How to run an effective end of year flash sale
Leon Mandigara
Digital Marketer | Entrepreneur | Content Creator | ESG student | Trail blazer | TEF Alumni 2022
Hello family!!, it's a joy to have you here with us this week. I hope you're doing well and you have applied some of the tips we shared with you on our previous articles. I really enjoyed the feedback and the likes you posted. I love and appreciate y'all.
This week we are talking about Flash Sales/Year End Discount Sales. After seeing so many brands do it wrong I thought let me write about it and show people how they could do it better. I would want to dive into it with you, How can yo run an effective end of year flash sale without making loses?
What we will learn from this article:
What is a flash sale?
Imagine Brighton is binge-watching his favorite TV series Mudiwa Wepamoyo about a young footballer Tawanda from Mabelreign, Harare who was a footballer and his loyal best friend Biko who also happens to be struggling with relationship drama and her poor family background.?
Brighton begins to realize that there are horizontal lines on his flat screen TV set, from when it fell whilst he had friends over at his place on a Friday. His thoughts tell him that it's a malfunction and it's ruining his special time watching the series. He's feeling awful now..
Since Brighton’s TV still works and he can try to ignore the disturbing horizontal lines, he’s not in a huge rush to replace it... because he's probably making plans for the festive holiday with family and friends, so unless he stumbles across an ad for a new TV that convinces him to buy now.
What do you think the ad could say to convince this bachelor?
A) An ad for a brand new TV listed at a normal price.
Or?
B) An ad for a brand new TV listed at a discount if 50% running until the end of the day or week.?
Got it right? I hope you did and the answer is (B).?
What my friend Brighton stumbled across was a flash sale, in this sense. The offer had a limited-time when you can get the on products. But the products can still be install after a certain time but he would not be able to get it at the same offer the the specified time has lapsed. This is also called deals or offers. This is applicable to both products and services.?
Flash sales/discounts can be a great way to build awareness of your brand, gain new customers, and boost profits in a short amount of time. But, there’s a lot more to this type of sale than just discounting a product and letting your target audience know. A good flash sale is part of a marketing plan that maps out the time before, during, and after the sale happens.
To set up a flash sale, first familiarize yourself with the different ways of running one. Most flash sales are based on a limited-time discount or on exclusivity.
Here's my crazy discovery and experience with flash sales. A flash sales can benefit businesses at every stage of development. If your brand is new to the world, a flash sale might be a great way to launch your product. Or, if your brand has been around for a while, a flash sale might help generate more sales.
How do you decide which products or services to put on a flash sale
It takes some time of consideration and analysis to decide what products or services you would sell during your flash sale, look closely at who you want to reach:
New customers or existing ones
I've seen so many bad and good flash sales being run without any concrete objectives or goals then there's nothing that can be recorded after a flash sale but loses.?
About 78% of loyal customers in Zimbabwe believe that companies are stingy with their flash sales. When I came across that I was left speechless and I know you feel the same too. You want to know why?, here's why: The flash sales are run on the basis of minimizing loses only, meaning to say the people behind these flash sales choose to see a flash sale on immediate gains and profits. This is sad, because they're risking loosing a future over immediate small gains.?
But, here how we're going to help you set up clear metrics and map on how you could make profits from the lash sales without making a decision that has long time financial loses to your organization.?
Implementing a successful flash sale
For new customers: You can use a flash sale to quickly sell excess seasonal inventory that’s expensive to produce, helping you make back some of your costs. Or, you can run a flash sale on popular merchandise that’s cheap to produce in bulk.?
Another great way to hook new customers is to hold a flash sale on your most valuable and/or well-known products. For instance if you run a fashion store it might be the trending ladies shoes
For existing customers: You can use a flash sale to reach existing customers and sell products that get a lot of website views but don’t result in a lot of purchases.
Re-targeting/Re-marketing – this involves showing ads to your previous site visitors/customers as they browse other sites – can help you reach existing customers who have abandoned your product in their carts, and let them know that it is now on sale.?
领英推荐
I know you're probably wondering is he crazy, how can I get that information?
&
The answer is maybe you are right until you read this....
When you browse a website using your favorite public browser, this doesn't include private browser. The browser such as chrome from Google has algorithms and it's analytic tools that gathers information on who, where, when, and how many people viewed also where do they go after they visited your website. I hope this is not too much for you and I would like to break all this down in the next following publications so keep following and liking. Don't forget to make a request if you want to here more about this.?
Going back to our issue, all this data is then availed to any website manager/owners when they what to set goals for their sponsored ads on Google, even social media platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc, also have a similar facility that offers such data. Here's how you use the data, the search engine or platform asks you if you would want to target your previous visitors to your website or social media page it might also go into details of where they are from or how their interacted with your brand online. Let me take you back to what you can do better with flash sales.
Create scarcity
I'm praying this is not all too much for you to digest. So When creating your flash sale, build excitement by highlighting things like the scarcity of your sale items or how fast you can ship them to customers and how much will it be beneficial to their health or environment in some cases.
Create urgency
You can put a countdown clock or meter on the sale items’ if it's on your website or?product pages to display how much time is left before the sale ends. You can also post a analytic tracker that shows how many items are still available.
Offer fast delivery or shipping
This is optional, If you offer fast delivery and/or free shipping on your products or services, make sure to promote that to customers. Letting them know that they can get their item in just 2 days if they ordered now gives them extra incentive or push factor to click the “Buy” button. But don't forget, before people can see your countdown clock and shipping info, they of course need to discover your flash sale. That’s where email marketing comes in handy.
If you’re an established brand, you can add calls to action (CTAs) to your site, social media marketing, and online advertising that encourage people to sign up for your email list so they’ll get newsletters and/or updates on sales and deals.
If you’re a new brand, you can have all your online advertising send people to a landing page on your site that has CTAs asking people to sign up for launch updates, news, sales, and so forth.
Sending out your flash sale via email
Once you have a list of customer email addresses, get the word out about your flash sale through a series of 3 emails if you have one or get assistance getting yours.?This is our recent email marketing strategy and you might want to try it.
1st outreach: will announce when the sale is happening, and gives people information about why this deal is so amazing. For example: “Our #1 top ladies shoe ??is on sale now ???.”
2nd outreach: should focus on the price and start mentioning the deadline of the sale: “Our #1 trending ladies shoes ?? is now 50% off. Sale ends Friday.” Notice something ?..."ends of Friday" ??? it contains a cut off date to speed up the sale and create urgency but at a minimum level.
3rd outreach: should hype scarcity and urgency at its fullest potential. “The sale ends today and only a shoes ?? are left are left. Don’t miss out on your chance to save such an amount on a purchase .” ??? Email is not the only best way to run your flash sale ???
How to use social media to run your flash sales
You can also use your social media platforms and online advertising to spread awareness of your flash sale and to build excitement around it. Make it clear that you're also excited to offer this flash sale in all your outreaches. It also helps increase the conversion rate on your publications.
A series of posts on your social media platforms can convincingly enough tell your followers about your flash sale. Just like your emails, these posts should focus on the urgency or timeline of the sale, the discount or deal, and why the sale items are so great.
Search, display, and paid social media ads can also promote your flash sale, and feature CTAs such as buy now not just learn more can help touch on the urgency and the discount or deal. For example: “Get 50% off today only. Buy now.” instead of saying "Get 50% off. Learn more"
And don’t forget about those re-targeting ads we mentioned earlier. They can help you reach people who have visited your site but haven’t signed up for your emails and don’t follow you on social media.
Setting your flash sale up for success also means avoiding common mistakes and being prepared to deal with any issues that may come up. Make sure that your supply chain can handle a demand in orders.
More than 45% of flash sale products sale faster than what the retailers expect.
So check your inventory first before you run a flash sale so that you avoid being left with too much or way too less inventory after a flash sale. If it happens that you're left with no inventory to offer the customers who wanted to buy from you. Get their details and keep them on the loop on when you will be having new stock so that they become the first people to know when another sale will happen.
By now we agree that they should be a lot of traffic on your website or store, so avoid your website crushing by checking with your developers, and also notify your payment services if you have such as Zipit, ZimSwitch, Master card, Visa or Pay Pal etc, that you will be expecting a lot of traffic so that they're prepared to handle your transactions in time. I had a bad experience with one of the fashion stores when I wanted to make a purchase during a sale and they said the network was down. That shouldn't happen on a special day like that.
A flash sale requires a lot of preparations even though it will be run for a short period of time, so be on the look out this Christmas Holiday.
I would like to give you our valued customers an opportunity to get an early flash sale of a 40 discount from Digital Mate Inc on all our digital marketing services starting now and it will be valid until 23 January 2021 . Simply use the code: L30NSALE. On all our checkout points with the links below.
Please let us no your views on this and please read other articles which we produce. Hopefully your week has been as good as mine and hope you're making the best of what you do...Until next time, I really like and appreciate you as one of my best readers and you have been with me all this way...Stay blessed
This article was written by?Leon Mandigara?for & on behalf of?Digital Mate Inc.?All copyrights to this article are reserved (c)2021.
Chief Executive Officer at Elect Ministries Inc
3 年Tell the truth, how did that work out for you?
AI powered Digital Marketing Transformation|Search Marketing|Pharma Solutions Marketer
3 年Good EMM strategy there for flash sales Leon Mandigara . Enjoyed the read