Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast
Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast
#10 - The Complete 2021 BFCM Preparation Breakdown
It’s that time of year again! Planning and preparation time for what we refer to as the ‘Superbowl’ for eCommerce - Q4 and more specifically Black Friday/ Cyber Monday Weekend.
In what’s been a super challenging year for eCommerce brands with the roll-out of iOS14 updates from Apple and massively affecting performance across most traffic channels - we’re seeing performance stabilise quite a bit now and actually improve.
Hopefully this trend continues into Q4 as platforms and businesses alike continue to adapt their strategies to maximise performance from paid advertising. Either way, war time is coming and it’s time to prepare for battle.
In this episode, Scott & Ray go DEEP into the planning for BFCM, the tactics used during the list building and tease campaigns in the lead up and also how to tackle the actual weekend from an account management standpoint.
This is a HUGE episode and Ray gives away the keys to the kingdom in terms of how we approach BFCM here at Right Hook.
Sit down, grab your headphones and get the notepad ready - cause you’re going to want to steal everything you can from this massive episode…
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0:00 - 0:27 - G&G eCommerce Podcast Theme
This is the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, powered by Right Hook Digital, with your hosts Scott Seward & Raymond Johnston. If you’re an eCommerce brand founder, entrepreneur, or marketer looking to accelerate profitable growth for your business, then listen in ‘cause this is the podcast for you.
0:27 - 2:01 - Episode Introduction (Updates from Right Hook Digital)
Scott (0:27 - 0:40) - Okay, okay! Welcome back to the Growth & Greatness Podcast. We’ve had a little hiatus, things have been a little bit hectic internally here at Right Hook. There’s been a lot going on, but we are back! Ray, good to be back with you, brother.
Ray (0:40 - 0:41) - It’s good to be back!
Scott (0:41 - 0:42) - That time of the year, man!
Ray (0:42 - 0:51) - It is, and that’s one of the reasons why we had a hiatus. We’ve been filling up on the agency side as well as prepping for an even bigger Q4 than we had last year.
Scott (0:51 - 0:54) - What’s been happening on the agency side? Let’s just give a little update.
Ray (0:54 - 1:32) - Yeah, so we hit our biggest employee count ever! We’re at 100 employees now. It’s a great feeling, I think. It’s very fulfilling. I can’t believe 4 years ago, we were like, ‘Oh, a 50-person agency sounds good,’ but here we are at a 100. It’s both amazing, but also scary at the same time. That’s one way, scaling up. The 2nd thing we’re doing as well is, you know, we have a retention department as well, email & SMS, and we have a full-fledged Google department - PPC, YouTube, Shopping - so it’s amazing moves, especially coming into Q4 for our brands. Yeah, it’s been a blur since our last podcast.
Scott (1:32 - 2:01) - Absolutely, man! The influencers as well, we’ve got an influencer department getting fleshed out. There’s production capability in the background. There’s a lot going on so we’ve definitely kept ourselves busy, but we’re really trying to get more of that end-to-end, you know, service capability there, and make sure that we’re executing at the highest level possible. It’s been pretty crazy, but it’s coming into Superbowl season, man! Q4 is nearly here. What are we doing?
2:02 - 3:47 - Learnings from BFCM 2020
Ray (2:02 - 2:42) - Yeah, so we’re doing a lot, and I think the biggest thing, what we started actually 2 weeks ago with our brands is… The first thing we always do, we look at, any brand we work with, last year. Look at last year, what information can we take away: the pros, the negatives, the learnings, as well as all the data that we have from last year that we can apply to our accounts. That’s always where it starts, analyzing what worked last year. Again, last year was a bit of an outlier, right? Kind of like a golden era. We had a lot of the COVID lockdowns that definitely blew a lot of the things, not out of proportion, but definitely skewed things. We have to take that into account, but there are still amazing learnings from last year.
Scott (2:42 - 3:47) - Last year was kind of interesting as well, though, ‘cause there was such a pump in the middle of the year when all of the lockdowns started that I was almost a little underwhelmed with Black Friday and Q4 because I think there was just, maybe it was just because of the expectations. It was definitely bigger than the year before, without a doubt, but it was, just because, remember, April to July was just absolute madness. It was, like, Christmas for 3 months. Then, Q4 came around and it was, it was big, but I wasn’t sure whether it was really gonna explode because people were, I guess, more accustomed to buying online at that stage. A lot of new demographics were sort of forced to buy online just because of the whole COVID situation. Yeah, I think this year’s gonna be interesting. The whole game’s been flipped on its head in the other direction with iOS14 and those updates. It’s an ever-changing field, right? You gotta be on your toes. You gotta be across what’s happening. We’ve been preparing a lot. It’s gonna be a bit of a different approach this year. Let’s dive into it and look at it from a bit of a high-level to start.
3:47 - 5:00 - Planning Timelines and The 3 Pillars of Preparation for BFCM
Scott (3:47 - 4:02) - The 3 main areas that we focus on, in terms of preparing for Black Friday and the team, you guys on the strategy team have already got that on the way. Clients, as you said, in the works for a few weeks now. What are those 3 areas? Let’s start with the 1st pillar of preparing for Black Friday.
Ray (4:02 - 4:40) - That’s a really great question. Every brand, every eCommerce brand, that is, there’s 3 areas that you should focus on. We call them pillars, and the first pillar is list-building, which we can go on into the specifics. You have list-building, the second one is teasing, and the third one is the actual launch. Now those pillars, they pretty much outline how you should think about your strategy and your strategy, really, should start now, if it hasn’t already. Of those 3 pillars, the two most important components of Black Friday, which we’ll get to later on, is gonna be the list-building and the offers. The first one, the list-building, from now until Black Friday, that’s all you should be focusing on.
Scott (4:40 - 5:00) - And what, in terms of planning around that timeline, what does that look like? When are we starting that planning? What’s going into that? When are we starting to think about running those list-building operations and campaigns? Let’s dive in there a little bit then we’ll get into the more technical side sort of bit later on.
5:02 - 13:30 - Mindset, LTV, and Customer Acquisition Leading into BFCM
Ray (5:02 - 5:49) - Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it depends on the maturity of not only the brand, but of, also the mindset. I know you’re huge on mindset, especially for eComm brand owners, and if you ask 1 eComm brand, they’ve been prepping for Q4 since January. They have that mentality, they also have that history behind them to know how important it is, but I’d say, for the majority of brands, they start planning the end of July, especially August, and the reason why is list-building. For those of you who don’t know what that term is, it’s essentially just purposefully capturing customer data either from a purchase or from a lead capture for the intent of remarketing to them. That’s the whole point of list-building. But it’s also, it’s the great pig that they’re fattening up for the slaughter as we tell our team. The bigger the pig, the fatter the slaughter, the bigger the feast. List-building is what makes the pig fat.
Scott (5:49 - 6:11) - That’s so true. I remember, we’re looking at some cohort analysis on one of our bigger clients earlier this year. That data supported that so much. Remember we were looking at last year’s data and what did that look like with the numbers and the acquisition and the 3-months prior to Black Friday as opposed to earlier in the year. There’s a massive difference in the numbers of LTV, right?
Ray (6:11 - 6:54) - Sometimes, it was, like, 200% increase in the profit from that first-time customer from, say, September to December as opposed to the months prior. It was, for example, if you’ve ever seen an LTV cohort, it measures the time from the 1st time someone purchases and their repeat purchases throughout the rest of the year. Sometimes, it’s in the double-digits, but in Q4, man, that’s when you get the double-digits and the percentage of the profitability increase, yeah, you’re right. I saw that and like, wow! That’s why really, truthfully, prepping for Q4, if you have that mindset is starting in Q1, but really Q3 is when you gotta put the pedal down.
Scott (6:54 - 7:35) - It’s really the adjustment in those acquisition numbers. Once you got, if you’re really clear on what impact that has from your lifetime value, the closer that you’re acquiring someone to Black Friday, there’s a much, much higher likelihood to repurchase over Black Friday. It really means that you can put your foot down, from an acquisition standpoint, not just a list-building standpoint, but earlier in the year, you may be looking for a little bit more fat, bit more profitability than on the front-end acquisition. But if you know that they’re 30% 40%, 50% more likely to repurchase over Black Friday, than say that 3 months prior to Black Friday, you know, you could be comfortable breaking even in those months, depending on the size and the business model, knowing that you’re gonna make up for it in November, right?
Ray (7:35 - 8:28) - That’s what’s weird is, it’s all about mindset too. Again, we all have businesses. We all have to keep our businesses profitable. It’s the whole point of being in a business, but if you look at every eCommerce business that we’ve ever looked at, hundreds, the majority of their profit, the biggest percentages, is in Q4. If you know that, all of your planning should be around, like how do you maximize that area? It’s like, it’s very clear for all eCommerce brands. Some may not ‘cause they have different seasonalities, but for the majority, it’s that. It always amazes me that even, by showing those numbers, brands are kind of scared to be, okay, breaking even, but like all brands we work with, we push really hard to help them understand that mindset. I wanna ask you, Scott, why do you think that is because I know that you’re really big in the finances, you’re a huge part of our team, managing the finances as well, why do you think that is? Is that a mindset that’s easy to overcome?
Scott (8:28 - 10:43) - It’s tough. I think it really just depends on where the business is at, really depends on the business, right? I think the experience of the business owner and the entrepreneur. So, for example, you know, really early-stage, first-time eCommerce owners that, you know, trying to maybe get a job or they’ve just left their job, they’re in a much higher risk, stage. They’re really relying on the income, that profit, and they, I guess, they’ll be more nervous not having that profit there on the front-end and not tangibly being able to see it. It’s almost a bit of an unknown as to whether people are gonna purchase down the road. It’s probably the mindset part to overcome. They just might not be in a position where they can sustain, like, breakeven acquisition for 2 months, or it just feels too high-risk for where they are, whereas, you know, businesses that have got cash in the bank, they’ve been through Q4 multiple times, they understand that Q4 generally represents possibly 20%,30%, 40%... I’ve seen brands up to 60%, 70% of their revenue driven over Black Friday alone. I think there are so many variables there. I think it really comes down to the experience and confidence of the owner, and knowing their business and knowing the dynamics of Q4 and what their numbers look like over the year. Yeah, I think there’s a few things there, but you know, I think it’s definitely, the earlier you can start thinking about that, and we know this is how the big brands win. They know that they can get themselves in a position where they have strong repeat purchase rates, they have really strong retention game, email, SMS, loyalty programs, referral programs, etc. And they know that they’re making that profit on the back-end. Front-end is acquisition and they can be as aggressive and focus on volume there, back-end is retention and that’s generally where they’re driving most of their profit. I think, startup founders, if you can start getting into that mindset, that’s where you’re playing the long game because you’re gonna win by acquiring the most customers, retaining them, and getting the most value out of them overtime. It’s obviously building the team, the resources, and those channels so that they’re performing optimally. Obviously, it takes time, but that’s the challenge, that’s the game that we’re playing.
Ray (10:43 - 10:56) - I wanna ask you, from a financial perspective, are there any signs or hints that you’re in a good position to scale aggressively on the customer acquisition from now until Q4?
Scott (10:56 - 11:59) - Yeah, and this year’s been a bit different, just because there’ve been a lot of inconsistencies for people and we’ve seen that across brands. With the lack of attribution and data being fed, and let’s talk about brands that are heavily reliant on Facebook, that’s probably where my head’s at. More here, it seems to have been up and down, been inconsistent, performance across the board. Generally, it’s not as strong as it was, especially last year, ‘cause last year, we’ve almost seen both ends of the spectrum, like absolutely amazing returns to really, really thin and tightened. You’ve got to adjust your strategy around that, or at least, adjust your expectations. Yeah, that’s the challenging part right now, I think, going into this year is just really understanding your numbers and where you’re at. If things are healthy for you, then, you know, trying and being a bit more aggressive, but I think we’re sort of seeing, I feel like we’re seeing a bit of the bottom in the performance side. How have you seen that in the last couple of months? It seems to have at least plateaued.
Ray (11:59 - 12:39) - Yeah, you’re exactly right. We’ve definitely felt the bottom, probably, in June, some brands in July. We’re starting to feel a significant, I think a plateau, especially because most of the people that opted out of iOS14, we pretty much reached the full extent of it at this point. Things are starting to stabilize more. Also, Facebook is starting to roll out their remodeled data, that’s another topic, but we are starting to see a significant, a little bit more data. How you think about it doesn’t change, especially in the post-iOS14, but what I would say is, for the most part, it’s not gonna get any worse. This is, most of the adoption rate has already happened, on the opt-outs.
Scott (12:39 - 13:29) - Yeah, and we’re just hoping that can improve in Q4, you know. You can get that Q4 surge and an improvement in the data that’s being fed back. We’ve been doing a few things internally around that, we’ll keep a lid on for now, but we’re trying to improve things and help. Yeah, we’ll see how it goes, but I think you still just got to take the approach of looking more at your overall numbers as opposed to relying on Facebook and ROAS numbers in the dashboard. We’ll dive into the measurement side a little bit later on, but for now, let’s move on to the second pillar. We’ll dive into the teasing aspect of what we do in our process and our build-up to Black Friday. What’s a big part of the planning there and what does that look like for brands?
13:30 - 17:04 - Teasing your list in the lead-up
Ray (13:30 - 15:20) - That’s a great question. On the teasing part, to kind of boil it down to terms that people can understand, teasing is all about throwing a party. How I like to teach our team is, in Q4, there’s lots of parties happening. Whether it’s a holiday party, or shopping parties, whatever that is, if you’re on a college campus and it’s spring break, there’s hundreds of parties. The question is, how are you gonna make sure that people come to your party and not someone else’s. That’s what we like to call the tease. You announce that the sale is happening, but you got to stay top-of-mind. How you do that is by getting people, on your list, to opt-in to what we call the VIP list or the first-comers list, whatever you wanna call it. You identify the people who are interested in your party. Then, once they’re interested, you stay top of mind and that’s from the time they opt-in to the time the sale or the party actually happens, you keep them focused on you. So as many tactics you can do about that, but it’s also around building hype and FOMO, meaning you specifically tell them that the sale is coming and you start reserving special details about it. Once they’re in that list, you release more. Give them more updates, more surprises, delights, and I’ll give you guys examples. Why this is so important is because what it does is it keeps them focused on you and not all the competition. Because when they’re on your list, you keep showing up with new information, new offers, or for example, a tactic I was telling you right now that I really like is don’t tell them that you’re gonna give the first 100 people a free gift, as an example. We have a lot of brands that do that to where they opt-in and once they’re on the VIP list, then you’ll say, ‘Oh, by the way, in 4 days, the first 100 people who buy are also getting a free gift.’ And then 3 days before, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re also gonna do this!’ It just gives them that hype, that excitement to where they’re focused on you and nothing else.
Scott (15:24 - 15:30) - That’s super cool. So how far out from Black Friday, specifically, would you start that teasing process?
Ray (15:30 - 16:12) - We recommend 14 days. The reason why is anything longer than that, that’s gonna be hard to keep them engaged and focused on you. Why not think of it as, let’s use human nature. My wife tells me we’re gonna hang out with a couple a month from now. I will forget, and in the day before, she’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, don’t forget, right?’ But if you tell me 2 weeks before, and then you just share a few details, I’ll remember and I’ll stay focused. We recommend 14 days. It makes it really easy to keep them engaged, but also it makes it really easy for you to what I call just a quick smash, get them really pumped up. And then, we’ve had brands in the past that tried 30 days. It was too long, people lost interest, and they went to a different party.
Scott (16:12 - 16:43) - I couldn’t agree more. I just think about myself, and your example of something that your wife said. I’m the same, if you’re more than 2 weeks out, it’s too far away to keep in your mind, but 2 weeks, okay, that’s next week. That’s pretty close, and you can keep that flow. You only need to drop something, you know, every 3rd day or something like that, a little reminder, that continued dopamine hit throughout the process and keep building it up and keep building it up. Couldn’t agree more!
Ray (16:43 - 16:58) - We recommend that the closer you get, you increase your frequency. If it’s like 14 days, do one every 2 or 3 days, keeping them warm and building the hype. As it gets closer, increase that frequency to make sure that they’re really hot and really focused.
Scott (16:58 - 17:03) - Absolutely. Solid advice right there. Pillar three.
17:04 - 24:50 - The LAUNCH
Ray (17:03 - 17:04) - Pillar three is the launch.
Scott (17:03 - 17:04) - The launch.
Ray (17:04 - 19:04) - It’s what I like to call organized chaos, if you’ve ever seen pictures of the stock market in the old days, people yelling on the floor. I love it! It’s the best time of the year for me. But the launch, honestly, it’s the pay-off, it’s the pay-off from roasting the pig. It’s the pay-off from all the investment you put in to the list-building and the tease. The launch, for the most part, it’s pretty simple. Now, depending on some brands’ styles, I’ll tell you different styles, you can go with the very simple launch where you pick a date and time, you tell your VIP list when it’s gonna happen, you launch it, you send them an email, send them a text message, and you just sit back & watch sales. That’s a tried and true way, you can’t really go wrong. Whoever’s doing your paid acquisition, it’s a really bit different what we do because we do a lot of paid acquisition. We go in with the expectation that it’s gonna go well if they prepped right and did all the steps right to where we’ll actually, for example, your budget for that day is $10K. We’ll set the budgets to spend $15K, ‘cause it’s really easy to cut back the budget throughout the day, but it’s really hard to scale on the day. So we go in with the expectation that performance is gonna be there so we can scale back, but another tactic that you guys can use is, we like to use is, for our VIP list for the launch, we’ll actually let the VIP list in early, 2 hours early, before everybody else for that sale, and maybe even make it really sweet for them, give them an additional 5% off, whatever you wanna do. But one thing I like to always remind our brands is, when we had a meeting with our email team, just actually about this, where people go wrong is they send one email, or SMS link, or one social post, and that’s it, that’s all they do for the day. That’s the wrong thing to do. This is the one time of the year you should be 3x-ing your frequency, 4x-ing your frequency, and I get asked every year - how do you know it’s too much? When you stop making money, that’s when it’s too much. But if you’re still making money from it, keep pushing and sending.
Scott (19:04 - 19:40) - We could probably do about three episodes just on how to run things across the weekend because that is, and it changes every year. If I think back, you know, 4, 5 years and to what it is now, and the shifts, and every year’s got its own DNA, right? It’s just the way the market operates, the way things perform. People are trying to get going earlier and earlier. Let’s actually stop there and I’d really like your insights there. We start seeing people running Black Friday offers at the end of October.
Ray (19:39 - 19:40) - It’s crazy.
Scott (19:40 - 19:59) - What do you think about this in terms of timelines? When’s, how early is too early? Is it worth it? Is there validity in running Black Friday campaigns at the beginning of November for cheaper costs and completely doing almost nothing on Black Friday?
Ray (19:59 - 22:16) - It’s a great question. I’ll be transparent. I’m not a fan of it, but I’ve seen it work well. I think we should start with, what are the pros and cons of doing it because there are significant pros and cons? Doing it earlier, the pro is less competition. I mean, there are still a lot of people doing it, but there’s less competition. You, potentially, have less competition for your party, wanna keep that same analogy. Why I don’t like it is because you have a whole month to get people to focus on you. That’s a long party! I mean, the amount of work you have to get into to keep people hyped about you, the reality is you’re gonna have one big day, maybe a couple of big days, and it’s gonna fizzle out unless you do something to revive it. That’s why I’m not a fan of it. I’d say last year is when we saw more people going earlier than I’ve ever seen. I saw brands going in October, and I think maybe if we saw the back-end, we actually see the numbers, if it’s actually worth it. The reason I’m not a fan of it is I like it short & sweet & powerful. I like to have it short. It’s okay if you launch before Black Friday, but keep it short because you wanna have a really big buildup. And what I would say to caution people on is if, for example, people know that typically your Black Friday deal is the best you’re gonna have all year, as an example, and so if they know that you’ve already launched it and like, the middle of November, or the first week of November, they know it’s the best you’re gonna get, and what I have often found, the brands that do that is, they have a really great day, but their sales are gonna suck the rest of the month because people know, ‘Ah, I’m not gonna go back to them, they’ve already done Black Friday. It’s not gonna be better or sweeter than that.’ I would also say because, typically, those brands, they wanna follow up the extreme that we go through to prep for those downturns ahead of time so that they’ll launch, and yeah their sales will go down, but yeah, that’s my opinion. I would highly recommend you keep it a week max, or just keep it to that weekend, because at the end of the day, there’s lots of competition, but it doesn’t mean that you still can’t win. It just means that, if anything, I think people are more primed over that weekend to spend money than they are earlier in the month, personally.
Scott (22:17 - 23:30) - Yeah, I don’t disagree. You know, everyone’s sort of building up for that, and I think that’s probably the biggest dynamic shift that I’ve seen since going back 4, 5 years ago. You know, when I was running campaigns for Q4, and probably more specifically for Australia, because Black Friday in Australia has only really become as big as it has, I’d say the last 3 years. Before that, it was kinda tapering up, but it was much more a US thing. So prior to that, Australia, from early, mid-October all the way through December, was just really solid, really good & solid & consistent all the way through. Now, I see it’s much more the calm before the storm, that big explosion that everyone, especially for everyone doing Christmas shopping. They know they can save money by just shopping over Black Friday, I think they’ve been conditioned to that. So think the buyer behavior through Q4, Australia more specifically, I’m not sure ‘cause I wasn’t really running US Black Friday 3 or 4 years ago, so I don’t know whether you’ve noticed that shift on the US side at all, but that’s a definite change in Australia, I guess, you know, the way buyers operate around Christmas.
Ray (23:30 - 24:50) - Yeah, I’ve definitely noticed that shift. One brand, specifically, I’m thinking about where they wanted to do a month-long Black Friday, and what they did to combat it was they would do different things each week. So I think, if you’re gonna do something like that, I’d recommend you gotta have variety. Variety is the spice of life when it comes to eComm, like you do the same thing, people are gonna be burnt out. They’re gonna go away, but if you show up, the secret sauce to eComm is new, right? Put new on everything and you’ll notice a difference. You do something different, I think that’ll definitely help you. With regards to the US, it’s just complete frenzy normally. I’d say, typically, I’d say it’s a little bit of a shift. It used to be that weekend was the hot frenzy. As brands, not only retail stores, but also eComm brands, as they try to cut down competition launching earlier, launching longer sales periods. I’d probably say it’s that entire month where people are conditioned like that. That’s where I’ve seen it go well, but you’ve gotta do something new to keep the hype up ‘cause otherwise, ‘cause if you launch in the first week of November, and you treat it like a Black Friday, it’s gonna be the same thing like Black Friday: you’re gonna have a great three days and it’s just gonna decline. So that’s where you gotta change it up and you gotta keep hype up by launching new things.
24:53 - 30:07 - Managing the weekend - budgets, sustaining performance, and offer tactics
Scott (24:53 - 25:15) - Let’s drill into the nitty gritty of launch a little bit more and, specifically, what are we looking at now, ‘cause a lot of people, it’s the Thursday night or you’re holding it ‘til Friday. What’s that sort of timeline looking for you when we’re going, Okay, let’s hit the green button. We’re pushing our VIP list first, when are we gonna do that? Let’s phase out those timelines over the weekend, or the start of the weekend, more specifically.
Ray (25:15 - 26:56) - Yeah, that’s a great question. So we like to give the VIP list something special. Two reasons - one, we like to give it to them early, and I’ll go into the reason why in a second, but secondly, why we like to do it is because it gives you a lot of the leverage to get people to sign up to your VIP list, so for lead acquisition as well. If you tell them you’re gonna give it to them early, it gives them a big reason to actually sign up to that VIP list so there’s two reasons. A big reason why I like to use the VIP list is because, if you know how many people are in your VIP list, it gives you a lot of confidence of what your potential sales are gonna be ‘cause you know how well it’s gonna convert. So then let’s say, hypothetically, you do the teasing, you’re 7 days out from when your sale’s gonna launch, or even 4 days out, and you know, okay, I’ve got 5,000 people signed up to my VIP list, and have 10% of those convert. It’s actually gonna be higher, probably like 15% convert, and you know how many people potentially, and you can reverse engineer your revenue. If it’s not close to where your goals are at, cool, then you’ve got 4 more days to smash it really hard to get people to that VIP list, or to change your strategy of how hard you’re gonna go on your acquisition. So my recommendation is, I like to give it to the VIP list early. So, typically, a day before or even a few hours before is fine too. In terms of doing it on that Thursday or that Friday, I like to do it, personally, the Thursday, ‘cause in the US, it’s a holiday, and there’s a reason behind it. People got fat during the day, eating that turkey, they got the carb overload, they’re not going to move. They’re sitting on the couch on their phones ‘cause they don’t wanna move. It’s the perfect time to launch a VIP list to those people ‘cause like they’re very focused whereas after...
Scott (26:55 - 26:57) - They need to buy a gym kit.
Ray (26:57 - 27:23) - Yeah, exactly! They’re probably thinking, oh, man, I’m so fat, I need to get in shape. That’s the perfect time to launch, or for the people who want to feel good about themselves, if you have a product like that. But on that Friday, for example, some people are going out for Friday doorbusters and so what you’ll find is you may not have as much of a captive audience on that Friday ‘cause they’re out and about, trying to get their retail store offers.
Scott (27:23 - 28:11) - Nice. The weekend really performs generally like in a bit of a hockey stick manner, right? How are you looking to plan that budget over the weekend, and it can be almost and it should be very much a day trading type of operation ‘cause you gotta kinda stay, move with how the performance is adjusting, changing over the weekend. So, budget allocation, what are we doing to keep it pumping through ‘cause I know we kinda did a few tactics last year that worked really, really well to keep it pushing through and keep those surges during the day. Let’s dive in a little bit more into the weekend structure and managing the actual campaign across those four days.
Ray (28:11 - 30:07) - That’s a great question. What we do is, we’re actually planning this now. For those of you listening, you guys don’t see it, but we have a 3-page checksheet and checklist to make sure that we have no stone unturned. And part of that is, a big part of it is just about that weekend, and one of the tactics actually is from you, Scott, after Cyber Monday, like how to keep sales up, which we’ll definitely go into next. For the Black Friday offer, if you really wanna go all out and you wanna have the biggest Q4 you’ve ever had, this is how we encourage you to plan. You’re gonna have the hockey stick, you’re gonna have great sales when you first launch, it’s gonna dip, and then as the sales are coming to an end, the last-minute purchasers are procrastinating, they’re gonna jump in and buy something. So the question is, how can you keep the volume and momentum going during the low time? For every Q4, especially Black Friday, we recommend, we have back-up offers. What I mean by that is let’s say you have one offer for that weekend. We recommend plan four more offers and the reason why is because you can launch those, spur of the moment, as a quick flash sale, whether that’s one hour or two hours, or you can change up your offers as well. If you have a plan B, C, & D, you can use that to your leverage to build hype. The reason why is, again, variety is the spice of life. Once you launch and tell everyone, hey, it’s 30% off or 40% off for whatever you’re gonna do, you know, you’re gonna have a tail-end. People are gonna forget about it. You can send them more emails, but they’re just gonna skip over it. But when you launch something new, you change it up, completely flip the script on them, and that adds an amount of stupor, and that’s what brings the attention back. So if you wanna do it, we recommend going into that weekend with a minimum of four offers and then the other strategy, the fifth one, is what happens after Cyber Monday. Scott, I’d love for you to dive into that one.
30:08 - 34:35 - Extracting additional LTV value post-BFCM
Scott (30:08 - 32:51) - Yeah, I’ll go back to that because that was the interesting, I think we only really tested it on the Friday for one brand where we did a new product-specific offer, like, every 3 hours or something, pumped out SMS & email, and we just had another massive spike for, like, 90 minutes or so, every few hours. It really kept that pulse going during the day and pushed it through. Yeah, the more you can plan out some specific product offers, if you want to clear something out, or there’s inventory, if you can move on the fly, that would really help. But we found that out on a Friday and we were jumping across the board and trying to roll it out for as many clients as we could for the rest of the weekend. It was something that just works really, really well. You know, what we’re trying to do, post-Cyber Monday, this is probably going back 3 years was, how can you still, you just acquired so many customers at a really cheap cost, how can you extract as much value out of them between now and Christmas? Christmas is still there so we’re really thinking about, you know, if you’ve got a new product drop, doing it 7-10 days later, maybe around the 7th or 10th of December, depending on when Black Friday drops, but still within Christmas shopping timeframes, but something new and fresh that you can drop, you know, another 10 days later and almost go back straight into list-building hype mode and tease, like you were talking about, and then you’ve got a fresh drop. It depends, obviously, on what your product is, but if you’re talking about fashion, for example, that could be the perfect time to almost, if you’ve already dropped a summer, we’re talking Australian seasons, summer or winter depending on where you are, range, might be a volume too of that, or it might even just be a smaller range or something like that or something specific, might not even be a range, just a couple of products that are really good, solid, good offer. Great way if you can do that and then, again, coming back to how you’re focusing on your measurement & acquisition cost. If you know that you can get 10% of those people that you acquired over Black Friday, which would be a massive number of customers, to repurchase again 10 days later with a high-profit product or something like that, it just helps you adjust your goals and your objectives and get as much value out of those customers that you’ve acquired. That was something that we tried to plan around that. That obviously needs a lot of planning and you need to be thinking about that now, at the latest I would say, to sort out inventory and what that product might look like, but something that works exceptionally well for the people that do it.
Ray (32:51 - 34:12) - Yeah, and to echo what you said, for example, if you’re a brand listening to this, you gotta plan all this now ‘cause if you have 8, 10, 12-week lead times, you have to put the orders in now. But I wanna piggyback off what you said about strategy about launching something new. We literally had a, our retention planning for Q4 with our team internally here and there’s an amazing strategy that came from Liis, our senior retention marketer. And what works really well that we’re planning for is, on that new drop for example, anyone who just bought over that weekend, what we do is we send them messaging email, SMS that we’re opting them into a drawing for a giveaway of this new product that’s launching in 7 days and we hype it up that way. So you’ve been entered in, if you wanna enter any more, here’s how you can enter in more, and then we launch it, and then we give them another discount for example. It’s a great way to just, they just bought, and it’s almost like building goodwill. They just spent a bunch of money with you - instead of saying, here’s our new product, buy it. Hey, also, for free, we’re gonna enter you into a giveaway as well. Here’s how you can enter more at the time, and then you launch the product. It’s almost like you pre-gave them an incentive. They’re already in this drawing, potentially, already. Then, when you actually launch the product, you can give them a discount if they didn’t win the drawing and it works really well.
Scott (34:14 - 34:38) - I really like that tactic. I can’t wait to see that, the rollout and how it performs. I think we really covered the three core pillars and gave, I guess, a pretty detailed look, even though it’s high-level, you know, the list-building, the tease, and the launch, and how to run things over the weekend. Let’s take a step back.
34:39 - 41:52 - How has the approach to measuring performance shifted and how are we tackling it?
Scott (34:39- 35:00) - 2021 versus 2020 - a lot of changes, it’s gonna be different, and I think that’s primarily around the changes in data & attribution due to the iOS14 updates. How are we viewing and measuring things differently this year and how are we approaching that, especially in our discussions with clients, the planning? You know, what are we gonna be looking at more as we focus on the weekend to make sure that we’re hitting the targets that we need?
Ray (35:00 - 36:28) - Yeah, that’s a good question, and we did cover this in another episode, talking about MER. I wanna go in deeper because we’ve had a lot of time on it, we’ve been using it for a long time now. How we do it right now, for example, is we track 1-day attribution using MER. What we’re looking at, total marketing spend, total sales every single day, we know at what point, profitability happens. So, from now until Q4, that’s really how we manage it. What we’re working with our brands on, you really wanna be as aggressive as possible, which we said earlier. So to do that, we’re day-trading, to be honest with you, day-to-day, and week-to-week. We look at things on a rolling 7-day; if things are going really well, we see that trend, like for example, you’re a surfer, Scott. If you see that wave coming, we ride it. We scale as much as possible, we ride that wave for as long as we can and then once it potentially dies down, then that’s when we pull back and wait for the next wave ‘cause people come to waves in buying cycles. From now until Q4, that’s how we think about it, how’s the most aggressive we can go at the KPI that the brand can sustain and then especially during that weekend, we’re doing it by the hour. We’re looking at the ads ‘cause we’re doing so much spend, like some brands are doing 30 - 50 grand per day. We’re doing so much spend that we track it by the hour - total spend versus total sales each hour so we can ride the waves even in the hour segments throughout that weekend.
Scott (36:29 - 36:32) - Do you think it’s made it easier or more difficult with the changes of delayed attribution?
Ray (36:32 - 37:58) - To be honest with you, I think it’s made it easier a lot of times. Let me tell you why I think that. Because in-platform ROAS, it was this pedestal that everything lived and died off of. But even before iOS14, you had ad blockers, you had different devices, cross-attribution, there’s a lot of factors involved… also, for example, we discussed this with what we’re working on internally to combat this, gosh, even on Shopify, there’s a significant percent, 10% of people, doesn’t get attributed because of page load speeds. For example, if someone comes to a purchase, the Facebook event may not even fire completely, they might already leave. Sorry, too bad, so sad - you don’t get that attribution. I think this made it easier because what we found is it doesn’t hurt scaling because we’re looking at the true north, the MER. The only thing that becomes more challenging is the MER platform optimization, which we can go in a different time or even now. What we’re doing to help combat that, like how we’ve adapted and changed, I think it’s made it easier ‘cause I think us, the brands we partner with, everyone internally, we’re all looking at the true north star, MER. In-platform is important, optimization, but we look at that, and if MER is going well, we think about how can we all scale? If it’s not going well, okay, what do we need to do to get a new wave or to turn the wave around?
Scott (37:59 - 38:48) - Yeah, I think that’s gonna be the challenging part this year when you’re coming back to the day trading component, right, and drilling down into what’s working specifically and what’s not working. That limited view of data, hopefully, you know, Facebook’s modeling is a little bit better. We still got a couple of months until then, but based on previous Black Fridays, we’ve just had Ad Manager blackouts 24 hours before so I’m not holding my breath as to things getting better in the meantime, but fingers crossed that we can get a little bit of improvement in the reporting & attribution within the platform ‘cause it definitely makes it easier to drill into campaigns, ad sets, offers, creative that is performing best when you’ve got more of that data coming back to make those decisions a bit easier in more real time.
Ray (38:48 - 39:57) - One thing I wanna add real quick is you have to get comfortable with, not only the day trading, but not having all the data at your disposal. The reason why is, as an example, we have a Google team. In Google, your conversion reporting is delayed 15-hours plus, sometimes even more than that for certain campaigns. What that means is, if you launched your sale at 8am, you’re not actually gonna get the data from 8am until later that afternoon or that night. By then, it’s too late to scale. That’s where, what we recommend is do micro-tests from now until Q4. If you know what your plan is for Q4, do micro-tests to give you the confidence of how it’s going to perform so that when the day actually comes, you’re looking at the ad spend & total sales and using that as your true north star for scaling because it’s on Facebook, there’s delayed attribution there too. That’s how you have to think about it. I think, with the delayed attribution, even with in-platform analytics, you’ve got to do micro-tests. That’s what we do, micro-test. We have confidence in how it’s gonna work, then we can then focus on the scalability and sales volume as that metric.
Scott (39:57 - 41:55) - Yeah, that’s a really important point. I think the other massive lesson here, especially if you’re coming into your first Black Friday, for example, or you know, you’re not so experienced, make sure you’re making those business-level decisions based on your MER. You’re looking at your ad spend to your overall revenue and not making a decision based on what Facebook is reporting to you at the time. I can go back a couple years and there was a really good example with a watch brand we were working with. I think we’re running it and the ROAS at the time, early in the day, was looking, it was 1.7 or something. It was building, but the MER, the overall performance, was at about 7x. Facebook was the primary channel so a lot of people would look at that ROAS, shit it’s not working, we better do something about this, and dial it back, whereas, you know, you’re making a smarter decision looking at it from an overall perspective, going okay, let’s increase the spend. Keeping an eye on those numbers during the day, adjusting them accordingly; if it starts dipping below whatever your target MER is, okay, then we may need to start thinking about pruning within the ad account, which comes back to a really good point you made earlier. Make sure you’re setting those budgets higher than what you wanna spend. It is significantly easier to prune your ad accounts and trim them back than it is to… if you’re spending a $1,000 a day, just a round number for simplicity and want to get it to $1,500, it’s much harder to increase your budget 50% than to get it from $1,500 down to a $1,000. That’s super easy. So 2 important things - make your decisions at an overall level, definitely. Look at the ad account, see what’s performing, what’s working, what’s not working, but don’t make your business decisions based on what Facebook’s telling you, that’s for sure.
41:56 - 48:03 - List-Building Tactics
Scott (41:56 - 42:34) - List-building tactics, so let’s draw back a little bit there. What are some of the things that we’re looking to doing this year to get those, ‘cause we’re trying to acquire the leads as cheaply as possible between now and, I guess we’ve been kind of doing it all year. You’re audience-building, list-building - what are the channels we’re getting them too? What are some of the tactics that we’re doing to get them on the list as cheaply as possible? What does the communication flow look like, you know, for someone that we’re getting on the list, say, now or in the next few weeks between Black Friday? It’s quite a window and we talk about that tease being 14-days out. If it’s too far, it sort of loses a bit of impact. What’s that approach sort of look like at a more tactical level?
Ray (42:34 - 47:04) - Yeah, that’s a great question. What I would start off by saying is, you know list-build now, this isn’t for the purpose of the tease. Those are different strategies. The list-build is to acquire, it’s to fatten up your calf or pig for the slaughter. Really, any list-building that we do, we’ve got to have a back-end flow. Call it a welcome flow, call it a nurture flow, call it an educating about the brand flow - you’ve gotta have that because if you don’t, they’re gonna get cold and you wasted that money or that effort to get that lead. You’ve got to still get them engaged with your brand. It’s like, you need to build out those flows and those sequences. That’s what our team is doing internally. Now, some of our favorite tactics, and this is gonna get as nerdy as we possibly can ‘cause I get really pumped about this. So let me tell you things we’re testing right now. The first one is, I’m so pumped about this, Google search forms! There’s a type of Google ad that you can actually acquire data - email address and phone number in a Google search. What we’re doing is we are testing that on all different areas, we’re testing that on unbranded search terms, branded terms as well, and just using a Zapier to shoot it over to our Klaviyo. I’m so freaking jazzed about that! And then, also, this is getting kind of crazy, we had our strategy with our Google team, we’re gonna target our competitors! We can capture their customers. We’ll measure the costs and if it’s even worth it, if we can do it at a cost that makes sense, but yeah, we’re trying out all kinds of things. Also, you can do it on YouTube as well, FYI. Another thing that we’re doing as well is, other areas, we test running actual lead ads. You can get really cheap leads. Obviously, the quality’s something you need to keep an eye on, but lead ads. And then, what we do is we work with our brands to make sure, especially on the SMS, use your SMS opt-in short code. Start putting it in your Instagram bio link, start adding it to your organic posts as well, text 5555 to this to get this. It’s a great, I mean, we have a brand that they’ve acquired 5,000 SMS just by doing that alone. It works really well. Another really nerdy tactic that we’re liking is, so on Klaviyo, you can do what’s called dynamic block. That dynamic block is, you can essentially have a dynamic so that if anyone you have, and you don’t have their phone number, they’ll see this opt-in just for them. And really great places where you can put it that is, you can put that in the shipping notifications. ‘Hey, if you like to get a text message notification as well, text 5555 and text ship.’ You get them to opt-in, you provide them a service where they can get text messaging, shipping notifications, order confirmation. That’s so, it’s like low-hanging fruit. The thing that we do is, after someone buys, in a thank you email, same thing, dynamic block, if you don’t have a phone number, ‘Hey, thanks for purchasing. By the way, we’re gonna give you an insanely good deal for 20 minutes only. Text Deal to 5555 and get 50% off, 20 minutes only.’ It works really well. Other areas and tactics that we’re doing, we do giveaway funnels or we have several brands doing giveaways every single month just for lead acquisition. And then, my favorite is giving away or doing free just pay shipping just to acquire customers. Let me tell you the beauty of this. A lead, a non-purchasing lead, phone number & email address, typically, the conversion rate is gonna be about 7%. When it comes to Black Friday, 10%, depending on their intent and how well you keep them warm for Black Friday. But a customer, that’s 10 - 15%, on some brands even more. Acquiring a customer can have a much better pay-off. We have brands where, we have one brand, where they’re just doing free shipping. One product, it’s a product that the COGS for them is just 95 cents, $1, you know, they bought 3,000 units as an example. They are just doing free, just pay shipping. The person has to go through checkout, they still have to buy it, but they’re acquiring customers. They’re running that on top-of-funnel ads. And then, another brand is doing, like, $1 pants. I mean, they’re losing money on it, but because they have the mindset, and they know what it’s gonna turn into for Q4. I’ll say those are probably the things that I love the most right now. Other things you can do are quizzes. We have brands doing quiz funnels, which, gamification, anything you can do with gamification, I would highly recommend it.
Scott (47:04 - 47:56) - Damn, that was fire, man! That was, there’s so much stuff that I have no idea that’s going on at the moment on the back-end here. That’s super cool because it’s just really interesting for me to hear that being out from the strategy team these days, and how that’s evolved. I think this year, specifically, now that we got so many more channels involved and team members bringing input, you know, we go back say 2 years where it was very focused on Messenger, getting them to SMS, and it was probably centralized around that. Now we’re looking at Google Search and YouTube and a whole bunch of other stuff that you guys are testing. Man, people going copy and paste those show notes and start stealing some pretty solid material there. That was really good.
Ray (47:56 - 48:01) - I may have given away part of the farm. Not everything, not everything, but I’ve given away a big part of the farm.
Scott (48:01 - 48:07) - You gotta keep some secrets, man. You gotta keep some secrets.
48:07 - 59:12 - Finding the Right Offer
Scott (48:07 - 48:36) - Alright, let’s get to what is probably the most important part that I think is where people overthink. It should be simple, people overthink, try to overcomplicate it - offers. How do we dial that in to get the right offer? What’s the process between now and Black Friday look like to try and get the offer that we feel is gonna work the best without making it over-complicated because we’ve seen people do that and blow themselves up, really sabotage themselves.
Ray (48:36 - 50:42) - Yeah, it’s really sad to where, when it comes to Black Friday, for brand owners, there’s a big desire to ‘I wanna stand out.’ Sometimes, they’ll create this offer that’s so confusing, complicated, that it ends up burning them. I think, for Q4, the simpler, the better. Just make it as irresistible as you possibly can. So there’s a few ways that we think about this. We try to have all our offers written out now. The reason why we do this is two things - one, so we can have some time to kind of massage those, to see what works and what doesn’t work, and then the other thing is, we’d like to do something that’s called micro-test. For example, let’s say your version of an irresistible offer for your brand is 30% off, that’s the most irresistible you can do. Then, what we’ll do is, okay, if it’s 30%, let’s do a micro-test. Let’s pick a particular product or product line and let’s not do 30% but 20%, or maybe 25%, just something close and we’ll do a micro-Black Friday test run on that product and see what happens to give us the confidence. For example, if we do, like, 20%, and we’re not quite happy with the results, we don’t feel confident that 30% is really gonna move the needle that much ‘cause 10% is a lot, if you look at your numbers, you think it’s a lot, but from a consumer standpoint, like, a difference of a ten is not that big of a deal. That’s where then we’ll go back and, okay, what else can we do to make this thing more irresistible and then we’ll try to massage it. Maybe that’s 30% plus a free product that costs you nothing, or 30% plus, for the first 100 people, we’re gonna throw in this. By still keeping it as simple as possible and, maybe, that’s hey, why don’t we increase our prices and do 35%, or increase our prices and do 40%. Like there’s different ways you can go about this and that’s just a feel of them, but you’ve got to make it irresistible and don’t overcomplicate it.
Scott (50:42 - 52:31) - Yeah, I think that’s a key thing to keep in mind here is, it’s still the product the people are buying. So, if they wanna buy the product, they’re gonna buy the product, unless you make the process complicated or you set expectations that aren’t fulfilled. Perfect example of this is, remember, this is going back probably 3 years ago when we had a fashion client and I think their offer was, it was 30% off, but their banner underneath had small text that was made for desktop and unreadable on mobile that said ‘only on offers over $150 or $200.’ They sell dresses, the dresses were typically between $80 to $125 so you had to get to the checkout and you actually had to buy 2 to get the 30% off, and you could not read that messaging on mobile. That was partly on us, not picking that up at the time, but we weren’t responsible for the website. We definitely got our checklist a little bit stronger and more robust, but I remember that one flopped and we looked at it going, all these people getting to add to cart and not converting, and then we figured out what the problem was halfway through the day and changed it. It opened it up, thankfully, but it’s those little things. It’s the offer combined with the clarity, the messaging, the UX, making sure that the messaging’s right and consistent. It’s all these little things that you really need to run through with a fine-toothed comb before the weekend to make sure it’s right. What are some of those checklist items that you make sure we run through so we don’t get tripped up with those? We’ve made the mistakes in the past, man, and we’ve learned from it. You know, we’ve had things that haven’t worked, but I think we’ve been good at improving what we’ve been doing, and it’s super tight now. What does that checklist look like?
Ray (52:31 - 55:32) - Yeah, and you reminded me of I think the worst Q4 offer I’ve ever seen. It’s also with, one of the cardinal sins of Black Friday - no code needed. Never force someone to have a code. I could give you a hundred reasons why, but let me tell a big reason from a cautionary tale. We had a brand one time, they sold packages of something in the baby niche, and they sold them in packs of 4 and packs of 8. The promos were good coming into Q4 and what they thought a great idea of an irresistible offer was buy one set of 4, a second set of 4 at 50% using this code; buy one set of 8, get a free set of 4 using this code; buy one set of 8, get a second pair of 8 with this code. It was incredibly confusing and that really tossed the lesson. One, of simplicity, also, no code needed. The first one is don’t make people have a code. Make sure that you have no code needed, automatically applied. The second thing is, whatever you’re gonna use, whether you code it in or use an app to help you with your no code needed or buy one get one free, or your bundles, test it ahead of time. There’s so many brands that they’ll install the app the night before, they’ll never test it, they launch it, they didn’t do it correctly, and it just flops. You gotta test all of your tech days before to make sure you worked out all the kinks. Everything you use, announcement banner, countdown timer, app, bundle, upsell, cross-sell, downsell, whatever it is, make sure you have got to test it ahead of time. And then, another thing is, a big one, and Scott, we’ve seen this backfire on different occasions is you gotta make sure, two things. One, you check your spend limits everywhere. We’ll check it on the ad accounts for you, you need to check it on your credit cards and bank. I’ve seen ad accounts be fine, but your credit card and bank, they’d close you down. They see a big spike go from, you know, $2K a day to $10K a day, they’ll think someone stole it, they’ll shut it down. You gotta lock that down, make sure that you know what the limit is. Tell them ahead of time, hey, I’m gonna spend a lot of money, I plan on doing it, that’s why I’m letting you know. Second thing is, have back-up spends - PayPal, back-up credit cards. Just, I’d like to go into a house having several plans and not relying on one plan and have all my eggs in one basket. And then, another big one is going to be, just checking out. Some people in the past where they launched the sale, and they checked out - you gotta be really attentive and, Scott, you’re big on customer service. You will lose a lot of money by not answering your customer service. They need the answer, they’re trying to spend money on your account. That’s one time to put in extra work. Respond to those people as fast as possible ‘cause I’ve seen a brand lose out on 15 grand a day because they just went to go to the beach and they didn’t respond to their customer service. They didn’t have a plan in place. Those are actually the big 3.
Scott (55:32 - 56:30) - The amount of money I reckon you could make if you set the 24/7 over the weekend responding to comments on your ads, massive! I agree, you should, this is, again, it’s Superbowl weekend. You should be on 24/7 over that weekend. We are, like in different times, we would get everyone together in the same place. We’ll probably try to in Australia and the US. Probably, you know, COVID permitting at the moment, and it’s such a good thing to bring the whole team together. Everyone’s there to work on the accounts, analyze things, it’s such a fun weekend for us, but it’s amazing, the brand owners occasionally go away and leave it to us to do it. We need to talk, this thing’s happening in real-time. Absolutely, the customer service side this weekend is a massive opportunity to build that reputation. It’ll be Christmas in 3 or 4 weeks, go on your break then. Put the work in now because this is where you’re gonna make a lot of money.
Ray (56:30 - 57:18) - I’d say it’s a great weekend to surprise and delight people. I’ve seen, let’s be honest, like some people, they’ll say, ‘Your website’s not working, I can’t get it to work.’ It’s probably them, it’s probably them that can’t get it to work. Everyone else isn’t having a problem. Great time to surprise and delight, ‘I’m so sorry, I just wanna make it worth your while. Here you go, take this thing.’ It’s great goodwill-building, especially if someone messages you at midnight. ‘I wanna buy this big thing for Christmas,’ and some will respond to them as soon as possible. It’s a great wow factor that, honestly, I think, it’s probably one of the biggest overlooked things when it comes to that weekend. I know it’s a lot of work, but I would love to run a test one day, saying, you can have one person, that’s all they do, and I guarantee it, that UTM, the tracking links of people clicking on it, I bet it’ll be insanely profitable.
Scott (57:18 - 57:39) - Could not agree more! Ray, I think this is probably been the episode most filled with knowledge bombs that we’ve done. I actually think this has been an immense episode. Really, really good talking to you about this. Any parting words for everyone going to Black Friday here? What are your last recommendations?
Ray (57:39 - 58:17) - Thanks, Scott. I hope this has been helpful for everyone listening too. Parting words would be, start now. Have a plan. Reverse engineer your goal. We’re big on that in Right Hook. Know what you wanna make, reverse engineer the inventory you need to make, then reverse engineer potential list size you need to make it. Reverse engineer potential ad spend acquisition you need to make. Just reverse engineer, it’s no different than your personal life. Have a goal, have a north star, reverse engineer all the way down to the most simple steps. That’s how you have a big Q4. It all starts with just starting now. That’s how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
Scott (58:17 - 59:09) - Absolutely, absolutely. It’s all in the planning. So much of this is in the planning. Guys, thank you very much. I hope you’ve all got a lot out of this. Any questions, you know, feel free to reach out to Ray and I. We’re always happy to help. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and got a ton out of it, we’d really love the reviews. We haven’t gotten many reviews so far. We’ve got one 5-star review, I think people just don’t do it a lot. If you have, we love it. If you’re looking for someone to partner with for Black Friday, we’ve got a few slots remaining open at the moment, but we will be cutting that off in 3 or 4 weeks because it just gets way too late to be able to plan anything properly. If you wanna reach out to the team here at Right Hook, let’s do it. Let’s have the biggest Q4 collectively with us or not, and wishing you guys all the best. Yeah, let’s finish the year with a bang! Thanks, guys!
59:12 - 1:00:10 - Episode Outro
Scott (59:12 - 1:00:10) - Thanks again for tuning to this episode of the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. We hope you got a ton of value out of this episode and if you did, we’d love for you to leave us a review on your platform of choice and help us reach as many people as we can. Now, if you’re a brand founder, an eCommerce entrepreneur, or an in-house marketing manager looking to accelerate your growth this year, reach out to us at Right Hook Digital. We’re a performance branding agency and we specialize in partnering with eCommerce brands to help them hit their growth goals with maximum ROI. Now, if this sounds like a solution that you need, check us out at righthookdigital.com and schedule a call with our client partnerships team. They’d love to have a chat with you and see how we can help you grow in 2021.
