The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Kyle: I think that the danger with copying anybody, when you start to just copy and take someone else’s thing, if you don’t know one, the outcome that they’re getting.
[00:00:08] You don’t have clarity and you don’t really have clarity into sort of the backend mechanism that drives profitability. It could be a loss leader for them
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[00:01:13] Jason: black Friday, cyber Monday 2021 is over. And in this episode, we’re going to do some hot takes on what we saw, what worked, what didn’t and the industry insights from different perspectives.
[00:01:26] So gentlemen, welcome to the show. I’ve got a couple of data points to kick us off with, and then I’m interested in to hear your perspective, but how are you all everybody doing? Okay. Doing well.
[00:01:37] Chris: Great.
[00:01:37] Jason: All right. Right, right. Well, let’s jump into it. I have a couple of different data points and insights.
[00:01:43] One bit that I saw recently was on CNBC. They frame. Black Friday, cyber Monday as a digital disappointment. And I was like, wait, what really? That’s not my perspective, but whatever. So I looked at their, you know slide deck that they shared on their screen it’s data from Adobe. And they said Thanksgiving spending was flat black Friday spending was down 1%.
[00:02:08] November 1st through 28 spending was $99 billion globally, maybe. And then Versus 2020, they said spending was up 13.6%. So apparently from their point of view, that’s a digital disappointment. I’m not sure I agree with that. But then there’s one other bit I’ll share. And that’s from Shopify directly and Shopify as data was more optimistic and positive.
[00:02:35] Their commentary was that the black Friday cyber Monday sales were record sales. $6.3 billion flowed through the Shopify network. And that was a 23% increase in sales over 2020. So with those little bits of data, what were your guys’s points of view? Do you have anything else that you saw that was a data point that you want to share or first hot takes or insights and happy to go around the table?
[00:03:03] Michael? I know you’ve got a data point or a document you wanted to mention as well.
[00:03:06] Michael: I don’t have any massive takes on the day itself so much, but I think the industry trends showed up in the black Friday, cyber Monday in the UK, which is to say that new K this has been a bit of a quieter year than last year, but then in 2020, we got up to something like 47% of.
[00:03:24] Retail was e-commerce in the UK last year and it’s a small country and it was very locked down. So obviously we’ve dropped back to a mere 25%. So that would be expected really. So I think it was a demand drop. I don’t think the conversions are down or anything like that. The model isn’t broken, there’s just more people are actually shopping in physical shops, I think is what we saw here.
[00:03:40] Jason: Yeah. All right. Anything else around the table? Kyle. Chris, what do you got that’s yeah, I mean,
[00:03:48] Kyle: I think that it would. Representative of what many people thought was going to happen with black Friday, cyber Monday, you’re going to have more retail sales, which that was happening in the U S as well. People were going out and buying in store still less than what they were pre pandemic.
[00:04:06] Right. So there’s still less people out, but it was still an uptick over, over last year. And I think what we’re kind of seeing as well, just an overall trend is that because also the supply chain issues that we’re all facing. That they’ve sort of expanded their buying. So a lot of times, really the buying pressures began black Friday, cyber Monday, and that sort of kicked off the holiday buying season and you saw conversion rates go up and sales go up and traffic go up.
[00:04:33] But that’s sort of been extended out a little bit. So it’s not so much of a focus on the best deals happening on black Friday. Cyber Monday, those deals have started much earlier. And so some people’s buying a sort of been extended out further. And I think that’s kind of what we’re seeing from a data perspective.
[00:04:48] Jason: Yeah, totally. I mean, you know, they started talking about black Friday, cyber Monday in early November. And that was obviously an interesting trend, Chris, what, what’s your first take on it or.
[00:04:59] Chris: I think it’s smart that people are shopping early. And yeah, I do think that the allure and like the grandiose version of black Friday is probably behind us people.
[00:05:09] Really. Aren’t looking to stand in line in the cold and get trampled going into stores to save a few hundred dollars on TV, like they used to. And that’s because of the increase in digital sales, not just digital products, but just being able to buy online. And I think people frequently forget how. Low low, maybe isn’t the right word for it.
[00:05:27] But online sales are still just a fraction of retail sales. The majority of sales still happen at the retail level and that’s going to make for every black Friday cyber Monday for the foreseeable future be record setting. Cause it’s just increasing and as it continues to increase, it’s going to be higher than the last one.
[00:05:44] Now with a pandemic year, it’s going to kind of put a little bit. Of a dip in there where people aren’t going out as much. And I think this year people really wanted to go out cause they didn’t get to do the social black Friday last year because of all the pandemic stuff. But people are still gonna buy stuff.
[00:05:59] I don’t see in my lifetime a time where people are not going to want to spend money, they get a dopamine hit out of buying stuff for themselves and for other people. And when the retailers know that and they’re like, okay, Special deals and let’s put out specials and better offers. You know, people are gonna take advantage of it.
[00:06:15] And I hope a lot of people did take advantage of them as consumers, as well as saying, look, if I’m a seller, if I’m a retailer, if I’m an, an author, if I’m doing something where I have something for sale, take advantage of that increase in traffic. But just don’t overly focus on black Friday, cyber Monday.
[00:06:29] Just take advantage of that bump, but you’re right.
[00:06:33] Jason: Yeah, totally. All right. I’m going to ask each of you in a moment what your personal purchase of choice was that piqued your personal interest. If you did any shopping over black Friday, cyber Monday, if that’s a fair question, I think, and why that caught your attention or whatever, what the deal was.
[00:06:48] But then I also want to ask you about how your personal business. Did, if you had any special black Friday cyber, Monday promotions and oriented lessons, learn from them. And, and if you don’t want to share the details or whatever, that’s totally fine, but I do want to get that. But one other thing I’ll just tee up for us as conversation is I do wonder the extent to which the inventory, a supply chain drama of 2021 has affected merchants interest in putting products.
[00:07:18] Sale. I’m like, you know, like the question is if you’re already stressed on inventory do you really want to burn it down to the ground with some kind of crazy black Friday cyber Monday special? I think the answer is probably no. So I’m, I’m curious on your take on that part of this story. And the other piece that I’m curious about is just the year over year comparisons.
[00:07:41] Given the fact that last year was insane. For volume and for online sales, because of you know, the COVID lockdowns, you would think that the comparison point would logically, could even have been less than last year’s because how much last year was pushed to online purchasing. So any thoughts in those regards, as it relates to supply chain or your over your comparisons that people have, you want to go in the same order, Michael?
[00:08:10] Anything.
[00:08:11] Michael: I can say, yeah, I’ve got a quick response. Has the supply chain effected merchants interest in putting things on sale? I would say a couple of things. I mean, first of all, cyber Monday black Friday used to be a big talking points amongst the, the seven and eight figure sellers that I know, and that I have the mass mind.
[00:08:25] Nobody’s really talked about it this year, which is an interesting kind of little. Test. And I’d think that the answer is some people are still interested in putting things on sale, but they really, really shouldn’t be. There’ve been trained by Amazon specifically, even if they sell multichannel to be obsessed with unit sales velocity.
[00:08:40] And I think that’s a huge mistake and I think they should in fact, be preserving stock and probably not putting anything on sale in many cases, because the flip side of that is one of the mastermind members who’s doing. A few million dollars a year equivalent looked at his statistics and she had some year on year comparisons, 20 19, 20, 20, and 2021 year to date on the Facebook group the other day, really interesting.
[00:09:01] And he was very excited when he saw a spike in sales last year, and he couldn’t explain it until he looked back at his records and he was like, oh, I was really in stock with my best sellers. So everyone thinks about the demand side I selling. As the solution to making more sales or God forbid profits, but actually it turns out often when you look at the real data it’s being in stock, that means you can make sales in the first place.
[00:09:22] It comes back to the boring old stay in stock, you know, obsession.
[00:09:26] Jason: Yeah. Kyle, what are your thoughts on supply chain and or you over your competitor?
[00:09:30] Kyle: Well, it, it becomes interesting too, because if you talk to different resellers that are in the marketplace too, they’re eyeballing the fact that some of these brands are out of stock and that they can get sourced from other places or other wholesale things.
[00:09:45] And so they’re actually being able to sort of fill that gap, which I think is really interesting. Now they realize that that’s not always going to be the case, particularly when Amazon is the seller of record, right. They’re looking and say, when is Amazon going to be out of stock? And can I get it? And if I can, obviously I want to sell it and sort of fill that gap in the marketplace while everyone sort of deals with supply chain issues.
[00:10:04] So I think that’s an interesting angle when you’re talking about the supply. Overall though. I mean, I, we didn’t do a whole lot of discounting at all. Over black Friday, cyber Monday, I think we, I had one skew, which I sort of ran a special on cause it was trying to, I had a lot of it and I wanted to move it.
[00:10:21] And so I ran it as a, sort of a top of the funnel loss leaders approach. Cause it was a good sort of sample size. It’s like a little book like this. And so. That was the only thing that we did. Everything else was still full price. In fact prices went up, you know, so that’s, that’s how I approached it.
[00:10:39] And sales were pretty much, I mean, there were up a bit, you know, over that timeframe from last, last year as well. So, I mean, we were definitely making more money. Because we didn’t do heavy discounting. So I think that there’s something to that. I think making sure that the supply side and demand side are equally balanced out and not to get too intoxicated by just top-line sales.
[00:11:00] Jason: Kyle, I know in prior years you’ve participated in the lightning isn’t lightning deals you participated in. Was that still something of interest to you or not so much if you kind of moved away from that or what was your.
[00:11:12] Kyle: Yeah, no, I moved away from it a bit. I mean, there, there’s still some strategic advantage to using them.
[00:11:17] But they’re just become very expensive, particularly over like the black Friday. Any, any sort of holiday, like it’s not uncommon for Amazon to charge you anywhere between. 250 to $500 just to run the deal, regardless of the outcome, you know, it’s not like they’re just going to, Hey, pay us 500 bucks and we’re going to put your product out there.
[00:11:37] And and plus you have to discount it like 20%. So you have to discount your product plus pay for the advertising to do it. So when you do the math on it, it becomes very, very challenging. Unless you have a lot of volume that you know, you’re going to do, and that’s a bit of a gamble as well, because even if you have good sales velocity for the particular.
[00:11:56] If that product doesn’t have really mass appeal, right. You’re going to put it out there as a, as a lightning deal or one of these special deals on Amazon. And you might get a few marks or sales, but you may not even sell out the total amount that you’re trying to do. So there’s a little bit of strategy involved in it.
[00:12:09] I still do them, but I do them a little bit more strategically and I don’t try to optimize for peak days. So yeah.
[00:12:16] Jason: Yeah. Love it. Chris thoughts about supply chain lowering your, you know, your prices are raising them, giving your stock on hand and all that stuff. Yeah. I’m
[00:12:26] Chris: listening to all these problems and I’m like as a digital product seller and as a print on demand product seller, I’m like, I am very glad, like I see all those boats out in the Pacific.
[00:12:38] I have no worries. None of my stuff is there, but, but I still live in the real world when COVID hit. And there were some states where Amazon has their print on demand book, printing facilities, and the state actually said you can’t be open. So. The Amazon event. I don’t know if they eventually actually stopped taking orders or if they had like skeleton crews, like even, even on the print on demand books, which normally print and ship the same day.
[00:13:04] Like it’s, it’s amazing. I could order it today. They’ll print it, ship it today. I don’t get it tomorrow. If I pay for overnight shipping, it’s insane, but they weren’t having eight to 10. Lead times they’re still prime eligible. Once they finally shipped the lead times really extended on a print-on-demand products.
[00:13:18] So it’s not the print on demand. Products are completely immune to supply chain issues. If they don’t have the labor to run the machines or if they don’t have the supplies, the paper, the ink, the glue all of that stuff to. The products, if it’s books or if it’s something else those things are still gonna be potentially impacted.
[00:13:31] I do like that because it’s Amazon, but I think it back, I don’t think they actually stopped taking orders, but the lead times got kind of crazy. But when it comes to like gift, like if someone can buy from Amazon and Hey, they know what’s going to get there, they can give an Amazon gift receipt. Amazon still taking that order, which means I’m still going to get paid.
[00:13:47] I’m not as worried about all that stuff, but I sympathize with, with the physical products. Who have real supply chain issues. And I think they should be strategic just like Kyle. And like we’re saying of not running a sale, why would I bother running sale? I’m a sell, there’s a full price. I might sell these all at over retail prices by the time Christmas comes around, because there’s going to be a lot of people who wait, they, they are not thinking ahead to be like, oh, I should shop right now.
[00:14:11] I should shop in November and get it out of the way because it’s 20, 21 every single time, the news comes on, they’re talking about supply chain issues like this. Isn’t like there was a year where I came back. I typically taken a vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas to avoid a lot of this stuff.
[00:14:26] And I totally planned to come back from vacation and say, look, I’m just going to buy everything from Amazon. They got free two day shipping. I can order everything I need for Christmas on December 22nd. And that was the first time that I realized that. Prime eligibility. They will actually push stuff back if they can’t ship everything on time.
[00:14:42] And that was the lesson I learned the hard way, but I can’t get this stuff at Christmas for any amount of, of paying for shipping. And that trained me to order stuff a little bit earlier. And I think 2021 is going to train a lot of. The order early, and that might translate into 2022 where Hey, like a lot of people are ordering really early cause they got burned last year.
[00:15:01] So it’s just important to kind of keep track of the different types of consumers that are going to be buying early, buying late and make sure that you have stock.
[00:15:07] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I’ll just share our little hot take from pixie fair. We have a very structured black Friday to cyber Monday week day parting strategy we do for every year with different discounts and deals a week.
[00:15:21] Iterated this year a bit and had a really great, great outcome. So we’re thrilled about that. We, we are like you, Chris almost all digital products, so we have to be very particular about what we do and how we do it. So we have a very regimented structure and we announce ahead of time at the first part of the week, our deals for the week, we had like our own little deal sheet blog, and we turn it into a con.
[00:15:46] And it worked really well this year, so people are showing up and buying and we’re really, really grateful for that. So yeah. So from our vantage point in our little corner of the internet is a great, great you know, black Friday cyber Monday. Okay. Now I want to ask you about your personal purchases.
[00:16:02] If anything caught your attention, what you bought, you don’t have to share. I’ll share mine first, if you want. I got a screaming. On a one-year subscription to the wall street journal for $4 a month. So that was my that’s my screaming deal. I think Kyle and I also bought a business deal half off jot forms, I think for our annualized subscription, which is a tool we use a lot in our business.
[00:16:25] And then I bought another app that was discounted a lot. And as a study app Bible study stuff. So those are my three purchases. So I didn’t go huge. I didn’t buy anything very expensive, but I’m interested to know if anything caught your attention and what it was and why, w you know, w if you want to share whatever, I I’m springing this on you guys.
[00:16:45] So feel free to decline the offer.
[00:16:48] Michael: I’ve got one that I thought was kind of exemplified a few useful things. So I bought, I spent a few hundred bucks on a couple of digital products under the wind for digital products. Two digital bundles. One was an online bundle of video courses, a bundling as an obvious way to move more stuff.
[00:17:01] And this is no exception. And then when it was. SOP standard operating procedures so that since I bought a ton of Google docs and Google sheets, so my reflection on this first of all, they, they discounted massively. I think it was supposed to be $97 per month. So a lot of money per year, which I definitely wouldn’t have bought for a lot of Google docs and Google sheets down to, I dunno what it was $97 or something.
[00:17:23] You know, once lifetime access. So if they’d done that with physical products, it would have been a massive loss. So sort of discount levels that you can do with digital products really struck me as a, as a. You know, mark said whilst I was shopping the second thing is the digital products were not in the value that the perception of the value for me, and the reason I was prepared to pay was not the product itself.
[00:17:43] Google documents do not excite me as products to pay for, but the perception of value was very much based on the results. And that was based in number three in the positioning, personal branding of the person who sold them to me, used to work for Airbnb and PayPal and is I believe a, an SEO expert. So that had to be in place before.
[00:18:00] Any kind of cyber Monday, black Friday, whatever which day it was, would have had effect. And the fourth thing is I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t gotten a great job of staying in touch with me and nurturing by email over maybe two years as it’s a headband on the podcast. And then he, he pulled the trigger and gave me an a really great offer and I bought, but it was an, an example of well done marketing.
[00:18:20] And when for digital products,
[00:18:22] Jason: I was actually going to give a commentary about digital products, but I’ll save it for a couple minutes here, but let’s go keep going around the table, Kyle or Chris, anything that was of interest to you personally, that you’ve picked up with a screaming deal in mind, we bought
[00:18:34] Kyle: baby stuff like car seats and strollers.
[00:18:37] Cause we’re having a baby in February. So we were looking for big stuff. We got the other screaming deal I got was also a digital product. But I bought more crypto because it was not a dip because the whole market went nuts with the with the new variant news. And so I bought the dip and that was my black Friday cyber Monday purchase.
[00:18:55] Chris: I think anybody listening to this are thinking like they’re not buying TVs and laptops and all the, I don’t know, traditional, stereotypical black Friday deals that are, you know, front page ads and all these things because I’m, I’m with you guys in of. Like digital stuff and subscriptions and incredibly, incredibly boring stuff.
[00:19:15] So I think a lot of people that are listening to this, they’re going to be business owners. And I hope they’re thinking along these lines, I’ve actually got a group chat where we were sharing like deals with like, Hey, if you need this for your business or, Hey, this is normally this much for a yearly plan and they’ve got a half off.
[00:19:28] So you might as well pick it up if you’re going to use this service or this program or this app for your business. And I think that’s. I think a lot of people are starting to look at black Friday and be like, yeah, I use this streaming service. What it’s like half off today. Yeah. Heck yeah. I’ll prepay for the year and take advantage of those things.
[00:19:45] That’s one way you can really save money is to say like eight, like buy ahead when it’s at a discount it’s like buying a whole bunch of toothpaste when it’s on sale. So you don’t have to buy toothpaste later. It’s one of the real ways that like you’re actually saving money you know, by doing this and they’re going to have another sale.
[00:19:59] It’s one of those things, like we talked last time about how black Friday can be the worst time to run a sale because everybody’s running a sale. There’s so much noise. There’s so much competition, but you also know, Hey, they’re all going. So if you’re gonna run a black Friday sale and give half off on something I’m going to buy anyway, I’ll take advantage of it.
[00:20:12] But because there’s so much noise having this group chat to be like, Hey, what do you guys get? Hey, I just picked this up. This might be of interest to you that kind of helped kind of filter it down towards not this overwhelming feeling of, oh, for Pete’s sake. There’s so much stuff out there. How am I going to find what I want?
[00:20:26] If you know what, forget this. I was like, oh, these are the things, oh, you use that you really recommended. It makes a lot of sense. So you can be a little more efficient with it, but I think I’m past the days of waiting in line and refreshing the screen and all that stuff. It is too stressful, man. Like there’s, there’s easier ways to get deals these
[00:20:44] Jason: days.
[00:20:45] You know, it’s interesting, as I reflect on this stuff, the only big purchase I’m waiting to make. And I, I went ahead and did it was I need a new iPhone, so I’m on eight. I want to go to the new one. But I’m on at and T, but T-Mobile was offering a, a thousand dollars plus a new phone. And then I saw that it was, I think Verizon was offering a brand new phone.
[00:21:06] And all these companies that aren’t my company we’re offering the screaming deals. And so I literally said to cinema, can I switch plans? And she was like, do not switch carriers. And so we got me a new phone, but I, but I was waiting for the, at T and T screaming deal, which they didn’t offer. And I was like, dang it.
[00:21:22] But then the other thing that the sort of a big ticket. That I’m trying to wait for or find is just an iPad, but I’m not looking for a deal. I’m looking for the iPad. They just don’t have them anywhere. I’m going every apple store I go to, I can’t get him. So finally I’m just like, okay, I’ll just buy it on, on the apple site and hope I get it shipped in a timely manner.
[00:21:43] But yeah, these are real supply chain challenges. Let’s talk about digital for a couple minutes. ’cause everyone’s mentioned the interest or intrigue in digital products, either for personal use or business use. And I think that’s fascinating as a digital seller, I mean, my pedigree, I guess, is I’ve been doing digital goods since September, 2009.
[00:22:04] Commercially online. And then before that I was a senior vice president of marketing at a university. So literally sell a piece of paper. And so that’s guess the intangibles and and had been in nonprofit fundraising forever. So that’s intangible, but, so that’s my background. What I saw happen this black Friday cyber Monday was a shocking degree of discounting by information market.
[00:22:29] That I personally feel was very, very immature marketing thinking and not logical. I saw people who have good brand and reputations burning their products, credibility to the ground, and literally saying to their audience, if you bought this last week on an early care, I’m now selling it for 97% off. And I said to myself, in what universe.
[00:22:57] Does that make any sense? Now famously Tim Berners Lee, the guy who made the internet is quoted as saying information wants to be. And every digital marketer has this tension between the use of strategic free and maintaining the value proposition of your digital items. And I just saw it in my view. I saw several examples where I was like, wow, what are they thinking?
[00:23:23] Because they are not doing themselves any long-term favors. I just think they’re parroting other people’s. Systems or, you know, kind of just copying without logic. And so anyway, that was my kind of personal reflection on it. And I was, I was kinda shocked. So what are you guys’ thoughts on the digital sellers, Chris?
[00:23:40] I know you’re in the. What w what are your thoughts on this whole topic too? I think you’re 1000%,
[00:23:48] Chris: right? When you have a digital product, you can discount a 99% off and still technically make money or not lose money. Right? Like you’re not actually buying products and sending them out and having this, this loss.
[00:23:58] But you’re right. Like you burn customers who pay full price when you have too good of a deal. There is the. The truth that people who pay, pay attention. So if you made everything free, it is going to have less impact than if you actually charged for it. And that that’s a little bit of like a catch 22, which is like, like I want to help my customers.
[00:24:18] And if I can help them for free, I would. But if I don’t charge, they’re not going to do it. So I actually have to charge them so that they do it. So. Helping them, if I charge them at it doesn’t make sense, but like, it actually does. It’s because humans are irrational and you have to understand that. And then you can make rational decisions about when to be irrational.
[00:24:34] It’s a little, another catch 22 in there. But digital product. I think you could, maybe Jason, tell me if you agree with this, because anybody can make and distribute and sell a digital product in 2021 moving forward. It’s kind of like the internet will let you play with fire if you want to. Right.
[00:24:49] Amazon’s the same way. Look, you can play with fire on Amazon. They’re not going to stop you, but if you get yourself in trouble, you might find out that you really get burned. And if you’re a digital marketer and you don’t have a true marketing background, if you don’t truly understand. The motivations of the customer in the digital product space specifically, then you can make big mistakes and have a high value proposition where if it’s a $2,000 course, it’s on sale for $6.
[00:25:13] I don’t think of it as $2,000 course anymore because you’re willing to sell for six bucks. That’s
[00:25:17] Jason: right. I think it’s a scam. Yeah. I totally right. I think that there are economic based principles. First principles that come into play immediately tragedy. The commons is a phrase that people can look up, but basically if you have a low barrier to entry system and many, many people can enter it, then the question is, do they debase the system for, you know, everyone?
[00:25:41] And and I believe that the pendulum is swinging more and more towards a global. Of information marketing products that are being managed by amateur marketers who have gone for the money grab. Now if they have a long-term strategy, good on them, great. Like, you know, if you give away one thing because you’re building another thing you know, it’s all good, but what my freebie is.
[00:26:05] If my, if my freebie is your $2,000, course, you have a big problem. I don’t, unless I don’t have another $2,000 product. So all of these swirled together into an interesting pie, you know, the, the, the bleeding edge of information marketing continues to advance every year, every month as people try new things.
[00:26:26] And I do think we’re seeing changes in the industry that are interesting to both. And over time, people will either ruin themselves and their long-term business value or they’ll create long-term business value for their customers and for themselves. And it can be done. Universities have done it for thousands of years.
[00:26:45] And so I think it’s an interesting situation. We find ourself in Kyle and Chris or Kyle and Michael. Sorry, what are your.
[00:26:52] Michael: I’ve got a quick one. Just got to confess that. It’s interesting hearing you talk about that. You know, people just copying other people and there is a great pressure. I mean, I, I’ve kind of been looking at other digital information, marketers and consultants, whatever, offering me stuff.
[00:27:05] And I bought one and that’s made me think, oh, maybe I should go and discounts and courses and even discount coaching. And then partners. Me’s just extremely reluctant to do that because I’ve put time and effort in. Which could be sunk cost, or it could be valuable to the consumer, but either way, copying somebody else is not actually a good reason.
[00:27:20] Part of me is resisting that. So I’ve got this internal tussle every year when cyber you know, black Friday cyber Monday comes up because my instinct is not to put discounts out there really. So it’s a very instinct Taso that we all face, but I would say. Okay. It comes down to, you know, you’re the man who normally says this, Jason branding it’s really, if you’re going to sell something, you’ve got to work incredibly hard to create branding, and then you can throw it away very quickly by coming up with ridiculous levels of discount.
[00:27:44] So I think that the color, the solution is you’ve got to work really, really hard to build brand. You’ve got to really work hard to persuade somebody, to give you $97 for something else that is not a hundred percent dissimilar to something that is $9. Yeah. That work is such a big burden I can, in some way we cave in and just put the money down.
[00:27:59] I can see why we cave, but I think it’s always a mistake really
[00:28:03] Jason: well. I think it was buffet who said might not have been him, but you know, a reputation that’s taken you a lifetime to build can be ruined in a moment. And really as information marketers, you, you almost have the. That ability to literally obliterate your brand or reputation by these kinds of silliness pricing mistakes or, or ideas.
[00:28:25] So, Kyle, what are your thoughts on, yeah, I would
[00:28:28] Kyle: agree with Michael and what you were saying as well. I think that the danger with copying anybody, whether it’s black Friday deals, cyber Monday deal, digital marketing, the challenge. When, when you start to just copy and take someone else’s thing, if you don’t know one, the outcome that they’re.
[00:28:43] getting Are they getting a good outcome at the back end of this deal? Or has it been a terrible thing where they’re losing money? Right. So you don’t have clarity and you don’t really have clarity into sort of the backend mechanism that drives profitability. It could be a loss leader for them where they’re like, actually, what I’m going to sell you is something totally different.
[00:28:59] And that’s still going to be $10,000 or $5,000 or whatever it is. And you just don’t see their full business. So, you know, you, you kind of make, you can’t make decisions. Look. The top of the iceberg, right? The tip of the iceberg, because everything else is below the water and it’s below your line of visibility.
[00:29:14] So I think that’s the big cautionary tale for me with that. And then the second thing I think with digital marketing, the people who are going to be making money, I think with digital products are the people who can organize information affect. Because to your point, information does want to be free. And there’s a ton of information, both good and bad on any topic on like YouTube, you can get bad advice or you can get really good advice, but I think what people are willing to pay for and what they’re willing to spend money on is.
[00:29:44] Someone a provider who’s going to organize that into actionable data and sort of sort through it and be the better of that, that data, and that has valued. So I think if you’re bringing that to any industry or any product line that that is tremendously valuable and you shouldn’t be just.
[00:29:58] Jason: Wow. Okay. This took a whole turn.
[00:30:00] I wasn’t expecting really, I didn’t realize it would get into deep, you know, like a philosophical, digital content pricing strategies here, but, but you know what? The black Friday cyber Monday marketing that we saw beg the questions and I think it’s good for us to reflect on them. Okay. Let’s wrap it up for 30 minutes in any other big takeaways for black Friday, cyber Monday 2021.
[00:30:21] We want to share with people concluding that.
[00:30:23] Chris: I’ll throw this out there as, as a primarily digital and print on demand seller, like Kyle really nailed it. And I think it’s important for people to understand just like you said, information wants to be free. In general. Information is free between Google, Facebook and YouTube.
[00:30:37] I don’t know anything. That’s literally not on the internet now. It might be hard to. And that’s the problem. And that’s what people pay for. In Kyle said organized, he said, vet, I would use the word curate to take, you know, an expert can curate and take all this information and kind of whittle it down and say, no, this is what you actually need to know to be educated in, in, in this topic.
[00:30:59] And that’s what people are. Now if it’s a one-time digital product. Now, when you go next level, when you start getting into thousand dollars, 2,005,000, all this extra stuff, that’s when, in my opinion, you’re getting into personalization. If you’re going to work with someone, one-on-one, who’s going to actually address things specific to you.
[00:31:15] And if that’s how everything’s going to work, that’s going to push prices down on the organization, on the curation products and good at I’m not trying to be too what the word what’s. I don’t know what the. But you know, pat my own back too much. But I do want information to be free. I want people to have access to good information at the lowest possible price.
[00:31:34] The easiest possible delivery method, which is my Kindle would be my preferred method. I want that to be very inexpensive and I would put out there, and I don’t know if I’ll do this within the next year, but to say, look, I really do want to help all you guys. I will make my stuff free one day a year.
[00:31:50] All of my stuff free. And Hey, if you, if it’s the day after the free day, you got to wait, get on the email list and I will email you ahead of maybe it could be my birthday on my birthday. All of my digital stuff is free and I’ll show you where it all like it’s, but it’s not personalized. You’re not getting one-on-one time with me for free, but anything I’ve put out there you can have for free that way.
[00:32:11] I’m not discounting 97%
[00:32:13] Jason: and all those things, because what you’re saying is what you’re doing. Earning a living off of is the personalized group work or one-on-one coaching or that kind of product, the stuff that’s the content is your loss leader. If you will, or you know, the freemium and the free and your freemium model.
[00:32:30] And therefore you’re just moving what Eben pagan calls, the free line, which in that regard, it’s smart. Pricing strategy for digital marketers, but you’re a veteran at this, you know, so, but yeah, to make it all free, if you’ve got to Kyle’s point an iceberg underneath it, that is how you actually earn a living and survive.
[00:32:50] You’re
[00:32:50] Chris: all good, everyone. Yeah.
[00:32:56] Jason: Some
[00:32:56] Chris: people can just take a book and it will change their life and they’ll do everything. Most people don’t, they might take a few different things, but if they have a coach come in, someone one-on-one somebody personalizes it for them. That’s going to stick. And a lot of people know that. And that’s why a lot of high-end professionals hire coaches.
[00:33:12] That’s why, you know, even LeBron, James. Coaches, not just for basketball, but for nutrition and for all kinds of different things. And people need to think about that, but I don’t want to be overwhelmed on the, on the digital product side. But when you have, when you’re digital and you have margin, you have things you can play with and you play with fire and you have to protect your reputation as you experiment, going into the future of, of marketing strategies that have never been used before.
[00:33:36] I encourage people to try things, but be careful of potentially ruin your reputation and the value of your.
[00:33:43] Jason: Love it. Okay. Kyle and Michael final thoughts wrapping up.
[00:33:46] Kyle: If you haven’t got all your black Friday cyber Monday, shopping done get out there and do the deals are still like, this is before, before all this stuff has gone with all the supply chain stuff.
[00:33:59] If it’s digital, you still you’re still in luck. And then, you know, if you’re lucky enough to wait for Chris’s amazing once a year deal sign up for his email list.
[00:34:07] Michael: I’m really centered by models that actually, I mean, all the things you said, Chris, make it a hundred percent sense and everyone needs an iceberg slash back-end and that you need to know where your is going to be made in your business model. To your point, Kyle, a hundred percent, you can’t copy the superficial structure of somebody’s marketing without going broke, probably, but I’m tempted the other way.
[00:34:24] I’m kind of tired of providing a lot of value. Thank you anyway for free on podcasts. I want to start charging for books and the reason why is because I can run, pays marketing and the reason for doing that, isn’t really about profitability. The front end. It’s a scaling without going crazy. So I haven’t done it yet.
[00:34:39] We’ll see if I get down to, but that’s my personal take on. I’m kind of tempted to go the opposite direction with price to everyone else.
[00:34:44] Jason: I love this. This is great insights. I would just say as a final takeaway, if you’re a marketer, a online seller, listening to this, my best advice for you would be. Take out your journal and document everything you did this black Friday cyber Monday, or during this, you know, selling season and record the outcomes and take a, you know, just journal it.
[00:35:04] We’ve tried our best to do that every year for the last 12 years or whatever. And you get cumulative effects when you do that, when you really can remember what exactly did we do last time? How exactly did we set this up? And oh, year over year, you’ll have a compounding effect and get better and better at your own use.
[00:35:21] Lost leaders and freemium stuff and digital goods and inventory on hand and pricing strategies and on and on and on. So hopefully that’s a final, helpful tip gentlemen, as always, it’s an honor to collaborate with you, picking your brain on this stuff is a blast. And thank you everybody who listens in the call-in show itself.
[00:35:42] And then for those of you who check us out on the e-commerce leader, you can see all the prior episodes at the e-commerce leader dot. We also have some goodies there free and that we’d love to have you check out and we also love your like or subscription or whatever you can do on your podcast listener, product of choice.
[00:35:59] So there you have it. Thanks guys. I’ll end it here. Thanks everyone. Thanks
[00:36:02] Kyle: everyone. Thanks.
[00:36:03]