Make BFCM Bigger, Better YOY

Notice how some companies actually closed up shop for Black Friday?

?Huit Denim Co., for example, is a unique manufacturer that produces high quality/high demand blue jeans. Their low production in small sustainable quantities puts them at high risk and at the edge—physically, financially, emotionally.

Nevertheless, they shut down their site on Black Friday, the biggest sales day of the year (they were back up on Saturday). ?

REI started doing this a while ago. Others have picked up the same theme. ?

How can they? Because these brands are about relationships, not transactions.

They’re not losing a day of sales, they’re gaining a day of reassuring people that they’re about enriching lives and helping to make existence more beautiful and fulfilling.?

On the flip side, BFCM’s entire reason for being is transactional—get as many sales as quickly as possible from repeated markdowns.

So what? Instead of the gallows tactics of performance marketing, companies like Huit, REI, Tiffany and more execute by building exceptional products that create exceptional impact and attract thriving communities who can’t stop babbling about them.

If that’s not the case for you, here are some ways to build your case.

Invert your strategy.?If you’re continually looking for new customers, be mindful that that method does not necessarily mean new sales. You have a better chance of getting your next sale from existing brand-loyal customers than hustling to find new ones.

(Yes, there are metrics for that: The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60–70%.?Existing customers are also 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.)

What else? Excited customers (users, consumers, people, fans) will tell their friends how excited they are—which drives friends of friends WOM and attracts more new customers. It's self lubricating.

Find out what impacts repeat purchases. You might need to do some digging. #Research What makes you sticky? What makes you important to your best customers. You already may have tons of learning buried back in the files. Update it.

Define your most loyal customers (they might have the shortest purchasing cycle, the highest number of repeat purchases, the most store visits, decide how to quantify your advocates). Sift through your data (or ask AI to sift through it) to find out the most important reasons why these people keep coming back to you?

If your answers are not in the data, go connect with brand lovers person-to-person.

Build from these insights. And never stop making what they love about you. (Make sure you check back with those people annually to know if/when their attitudes shift.)

This is just reinforcing your baseline.

Then do this.?Now that you know what keeps repeat shoppers coming back, ask potential repeat customers what holds them back from buying you more often? Then remove those friction points.

Activating the above two paragraphs alone, we have found, can produce double-digit increases. Get promoted.

Anyone measuring advocacy??Research guru?Joel Rubinson?keeps saying this, “Math could explain a non-zero transition probability from non-customers to customers. As soon as that is accepted, it’s not a matter of if, but when.” That sentence makes me cross-eyed, but it’s incredibly valid and the missing link for many companies. #toomuchmath

Keeping existing customers enthused should be happening while you sleep. Being intentional matters. Keep them engaged with fresh content. Be persistent. Go where they are across social, digital and traditional media—follow your customers, not marketing/advertising media trends. Place testimonials at the top of your site, don’t bury them at the end. People want to hear what others think about you, not what you think about yourself.

Stay attentive, be conscious when your customers move to other media platforms.

Keep people happy.

Build the larger Brand story of what you want to become.

For more on this, see how executive producer Derral Eves explains the content strategy behind his build for the largest media crowdfund raise in history?—?over $10 million. And an audience of over 500 million. His approach while promoting his hit streaming series “The Chosen” is included in his book “The YouTube Formula” (detailed in Chapter 18). ?

However. No simple rerouting of content will achieve true Brand value without continually reminding people of the larger brand story at play.

Remember, you’re not in control of your story, people are.

Grow your audience. Grow WOM. The role of every company today (some might say the only role of the today’s company) is to inform people where you’re from, what you’re all about (why you exist), how to identify you, how to use you, the language your community uses to talk about you, what you stand for and what you don’t and, lastly, identify your brilliant leader who set out to create something new, unique, and how it’s going to change the world—functionally, emotionally, beautifully. ?

People need to be reminded of the facts (in different forms and different formats). Best customers will fit your content into their own story arc, building a self-propelled story circle.

After all, you’re not really in command of your story—people are. (You keep hearing that, but this is what it means.)

Happy news. Build stories based on key messages, data-driven insights, peer to peer feedback, User generated content, AI-assisted content. The more pieces of code communicated to your public, the stronger your product, service, cause or community becomes.

The intentional strategic use of Primal Code builds Brand value, which has a direct impact on capital, ie. your marketing spend.

Try it for a quarter. Worst case you will not be starved for sales. ?

Thanks for reading, take the rest of the day off.