[DELETED ON YOUTUBE] Making an Entire Year's Revenue on Black Friday WEEK

0:00There's a little known secret that a lot of SaaS companies, a lot of e-commerce companies make the majority of the revenue in just one week. That's Black Friday week. But how do you actually implement a Black Friday campaign that's going to get you paid? Well, today we go through all the techniques to do so. We share all of that with you. We share examples. And by the end of this episode, you will be a Black Friday expert. I actually recorded this episode a year ago, and I wanted to put it live again because not that many people watched it a year ago. But I think it's one of the most impactful videos to understand how to sell to customers during Black Friday and also just how to sell them in general.

0:43So enjoy this episode. It's with one of my friends, Jonathan Courtney. Much loved by the pod. So enjoy, like and comment for more.

0:57It's sipping time, baby Jay Ice Cream, what is this episode about? So it is, as of recording this, it is Black Friday week. It is one of the biggest weeks of the year in terms of sales for e-commerce companies, for product companies, for info product companies. We are running multiple Black Friday sales for companies this week. And I thought what I've been surprised about is that a lot of companies who sell things, not just services, but like a lot of people who sell products, don't take part in Black Friday. And if they do, they don't really understand the different types of deals and different types of sales they can do.

1:40And so I thought it would be cool to look at some really cool examples of sales that are running right now as this week goes on and look at the different ways you can run Black Friday sales, but also any type of sale. It's not just, oh, I'm going to do a discount. That's like really low level running a sale campaign thing. Just to give you a feeling, like a company that's making, let's say, 500k a month or 200k a month could make$1 to$2 million in just this week. and a company that's making like 10 million per month or 20 million per month could make like all of their yearly revenue combined in just this one week as well.

2:26And so it's not and a lot of people don't understand that. You know, sometimes I talk to entrepreneurs and they're like, I don't want to take part in that. I don't want to take part in like it's too, you know, we're a prestigious brand. And like, we want to stay away from that kind of stuff. And I'm like, let me show you all the prestigious brands that are more prestigious than you running sales like this. And you just don't understand how to actually do it in a way that's maybe, you know, on brand. So I think a lot of people are not thinking about Black Friday as a sales opportunity. And people who do think of it as a sales opportunity often completely flub it because they don't know the different types of sales that they can do.

3:06We run a Black Friday sale every year. we run Black Friday sales for our customers and they make millions of dollars. And I think we can show you, I'd like to show you like some of my favorite examples that are out there right now and teach people a few things they can learn for their own things that they're selling. That's my idea for today anyway. So a few things. Number one, I like the way you say prestigious. Prestigious. What do I say? Prestigious? You say prestigious? Do I say prestigious or do I say prestigious? No, you say prestigious. Let the record show that you say prestigious. That's number one.

3:44Number two, you said the word flub. Flub. Which I thought was an incredible word. Flubby. Write flub in the comments if you agree with me. And number three, I think, you know the saying, if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere? Yes. well i think if you can do a great black friday sale you can sell anything on the internet so i'm excited to dive in with you i i have an alternative way of saying that if you can do a great black friday sale you can literally fuck up everything for the rest of the year and still have a great year there we go you can have your your worst year ever full of the worst strategic business decisions and still nail Black Friday and still make it all back.

4:34I'll tell you, we've had some... At 2023, we didn't have a great year. I made some strategic decisions at AJ and Smart that I don't think were very clever. And Black Friday was... Black Friday and summer sale, those made up for some of the sillier decisions or larger expenses. So yeah, that would be my really messy alternative quote for that. So should we have a look at a couple of these Black Friday sales and kind of look at what they're doing? Like I haven't broken it down into different types yet, but I think there's like, there's companies that do discounts. There's companies that do free bonuses and no discount.

5:14There's companies that do bundles with discounts and free bonuses. And there's companies who do sort of like, if you've got like a subscription software service, there's really interesting things people do to get you to renew as well. So I think there's a mixture of everything in here from physical products to SaaS products to just like services and stuff like that. So I think I've got a big overview of some nice things. Well, I show you the first one because I can literally just open it on my phone right now. So do you know the product Endel? Is it a sleeping type thing? Yeah, so they basically do.

5:53I'm sorry that this is not really focusing. So Endel basically does different types of noise and soundscapes, which help with stress and sleeping. And they have like ADHD focus, whatever. And I personally think it's a really nice product. And my renewal is coming up, but I chose an annual non-automatic renewal last year. And so what's coming up on my screen this year, and I'll tell you what they did last year as well to get me in. they are showing me this 50 % off if I renew. And when I tap into it, and obviously I got a notification about that. And if I tap into it, I'm essentially given a mini landing page within the Endel app, which is showing me all of the benefits that I might have forgotten about.

6:44And this sale, this is kind of something that evolves throughout the Black Friday week, where they might add in a bonus towards the end of the week. Last year, they added in a really nicely designed Endel bag. Whoever designed that Endel bag, I know you guys are based in Berlin. That bag convinced me. But yeah, so this is something where if you have a software product or if you have a service where there's an annual renewal, doing something around Black Friday, even if that's not exactly the time where people are renewing. So for example, with the PlayStation or Sony this week are doing their Black Friday sale.

7:24They started it last Friday and they have this PSN service, which is you pay for that service to play multiplayer on PlayStation. And even if you're already a subscriber to PSN, which I am, they'll say, hey, if you want to like extend for another year, if you want to add more on, you can do it at a discount during this week. And so that's something which is like a you're already locked into the system. you're already part of the subscription. But now during Black Friday week, when people are expecting things to be happening and discounts to be happening, they're offering you a way to extend. Whoop is doing the same thing.

8:01You'll probably see these boys here, along with doing a lot of like little bonuses with their bands and everything. But yeah, SaaS products are doing like renewal pushes around this time of the year. And if you're not a member, they're obviously doing their subscription pushes at this time of the year. So that's one example that I really like. If you're running some sort of digital product, some sort of SaaS thing, this is the time of year where you can push people on some sort of nice, juicy renewal plan. You should check out Endel. It's nice. Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy and he is not wrong.

8:42I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So that's exactly why I built idea browser.com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox. And it's all backed by high quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products that you should be building. And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out.

9:24We do have a few paid plans that take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more almost like a chat GBT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, ideabrowser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it. Is there anything you would do differently if you were running marketing at Endel? So I think that they're doing a great job, first of all. I think they really put it front and center. um i think i would probably take the uh approach that my magic mind and ag1 are taking this week which is i would include the free gifts up front so free gift the free gift strategy i think i spoke about it the last time i was on but if we maybe open up do you mind if i just share my screen and open up magic mind just in case this is i don't mind at all i don't you know what you that that's the equivalent of is when you get like i don't know maybe you get some oysters or you get a fish and someone says do you mind if i lemon it you know like put some lemon on it it's like obviously we don't mind if you put lemon on it like no one is going to go no one is going to get mad at you for sharing your screen right now no one's going to get mad at you for putting lemon on the oysters i just don't want you to get mad at me okay so i think what magic mind has done in my opinion, is like a masterclass in a Black Friday sale.

10:57We're emulating a lot of this for the Black Friday sales we're running. First of all, you obviously get your discount up front. Second of all, you get welcome gifts. And welcome gifts are things that you're only going to get as part of this sale. And so the welcome gifts are you get 90 days access to this open app. I don't know if you've ever used this open app. It's really nice. It's usually$60. Now it's free. You get the Beyond Coffee book, which teaches you how to become more productive, but without coffee. And you also get free shipping as part of a welcome gift. I think they have the same gifts for both.

11:35So this is something where not only are they saying, okay, if you just come back to us and subscribe, we'll give you 50 % off Magic Mind plus free gifts. That's the thing that actually gets you. It like sweetens the deal. um ag one are doing the exact same thing i don't know if you've seen how many gifts they're adding to their thing but it's been building up for the entire black friday month i'll show you let's see if they're presenting this publicly yeah they're calling it their welcome pack oh they're oh there's some of the some of this stuff's only happening in email so it depends how far how long you've been in their funnel, I guess, but they're currently doing this.

12:21I'm just going to actually switch it to English because it's on German. Now we're going to have to do, we're going to have to do German. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Do you mind if we do this in German? That's where I draw the line. So you can see that AG1 right now for Black Friday is doing two travel packs, vitamin D, the container and the shaker all for the price of what you usually just get the the bag and the initial shaker for um if you look at their black friday email campaign they've also added in a hat so sometimes what you can do and that's what we also do is you start with a set of free gifts and as the campaign goes on you add more free gifts which obviously you give to the people who joined early, but it convinces people towards the end of the sale to jump in.

13:13And sometimes you can call these Mifky's most incredible free gifts ever. Sometimes you can call these one time welcome gifts. But it's like a way to... A lot of people do merch, like a one time merch, which you can only get during this period of time. I just think it's a really... People don't realize how powerful it is to just give someone something to sweeten the deal and discounts are often not enough there's another way do you want to see like the more prestige way to do it what is it prestigious prestigious um so this is so what people will say to me is like yeah but like like you know premium brands like apple doesn't do that and blah blah blah i'm like all right all right motherfucker let's take a look at what apple's doing yes they do something very different but they still really push black friday and cyber monday so let me show you how apple make this happen um apple and this is something that's also effective and more you know highbrow this is you You buy a product from Apple during this period of time, a non-discounted product, and you get a$200 gift voucher that you can spend on something else from Apple.

14:34So it's not that you're getting a discount. It's not that you're getting a free gift. It's that they're giving you a$200 voucher during this period of time to buy something else from them. And I think that's like a really great way to not cheapen these high quality products and like these kind of, you know, high end products while still technically giving you a discount. They're just not saying it up front. They're giving you a$200 gift card. So they're theoretically giving you a discount because you have to spend it with them. But they're not saying this is a discount. Can I show you another really, can I show you a cool and really creative one that an e-commerce shop has done?

15:17Wait, can I show you, can I show you something? Yes, we're the biggest nerds on the internet, I think. Dude, we've, the entire AJ and Smart team for the last month, we've just been collecting these and obsessing about them. Show me yours. I'll show you mine. If you show me yours. All right, well, I'll go for it. No, yeah, go on. Okay, here we go. So what I like about this is Black Friday sale, you have$17.63 in store credit. So instead of doing like buy something and you get a gift card, I think that if people have credit that is, look, hello, Max, you've got store credit, which is about to expire for good on Sunday.

16:06They put your account email and they say use your code to apply the credit at checkout gainsinbulk.com. And then it's just like, it feels like, no, I don't want to lose my credit. That's my credit. Yeah, that's really cool. I'm just literally, I just screenshot that. I screenshotted it and added it to our team Black Friday thing. That's really cool. I love that one. So store credit. So they're basically telling you Instead of a discount, everyone thinks of discounts. I'll give you 10 % off, 20 % off, 30 % off. If the average order size is$100 and you were going to give$20 off, instead of saying you have 20 % off because everyone is saying you have 20 % off, the whole internet is saying you have 20 % off.

17:04Actually, don't say you have$20 in credit. Say you have$21.63 in credit. I love that. That's really cool. That's really nice. I want to tell my team this for the next email, so just give me one sec. Can you bring that up on screen again? Because my screenshot didn't actually work. Who's this from?

17:31It's from Jordan on my team sent it to me. So it's from gains in bulk. Like what is that? I wonder what that's about. Oh no. This is going into one. Yeah, that is so good. Okay. It's like a protein company, right? Yeah, like creatine, workout candy. Good name. Athletic digestive formula. Yeah. Okay, I'll show you one from my email screenshot hole. So this is another concept, which is... Let me see. Can you see my Basecamp thing? I see growth day. Yeah, look at this. Yeah, Basecamp. So this, instead of doing a discount, instead of doing MIF keys, instead of doing anything else, It's okay. All those things that weren't in one package before are now in one box at like a slightly better price than buying all of them individually.

18:41So and creating a branded element, a new branded product that's now going on sale during this period of time. I think this is a really cool, it's a really cool way of not just doing something discounty or not just doing something like, you know, free gift. It's like, I'm just taking all of this stuff. You see companies like Aesop doing this as well. The hand soap company or like the beauty company, I don't know. They've bundled like different scents into a box and they're like special things for Christmas, which make you want to buy them for friends. I really like that as a simple repackaging of all the things you already have as a bundle to sell for Black Friday I like that one I like that too I think you showed it with who was it?

19:36Magic Mind I thought what was really cool about their kind of bundle is they were giving a free digital product that I don't think they started that company. I don't think so either. Yeah. So if you're looking for something to bundle, go reach out to companies that you like and they're happy because they're getting distribution. A digital product is free to distribute and you're happy because you're adding value. And I think it's such a missed opportunity when I see companies, like companies with million dollar Facebook meta budgets and they're just doing straight up discounts. Or I mean, the worst case scenario is they're just ignoring Black Friday because they don't...

20:26If you talk to someone and they're running an e-commerce site or they're selling things online and you ask them in September, are you guys getting ready for November? And they're like, what do you mean November? I'm like, all right, goodbye. Either you're making too much money or just shit's not working at all. because you need to know like from like June, we already knew the 29th of November was coming up. We're already thinking about it. And if you're spending like a million dollars already per month and you're just sending people to a straight up discount, I think that's crazy, especially when this could be your biggest week of the year.

21:03Can I show you a really cool one, like a really creative one? I cannot tell you whether this works or not because I don't know anything about it. I just think this one's cool. so zero data on this but vibes positive vibes i need to reach out to the team and ask them why they decide to do this okay i've always been a fan by the way it's also good for your brand sip more save more baby hell yeah so they're doing something kind of interesting so you can either shop their curated kits which are going to be bundles or you can build your bundle and i've been playing around with this. So here's like a whole like little web app for Black Friday.

21:45And the more you add to the bundle, the more you save. So there's this checkpoint at$99 after which point, so there's a checkpoint at$59 for free shipping. And there's a checkpoint at$99, which gets you 40 % off. This is fucking genius in my opinion. And this is something I'm going to steal for any e-commerce clients we work with in future. So I'm just going to like add things. They add up here. What's really cool is you can see the bundle building up and now I have free shipping. I wish there was a check mark when you actually got that point, but whatever, we're all good. And we're going to turn this up.

22:20And now I have 40 % off everything and you can see your savings here. I think that's a little bit hard to see, but that's all good. And then you proceed to the checkout and you can see all your savings. I think this is a super, super cool one. I love it. It's really nice. And I'm sure you can also add other discount codes. I'm sure there's other things you can also add on there. And I'm assuming that as this campaign goes on, there'll just be more and more stuff. But this is actually a pretty sophisticated Black Friday sale, creating your Black Friday box. I think it's like it wins the SIP award for best or most creative Black Friday sale, in my opinion.

23:04And the SIP award we know was a very big deal. It's huge. So I'm just wondering, did they build that themselves? Because that startup idea, go and just build this and make a Shopify app. It's genius. I would assume that the Four Sigmatic guys probably did build it themselves. but I don't know. I think they probably did. But I mean, anyone being out there, being able to build something like that for their clients for Black Friday, like it's... Guys, if you're listening to this podcast and you know how to run sales, and you have some proof that you've run sales for yourself or for some other clients, or you could build that for clients, you need to be reaching out to them approximately August every year.

23:59Actually, a really cool thing happened. So we actually brought in a copywriter, an extra copywriter for this week. And he reached out to us cold, reached out to me cold in August with an email, which was like, is your Black Friday sale planned already? Something like that. And he's here now sitting in the office helping us with our campaign, just because we have so many campaigns running and so many emails going. And I thought that was like a really clever way to reach out to us. Like copywriters and people who can build things and build little kind of neat little shop ideas for people during Black Friday.

24:38They're needed everywhere. Yeah. So that's like another startup idea, which is so you can go and build the software and or you can actually create the Black Friday agency. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Yes. And then you can, that's actually brilliant. No, it sounds like, I know there's going to be people in your audience who are going to like, yeah, whatever, but actually that's excellent. That's a really good idea. Like, well, yeah, that's really good. I love that. That would work. It's like, because all of the ads are going to be, it's your biggest week of the year. Don't squander it. Don't flub it. You know?

25:18Don't flub it. Oh man, that's really good. We need to... We might have to do that one. We might have to find a team and invest in it. I mean, we help people run their Black Friday campaigns, but just from a strategic point of view, just like telling them what they should do and helping them with the copy and stuff. And we've got all the teams literally sitting here. They've flown in for this week. and we're just doing that. But an agency that proactively reaches out to companies, e-commerce stores, and is like, by the way, I can double your sales during this week. I will not, you don't pay me.

25:58I'll just take a cut of just the revenue from this sale. Come on. So with what we're doing, just for transparency, we're only taking a cut of the money that's made. so it's it's kind of like a it's not a no-brainer because we take a big cut but it is kind of a no-brainer because they these companies weren't going to run these sales in the first place so it's it's like a it is a bit of a win-win that dude at black friday focused agency which in general campaigns right so what is black friday black friday is a campaign and all of these campaigns. So we run every year, we run a summer sale campaign.

26:39We run a Black Friday campaign. We've now started to piggyback on the Prime Day campaign, the Prime Day sale. And we're looking for other times of the year to piggyback. For example, back to school, things like this. Piggybacking on events that happen throughout the year and running campaigns during these events. A lot of SaaS people, because as you know, a lot of SaaS people are anti-ads and ads suck and all marketing sucks. It all has to be organic. That's fine. But there are massive opportunities. We just looked at a lot of companies now who are running these types of things, including Apple.

27:23Oh, the big, great Apple are running Black Friday sales. there's just a massive opportunity out there to grow your business by piggybacking on these things and running campaigns during these times where people are expecting to be receiving campaigns um it feels like a no-brainer to me if you can do it in a way that's aligned with your brand and you know what i mean you know what i mean i don't know if i asked for your life story over there. Ah, shit, you got me with my own poison. Okay, so can I show you one last really cool Black Friday sale? Please. So you got me thinking about it because Four Sigmatic, the one that you just showed, is kind of like a game.

28:12And let me share my screen. so i got this email from bodega bodega is a retail shop and they sell streetwear so i opened it up they send me like an email a week i never opened it up but i i got got with this one because they say there's a 200 dollar bodega gift code in this email like okay you're giving me 200 let's go gotta open so she's open then i say oh yeah this code right here is worth $200. Side note, I actually like, I love how their copy is, right? It feels like they're writing me a personal email. Problem is, it's missing a few characters, could be numbers or letters, whoever can solve it and check out with it gets it.

28:59First come, first serve, have fun and good luck. And then they give you the discount code. So this is taking a promo code and turning it into a game, a treasure hunt type thing. Really cool. That's cool. I've never seen that before. I've not seen a company do this. And it's interesting because that getting a$200 gift voucher for a company that sells stuff that probably is under$200 is almost like we've just got free stuff for you. That's very cool. While you were showing me that, I was thinking of another one, but I can't remember what it was. so wait while i was showing it to you weren't listening you were thinking about your own thing you know on this podcast my only goal is to make sure that your audience is happy and so i'm trying to think of stuff the whole time and uh you know because if they don't get if they don't get what they want yeah they'll they'll just attack that's that's it um are you the actual important question is what are you buying this Black Friday week?

30:04What things are you buying? That's a good question. Really boring stuff. I took stock of all the things that I buy repeatedly. So I buy the same protein powder. I started taking creatine by this company called Thorn by the same one. So I think it's a good habit to look at the 20 things that you consume on an ongoing basis and just go and buy them at 20 to 50 % off. Yes, that's a really good point. I mean, I do that on Amazon or that's what I did this morning. I just woke up and you go into the settings and it just says the buy again section. And I bought detergent. I bought some random really boring stuff.