NAME: Ep 376 Customers The Shiny New Sales Strategy You’ve Been Searching For_audio.mp3
DATE: 2023-03-24
DURATION: 4148
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SUMMARY:
Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner, is the host of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. In this episode, she discusses the importance of understanding why people buy in order to yield successful sales. She explains how offering discounts and promotions are not enough on their own and that there is a crucial piece missing from the puzzle. Selena also discusses how her business has been going through many changes and updates, and how she took a break last weekend to relax at the beach. She emphasizes the importance of taking breaks and avoiding chaos in order to be productive.

In the conversation, the speaker talks about the importance of taking a break from the daily grind. She ran into her chiropractor who had recently gone to India to raise money for a charitable organization, and was doing chiropractic work while she was there. The speaker then brings up two comments she received on her inventory training program, which is designed to help people move old stock without having a sale. The training covers why stock isn’t moving, the formula to decide when stock needs to move, and the strategies to do so. The speaker emphasizes that selling is not rocket science, and encourages people to take a break from their daily lives to recharge and gain perspective.

The speaker discussed how important it is to have a goal when attending events, webinars, or trainings. Even if you think you know the content being presented, there may be something new that you can learn. The speaker used the example of a recent event they attended where they already knew the content but still walked away with something new. They had met someone at the event and learned a new idea from their conversation. The speaker’s takeaway from the event was to always go in with a goal and be open to learning something new. They also learned a small extra step in social media from the person presenting and although they weren’t sure if it would work for them, they now had it in their back pocket if they wanted to try it.

The speaker was reflecting on how he learned from customer feedback. He noticed two people using the same words shiny and new to describe what they were looking for, and it made him realize that they wanted something new. He decided to take notice of this and develop a shiny new strategy. He is going to share this strategy with his customers and has also created a bonus number 10 strategy and other extra content. He is confident that if customers use his strategies, they will make their money back.
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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00:00 “Uncovering the Crucial Piece to Transform Your Sales Game”

0:03:11 “The Benefits of Taking a Break: Refreshing the Mind and Recharging the Brain”

0:04:32 “The Benefits of Setting Goals When Attending Events and Trainings”

0:07:47 “Uncovering the Missing Piece: How to Identify and Implement a Shiny New Strategy”

0:09:26 “Gamifying Training Programs to Increase Engagement and Results”

0:12:32 “Uncovering the Shiny New Sales Strategy You’ve Been Looking For”

0:14:55 Unlocking the Secret to Creating Irresistible Offers that Convert: A New Sales Strategy for Success

0:17:36 “The Secret to Successful Promotional Campaigns: Avoiding Common Mistakes”

0:22:04 Exploring the Customer Pillar: Why Discounts Don’t Always Work for Moving Stock Inventory

0:26:12 “Using Customer-Centric Strategies to Increase Sales and Profits”

0:29:44 “Understanding the Psychology of Buying: How to Appeal to Your Customers’ Emotions”

0:31:26 “The Power of Transformation Marketing: Leveraging Customer Feelings to Sell Products”

0:33:19 Exploring the Difference Between Successful and Unsuccessful Promotional Campaigns

0:35:55 “3 Reasons Why Your Promotional Campaigns May Be Falling Flat”

0:37:44 Creating a Winning Promotional Campaign: Strategies for Success

0:43:10 “Debriefing Your Offer: Strategies to Help Your Business Scale”

TRANSCRIPT:

0:00:00 A: So if you’ve ever felt frustrated because your products aren’t selling even after you’ve been offering ridiculous discounts, well, the simple fact is selling shouldn’t be rocket science. But if you’re avoiding the biggest issue of all, then what’s going to happen is you’re not going to see results because you think that if some if you put a product on on clearance on, say or you give it a discount, people are going to buy it, right? So you may have tried a buy one, get one free, or you may have tried a 50% off sale and it hasn’t worked for you.

0:00:36 A: That’s because you’re missing a crucial piece that will pretty much transform your entire sales game. Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. If you’re looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or ecommerce business, then you’re in the right place. I’m Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level.

0:01:18 A: I’ll provide you with the strategies, the tools, and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started? Hey there. And this episode of the Bringing Business to retail podcast. OMG. It is nearly the end of March, and I feel like life has been a whirlwind. We have had so many changes inside of our business. We have new programs. We have loads of new retail and ecommerce store owners that we’re working with. We’re bringing on new coaches.

0:01:58 A: It just feels like there is so much on, but it’s been really nice because none of it has been chaos. It’s kind of been organized chaos. And I’ve been in a kind of happy place where it’s like things are moving along. I took a break last weekend. I went down to the beach house. I went down to the beach and I just potted around by myself. Nobody else. No. Didn’t have to make any food, didn’t have to do any washing.

0:02:23 A: I went out for dinner. I brought the leftovers home for lunch. There was literally no food in the fridge and no food in the cupboards apart from tea bags and milk and some strawberries to keep my snacking. So keep me hydrated and to keep me my tummy full when it came to snacking. And it was lovely. It was the break that I needed and I feel like everybody needs a break like that because it allows you to recharge. And I actually ran into my chiropractor at the supermarket yesterday, and she had just been to India on a there’s a name for it, but essentially it is when you raise money to fund a charitable organization and you go over and volunteer. So essentially she’d raised $5,000.

0:03:11 A: She got over to India. That money then goes into putting girls through school, but she was doing chiropractic work while she was over there, and same thing. She’s like, I love my family, but it was really nice to be able to not be responsible for anyone. Like, I just get up and I do my thing and I meet new people and I have a chat and the brain space that comes back with taking that break. So it meant that when I came back to work on Monday and my brain was a bit refreshed, I had the opportunity to look at some of the comments that had come through inside of our programs with a little bit of a different perspective.

0:03:52 A: So I say the comments we’re talking two comments that came through, and these two comments were people who had purchased my inventory training on how to move old stock without having a sale. And in that training, it is, I think it’s $27. And in that training, we go through why stock isn’t moving. You’ve probably heard me talking about it, right? Why stock isn’t moving. The formula that you can use to decide when stock needs to move, and then we have the strategies that you go through now, they’re not rocket science, right? Selling is not rocket science. Selling is putting things out there for people to buy. There are only so many ways that you can move old stock.

0:04:32 A: But I still stand by that program because I have heard the successes, like people making tens of thousands of dollars. One of my favorites is Jennifer, who was putting her products onto a marketplace, and not only products that she was going to chuck in the garbage, and then not only did she make money from them, but she brought in dozens of customers in the process. And so I know that when you go into a situation, whether it is a training I recently went to an event, and I knew that at this event I was going to get sold to.

0:05:09 A: Let’s be honest, nobody offers a free event on social media training without expecting to get sold to at the end. And so I knew full well that I was going to be sold to. But I wanted to hear what this person had to say. I’d been following them for a while, so off I went. The thing was, the content wasn’t even that great, but I walked away. I always go into these events. This was something my friend Gina taught me.

0:05:32 A: Always go into any situation with some kind of goal. And generally that one goal for me is learn something new. Just learn something new. Just find myself a takeaway where I invested this much time. Something I’m going to learn is going to help me in some way. And so now, whenever I go into an event, into a webinar, into a training, I always go in with, what can I learn that’s new? If I can get one thing out of it, one little nugget, then it has been worth my time.

0:06:04 A: And so I get really frustrated when people say there was nothing new here, or I knew all of that because I went into this trading. It was a live event. I went into this live event thinking I probably am going to know everything that this guy says. Now, I knew we had been using the strategy that he was talking about for years. I would say we’ve been using that strategy that he was talking about for about five years.

0:06:33 A: The thing was, the one thing that I learned that was new wasn’t from the person on the stage. It was from someone who I met sitting, waiting to go in and having a conversation with this lovely lady Jess. And the conversation I had from her, I learned something new. And so when you go into any type of situation with a goal, then what happens is you’re never disappointed. You will always learn something new, even if that something new was something that you had known before but completely forgotten about.

0:07:05 A: And so I did learn one thing from the guy from the stage, and he had done one little extra step, which I had known about, but we had not used in social media. And I still wasn’t sure if it would work for me, but I was like, hey, I now have something in my back pocket if we want to try it, that we can go ahead and do it. My new thing came from the person who was out the front. And so when I came back long story, but when I came back to work on my Monday after feeling very refreshed, there were two notifications inside of our sales system or our CRM system where people had said there was nothing new in the training in very different context, but essentially that was the same. There was nothing new in there. I didn’t learn, I think nothing new.

0:07:47 A: And the two words that we used actually sorry, the same word that we used in both of them was I was hoping for something shiny and new. I thought that was really weird, like, they weren’t the same person. And these words shiny and new, I was like, oh, okay. If that word shiny and new comes up twice out of two people, that’s 100% of people, right? I know it’s a very, very small sample, but I’m like, oh, okay, maybe there’s something we need to take on board.

0:08:14 A: So instead of being like these people, they should just know. They should understand that these strategies have used what worked for so many people. And if they just got their head out of their ass and put the systems in place, they would make the money. I’m so confident that I give money back guarantee, right? I know that if you do this, do one of the strategies, you’ll make your $27 back. Like, it’s almost impossible not to. And if you don’t, fine. I’ll give you your money back.

0:08:40 A: But instead of thinking like that because my brain was refreshed and I was in a happy place, I was like, okay, this is a comment I probably need to take notice of. They want a shiny new strategy. So what is missing? Even if it wasn’t promised in the original product, what is missing? What is the shiny new strategy that these people want? And I worked it out. And on today’s podcast episode, I’m actually going to share it with you. I’m literally going to take this lesson which is going into our training portal. So if you bought the program, this lesson will be in there soon along with some I’ve actually created a bonus number ten strategy and some extra content.

0:09:26 A: Fun fact, we are in the process of gamifying all of our programs, which means there will be fun things and rewards. Like, you know how you guys have a rewards program. We are having a rewards program too. Taking little pieces of action, little piece of action, little action steps can be the difference between customers that stay and customers that are engaged and customers aren’t. I don’t have to tell you that. You already know that’s why you guys have rewards programs. And so we’ve been thinking for ages, how can we do the same thing?

0:09:59 A: And obviously for us, training, it’s a little bit different. Training and education. So this is what we worked out gamifying. So all the coding is being done in the background and moving forward, you will have to actually undertake a few little action steps before this training gets released. So essentially this is like a reward. But you guys have been here for a while, so I’m going to give it to you for free.

0:10:24 A: So assuming that you have used any kinds of promotional strategies in the past or you’ve tried, you feel like you’ve tried everything, what I’m going to do is walk you through the three in this lesson because that’s essentially what it is I’m sharing with you. I actually went live on Facebook. So this is not super, super polished because I wanted to get it out there and I wanted to get it into a group and to encourage some discussion. So I recorded it live into a Facebook group.

0:10:53 A: I just literally got off that zoom to zoom it into the Facebook group. And so it’s not like 100% polished. It’s still got a little bit of freestyle going on, but it is perfectly understandable. So in this lesson that I’m about to share with you, let me go through what we cover, which is like it’s kind of like getting a little bit of an insight into what happens inside of our programs. We go through the main reasons that your sales and promotional campaigns probably aren’t working.

0:11:21 A: Simple solutions that you can use to ensure that you avoid those mistakes in the future and how your results can be affected. So if you have ever put a promotion out there, especially a discount promotion, and nobody bought this episode is for you. All right, I would love it if you could leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Drop me a message on Instagram or Facebook. Or if you’re inside our Facebook group, feel free to comment on this training and let me know what you think. And of course, please, the thing I never ask for is, if you implement this, let me know the results. Like, I love hearing about this stuff, and most of the time, I only hear about it by accident.

0:12:05 A: So if you have implemented either any of the strategies in my Nine Ways to Move Stock program, or if you take this information and you implement it in your business, please, please reach out, send me a DM, send me a voice message, drop me a comment, and let me know. Oh, before I forget. If you haven’t gotten my nine ways to move stock that was so bad for getting a call to action, right. If you haven’t got my Nine Ways to Move Stock training, you can find it over@selenanight.com

0:12:32 A: stock. If you are on Instagram, just click my link in Bio. It’s like $27, and you can jump in and get started. It takes about 30 minutes. And if you do the little action steps that are included, you will get some rewards inside of our new rewards program. All righty, let’s jump in. So I wanted to jump in and do a bit of a Facebook Live because last week my team and I received a couple of emails from people who had gone through some of our trainings and pretty much said the same thing, which was that there was no shiny new thing that I was hoping to find inside of the training.

0:13:15 A: Which surprised me, because if I had a dollar for every time a business owner told me that they already knew everything and there was nothing new when they did a training, well, honestly, I’d be recording this in my beach house overlooking the beach in La Jolla in San Diego right now. And one of the things that I really make sure to do is even if I go into an event or a webinar or a workshop, that I always find something new.

0:13:52 A: And if you go into some kind of training with the concept of I will always find something new inside of that training, then you’ll never be disappointed. But I know that not everybody thinks like me. And so what I wanted to do is bring you the shiny new sales strategy that you were hoping for. So if you’ve gone through any of my trainings and you found yourself thinking there’s nothing new here, then this lesson is for you.

0:14:24 A: Because in this lesson, I’m going to call it a lesson, right, because that’s pretty much what it is. In this lesson, I’m going to uncover the shiny new sales strategy that you were hoping for when you purchased my program. All righty, are you ready? So if you’ve ever felt frustrated because your products aren’t selling even after you’ve been offering ridiculous discounts, well, the simple fact is selling shouldn’t be rocket science.

0:14:55 A: But if you’re avoiding the biggest issue of all, then what’s going to happen is you’re not going to see results because you think that if you put a product on clearance on sale, you give it a discount, people are going to buy it, right? But if you have tried putting things on discount and it’s not working for you, then that’s what I’m going to share with you here today, inside of this lesson. So you may have tried a buy one, get one free, or you may have tried a 50% off sale and it hasn’t worked for you.

0:15:30 A: Well, that’s because you’re missing a crucial piece that will pretty much transform your entire sales game. And if you’re ready to know what it is, well, here’s what it is. It is about understanding why customers shop with you. That missing piece of the puzzle literally makes the difference between a no brainer sales campaign or I’m saying sales campaign, but basically, I mean, any kind of promotion that you run. But I’m just going to call it a sales campaign because you’re going to be selling.

0:16:08 A: So understanding why your customers shop with you is the missing piece between the no brainer sales campaign that can sell tens of thousands of dollars and a campaign, usually a discount campaign where you get crickets. I mean, who doesn’t want a product at 50% off, right? Why aren’t they buying? So if you found yourself in that situation, then let’s dig in a little bit deeper. So this shiny new sales strategy that I’m going to share with you isn’t actually a sales strategy, but it is the thing that you have been searching for.

0:16:48 A: So it’s going to be the secret for you to unlock how to create irresistible offers that actually convert. And then you can go back through my program and re implement the strategies that are in there with this new found vision, with this new found clarity that will actually help you create offers that your customers want. So I’m going to give you a few examples of how this has worked. So Rebecca is one of our clients that we’ve worked with in the past, and she has an EcoLUX skincare brand. So the products that she sells range in the kind of 30, $40 for moisturizers, right up to way more expensive, 60, 70, 80.

0:17:36 A: And she had a 30% off sale. So her thoughts, much like yours as well, was that 30%. And if you’ve worked with me in the past, you’ll know that I say that at about 30% is the tipping point where someone who wasn’t going to buy will actually go ahead and purchase. So anything less than 30% for those products with a price point under about $300. Anything less than that, if you give them a discount, they probably were going to buy it anyway.

0:18:08 A: They’re just choosing that opportunity to buy. So when Rebecca had a 30% off sale, she was having a bit of a cash flow, having a cash flow moment. She’d spent a lot of money buying inventory for her next round of products and she needed some quick cash. So 30% off sale, $5,000. $7,000 was her expectation. And guess what happened? Nothing. Crickets the thing was, it was an end of financial year discount, so it was a perfectly acceptable reason for her to be having a discount. It wasn’t just like, hey, we’re having 30% off.

0:18:47 A: Lots of other people were having the same kind of discounts and promotions. So she thought she would be rushed off her feet with orders. She promoted the offer on social media, she sent emails, she even ran Facebook ads to this offer. But instead of seeing the orders flow in, the exact opposite happened. I think in that whole campaign, she got one sale that for most people is a situation that they found themselves in, because you think if you just have a discount, all those people who’ve been waiting to buy, they’ve just been waiting and waiting and waiting. This will be the moment that they choose, this will be the push that they need to go ahead and buy.

0:19:33 A: So what I want to go through with you in this lesson is the main reasons that your promotional campaigns will flop. I want to talk about simple solutions that you can use to avoid these mistakes and how your results can be affected when you put this secret, shiny sales strategy that’s not a sales strategy, into place. So why did Rebecca’s campaign flop when, on paper, she did all the right things? She promoted the offer, she ran ads, she gave a really hefty discount.

0:20:11 A: Well, the answer, quite literally, is that her offer sucked. Let’s not beat around the bush here. Customers didn’t shop with her brand. It’s an EcoLUX brand. Customers don’t shop with her because they want cheap. And by discounting the range, what was actually happening was the entire customer experience was being devalued. And I know for a lot of people, we kind of tend to have people in two camps. We have people who are staunch I never have a sale people, and then we have staunch people who are always on discount. And the thing is, neither of those are right, because the answer is, in this lesson, the answer is, why do your customers shop with you? Now, I always believe that you should have a promotion running. In fact, I believe you should have a promotion running at least once a month. But that promotion, as you’ve learnt, does not have to be a discount.

0:21:18 A: And so what Rebecca did and what you may find is happening in your business as well is you are devaluing your customer experience. And this was a really steep learning curve for Rebecca. But she quickly worked out that her customers didn’t value discounts, so still needed the cash flow, right? She tried again. She took the same strategies that you guys have got and she put them into place. This time she did a gift with purchase and what do you know, the orders came flooding in, so she still moved the old stock out. She still got the cash flow. But what she did was she gave her customers what they wanted, and what they didn’t want was a discount.

0:22:04 A: And this is why digging deep into your customer pillar and doing the work, understanding why your customers buy from you, why they buy from you, and why they’re coming to you versus somebody else is the difference between skyrocketing your growth or sending it reeling backwards. And if you’re having campaigns that aren’t working, if you’re saying that the things that you’ve learned, the sales strategies you’ve learned, you’ve tried them all and they’re not working, this is the reason why. It doesn’t mean those strategies don’t work.

0:22:40 A: It just means your offer sucks and it’s okay because we can fix that. So we just kind of touch on the customer pillar in my Nine Ways to Move stock inventory training. But if you go through any of my other programs, we obviously dig into the customer pillar a lot more. But what I want to do now is try and give you the information that you need, just enough so that you’re dangerous, just enough so that you can go and implement the strategies that you’ve got in a way that is going to work.

0:23:13 A: So the thing is, the truth bomb that you’re looking for is there’s a pretty good chance that your customers aren’t looking for a bargain. And if they were, you wouldn’t be listening to this right now because you wouldn’t have inventory that didn’t move. You wouldn’t have issues with having discounts and customers not buying. And if you’re having those problems, then the truth is you’re not giving your customers what they want.

0:23:46 A: So I’ve got another example for you that I want to share, and this one is Caitlin. She has a sustainable bulk food store. So I don’t know if you have them where you are, but they’ve kind of been around for a long time, but now they’ve gotten really popular. And so you go in and they’re quite often health related foods. So you might have your nuts and your seeds and your flowers and carab. I love carab and they’re carab dots and all those kinds of things. And you put them into a paper bag or you put them into your jars and you weigh them and then you take them home.

0:24:18 A: So the people who shop there aren’t on a budget because those products tend to be premium products. Now, I’m not talking a food co op here where you’re targeting people in a lower socioeconomic area. I’m talking people who are coming because they want premium, they care about sustainability, they want to feel like they’re doing their part. So they bring their paper bags, they bring their jars and they walk away with a really happy experience that they’ve got great products, they’re doing their bit for their environment and their heart feels happy as they walk out and they hand over their money.

0:24:53 A: So Caitlin has faced the exact same problem that probably most of you listening have as well, and that was that she had a group of products that just wouldn’t move off of the shelves and she had tried the classic 50% off and the thing was, no one bought them. And you would think it kind of goes against all of our psychological principles that if I just discount it, then all the people who wanted it will go ahead and buy it, or the people who already like it will just buy more.

0:25:26 A: But that’s not how we work. Humans are wired very strangely and so logic doesn’t fit in when it comes to sales psychology. So the 50% off rack was sitting inside of her store, nothing was moving. Now, for Caitlin, the difference is these are perishable goods, so there is a really finite amount of time that these products can sit on the shelf. And I think you should take that kind of concept on board as well, because every minute that that stock is sitting on your shelf after you’ve bought it is costing you money. So if you think about the fact that it is essentially perishable, then you won’t be tempted to put it back in the closet and bring it back out next summer or next Christmas or next fall, like you will get rid of it now.

0:26:12 A: So no retailer wants to be in a situation on a regular basis where you have stock that is perishable, that has to go. And so the fact is, the simplest solution for Caitlin is probably something that you can do as well. And what she did to turn that unsold stock into customer favorites was simply change the language around the offer. So instead of 50% off, I buy this one thing and I’m going to get it half price.

0:26:47 A: She changed them to buy one, get one free, same offer. But here’s the thing. Now she’s moved two items, so she’s got volume. And on top of that, customers feel like they’re getting an added bonus. It’s like, wow, I got one and now I’ve got another one free. That is completely different psychological mentality to 50% off, especially when you’re looking at customers who don’t need discounts. Because when I have a 50% off product, the first thing I’m thinking is, what’s wrong with it?

0:27:21 A: Why is it half price? It mustn’t be very good. Whereas if it’s buy one, get one free, remember, that’s the same offer. Now I feel like I’ve got the thing I want, and I’m getting a bit of value in there as well. So changing the language around your offers to suit your customer is the key to offers that convert. Let me give you another example. This one actually just came up last week inside of our Supercharged Mastermind.

0:27:50 A: So Renee, who has an equestrian store, horsey stuff. Again, people with decent disposable income. She had some summer T shirts, summer shirts to get rid of. And we needed to move volume. We needed to move in a way that speaks value to the customer. So instead of discounting, she did a buy to get the third free. Essentially, that’s a 33% discount, right? But we’re moving three items instead of one. Funny thing happened.

0:28:24 A: People came in, just bought two items, didn’t need the third, paid full price. I mean, mind blown right? Here are customers coming in for value that don’t take up the offer but still walk out spending money. I mean, that is freaking gold. That’s pure profit back into your pocket as the retailer. Like, this stuff makes my heart sing. Because if you’re making more money and you’re getting customers into your store, that’s a bonus. And of course, what happens is people come into your store or they come back to your website, they’re looking at the offer. They kind of shop around. If they can’t find the third thing, maybe they’ll add an extra thing in to get to your free shipping rate order.

0:29:10 A: Your average order value goes up. So sometimes you can run these offers and actually not be discounting in any way, shape, or form. So have you kind of worked out now that the shiny new sales strategy that you have been looking for isn’t a sales strategy at all? What it is is a customer strategy. The sales part is having a lousy offer that your customers don’t value. Well, that is the reason that your promotions probably are failing.

0:29:44 A: It’s a sales strategy, but the problem is in your customer pillar. But even if you have a great offer, there’s still a chance that your customers won’t buy, right? That’s like the missing piece, but it’s not the be all and end all. So I mentioned before that humans, the psychology of buying for us just means that sometimes logic goes out the window. So humans buy on feelings. Now, think about it. I can go and buy I love my Coke Zero, right?

0:30:16 A: In fact, I have one right here, but I can go and buy one from the supermarket. And it might cost me, here in Australia, $3. If I want to buy one from the convenience store, it might cost me up to $6. Doesn’t mean I won’t buy it because the convenience is what I’m paying for. The fact that I don’t have to go and find a supermarket, walk in there, find it, buy it, get into the line, pay for it, and walk out.

0:30:44 A: I will. Pay the extra money I will pay. Other people will go and spend the $3 and go to the supermarket, but I will pay the extra money so I can just walk in, grab it and continue on with my day. Because time is important to me. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s a can of Coke from a convenience store or a $10,000 cashmere coat. We buy because we want to feel a certain way. And if you don’t show your customers the outcome, if you don’t show your customers the transformation, that end result that they’re going to feel after they buy from you, then they literally have no reason to buy from you compared to the thousands of other retailers out there that sell the same thing.

0:31:26 A: And this is why your 711 can charge double the amount for a can of Coke, because they have stores everywhere and they’re open all the time. And so they’ve shown you that the end transformation is you can have the thing that you want at the time of day that you want what is yours. There is a great company that is, if you’re a woman and you’re on the internet and you’re of a certain age, there’s a great company called Shaper Mint. And I say great company. I’ve never bought their stuff, trust me, I have been tempted to because I get inundated with their ads. So this company, Shaper Mint, they sell Shapewear and they know how to leverage a customer’s feelings. So I actually did have one of their ads.

0:32:14 A: Oh, here, let me just pull it up. I have one of their ads. So they’re selling Shapewear for women. Now, if you’re wearing Shapewear, it is because you have a problem that you want to solve. You want to look good in the thing that you’re wearing. So some of the copy, some of the words on their ads are, where did we do? This is how you control your mum tummy and love handles. I mean, hello, there’s my transformation, there’s my problem, right? Everything.

0:32:47 A: You’re solving everything. I’ve got a mum tum and I’ve got love handles and I don’t want them anymore. Like, boom. One sentence you have given me, everything that I need is the next one shape of shorts that give you an hourglass figure without suffocating you. Boom. That is a great offer, but I don’t need a discount to want those things. I want an hourglass figure. That doesn’t suffocate me. That is the difference between the offer that sells and the offer that doesn’t.

0:33:19 A: That is the difference between you getting customers to buy from you again and again and moving out that old stock to having campaigns that are crickets and using this excuse that you have tried everything already. If you are saying, if you have ever caught yourself saying you have tried everything already, the simple answer is you don’t know who your customer is and you’re not giving them the offer that they want. So you’re not talking to them in the speak, in the language. You’re not giving them the transformation that they want.

0:33:51 A: So let me share another story with you. I chatted with a lady called Robin, and she is a passionate founder and CEO of a company called Redsticks Tampons. And when I was chatting to her, I could absolutely hear the frustration and disappointment in her voice. In fact, she was nearly on the verge of tears because it was the biggest shopping weekend of the year. It was Black Friday cyber Monday And so, despite offering a 50% discount on Tampons, like, I’m sorry, but ladies need these things. Like, we’re talking about an essential item at 50% off, why would you not buy them?

0:34:35 A: But nobody was. Now, here’s the thing. Robin’s cause was noble. Her whole brand was built to fight and eliminate the stigma and shame surrounding women and periods. And as consumers, it is so easy to get behind a company that is using a portion of their profits to fund a societal mission, right? But even with a great cause, robin was facing the exact same problem that Rebecca had and Caitlin had, and probably you guys have as well, which is she hadn’t convinced her customers to buy her promotion. 50% off was doing the exact opposite of what her business was promoting.

0:35:21 A: And as a customer, if I’m buying into the fact that I want to buy from this company because of their mission, then why the heck would I want to take any money away from the cause that they were fighting for? So her offer was actually repelling me from buying. In fact, I would have waited until after the sale before I purchased. So the good thing was, we had this conversation on the Friday of Black Friday, so I suggested a change in her offer.

0:35:55 A: Same offer, different language, different understanding of her customers. Buy one gift, one for every packet of Tampons that you purchased. Redsticks would donate a packet of Tampons to someone in need. Same offer, 50% off. But can you see the value to the customer and how this becomes a win win scenario? I’m getting to do good for the world at absolutely no cost to me and at absolutely no effort on my part.

0:36:33 A: And this is the exact same strategy that successful global brands like Tom’s Shoes have used to win over customers. It is about what your customers want. I cannot say this enough that you can have all the discounts in the world, but if you don’t know what your customer wants and what they value, and you don’t align your offers to what they value, they’re not going to buy. And you could be like Robin, and you could be like Caitlin, and you could be like Rebecca, and actually, what you’re doing is stopping people from buying.

0:37:05 A: So let’s spice this up a little bit. The third reason that your promotional campaigns, your sales campaigns might be falling flat, could be as simple as you don’t tell anyone about them. So we’ve looked at offer, we’ve looked at what your customers value and now we’re looking at did you actually tell anyone? And just hoping that customers will stumble upon the sales section of your website or that they will see your social media campaigns. When you don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers, that is like wishing for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is not going to happen.

0:37:44 A: Posting once on social media or sending out a single email isn’t going to cut it. When it comes to building a promotion, all that you’re doing is running on the hamster wheel of hope. You’re literally just crossing your fingers and hoping people will buy. And that is not business. If you are not shouting your offer from the rooftops, then how do you expect anyone to know about them? Okay, so it’s time to put all of this into action and create a winning promotional campaign with the information that you’ve got.

0:38:18 A: We’ve already covered the importance of knowing your customers and choosing offers that resonate with them. And let’s be clear, if a promotion flops, it doesn’t mean that you should give up. The key to successful campaigns is to develop a repeatable Blueprint. Do more of what works. Simple. I cannot say this enough, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Do more of what works. Now, convincing your customers to buy doesn’t have to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be expensive.

0:38:54 A: It could be as simple as leveraging a product like product reviews on your website. That can be a game changer when it comes to helping customers decide whether a product is right for them. And when you’re crafting product descriptions, think about how that product is going to benefit your customer. And I mean, you can even use chat GPT to rewrite product descriptions for your customer. This does not have to take hours and hours and hours.

0:39:22 A: And lastly, it’s about leveraging as many channels as possible. Social media, email, SMS, your sales and customer service teams. Like if you have somebody answering emails and replies, are you telling people about your upcoming promotion? Your suppliers, brand ambassadors, even the pop ups on your website? All of this is going to be the difference between a campaign that works and a campaign that doesn’t.

0:39:49 A: But the more interactions that a customer has with an offer, the more likely they are to purchase. And this is where all of your customer data comes in handy. Segmenting your email list to put the right offer in front of the right customer at the right time. No more bombarding everybody with the same email all the time, right? That doesn’t work. So it is time to create campaigns using the information that you have, using the strategies and going back and looking at the offers that you’ve created in the past. So if you are inside of any of my programs, actually, I have a debrief form for you.

0:40:30 A: It’s just a simple one pager. Anytime you run a promotion, anytime you run an event, take the time to enter the relevant data. Like, it will literally take you maybe 510 minutes, and then you’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t. And if you’re not inside of my programs, you can do this anyway, right? You just go through what worked and what didn’t because guesswork doesn’t cut it. Guesswork is not a repeatable strategy. Guesswork isn’t something that you can hand off to a team member next time you want to run a promotion.

0:41:01 A: And also, looking at your CEO dashboard, again, if you’re in any of my programs, I give you a CEO dashboard and that gives you an overview of everything that’s happening in your business. All right, so let’s just take a minute to rewind and to analyze why your previous marketing attempts, why those previous sales campaigns, why you think that the strategies that you’ve got don’t work. Well, that’s an incorrect assumption.

0:41:33 A: First of all, was it because the offer didn’t resonate with your customer? I’m guessing for most of you, that is going to be the answer. Or was there something missing that didn’t convince them to buy despite seemingly having a great offer? Like what was the missing thing? What was out of alignment? Or was it quite simply that you just didn’t tell anyone you posted on social media? Maybe you sent out an email and then you’re wondering why your 50% off campaign didn’t work. And it could be a combination of all of these things.

0:42:07 A: The good news is, all of those can be overcome with some easy fixes once you know now what to watch out for. So if you have ever gone through a program, whether it’s my program or somebody else’s, and you have said, I didn’t learn anything new, like, I knew all of that stuff before, there’s nothing new for me, take a moment to reflect on those critical factors and how they affected your past campaigns.

0:42:36 A: And if you are still stumped, go through and do a debrief. Spend five minutes writing it down. Because what you might find is that fresh perspective makes you realize that if you just did a small tweak, you could try it all again and get completely different results. All right, I think that’s all that I have for you. I would love to know in the comments if you think this is helpful. Like, did you go through the program and think, hey, I knew all of that stuff and there was nothing new for me here?

0:43:10 A: And if you did well, have you had a bit of a rethink on how you could take the strategies that you’ve gotten and actually use them to rework and try again? Do the debrief and see if a different offer or getting that alignment with your offer and what your customer is looking for, maybe tweaking the language a little bit is going to be a game changer for your business. All righty, I’m going to pop this up into the portal as a bonus lesson. So if you are in my programs, I’m going to pop this up for you, and if you’ve got any questions, feel free to pop them below.

0:43:47 A: All righty, so that’s a wrap. I’d love to hear what insight you’ve gotten from this episode and how you’re going to put it into action. If you’re a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena Knight and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review.

0:44:19 A: On your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and ecommerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it’s a win for you, a win for your community and and a win for your customers. I’ll see you on the next episode.