3 strategic hacks to make more money on your next sales promotion
Hey hey hey and welcome to another episode of the Simplify Your Sales podcast!
While I love, love, LOVE using a sales promotion as a quick cash injection in my business (which, if you’ve been following along on the podcast, I’ve been talking about it *quite* a bit lately), they’re not always easy.
In fact, it can take a fair bit of work in order to run a sales promotion that is smooth, streamlined, and profitable. Especially if it’s your first time.
After running dozens of sales promotions myself over the years on everything from wedding guest book art prints to stationary to baby headbands to online courses and templates, when I DO choose to run a sales promotion, you better believe I do everything in my power to make sure it’s optimized and going to bring me as much revenue as possible. As a busy mom, I am ALL about getting as much bang for my buck, so to speak, as possible. It’s just how I run my business.
Chances are, you’re probably a bit busy, too. Whether it’s with kids or school or a full-time job or just LIFE, you probably don’t have “all day everyday” to just sit and work on running your creative business. I GET THAT. I’m right there with ya.
SO in today’s podcast episode, I want to share 3 tips that I personally use every single time I run a sale to ensure that it’s as profitable as possible and that it’s 100% worth the time I DO put into it.
Ready to dive in? Let’s do this!
Alright, tip #1: Show up multiple times per day for the duration of your sale.
When it comes to running a sales promotion, the more often you can show up, the more money you will make. Every single time.
I’ve definitely talked about this in past episodes before, but there’s this widely-popular myth out
there that if you talk about your shop too much during a sale, you’re being sleazy and sales-y and everyone is going to hate you.
And truly? That is just ABSURD!
You are a BUSINESS owner for crying out loud! Your goal with marketing is to make people aware of your products and sales– and if you’re not talking about them, you’re not doing your job! If people are following you on social media, they have already expressed interest in your product. You are doing them a MAJOR disservice if you aren’t letting them know the things they expressed interest in learning more about (aka your sales!).
You should be showing up nearly every single day the 2 weeks prior to your sale, absolutely, but when your sale goes live? You should be present on social media AT LEAST 2x/day.
Usually, this is in the morning + the evening and there’s a reason for that: You want to attract BOTH types of shoppers– the early morning browsers and the late night browsers (I happen to be in the latter category).
With the ever changing algorithms and clutter of social media, if you only post 1x/day, you’re only appearing to a VERY small and select group of people– and there are plenty of your followers that just flat-out WON’T see your stuff! How is that fair to them?! Hopefully approaching it with that mindset shift will help you realize that you’re not being spammy and sleazy sales-y when you post about your stuff– you’re just trying to make sure that as many of your followers as possible see it– since they signed up to follow along with you anyways!
And at the end of the day, remember that this is ONLY for a short period of time– you’re not going to be mega-posting 2+x/day for the rest of your life– just for this teeny-tiny promotion. And then you’ll go back to your normal posting schedule.
And if the idea of creating 2x posts/day is stressing you out, I highly, HIGHLY recommend BATCHING it– creating ALL THE CONTENT in one big chunk of time prior to running the sales promotion– and then scheduling it to deploy on schedule. Not only is this going to cut down on your stress level significantly DURING the actual promotion, but it’s going to allow you to craft posts that truly ARE strategic in driving the sale– instead of trying to wing something the morning of.
Alright, tip #2: Create additional “deadlines” within your sale
Every sales promotion has a start date and an end date, right?! And it’s usually during that end date that the sales come rushing in (assuming, of course, that you have an offer your customers are interested in).
But let me tell you– it is DISCOURAGING to run a sales promotion and get people pumped up for it only to have barely a trickle of sales the first few days. I’ve been there, done that, and I’m here to tell you that it’s hard to keep morale and energy up high (and keep “showing up”) when you feel like a flat-out failure.
So how can you optimize the “lull time” in between the start and end dates of your sale? What can you do to get people to take action during the MIDDLE of your sale?
It’s all about creating additional DEADLINES within your sale.
These deadlines are simply fast-action offers— or special offers that people get if they take action and purchase during a certain time frame. It provides your customers with another FOMO opportunity that moves them off the fence and opening their wallets.
So what does this look like?
Well, if you were running a 3 day sale, on Day 2, you could have a 24 hour bonus where everyone who ordered within that timeframe would get an extra 10% off or upgraded shipping or something that they would see as valuable, but wouldn’t put you out too much. You might even include a free gift with their order. It doesn’t matter so much WHAT you offer as much as it does that you create the urgency behind it– letting them know it’s only good for 24 hours (or whatever time limit you set on it) and that they have to act quickly to snag the deal for themselves.
I’ve done this with both physical AND digital products– I’ve offered a free bonus headband for the first 20 people to purchase during a sale before, and with my signature Mastermind Your Marketing program, I’ve offered free coaching calls to the first 10 enrollees. I’m here to tell you it all works like a charm.
I’ve also run sales with different “daily deals” where a different type of promotion was run everyday– like 20% off on Monday, Free upgraded shipping on Tuesday, Doorbuster pricing on Wednesday, etc. And while a little more of a logistical headache, it worked amazingly well, too.
So if you are ready to up the ante and get that confidence boost early on in your sale, consider adding that fast-action bonus– that additional “deadline”– to your sale to get people to take action before the final closing hours– not only is going to help you logistically when it comes to filling orders (since they’ll be more spread out), but it’s also a really great way to test out additional “promotions” and see what your audience really responds to. Successful business is all about experimenting, my friend. So go wild!
Okay, and finally we’re here to…
Tip #3: Add email marketing to the mix!
I am not shy about singing the praises of email marketing and there’s a reason for it– email marketing just plain converts people into paying customers a heckuva lot better.
But I was probably a lot like you are now in regards to email marketing– I didn’t believe it was true and put it off for a looooooooong time, thinking my time was much better spent creating just “one more” Facebook post for my promotion.
The contrast between running a social media ONLY promotion vs. a social media AND email marketing promotion was like night and day.
Like I mentioned earlier in this episode, you can easily disappear into oblivion on social media before your followers see you. It’s just a fact at this point.
But with email marketing, you’re landing DIRECTLY INTO THEIR INBOX. And while they certainly can choose NOT to open it, they’ll see it. They’ll know it’s there. And you’ll be on their mind.
The click-through rate for social media is .5%– meaning that .5% of your followers will actually click through to your shop. Womp womp.
For email marketing? 2-3%– which is 6x MORE effective than social media, if you’re counting.
Now that’s not to say social media isn’t important– it absolutely is and you can still run a profitable sale with only that.
But if you REALLY want to kick things up a notch (or, like, 6 notches), then combine it with the power of email marketing and watch your sales EXPLODE.
Inside Mastermind Your Marketing, my signature done-for-you marketing system program, we walk you through getting started with email marketing and creating an automated sales sequence for it that each of your new subscribers goes through.
We’ve had people use the strategies inside the course to create that strong email marketing foundation and then and QUADRUPLE their normal sales numbers when they ran their next sales promotion. One of our students got 14 sales in the first 15 minutes of sending out her sales promotion email.
So yeah, email marketing? It works. And when you add it to the mix in addition to your social media, your sales– and revenue– will exponentially grow.
And just so we’re clear– you’re not creating ALL NEW content for your emails– you’re repurposing the content YOU’VE ALREADY CREATED FOR SOCIAL MEDIA and using that. So it’s basically a “two birds with one stone” sorta deal that impacts your revenue in an insanely profitable way.
Okay, so just to recap:
3 things you can do to boost your revenue drastically in your next sales promotion:
1- Show up multiple times per day during your sale
2- Create additional “deadlines” within your actual sale
3- Add email marketing to the mix
With these 3 tips in hand, you are well on your way to hosting your most profitable sales promotion yet– you better believe it!
Thanks for joining me this week on the Simplify Your Sales podcast! If you liked what you heard, make sure you subscribe to the Simplify Your Sales podcast over on iTunes where I share a new episode every single week. And if you’ve found ANY sort of value in this episode, please leave it a review so that others can see if it’ll be a good resource for them, too.
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next week, same time, same place, teaching you how to build a business that supports your lifestyle…and not the other way around!