MBA2460 Why Amazon's Lightning Deals Work & How to Do the Same in Your Business

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, the business podcast that's always got your back with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And in today's episode, you will learn why Amazon's lightning deals work and how to do the same in your business. Recently, Amazon has been doing these things called lightning deals. You might have noticed these lightning deals on some of the products that you browse on the regular on Amazon. They're limited time promotions on products on the Amazon store, on everything from fashion to betting to tech. But why are they so effective?

0:43And how can you start running some Lightning deals on your site, in your business, whether it's a product, a service, a digital product, a training, a course, a software, whatever it might be. These are high converting deals for a particular reason. We're going to dissect why these work so well. What's the psychology behind them? and the first steps you could take to start crafting your own Lightning deals today. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Amazon Lightning deals are limited time discounts that last for as little as a few hours. Likewise, the quantity for the given deal is always limited.

1:22So when they sell out of quantity, the deal is gone, even if there's still time left on the clock. And because the discounts are quite often deep, you're limited to buying just one, one per customer. If you add the item to your cart, you don't have time to dilly dally because you only have 15 minutes to complete the order and check out. If you wait too long, the lightning deal is automatically removed from your car. Now, from the shopper's point of view, this is really fun and a great offer because you're getting a very significant discount in the spur of the moment when you're on the site. Now, from the business point of view, this is incredibly powerful because it's using a lot of different human psychology to get people to buy now.

2:05And it starts with giving them a reason to buy now. They can come back and buy at any time. But why buy now? Because the deal is going to run out in 15 minutes. You better buy now. Time scarcity is one of the best ways to encourage people to take action right now. By saying, hey, this is going to end soon. And in this case, very soon, within minutes. this shortens the window where they can think about it and really encourages them to take action to go for it this is incredibly powerful if you even combine this with some sort of risk reversal a money back guarantee 30-day return policy whatever it might be so that they feel like hey if i decide to buy worst case scenario i can return it lowers the risk so this is the first reason why lightning deals work so well on amazon and can work for you and we'll talk about how in a moment, but is the time scarcity.

2:57It really pushes people to have a reason to buy now. I don't want to come back later because this deal won't be around later. Let's get it now. Second, limited quantity. They're using time scarcity with quantity scarcity, hand in hand. This is incredibly powerful because people understand that if they wait too long, either in time of 15 minutes in this case, they're going to lose out. But they might even lose out in a short amount of time because the quantity might run out. This is something that's really used in retail in a lot of European and Australian stores. They don't have a lot of stock in their stores.

3:33If you go to Foot Locker and you want to buy a pair of new sneakers, there's a good chance they only have a couple of pairs in each of the sizes that they offer. Usually, if you see your size, you're just programmed to just buy it now because chances are if you come back, they won't have it in stock. And they usually tell you they'll only have one more in stock or only have two left in stock. You'll notice this in Europe. You'll notice this in Australia. This is a common practice. They never overstock. They like to keep it scarce so that people are motivated to buy. The US and Canada, often there's a lot of stock and that's why there's so many outlets and there's so many discount stores and so many sales because they're trying to get rid of that stock.

4:12But because a lot of the products are being imported in Europe and in Australia, they limit their stock and use the scarcity model. I use this model when I did coaching at the$100 MBA about four or five years back. I only sold a certain number of spots and this allowed those spots to get sold out very quickly because people understood that once those spots are taken, it's done. I do this in events as well. OSCON, our retreat and event for five days with Australian founders. There's a limited number of spots, only 16 people. Once those spots are filled, it's sold out. So this on top of the time scarcity forces people to think twice before leaving and not buying.

4:49It makes them really think, hey, if I want this, I should buy it now because the quantity can run out. Now, when you combine the two, this is where the magic happens. Not only are they worried that the stock will run out and people will buy all the stock and they'll sell out, but the time is a factor too. And whatever comes first, meaning if they sell out, then time runs out even earlier. Or if the time runs out, but they don't sell out of stock, the deal's also done. So it puts some pressure on two sides for the customer to buy. And listen, I'm going to tell you, I've been doing this for a long time.

5:22I really believe in legitimate marketing, marketing and sales that actually works and that is in the interest of the customer. This is actually in the interest of the customer. Most people will take their time, will procrastinate, will not actually take action. You've got to give them a reason to take action, especially if this is something that's going to help them or improve their lives. So you're actually doing them a favor by putting these parameters and putting these restrictions. Now, I want to throw in another thing that Amazon does into the mix. If you're a Prime member where you pay that membership and you get Amazon Prime, the fast delivery and the streaming service and the other benefits they have, one of the bonuses is that you can see upcoming lightning deals before they start.

6:03So you kind of get a heads up, like being on a waiting list, which can help prepare you to snag a great deal before it sells out. This is something that you can do as well in your business. Join my mailing list and know as soon as a Lightning deal is launched or made available. Be the first to know. You'll get a heads up 24 hours before. This will allow people to be encouraged to sign up for your newsletter. It'll give them a chance to be in touch with your content. They'll be in the know when you have a sale or have a promotion, and therefore you'll get more conversions because people are anticipating the deal.

6:36So how do you implement something like this, like Amazon Lightning Deals on your own site? Well, let's start with e-commerce. If you have an e-commerce site where you sell physical products or even digital products and you use Shopify, there is an app or a plugin by WebKul that will create these Lightning Deals for your products and it's pretty seamless. This is a very, very useful tool if you use Shopify. If you have an e-commerce store, really Shopify is the way to go. They're not a sponsor of this podcast right now, but I've used Shopify in the past. They're fantastic. They're easy to use. It's worth the monthly fee.

7:14The headaches you're going to save, it's worth just signing up and using them. And with these tools that get built, they're so big. There's so many great tools that get developed for Shopify, you're going to make your life a whole lot easier. The good thing about this is because Shopify has, you know, the whole inventory built in, your products already there, all that kind of stuff. When you add this kind of lightning deal tool, it's all plug and play. It's all reading from your inventory. It makes it easy for them to know how much is in stock so that you can actually have a legitimate scarcity of units.

7:46It's just the smart way to go to save time. If I was starting a new e-commerce business, I would build it on Shopify. Now, if you have an existing business that's off Shopify, let's say you're using WordPress and using WooCommerce, there are tools that do lightning deals like Amazon. One of them is from WP Venus, and they have a lightning deal tool for WooCommerce. WooCommerce is basically an e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It's free and allows you to kind of have a shopping cart and have people check out. So the tools are the easy part. Now, how do you craft the right offer? Well, when I ran an e-commerce store, I definitely wanted to push products that I had limited quantity of, and I wanted to kind of get rid of that stock.

8:26And I was willing to discount it because holding onto the stock was costing me money. So that's one way to identify products to do these deals for. But you can also do the deals for best-selling products that you know that will fly off the shelf. And you don't even need to heavily discount it. You can do 20, 30 % off. And that would be enough for people to want to buy it now because they want it anyway. I also want to mention that this is applicable for non-physical products. You sell courses, you sell digital e-books, sell software. You can create these deals and send them out to your email list to get them to buy right now.

9:05Time-sensitive, unit-sensitive. Even for the first hundred customers that sign up to the software on this day will get this deal or get this bonus or get this discount, whatever it might be. Same goes with courses. Udemy is very big on this. Udemy.com, which is a marketplace for courses, they're very, very big on lightning deals. They do these limited time offers. They discount courses across their library for a period of time. And it gets people to come back over and over to see what lightning deals are happening today. What courses do I want to buy today? that are on sale. So this is really an encouraging way to get people to come back to your website and shop more and more products from you, knowing that they're going to get a good deal because something will be on a special deal or special price or a lightning deal where, you know, it's going to be a limited time and limited quantity and they should act now.

9:57Now, if everything I shared with you makes sense to you, you want to start with lightning deals, but you don't want to kind of tinker with your website or maybe implement this with products on your e-commerce store, or your digital store, whatever it might be, and you just want to try it out, one of the easiest ways to do this is via selling through a webinar. Email your list and invite them to a webinar. Give them a live workshop on your area of expertise that is congruent with your product or service. Say, for example, you sell a course or you do coaching on how to become a better piano player.

10:27You're going to give them a crash course on how to play Candle in the Wind by Elton John and get them to maybe follow along and play the first verse with you. And then if they want to complete the whole song and they want to be able to play all of Elton John's classics, they may want to buy your course on Elton John's classics. And on the webinar, you could say, I'm going to do a special offer only for the next 10 people, next 15 people, whoever number, whatever number you want to do, depending on how many people are on the webinar, I would say about 10 % of the people on the webinar that really push it and say, hey, next 10 people that sign up, they're going to get this deal, they're going to get this bonus, and you have to sign up before the end of the webinar.

11:05So it's time bound and it's unit bound, you know, it's quantity bound or quantity limited, and they're going to get some incentives, a discount or bonuses or both if they take action. This is a great way for you to test this out and see the benefit of it in a one-shot deal in just a moment in time without changing your inventory, without changing your website in any way by just doing a webinar. And you can literally just deliver these bonuses manually. That's what I did where I got my team to help. But in the beginning, I did this myself where, you know, anybody who bought in those 20 minutes at the end of the webinar, I got their email address from my checkout payment processor.

11:43I then emailed them the bonuses one by one. That's simple. You can even just BCC them all and send them the bonuses. Simple. Keep it easy. You don't need to make this difficult. Create a coupon code for them. If they're on the webinar, if they're getting a discount, give them the coupon code, make sure it's valid only until the end of the webinar, or maybe you want to give them a little bit extra time, maybe 10 or 20 minutes afterwards to make sure there's no heartbreak. Well, there you have it, guys. Lightning deals. You can harness that power that Amazon is using to increase their sales, move more product, and increase customer loyalty.

12:16So you could do the same in your business. Go ahead, take action. Use any of the techniques I talked about. Use any of the tools or just run a webinar and run this a limited time and quantity strategy to make sure you give a reason for your customers to buy now. You got to give them a reason to buy now. Otherwise, they'll just put it off. Procrastinate. Thanks so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. If you love the gems of this podcast, if you find it useful, the best way to say thank you is to hit that follow button on whatever podcast app you're using right now. We'd love for you to follow the show.

12:51It sends a signal to the podcast network that, hey, this show's great and allows us to get more exposure and reach new audiences so that we can continue to grow and give you quality, practical business lessons. Thanks in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your job is to help your customers make a decision. That's what sales is. Maybe that decision is not to buy, but if the decision is to buy, you got to make it easy for them. Give them a reason to buy. Help them the first time around with a discount or a bonus. Grease the wheel so they can have a good experience and say, hey, these people are right.

13:23I'd love to buy from them again. Thanks again for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.