Speaker 2:Well, I do know that that's my assumption those communities and assisted living homes are some of the uh Highest rates of std transmissions.
Speaker 1:I know that as well. I have a really funny story Abby's face says it all.
Speaker 2:I have a really we just ruined abby's world.
Speaker 1:I have a really funny story. I actually was golfing. This is just really quick. I was golfing in Orlando and we got paired up with this like 75 year old guy and he was from like Kansas and we're like what are you doing here? He's like well, actually I'm going to a few big assisted living parties and it's one of those parties where you all touch your golf cart key In a bowl and you pick it out and you just get to hook up with those and he was so open about it, about how he's gonna do like three or four of those while he was here three or four of them, yeah, and he kept saying he's like. He's like, oh, I know, is I better make sure I have protection? Because he was referring to the std potential.
Speaker 2:It's horrible.
Speaker 1:Anyways, okay, so golden bachelor. So at first, yes, my reaction is this is gonna be stupid. I do not want to watch this, but I have to Watch it. I just have to at least watch an episode or two. And it's actually amazing, because In the bachelor you tend to have guys who are big jerks if it's a woman. So if it's like the bachelor, they're all like competing.
Speaker 1:Yeah macho and and and there's, you know, and then the girls, on the other hand, like same thing. They're competing each other with each other in their own macho way. You know lots of drama and there's a lot of people who like there's a lot of self-esteem stuff. That happens, that you know. You just like, when you actually think of the bachelor showing it itself, you're like man, this, there's some sadness about what's happening here, but this, the golden bachelor, the guy, is An incredible human being. So he's like opening the door for these women. He's complimenting him, he's staring at them, he gives them the time.
Speaker 2:Well, like we're making eye contact, yeah, like he's.
Speaker 1:Intentfully like he's there. Yeah, you know staring.
Speaker 2:I mean staring is yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Like you, tell your kids not when somebody comes up to him.
Speaker 1:You know he wants to finish the conversation before somebody interrupts, and he's he treats all these women with the utmost respect, and then the women treat all of the women with the most utmost respect too. Okay, and so the reason why I like it is because I'm like so there's no drama.
Speaker 1:Well, so far I think there's only been two or three episodes. So I'm sure there is, but it just to me. I I'm actually happy about it because I'm like this is showing People actually how women should be treated, actually how women should treat each other, you know. And well, here's a question.
Speaker 2:So I like it. Here's a question is the lack of drama just because their Hormones are so low at that age that there's not enough?
Speaker 1:maybe Is a pretty good theory. I'm sure there is an aspect of that. For sure I'm curious.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm sure, but I sure there's no, there is no breeding potential Right. So the natural world Animals tend to get a little bit more feral when there's an opportunity to breed, right, like that's the whole, like we're in hunting season, talking about seasonality. That's why bucks fight each other, right, like they're all fighting. There's drama because they want the opportunity to pass their, their bloodline along. I mean, humans certainly have some of those characteristics.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's a pretty fair question.
Speaker 2:When you're that old, there's none of that.
Speaker 1:I bet it's more of.
Speaker 2:I just want a nice situation, yeah.
Speaker 1:I bet it's a mixture of that, also with, like I Would imagine, when you're in your 20s. Most people still do not know who they are right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's some more insecurities. It's a quote-unquote.
Speaker 1:I'm finding myself years. Yeah right, whereas, like when you're 70 years old, I'm pretty sure you found yourself like all these women have had a husband who's either passed away or they, a lot of them, are Widows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're widows.
Speaker 1:They all have grandkids, so they very much know who like, who they are and what their purpose is in life. Can you imagine? Seeing your grandma on that I Was talking to my wife's grandma and she was like it's so cringy. I died like 75 or something like that, and she was not as into it as I was, but anyways. So what do we want to?
Speaker 2:talk about. That's horrible.
Speaker 1:That was a big rant. That was gold bachelor, though give the shot, no, I won't. Well, I tried.
Speaker 2:I won't, but I tried. I'm glad that you enjoy it. Thank you. Well, seasonality. So we've got seasonality at play. So I think what's on the mind of a lot of marketers right now is the seasonality of quarter four. So quarter four is the epitome of seasonality in a few ways. Right, because you have November, which is the biggest month for e-commerce. That is the biggest gift buying month, that is the biggest deals month. So we know November is gonna be big. That can make or break some brands in a single month, in a single month. But we also have other seasonalities at play, so One of those is before big month. You usually have a really bad month in October. So September, october, tends to slow down. You have seasonal products. You might be in a category such as golf bags or golf apparel. People aren't buying golf apparel or bags at the same rate right now.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying, as they would be in spring season yeah, exactly, season also swimsuits, swimsuit. Same thing there, you know anything, that's a little bit more spring, summer, but if you sell hoodies, you actually might see a lot of pretty good.
Speaker 2:September-October and then it'll dip for a couple weeks before. Yep, black Friday, yes. So I think what a lot of business owners and marketers have to understand is that sometimes you have to what's the word I'm trying to take here? But essentially that you have to figure out a way not to create demand, because I think sometimes people think they're creating it. Sure, you have to just capture it. And Sometimes you have to realize that at some moments the winds aren't blowing and the sales aren't going to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah so you just have to figure out another way to go about your business for a couple of weeks, or another way to I don't know define success. Yeah, success might not be through sales in your marketing initiatives. It might be through email sign-ups. Mm-hmm, if that's a proven funnel for you, by the way, sure, sometimes it's not sure.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you think it'll work and it doesn't so sure sometimes you just have to think about how do we get our name out there. So, for an example, if you are a Seasonal product but you know people come and buy during black Friday because then they're gonna buy a bunch of gifts for Christmas that people will use in spring, yep, yep. So let's call it a spring Seasonal product, like either golf or swimsuits or whatever. Well then maybe you want to search, you want to bull, bolster up your Google ads so that when people are searching for those things, your name's always popping up.
Speaker 2:Yeah so you have retargeting lists that you can use in black Friday. So that's, just an example of how you might want to start Perceiving success during October. Yeah but the main thing is there are seasonal trends that you will not alter. Doesn't matter how good your ad is, sometimes you're still not going to buck out of that seasonal trend because people are just not going to buy it right now. Right, for two reasons it's not in season, right, and they know that there's a sale coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you cannot alter the projection there unless you know you can do it. There's ways to do it, but I wouldn't count on those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you. What marks essentially saying is like what you'll, what you see is you'll see a trend in buyer behavior. So buyer behavior can be determined with a few different metrics. I think one is conversion rate, like that's obviously probably the most telling right. If your conversion rate starts to dip down and you have inventory in stock and it's not an inventory issue, most likely there's a seasonality thing at play. You got time on your site pages viewed Bounce rate perhaps Mm-hmm, you know those are. Those are leading indicators of buyer intent.
Speaker 2:So and a great indicator of knowing if it's seasonality at play is if nothing is changing but conversion Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yep, or some of those metrics, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, meaning you're, you're. You didn't make a big change on your branding, you didn't make a big change on your content, you didn't make a big change to inventory.
Speaker 2:People are still staying on your website for the same amount of time. They're searching as much, but they're not buying is down. Yeah, that's a perfect example and you'll see that Very frequently right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know, we have a lot of people who are like, hey, I should start turning my budgets down, right, because, like, my conversion rates are down and and and, yes, you can do that. But mark kind of said a couple different things that are really important to say is like, hey, yeah, you, you can do that. But what you do now Is going to determine actually what you end up, how you succeed in November, over black friday. So, for example, if you are a swimsuit product or or something that's more seasonal and you're not showing up right now on top, top of people's mind, and your plan is to say, hey, but over black friday we're gonna dump a bunch of marketing spend into this, you're doing what everyone else is doing Mm-hmm, right.
Speaker 1:So now you're up against. You know one. What's gonna happen is your cpms, which stands for your cost per thousand impressions. So essentially, how much it's gonna cost you to get a thousand eyeballs in front of an ad? It's gonna significantly go up. That's just what happens. Facebook, google, like those costs just go up over that time because the demand is better, is higher. So now you're competing and what might get you? What 10,000 dollars a month or in a weekend gets you right now Is significantly different than what 10,000 Dollars a month in eyeballs gets you in november. Right. So significantly different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, significantly less. Right now, your conversion rate intent is gonna be higher, but your eyeballs are gonna be much less right, Cause they're gonna be more expensive.
Speaker 2:It's just, cpms are so expensive.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So right now you can be doing these things that help build what we kinda call retargeting pools, help build your email lists. Sometimes we're even telling people, hey, be okay with lower or higher cost per acquisition cost as well. So even if you're not necessarily a spring, summer product but you just November's or October's early November's generally tend to be maybe for some companies, a little bit less successful, because at a certain point in time people are like, if I wait three weeks I might get 30% off. Do I need this now, or can I wait three or four weeks?
Speaker 2:Is it really solving that crucial of a problem? Exactly so if you're not, a which of course, like if you're selling coats, for example, yeah. So if you're selling a parol, people might feel like I need it now. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you're selling just pants or a parol shoes, whatever, you're maybe okay. If it's not a problem solution product you're gonna be.
Speaker 2:People might start saying I'm okay, but the reality is most things are wants. Yeah, exactly. So most people will tend to wait if they're gonna get a great deal.
Speaker 1:But, with that said, we highly recommend that you keep spending that money and accept the higher-cost per acquisition, higher cost per net new customer, because the perceived, perceived, yes, cac, yes, that's the first right, your first time purchase, cac right. But what generally happens is, if you can get somebody to come back and buy from you, within what Is it? 60 or 90 days?
Speaker 2:30 days. I think it's more than that, yeah, well, it's between 30 and 60.
Speaker 1:You can go up to 60, but really if you can get them to buy within 30, that's when it, if you can get them to buy with, let's just say, between 30 and 60 days a second time, the likelihood of their lifetime value doubling increases by like an insane amount, right, Mm-hmm?
Speaker 2:So and you get the eyeballs that you can retarget for your Black Friday deals, because they're expecting it Exactly. They're expecting to find out what the deals are. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So why not spend more money right now? Yes, you might. When you look at your books in October season, you might say bad profitability wasn't what I want it to be. But that just means that if you have a really good retention strategy and a really good acquisition strategy on the retargeting side, you might blow up and explode your November.
Speaker 2:And another way to probably conceptualize this is a lot of companies we have seen that have really successful quarterfours are those that don't look at profitability or success per month in quarter four. Yeah, they look at this as a quarter, so October leads into November and November bleeds into December and then December near the end usually starts kind of just falling apart. Right, but they expect that and they know that, so they play into the seasonality. They don't try to play against it. They know it's coming. How do we play into it to feed November that it can then bleed over into December and then we have a successful quarter four.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love what you're saying. Is Marx essentially saying, like Q4 is a marathon, you can't look at things. You operate in sprints. Maybe the sprint is Black Friday? Yeah, you might operate like that, but you have to holistically look at everything. So when you have a bad weekend, you don't look at it as a weekend. You look at it as what happened over the last three months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yes.
Speaker 1:You still look at weekend stuff and you're looking at those trends and you're still looking at day to days, but you can't put as much weight into one day as you can, as you should for the whole month Exactly, or whole quarter.
Speaker 2:And in quarter four you can't look at even a week. The same way, yeah, you do in other parts of the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because your week before Black Friday might look completely terrible, or the three?
Speaker 2:weeks before. It just depends right Depends on your trends and who you are as a company, because we see some companies do such exponentially larger volume in Black Friday that it just does not matter what they do for three or four weeks prior.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:Now I'm not saying that they can't have any success, but the success is very small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like. We've seen companies that do anywhere from three to $10,000 a day for a couple of weeks before Black Friday, but then during Black Friday for four or five days they do over $250,000 a day, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it just varies. It depends on your company and how you're planning for it. But I think the secret of Black Friday is that there's not a ton of like secret strategies out there. It's just realizing that it's an eyeball game you have to play with CPMs. You're going to get much cheaper CPMs in October than you are going to get in November. So if you're planning on trying to acquire customers, it's pretty hard to acquire those customers on a first touch point in November.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:You can do it, but we're just saying it's not necessarily the best strategy to assume that you'll be able to just, we'll just scale up. Spend just during Black Friday, yeah, and we're great, but we didn't spend anything in October. Right, we're going to acquire a bunch of new customers. What you'll find is a lot of those new customers were either on your email list prior right, they knew about you somehow and then your retargeting pools get drained and then you're just fighting against everybody else.
Speaker 2:So, how do you fill up your customer and retargeting Bank prior is crucial, and a lot of companies make a mistake with the higher cost per acquisition that you were talking about, which is well. I'm going to deal with a lot of unhappy customers because they're going to buy at full price and then it's going to be for a discount a week later or a couple of weeks later, and then they're going to be mad Yep, the reality is there's a few squeaky wheels that will say something, but everyone knows Black Friday's coming Right. The reality is, if you get somebody at a higher cost per acquisition, you have a really good chance of them buying again because now it's at a great deal. So, if you have a good product that has the ability to have repeat customers with or different skews, now you actually get in their email box, their texts. You're not trying to compete with a million brands, necessarily on Facebook. You have multiple touch points that you can work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. What are some November strategies? I think we kind of just laid out right now what you should be doing. We're essentially saying, hey, it may look like you want to pump the brakes. We're telling you not to. In fact, there's a really good argument, without me looking at your numbers, that you should be spending maybe more in October than you were in September.
Speaker 2:To build up for that.
Speaker 1:We do that with a lot of clients. But what are your thoughts on some strategies, what are some things you're hearing in the D2C community or from brands you're talking to or things that were done last year? You got any thoughts? I got a few thoughts.
Speaker 2:I got a few thoughts, just creative strategies or overall Black Friday.
Speaker 1:If you think it's something creative, offers when people should start doing starting their deals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when you look at customer behaviors, we know that there are certain thresholds for discounts that make people move. If you don't hit those thresholds, you must expect a decrease, unless your brand is performing really well and you don't run a lot of discounts. So 10, 20% looks like a good deal because you don't run discounts ever. But most e-commerce brands are running 10 to 15% off just for signing up for an email.
Speaker 1:Mark and I over the last three years, every Black Friday, before Black Friday and after Black Friday, we run polls and surveys with people and we asked the question.
Speaker 2:We've also tested it out just in email drip campaigns, the difference in response rate and conversion rates. If you offer a 10% versus 20%. The delta is huge.
Speaker 1:Talk about the deltas here in just one second. But one thing I want to say is we run polls to say, hey, if you saw this discount, would you consider this a deal on Black Friday? Last year, for example, we were saying I think it was between 10, 15 and 20%. Do you consider this? I want to say last year it was over 85% of everyone who responded said those three deals I do not view as discounts, like good discounts for Black Friday, which I thought was very interesting. Now I think you bring up a good point. There's obviously exceptions to that rule, which are the people who, if you're never doing discounts, or if you're a $5,000 product, a higher valued product, 20% off of $5,000 is a ton of money.
Speaker 2:That's a great deal.
Speaker 1:Right, versus 20% off of $50 is not a crazy amount of money, not enough to get you excited. So that's just some food for thought. But talk about some of the deltas, the tests that we've ran as you, from 10% off versus 15, 15 to 20, 20 to 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we saw, when we've run these tests with companies in their drip campaigns so their email automations we saw a dramatic increase in conversion rates. So, for an example, between a 10% and a 20% discount for a company and their AOV was about $100, just to put that into context, if you offered someone a 10% versus 20, the 20% had a 50% higher click through rate and then a 80% higher conversion rate.
Speaker 1:When they clicked, when they clicked.
Speaker 2:So not only were you increasing your amount of clicks by 50%, but you were increasing the conversion rate by 80%. So you're almost I can't remember the math on that but like a two and a half three X increase in sales. Yeah, it's dramatic. It's very different. People perceive that 20% off, even though for the company that meant what like 10 bucks. Yeah, so it was ten extra dollars to get three, you know, in margin loss per product. But you're getting three times the amount of sales off of that email, yeah, by offering that 20%. Now, the reason why we did that was just to try to prep for Black Friday at the time, so we were just trying to figure out what and how much did these percentiles move people?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because the year prior this company decided to do only I think it was 20% off.
Speaker 1:No, I think it was less than that. It was like 15 or 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, instead of their 30 to 40 percent. So so the rule is you 25. If you're not doing 25 or more, it tends to not move the needle much as much yeah. Yeah, and then between 30 and 40. You usually see there are some Rules to this, but 30 to 40 percent. You're not going to see much difference between a 30 and 40, right? You see a huge difference between the 10 up to the 25.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and between the 20 up 20 to the 30 20 to the 30.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or 35. This is where you see the big jumps and people thinking it's a deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about 40 to 50. You're not seeing a huge jump if people view 40 and 50 very much the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah so, if you are doing Black Friday, just make sure, depending on your brand, know your brand, know your customers and why they value your brand. Yeah but that tends to be the difference maker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure. A couple other things that I wanted to maybe talk about was a couple also free gifting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, free gifting is huge. So I was about to just chat about that. So free gifting is massive. So if you happen to have, like, if you've got a product that Maybe isn't selling, that is already sunk costs and inventory meaning you've paid for that inventory it's sitting on the shelf, it's taking up real estate You're getting, you're just not getting people who buy it you. This happens with tons of people. Right, it's a great product, it's amazing product. When people buy it, they love it. But it may be a product that Isn't your staple hero product that you're selling. Maybe it's a little bit different from what you would Like, your like it strays a little bit from a core Product, for whatever reason. It's just not a product that's selling. Great, but it is a great product. Those are really good products, especially if they're like low cost to manufacture, to to use as gifts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some of those products just need to be in people's hands. Yeah, Totally it's not that it's not a good product. It's just not different enough in your marketing. And then its values, where people will buy it from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a good example of this is like people, like totes. Yes, right.
Speaker 2:And every bag company or whatever it's like.
Speaker 1:I can get that on Amazon, I can get that at Vans, I can get that in eat Jan sport, I can get that anywhere yet every food. Everybody wants a tote or something like that, or a hat.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, hat could be that same thing too. So those are great products to toss in as like gift, a gift with purchase or if, depending on what your manufacturing process is. If you're listening to that this, there's probably a good chance that you're not gonna be able to manufacture a gift for Black Friday in time, but if you can, that's a great Opportunity. The reason why that's a good opportunity is because we've seen.
Speaker 2:We've seen some athletic wear for women. Athletic wear for women brands.
Speaker 1:So after Athleisure wear active wear active wear, active wear, yeah there we go. That's the. That's the term I was. We're recording this little. You say athleisure after athleisure wear.
Speaker 2:But a great, a great example of a gift that you could manufacture as a headband.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, you can make socks a nice headband as a gift with purchase, because it's gonna be the same material you're using it's. You could cut Scraps out of it and turn them into bands or whatever socks, yep, so that's how you can think about manufacturing. A new product is not necessarily go and create a brand new product out of new materials, but yeah, it's our way to use what you've got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the perceived gift is also, the value is really cool. So, like when you break that down economically, this is where things make a lot of sense for you and for the customer. So, for example, if you're giving somebody, let's say, let's say, just for the sake of math, your average order value is $100 and and you are thinking about doing a 30% discount. So that means that you are Essentially gonna not make $30 on that because of the discount.
Speaker 2:Not, not, which might mean you don't make a dollar off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not counting your cogs, your cost of goods sold, your shipping, your marketing cost, whatever, all right, but let's say you have a tote bag that you sell on your shop for $30. Or let's say it's $40 but it costs you $5 to make. See what I mean here. It's like You're only if you don't, if you didn't do a discount right and and you just said, hey, we're giving away this, this bag, valued at $40, so the perceived value to the customer is I'm getting $40 off.
Speaker 1:Essentially, I'm saving $40, whereas you're saying like we're only giving away five bucks versus the $30 we were gonna have to give away. So that's why I like a gift. Economically, the gift with purchase is a really, really cool offer to think about.
Speaker 2:I think this is a great moment to segue into Storytime. Do you know who Ron Johnson is?
Speaker 1:Should I know who Ron Johnson is, because it sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know the story of Ron Johnson. Okay, he was a I don't remember what his title was, but he was some kind of senior executive VP at Apple. Okay, yes, and he got hired by another company to be their CEO. Okay, the company that hired him was JCPenney. Do you remember this story? Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Okay. So for those who don't know, ron Johnson, using the success of Apple, he was hired as the CEO for JCPenney and he came in and what he did to JCPenney was similar to what Apple's Strategy was for consumer acquisition, and so what that was is really high-end brand. You know, not a lot of discounts, if you notice Apple, we're talking discounts right now. Go check out what Apple's discounts are over Black Friday Nothing, very sad.
Speaker 2:Yeah if you're expecting anything, great, yeah, go find out what Apple does for Black Friday. Not that exciting, yep, why? Because they are a High-end consumer product at this point and their brand is such that they don't have to do discounts.
Speaker 1:So 10, 20 percent's great for an Apple product and what they realize is what happens over Black Friday is people's. But whether you have a discount or not, people's buying habits are buying habits and so people, whether you have a discount or not, are going to buy over that time frame. So there's that particular product, yes, and anything. Yeah. We see it with a bunch of brands who don't do discounts. So sorry, ron Johnson.
Speaker 2:So Ron Johnson goes to JCPenney and he implements this same Customer acquisition branding and strategy. And at the time, jcpenney had a lot of these Discount games that you could play, discount stacking, coupon codes. They were showing up in all these different kind of like discount magazines. At the time, right, they had these coupon code Yep pamphlets that would get mailed to people's houses Yep, they got rid of that and they Completely failed. So JCPenney was sunk by this strategy. Yes, and why were they Destroyed by it?
Speaker 2:It's because they failed to recognize that their entire customer base Were bargain shoppers exactly the entire customer base with bargain shoppers, so you removed the one thing that they actually liked about your Retail store, because they could find the same products in other stores right. But they liked you because you were this bargain.
Speaker 1:Brand. They got a high off of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they got a high. It was exciting for them, and then you removed everything about it. Yeah, for them. So, at the end of the day, I know we're talking about these different situations, but you have to know who you are as a brand and who your customers are as people, because you might think this strategy will work or that strategy won't, but it really depends on who you are and who they are. Yep, you might have bargain shoppers. We can't tell you that, I don't know. Yeah, we don't know what your brand's like. Yep, you might be a high-end brand thinking that discounts are gonna be a great thing for you, but because your high-end brand and product, your margins might not be that great.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the people you do acquire might not be worth it Totally. So you just have to start thinking about things and in an individual and contextual Frame, frameworks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Ron Johnson did not do that. He thought that what they did at Apple was something that you could just repeat, rinse and repeat with other companies. And that's just not true. Yep, you have to understand who you're actually targeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, totally agree, and and the way you know that, the way you do that is you Like you just need to talk to your customers, like now is. There's no better time Than right now to start talking to your customers. You are about to get an insane amount of traffic to your website and to be able to utilize that to the fullest capability. Mm-hmm, you really want to do that. So if you right now can't answer, like Ron Johnson did not know that the one of the core Principles of a JC penny customer was that they were a bargain shopper. Like that seems Duh-duh. Like doesn't you know they mean like doesn't that seem like such a?
Speaker 2:It seems like that should have been very obvious, totally, but it wasn't. But apparently did anyone in the board stop him. Did anyone give him that feedback? Why was he able to unilaterally change the direction of the entire company overnight?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and JC penny was a. I don't know what their revenue was, but I'm sure they were a billion dollar company.
Speaker 2:They were a massive company back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think they actually tried to fix it. Do you remember this? I think they made two mistakes, so they did what you said, but then they went back, lowered all their prices and they said oh, we're no longer doing discounts, it's just already discounted. And it still didn't fix it. Do you remember this?
Speaker 1:It's still remember the, I'm pretty sure that was the fix was okay, if things are. You know, hey, normally it was 150 bucks, but after discounting it was 99 bucks, but then Ron Johnson comes in and made it 200 bucks. Mm-hmm, what they ended up doing was like no, let's just lower the price down to 100 bucks. So what happened, was they like they messed up the high the high they got from discounts. So it was. It was the price they would have got, but it wasn't a discount but there was no game to.
Speaker 1:It was no gamification to it. So I think that I think, if I remember right, that's the ending of that story.
Speaker 2:We'll have to.
Speaker 1:That didn't end it like that, didn't end up reviving it and I don't know if JC Penney's even a thing, but yeah, anyways, talk to your customers. A shameless plug right now, like you should be using post purchase surveys. We don't talk about bestie a lot just because it's we just don't need to. I don't know, is it poor taste to be?
Speaker 2:peddling. A poor taste to be peddling products.
Speaker 1:Hettle product here. But like, straight up, you should be running post purchase surveys. We happen to own one of those called bestie. You don't have to use us, but you should be talking to your customers and, at a minimum, you should be calling your customers.
Speaker 2:There are customers that will happily talk to you. You should get to know your customers on an individual basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah and just get to know what gets them excited during certain times. And and the other thing I want to bring up too about Black Friday is it's such a big deal, but it will not make or break you as a company. I think a lot of people get caught up in these moments and companies freak out and it's all desperation, but At the end of the day, there's not one mistake or one success that makes or breaks your company. It's a learning process.
Speaker 2:So I think if you look at this as a journey and realize that, hey, you know what you're gonna make some mistakes during Black Friday. The purpose is to grow and just learn and make it better next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, document everything you do. Keep track of all the emails you send out, all the text messages you send out, keep track of the products you see to influencers, keep track of their budgets, so that you can go back next year in reference hey, we had a killer Black Friday. What did we do Well? Hey, we did not have a good Black Friday. What did we not do well, exactly so. Document, reference everything. I think it's a. It's gonna be good. I think I think Q4 this year is gonna be great. I think a lot of people are really nervous. I think you're. I think there's a lot of people who are maybe Thinking too hard about it. We're really all you got to do is start building things now. Stop looking at things in a day-to-day, from a day-to-day window, and start opening it up to monthly, quarterly windows and Yearly and decade windows.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:If you are a company, you are supposed to survive longer than, yeah, one year or one quarter. I get that things happen and sometimes it feels, yeah, like you're not gonna make it and a lot of companies don't. But the goal is not to be around for one year, totally, and so I think the the fallacy here is a lot of people get into Black Friday because we've seen this with companies. They get so desperate Because of bad decision after bad decision. They think the one thing like Black Friday will just push them over the edge and fix everything from the entire year, but it won't fix the fundamentals if you're not learning along the journey. Yeah, and the fallacy they fall into is thinking that they can justify the means by the end. Yeah, right, but that never works out because the end is just the summation of all the means along the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're not doing, if you're not operating Effectively now, you're not gonna operate effectively over Black Friday either. Like that's.
Speaker 2:That's usually one quarter, one the next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just how it is, like it's not gonna save you if you're not working things the right way now. So Focus on the now and it'll help you. Throughout Black Friday, have a good offer. Know who your customers are, collect that data, look at that data, call your. You know, I love what you said about calling your customers. Like think about it, if you like, brand loyalists love their brands. Like if my wife, if anthropology called my wife, she'd be like that was so cool.
Speaker 1:Somebody from anthropology called me and she'd probably talked to them for an hour or if Nike called me and they're like, hey, what do you think about the shoes you bought six months ago? Are you serious? Like this is, this is awesome. You know, even though I would be taking time out of my day like just you got their numbers. Give them a ring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the number one thing that people like to talk about is themselves.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, and so don't think for a second that people don't want to talk about themselves and your product is part of their story. So if they're spending time to purchase with you, then there's a good chance that they will also talk to you. Yeah, but agreed, yeah, I think. I think those are the takeaways for people. Just remember you have to know who your audience is. Sometimes discounts matter a lot, sometimes they don't, but it depends on who your customers are. Yeah, if you are gonna discount and you know that that's a big deal just know that if you're trying to Squeeze your customer not your customer I shouldn't say that it sounds a little negative. If you're trying to squeeze and make sure that you're not giving up too much margin, just know that there is a big difference in how customers perceive tears of discounts and those tears. You can really think about it from 10 to 20 percent, 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 plus.
Speaker 2:Yeah there's big differences between how people will react to each of those discounts. Yep, okay. So if you know those two things going in. And then the third thing is just know that you're not going to be able to get in front of as many eyes as you think you will yeah during black Friday, cpms will go up Astronomically.
Speaker 2:Unless you have ad creative, that's really gonna kill it and just get you in front of eyes and it's gonna be shareable During that time. Just know you're not gonna get in front of that many eyeballs. Yes, conversion rates will go up. However, you have to plan for that and think of a strategy of making people sure, make sure people know who you are before the moment is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, dude. I got one last thing I want to say, just One last question. Not even, not even about it's not about Q4.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say, if it's about golden bachelor, I swear it's not about golden bachelor.
Speaker 1:It's not about pop culture, mark, what are your thoughts about tick-tock shop, because it's all over my feet right now?
Speaker 2:Your tick-tock feed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying not to be on tick-tock or social media really in general a ton yeah, but I have to. Just basically, you know it's important for what I do and and I enjoyed a little bit, but it seems like every other. So tick-tock shop, just to let everybody know, is You've got organic posts? That there's, there's, there's a way to spot a sponsored post and it's got that gray little box in the bottom left-hand corner that says sponsored. It's like a overlay of the image, yeah, but If a tick-tock shop does not have the sponsor, it's above the username, if I remember, and it's an orange link like an orange button that allows you to shop whatever the person's talking about. And They've been talking about tick-tock shop for a while now.
Speaker 2:It's even out for a minute. Yeah, even if it's promoted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I Don't know, I Don't, I don't know. I actually don't know the answer to that question. If you promote it, have not. I just don't see any of the sponsored and under any of it.
Speaker 2:Look, my feelings on tiktok shop is just my feelings on tiktok in general, which is it's a Going back to what Brett said.
Speaker 1:From Kizick curry okay, couple brets couple brets.
Speaker 2:What did Brett say, remind me, you have to understand. So he was talking about YouTube in particular and the. The behavior, the, the consumer behavior, on each channel. Mm-hmm tiktok is not a place that people tend to go to buy anything. Now I know there's some virality there and there's some brands that are killing it there and some brands can buck the trend, but I'm we're talking generalities here.
Speaker 2:We're not talking exceptions yeah, so is tiktok a channel that is Going to be the main driver for your brand. If you're Seeing a lot of success on meta, I mean, I don't think Tiktok shops is going to be the one thing that like pulls you over it might be, silver bullet? Yeah, it might be. But again, focus on what you do well, and sure do those things like get your tiktok shop up like obviously don't, don't, not, don't do something just because.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't do it, Don't not do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, don't not do something. Yeah, that could potentially be great for you. Like, yeah, if the cost is simply setting it up and that might be the thing that drives an extra hundred K for you, great, do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah but I'm not. I don't know. It just seems like there's always something about tiktok that everyone thinks is the greatest deal in the world and then it never is. Yeah, it is for some brands, right, but Everyone acts like it's always this secret sauce that's gonna be the thing that lifts your brand up and then it never is. It's always back to the basics and I know JT Barnett talks about that a lot which is tiktok.
Speaker 1:People chase trends all the time, when the strategy to having a good tiktok is Consistency, telling a story, relatability yes, I was gonna say is like, if you're great at storytelling, like if you don't have great, if you're not getting great views, organically meaning you'd either don't aren't great at storytelling or you don't have a Really like problem solution product, that those are the brands that tend to Get the best view. Edge is when they have incredible storytellers, both through speech and visuals, or Products that just sell themselves right like what? What is a zoo relief? When we had Spencer on rights, like this is a headache relief.
Speaker 1:It was inexpensive. You know, those are the people who I think tiktok shop to tiktok shop can really really change a business or be, you know, change it but be a very great Channel for them. If you're only getting a few hundred views at a time and you're selling Jewelry or shoes or something that's not big and standout, he is it gonna make or break your business? Probably not. That's kind of my thought, but I'm seeing it everywhere, every other one of my posts.
Speaker 2:I'm well, I'm sure, cuz tiktok is pushing it right yep, now again. I don't know. It's just one of those trends that I don't. It just seems like there's always a trend and everyone gets so excited about it, but most people end up jumping on that trend and saying it wasn't worth it, yeah, or it wasn't great, or it's just like oh, yeah. And I think, going back to JT's principle About tiktok in general, are the way you should look at it is don't think it's necessarily a silver bullet. Should you get on to tiktok shops? Of course you should, because you're probably on tiktok. Of course you should set it up and make the buying, the buying experience easier for your customer yeah, so that should be your motivation. But don't think that necessarily it's the make it or break it moment. It's just another habit, and good habit that you should be doing to make things better for your consumer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it All. Right, I think that's a great place to end basics basics basics.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining the unstoppable Marketer podcast. We will see you next week. 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 Trevor Crump on both Instagram and tiktok. Thank you, and we will see you next week. You.