Ep 24 - Boost your earnings during the Black Friday weekend

Episode Show Notes

As healthcare professionals, we too can benefit from the biggest sales event of the year 'Black Friday and Cyber Monday' running from 29th November to 2nd December 2024.

In this episode I'm sharing 6 ideas for offers that work really well for us as well as how to plan ahead and optimise your marketing so you can take advantage of this really great revenue boosting period.

• Start Early: Begin planning your Black Friday offers and marketing efforts now for maximum impact.
• Choose High-Value Offers: Know which of your services you can discount, and which you definitely shouldn't.
• Have nothing to sell?: Learn how to still make money even if you don't have your own goods and services.
• Craft exciting promotions: Create a buzz ahead of the event and during so that people can't wait to buy.

The Master Plan:

Helping you build the business of your dreams. Get your 22 point step-by step workbook here: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondtheclinicbusiness

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

Episode transcription:

Beyond the Clinic EP24

[00:00:00] Sarah Almond Bushell: Welcome to episode number 24, Boost Your Earnings During the Black Friday Weekend. Now you might be wondering why I'm publishing an episode all about Black Friday when it's only the beginning of October. If you want to take advantage of this peak time in potential clients becoming actual clients, you're going to want to prepare ahead so that you can maximise your impact.

[00:00:27] Sarah Almond Bushell: In today's episode, I'm going to explain why I think we as dietitians and healthcare professionals Really need to jump on board with the traditional retailers and take advantage of this opportunity. When the promotional period actually happens and what the best offers are that you can be selling during this time.

[00:00:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: And of course, how to plan ahead and nail your marketing so that you have the best impact that you can have. Sound good? Let's dive in. Okay, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It's the period which is probably recognised as the biggest sales event worldwide. It's actually only been happening for less than 20 years, but I read a statistic in Forbes magazine.

[00:01:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: that year on year the amount of money that's spent gets bigger and around half of all consumers plan to spend the same amount or more money during this Black Friday, Cyber Monday period than they did the year before. And this is despite our current economic climate. So essentially what I'm saying here is people are primed and they are ready to buy.

[00:01:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: When does it happen? It's always the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. For us British folk, that's the end of November, and this year, in 2024, the dates for that four day period are Black Friday on the 29th of November, Small Business Saturday is the 30th of November, Sunday, that doesn't really have a name, that's the 1st of December, and then Cyber Monday is Monday the 2nd of December, and this is often marketed as the last chance for you to get deals.

[00:02:20] Sarah Almond Bushell: But, you know what, it's not unusual for promotions to run in that week leading up to Black Friday as well. In fact, I don't think it's a bad idea for us because when it comes to that sort of four day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, there's a lot of noise, especially online. Getting started early can work to our advantage.

[00:02:43] Sarah Almond Bushell: It means that we as small business owners, have a better chance of being noticed. Just to say, there's not really a difference between what goes on Black Friday and on Cyber Monday. So traditionally back in 2005, if you can call it a tradition, when this phenomenon all kicked off, Cyber Monday was exclusively for online sales.

[00:03:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: But nowadays, everyone shops online and you can still get Cyber Monday deals in actual physical shops as well. So there's no difference really for us between them. And as I was doing a little bit of preparation and reading around when I was looking at this episode, I came across an article referencing some consumer data from GWI.

[00:03:35] Sarah Almond Bushell: So for those of you who don't know, that's like a global market research data company. And all the massive brands and businesses and marketers, they will use this data to learn about their audiences. So what I learned from this article was that the number one thing that people of across all of the generations are planning to buy this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is self care.

[00:04:06] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, obviously that includes things like clothes and gadgets and things, but what we can take from this is that they want to buy things for themselves. And I think that this is excellent for us who are in health care, and obviously our things are to benefit them directly. Interestingly, the Gen Z cohort, the youngest cohort in our generation, they're the ones who are most primed and ready to buy.

[00:04:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: But following not that far behind them, really, are the boomers, so the older adults. They've got money. They're not 100 percent convinced whether to spend it during Black Friday or at another time, so they need a lot of information around the value and what's in it for them. But they're the two groups who are primed, essentially, and much more likely to buy.

[00:05:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: As I said at the start, I'm talking about this now in early October because it's quite important to start your preparation for this period now, if you really want to take advantage of this what is a massive revenue generating opportunity. So I've got six ideas. Of what are good offers for this time of year that we as healthcare professionals can sell and also a little bit about how to optimize your marketing for sales success.

[00:05:35] Sarah Almond Bushell: So let me take you through those six ideas. So number one, the first one and the most obvious one for a Black Friday event is offering a discount. And discounts are what Black Friday is known for. It's why people wait to spend because they're looking for a deal. So consumers essentially are conditioned for deals on Black Friday.

[00:05:59] Sarah Almond Bushell: So I want you to take this idea seriously. But before you start thinking about what can you discount, I want you to think about what's profitable in your business, because this is really what you want to discount. So definitely not your one to one consultations. These are your most valuable offer. And I really dislike discounting one on one services.

[00:06:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: I feel like this devalues our profession, but if you've got a course or you've got a membership or something that fits more of the passive income business model, this can be a really great idea because there's a very, high profit margin in these types of services. Now your discounts need to be good.

[00:06:43] Sarah Almond Bushell: So 10 percent off just won't cut it. People will not be interested. Consumers are looking for deals. So 35 percent off as a minimum or higher even is the way to go here. So to give you a couple of examples, I've got a 49 a month membership. The annual fee for this is 497, where they already get two months free.

[00:07:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: I'm not going to discount the monthly fee. That's not going to bring in very much cash for me, but I will discount the annual membership, and I'm going to do that by a third. So for the 12 month membership, instead of the price being 497, it's going to be 347. I'm also going to discount my highest ticket offer, which is Fussy Eating Fixed, and I'm going to discount that by 33%, so selling it at 9 97 rather than 1. 497, which it currently is on my website. And I'm also likely to be running big discounts on all of my digital goods because You know what? They're 100 percent profit for me. I made them once, I sell them forever. So things like my e books, my portion size guides, my meal plans, I'll offer really big discounts on those.

[00:08:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: Okay, the second offer I've got for you is a free gift. If it's mainly one to ones that you do, then, and I imagine many of you will, and you're planning on promoting these during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, you can increase the value of your one to one offers by adding in a free gift when people purchase.

[00:08:26] Sarah Almond Bushell: Your free gift could be anything. Anything that complements the reason that they've booked in. And something digital is probably easiest, so it could be an e book, it could be a course. Or if you're an author, it could be a copy of your actual book. If, like me, you don't do one to ones, I could offer a one to one consultation along with their purchase of something else.

[00:08:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: I'm not going to do that, but it works both ways. For clients who come to work with me in my Business Coaching Mastermind, During this period, they're going to get a free gift. They'll get a copy of my annual planner, which is just behind me here. And it's a really beautiful A5 desk diary. And this is great because not only will they learn the strategies and tactics to grow their business, they can plan it all out in front of them so that they can see what they're doing on a day to day basis, which means that they'll make progress in their business.

[00:09:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: I love the concept of free gifts, and they're really enticing for people who've been thinking about it for a while, but they're just not sure. It can help turn a maybe into a hell yes. Again, you've got to give people a deadline. The free gift goes away at midnight on Cyber Monday, and this is just to encourage them to buy now, and not continue to put it off for later.

[00:09:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: So the third thing I've got for you is a bundle. And this is where you just gather together assets that you might already have in your business that all align with the same topic and then you bundle them up and you sell them at a discount. So for example, I've got a baby weaning course, I've got a toddler nutrition course, I've got some meal plans, I've got some portion size guides for each of the ages and stages.

[00:10:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: And quite often when I sell these individually people will start with the weaning course and then they'll buy the portion sizes for those age groups and then six months later they'll buy the toddler nutrition course and so these come together really nicely. If people were to buy these individually, it would cost them 555, but as a Black Friday deal, they can get the whole bundle all together for 333.

[00:10:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if you do want ones rather than courses, you could bundle together an e book and or an online course and even three months of WhatsApp support as a package to sell them as a nice bundled up deal. The fourth thing is an offer party, and I absolutely love this. You can have so much fun with an offer party.

[00:11:10] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you came to my masterclass that I did on the 24th of September, you'll have heard me talk about this. An offer party is where you make an announcement a couple of days before Black Friday that you're going to be hosting this offer party. Offer party. It's going to span the four day event and you're going to tease that there's going to be exclusive offers, there's going to be discounts, there's going to be limited spots, but you don't say what those offers are until the party starts.

[00:11:40] Sarah Almond Bushell: And what this does is it drums up excitement and it encourages people to come back to your profile, to your website and Check out what's going on. So for this one, you're gonna need to have a variety of different things to sell. Again, it could be diet sheets, it could be prerecorded talks, it could be eBooks, it could be guides that you've produced.

[00:12:01] Sarah Almond Bushell: It could be courses, memberships. I mentioned a bunch of baby puree recipes that had on my website that I put together into a guide. for a client, and I just put a front and back cover on it and sold it as a recipes for your first month of weaning ebook. I also mentioned that at one year I took 52 Instagram posts with their captions and I sold them as weekly tips on how to raise a happy, healthy eater, delivered as an email series.

[00:12:33] Sarah Almond Bushell: Honestly, you've probably got all kinds of things like this on your computer. Things that you've created for clients, things that you've created slides for a talk, for example, that you might've forgotten about that you can jazz up and you can sell for this purpose. So then once you've gathered all your assets, all the things that you want to sell, what you do is every few hours throughout that period, you announce a new offer with a short deadline.

[00:13:01] Sarah Almond Bushell: So for example, between 9am and 1pm on Black Friday, you might be able to get 33 percent off my Happy Healthy Weaning course, but don't delay because it expires at 1pm sharp. Then at 2pm, I might announce, Hey, are you running out of ideas for your children's meals? You can get 50 percent off my Nutritionist Approved Meal Plans with a new meal plan every single week for a year, but it expires at 6pm, so don't delay.

[00:13:31] Sarah Almond Bushell: So from Black Friday right through to Cyber Monday, you just make your offers at various intervals all with really short deadlines to encourage your clients to take action now. You need to give people a reason to buy now and these short deadlines work really well. Okay, the next thing you could try is an extended payment plan.

[00:13:55] Sarah Almond Bushell: So this is something I've tried in both of my businesses and it's actually worked really well for me. For example, in my six month mastermind program, occasionally I've allowed people to spread the cost of that Program over 12 months. Yes, they'll be finished the program before they've finished paying.

[00:14:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: But what it's done is it's allowed those people who are really new to business to start getting the advice that they need to get their businesses set up and running without that initial upfront payment. Essentially, It's helping people at a stage before they are ready in terms of the amount of money it costs.

[00:14:34] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now I'm not sure whether I'm going to run this again this year. I'd have to have a bit of a think about that. But the risk of course is that people might default on their payments. So I haven't had that happen to me yet in Dietitians in Business, but I have had that happen to me in the Children's Nutritionist.

[00:14:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: So you just need to be aware that this certainly is a possibility. And then the sixth one is affiliate promotions. So finally, if you don't have anything of your own that you can promote somebody else's things and get a kickback as an affiliate. So if you've got an audience, this can be a really great way to make money from them without having to create any of the assets yourself or actually deal with the customer services if they complain about the thing, they want a refund, or they change their mind.

[00:15:25] Sarah Almond Bushell: So have a look at what you recommend to your client all of the time. It could be cookbooks. It could be kitchen equipment. It could be supplements, meditation classes exercise apps, gym equipment. You get the picture. And then all you do is you reach out to these brands individually and ask if they have an affiliate scheme.

[00:15:47] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if not, can they set one up for you? So you promote their products. They get a new customer and you get paid for it. If you've got an active blog, you can apply to become an Amazon affiliate and you can share their links. Now the key to this type of promotion is to be really transparent and upfront.

[00:16:08] Sarah Almond Bushell: You need to be Honest, that you're going to be earning through their purchase. And you need to also be doing this with integrity. So what I always say is never promote things that you don't believe in, or you don't love, or actually you wouldn't choose to use it for yourself or your own family. If it's a, if it's a yes to all of those, something you love, Something you'd let your children have, something that you would use yourself, something that you're always recommending to a client.

[00:16:37] Sarah Almond Bushell: And that's usually a good sign that you're acting with integrity and it's okay to promote that thing. So this is something I'm going to be doing this year in my dietitians and business company. I'm going to be putting together a list of some of my favorite business tools and the best Black Friday deals that I can find for you as an affiliate, of course.

[00:16:59] Sarah Almond Bushell: So watch this space if you are interested. Okay, so now you've got some ideas for your offers, I want to talk you through how to execute this plan. So obviously the first thing you need to do is map out your dates. You're going to put the, promotional dates in your calendar. Now, definitely we can do that straight away because we know the dates that Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend is happening and the week before.

[00:17:26] Sarah Almond Bushell: And then the other thing I want you to do is just hold More or less the whole month of November to plan out your campaign and to create all of your marketing assets. So decide first of all, where you're going to do your marketing. So my clients, one of the things I always recommend to them is a three pronged approach where number one, you're going to promote to your email list.

[00:17:54] Sarah Almond Bushell: Number two, you'll promote to your social media, whichever channel you're on. And number three. On your website. Now, your email list is going to be your warmest leads. They are much more likely to buy because they've already made a commitment to you by giving you their email address. It's called a microconversion and it's a significant thing.

[00:18:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if you've been doing your email marketing well, they will have connected with you and your stories through your weekly or your daily newsletters. And if you don't have an email list, I want you to take this as a little reminder to start one because this is how we make money in our businesses. So what I want you to do is open up a spreadsheet on your computer and list out all of the content that you're going to need for these three places.

[00:18:43] Sarah Almond Bushell: Your email list, your social media channels, your website. For example, you might need banners for your website. You might need graphics for Facebook. You might need images and reels for Instagram. You might need longer form video if you're on TikTok or YouTube, if that's your thing. You will also need to write captions for all of these.

[00:19:05] Sarah Almond Bushell: You'll need to write copy or the words for your emails, copy for your website pages, for your checkout pages, etc. It goes on. We want to do this now, because as I say that, that sounds like a lot of work and we've got a good seven weeks or so before this all kicks off. So now is the time to be making these plans.

[00:19:27] Sarah Almond Bushell: So start with that list, list them all out, and then you won't feel swamped and overwhelmed and drowning in work as the date gets closer. So one of the things that we need to get across in all of our assets is. Value. So we know that there's fewer impulse buyers these days, probably because of the economy.

[00:19:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: People are taking longer to come to a decision about whether to buy from us. And therefore, to counteract this, because we've got such a short window of four days, we've got to be really good at communicating the value of our offers and our deals throughout this four day window. Always put yourself in your client's shoes and think about what's in it for them.

[00:20:17] Sarah Almond Bushell: What is the value of your offer? Benefits will they get from your offer, from buying your thing? And how will it positively impact and improve their lives? And I want you to make sure that this comes through in all of your marketing because this is what's going to make the difference between whether they choose to buy from you or not.

[00:20:40] Sarah Almond Bushell: So the other thing I would say is it's also a really good idea to start dropping hints to your audience that something exciting is coming. You probably don't need to do this much before the beginning of November, but what you're trying to do is build up a bit of a buzz, a bit of excitement, so that when the time comes, people are primed, they're excited to see what's on offer, and they'll head over to your sites, your pages, and just see what's going on.

[00:21:06] Sarah Almond Bushell: I also like to set up abandoned cart emails. Now, this is only going to be available to you with certain tech platforms and actually it's not with others. But if you do have this available to you on your tech platform, absolutely use them because people need reminders. They may have just been able to buy your thing at the checkout and then the doorbell rang or the baby started crying or the Ocado shop was delivered.

[00:21:34] Sarah Almond Bushell: Everyday distractions, these things happen. And so these abandoned cart emails are just little reminders that they were about to do that thing, make that purchase, and they will hopefully go on and do it. And then of course, you need to test, test, test everything. I want you to make sure that all your links are active and working.

[00:21:55] Sarah Almond Bushell: I want you to buy your own offers and see what the customer experience is. Do they get the right email? Do they get the right digital product delivered to them? Is it a really helpful onboarding experience? And then finally, you need to offer really, exceptional customer service during this period.

[00:22:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: So if people are asking you questions, make sure you respond to them in a really timely manner because that can make the difference between whether they make that sale or they don't. And the other thing is if These questions that come in, they're actually a really great insight into what people need to know.

[00:22:37] Sarah Almond Bushell: So you can bet if one person's asked it, somebody else is thinking about it. So it's a really good idea to be able to tweak things live if those questions come in. So you might have emails written and scheduled, you might have things on your website advertising what you're offering. But if questions Go into your website and answer those questions.

[00:23:02] Sarah Almond Bushell: Add it to your email so that people truly get. Their questions answered and they understand what it is that you're offering them. Okay, I hope you're excited about the forthcoming Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. So just to quickly recap, you can optimize the revenue and sales in your business with number one discounts, Number two, free gifts.

[00:23:27] Sarah Almond Bushell: Number three, bundles. Number four, hosting an offer party. That's one of my favorites. Number five, offering extended payment plans. And number six, selling other people's things through affiliate partnerships. And you also now know why I'm suggesting you start planning now. Because there's a fair bit of marketing that you'll likely want to prepare ahead for.

[00:23:51] Sarah Almond Bushell: And so my action step for you today is to start thinking about your Black Friday Cyber Monday offers. I'd love for you to tell me what you're going to test out. Let me know in our Beyond the Clinic Business Facebook group. Okay, that's it for today. I'd love you to join me next time where I am back to interviewing colleagues.

[00:24:13] Sarah Almond Bushell: This time I'm going to be talking to Naveen El Shabini. She is a dietitian and she also works as an online business manager supporting other dietitians. We are going to be diving into this unusual and innovative role. Join me then. Bye for now.