Black Friday Craziness
I woke up at 5 AM Friday morning.
So I thought, “Hey, why not go out and see what all these Black Friday sales are about?”
To my surprise, the stores I visited seemed to have everything in order. While there were large crowds things were moving well.
I went to Sports Authority, Dicks Sporting Goods, and Wal-mart. All of them had every register open. All 3 had staff members everywhere answering questions, and I didn’t see any “craziness” that you often hear in the media.
What I did notice is how well these sales affected you emotionally.
At Sports Authority they had nice Florida Gator sweatshirts for $14.95. Planning to pick up one, once I grabbed it…checked and label and saw the normal $49.95 price…I ended up buying 4 of them.
Beside that rack was a GPS that showed a regular price of $249.95. It had a big sign over it saying “door buster” for $99.95. I bought it even though I hadn’t really wanted or needed a GPS. How could you pass up a deal like this! 
I noticed a similar pattern at each of the stores. No need to share with you all the extra money I spent because of these money saving deals. For example at Walmart, many movies were $2. I bought a load of them – some of which I don’t even know what they’re about.
Once I saw the regular price – and then the discount offered – I felt the tug to purchase. All I could think about is how I would miss out if I didn’t buy immediately.
A lot of times I think we miss out on this powerful discount strategy online.
And no…I’m not talking about how you get $12,327 of items for only $19.95. That has been so overdone with ebooks that you don’t believe the value anymore.
That’s a key principle of what I saw going on. I bought a running outfit for 50% at Dicks Sporting Goods for example. I bought the SAME type of outfit in a different color for 15% off two weeks ago. So the sale was very real!
And that’s what’s missing from so many internet businesses…the sale that is REAL.
When is the last time you had a real sale in your business?
You’ll notice whenever I release new products I always have them discounted for a period of time. And here’s an interesting stat which wasn’t true a couple of years ago. Over the past year I’m finding 24 to 48 hour sales are the best length because almost all sales come in the last 24 hours.
But I haven’t been doing enough “regular” specials after products have been released. The majority of them have been during mini product launches.
That’s one of the values of building your opt-in email list. Now you can run specials and sales to your audience for products and services whenever you want. In fact, several of my clients run regular specials on each of the holiday sales right along with the stores…and these are their BIG selling periods also.
Another element is really proving to your customers that your special is a real special. For example, let’s say you’re including an ebook bonus you say is worth $47. OK, but how do you prove it is really worth $47 (there is the problem of everybody throwing in so much with ebooks)?
At the stores, I knew the sweatshirts were a good deal at $14.95 because I know what they cost at the other stores. I know what they cost regularly. I see those normal prices all the time for that SPECIFIC product.
This means the best solution is to often SHOW a link to the actual product offer. So if you say the ebook bonus is worth $47, show me a link to where you’ve been selling it for $47.
If you’re giving it to me as your free subscription offer on your squeeze page, link over to where I could buy it for regular price instead if I want.
In other words, give me a real deal…and then prove it’s a deal.
One issue with having these types of sales. Whenever you run one, you will often get customers who purchased the product recently for regular price?
What do you do in those cases? I noticed most of the stores don’t do anything. But online what about when customers ask for it? If you give them the discount, you’re getting rid of the value of the sale and possibly going back on your word depending on what you said about the sale. If you don’t do something, they can be disappointed or angry about their purchase.
Best solution I’ve found so far is to give them a similar level discount off another product or a coupon towards another product you offer.
Here’s an example of a special. Today is the last day you can register at the LOWEST PRICE for the Mark Hendricks conference I’ll be speaking at in Orlando for January. The price goes up on December 1st (although Mark has not said at what time of day the price goes up).
If you purchase a gold ticket, you will also get a load of additional bonuses (in addition to a license to sell the recordings from the event).
While I can’t speak for all the bonuses since they’re not mine, I do know that mine normally sells for $97. You can buy it from my site at that price any day.
It is still going to be included in the package if you order in a few days, but you will pay more for your ticket (and that goes up again on Dec 15th).
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We run a Bundle discount once a month that is over 70% off. It usually doubles to triples our profit for that pay period. I think online businesses don’t think that sales or bundles work online, but they are wrong, they can work wonders.
Thanks Terry,
We sold a product for $99 then offered a very similar product in an up-sell for $19.95.
The upsell product was an electronic toy and it looked very similar to the main product that cost 99 (the upsell product was different than the main product)
1 out of 3 customers took this upsell. The drastic cost-reduction on a product that had a similar perceived value to the $99 main product must have pushed people to take us up on the offer
Thanks for the post.
Jeremiah
Terry, I didn’t figure you for the shopping type
Thankfully we had another Thanksgiving celebration to attend Friday, or I would have had to lock my wife in the house!
Hi Michael,
I’m not normally the shopping type, but I happened to wake up and wanted to go watch how the sales affected people – getting caught up in buying along with them. Thankfully I only visited those sports stores and Walmart so my shopping wasn’t too big.
I saw on CNN that the people were so unruly at Walmart , that Walmart threw them out and locked them outside for two hours. What gets onto these crazy people?
All sales affects me in that way. Of course I need all the things that they sell cheap, even if I don´t even know what the product is for
I pray someday I will learn, ´cause it´s not cheaper to buy on sale, you just buy more, at least me 
I’ve never shopped on a Black Friday but this last friday I went and could’nt really find a deal. I think you get most of the deals if you show up at the stores the time they open up.