[Jordan Brandon]
We’re going to get started by letting the panelists introduce themselves. Once again, thanks for coming out. It’s our prep for Black Friday event, Black Friday, Cyber Monday put on by Skipio.
And then we’ll just go down the line, Kyle, if you want to start and introduce yourself, and give a quick plug for the company that you’re with.
[Kyle Shurtz]
Yeah, so I’m Kyle Shurtz. I am the VP of performance marketing at Avalaunch Media. We’re a full service digital marketing agency based out of Lehi.
We work with all sorts of brands and businesses and are happy to help you hit your Q4 goals and your business goals.
[Brooke Rosqvist]
I’m Brooke Rosequist. I’m one of the founders of Clash Marketing. We specialize in brand cohesion and online presence along with some other a la carte marketing needs based on what you want. And we mostly focus on small businesses.
[Michael Rutkowski]
Hello, I’m Michael Rutkowski, the VP of revenue marketing at D2L. D2L is based out of Canada, and I live here in Lehi and work remotely andnd I always try to explain to people that my job is to make sure that the investments marketing is making pay off on the company’s bottom line.
D2L is an educational technology company. I always tell people I love working in Ed Tech. Because when you impact learning, you impact people’s lives for the better. So it’s a great space to work.
[Jordan Brandon]
And then I am Jordan Brandon. I’m the head of marketing here at Skipio. We’re putting on this event.
We are a small business software that helps you with your lead engagement, your sales, and your marketing. So we will be going over a little bit more of this later, but really excited to have everyone here and can’t wait to get going. So without further ado, I have all my notes on my phone. So when you see me looking at my phone, I am not reading a text. I’m just reading my notes. Brooke over there though was probably just reading up the ingredients on her swig drink.
[Jordan Brandon]
I doubt that’s it.
[Brooke Rosqvist]
That’s it. Do you want to take a swig?
[Jordan Brandon]
No, I’m good. I’m all right. So we’re just going to get started.
We’re going to have a quick panel. At our last event, people said that they really wanted to do more q&a. So we have a lot more time for q&a.
And then after the q&a, we’re going to break out into some small sessions and do a quick workshop. We’ve got a worksheet for everyone to take with them to help you with your Black Friday planning. You should get this out ASAP, just if you’re not already have it out, get it out as soon as possible.But hopefully you can get some good takeaways.
So one of the things I wanted to go over today is that Black Friday is different now than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, people used to line up at the stores at midnight or earlier, right? And and wait to bust down that door and run over those Walmart employees for that TV that was $10 off. So things are different now and we’re not lining up at stores.
A lot of the small businesses have online presence and different things like that. So we’re going to go through each panel. Kyle, I’d love to start with you and ask what you think is different about Black Friday today and how businesses need to adapt to the new Black Friday.
[Kyle Shurtz]
That’s funny. It seems like Black Friday has started to creep into even October of all the discounts. And I think as a business, something that you just need to figure out, your strategy, is you need to teach your customers and your clients how to treat you.
If you are going to be the discount brand, be the discount brand. But if you want to have a high, luxurious product, just do what you say you’re going to do. If you say that your sale ends on this day, actually end your sale on that day.
Don’t say, oh, magically, we’re going to extend our discount. I just think it really trains consumers that, oh, I don’t need to buy yet. But if you actually do it, and you actually stand by what you say you’re going to do, you’re just going to increase your sales for that day specifically, and probably for the month.
[Jordan Brandon]
Are you saying fake urgency doesn’t work? Come on, Kyle.
[Kyle Shurtz]
Fake urgency does not work like it used to.
[Jordan Brandon]
Brooke, anything to add there?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
I would say this is your time to be really creative because there’s a lot of small businesses out there doing the same thing that you’re trying to do, is get more customers. I think this is the time to maybe put on a big event at your store if you have a brick and mortar, or maybe have a really fun online presence for that week going into Cyber Monday. I think creating more of a relationship with your customers is going to really help you stand out in such a crazy market of Black Friday.
[Michael Rutkowski]
Thank you. Mike? Yeah, my specialty is business to business and so Black Friday is a little bit different in that space. But where I think things have changed is that you don’t have to be satisfied with the belief that the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is a dead zone for your business. People actually are paying attention.
And even if it’s not the best time of the year for them to be considering what your solution can provide them, if you can get somebody during that time and leverage a calendar event like Black Friday to capture some attention and provide some value, the odds are really good that that person has very high intent. And so you’ve got a really good opportunity to actually make impact at a time when other things are not as competitive in the B2B space, because there is so much emphasis on the noise that’s being created in retail.
[Jordan Brandon]
Yeah, one thing I want to add, ditto to everything. I feel like Black Friday is an event where consumers are waiting, they expect something from your brand. And if you can be like, out of the box thinking like Brooke was saying, like Mike was saying, you can get a loyal customer or at least a very engaged prospect that you can then nurture throughout the rest of the year.
And then it doesn’t have to be a one-day and then over. One thing I wanted to throw to you, Kyle, the next question is kind of what do you do differently for existing customers versus new customers? I know that a lot of ecommerce brands will just slap the same thing on for everybody.
But how do you make an existing customer feel special at this time of year? And how do you make a new customer feel like they need to be part of this?
[Kyle Shurtz]
I think you’re always marketing to a human, like, when I see somebody calling my phone, and I know who it is, I’m going to answer very differently than if it’s a telemarketer, because I’m just not even gping to answer their call. But as a marketer, you want to really isolate your audiences based upon what you know about them. So you can educate and talk to them and meet them where they’re at.
If they have no idea who you are, you should tell them why they should know who you are, what’s in it for them. I love what 1% [1% Fitness] said, we’re disrupting the fast food industry with convenient, healthy food, you can understand the labels. That resonates with me. Yeah, I love convenience. But I also love eating healthy food. That’s amazing.
Whereas if you know that they’ve interacted with your website a bunch, and they’re just not quite spending money or engaging or becoming a lead. Why is that? Think about it. Like actually ask yourself, why would somebody not want to buy from me?
Talk to the sales team say, what are the big holdups? Why are these customers not wanting to purchase from our business or from our brand, and then actually get ahead of those things in your messaging, talk to them about those concerns and say, here’s a concern you might have. It costs $10, using 1% again, we’ll talk about how much money you spend at McDonald’s or all the inflation that’s going up in fast food, but then also highlight how much better it is for you as an individual.
[Jordan Brandon]
Thank you. Mike, Brooke, anything to add on that?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
Did you talk about the difference between like new leads and yes.
[Jordan Brandon]
Yes. So the question, how do you market to existing customers versus a new prospect?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
Yeah, I feel like with a new prospect, it’s all about awareness and education. And that takes a long time. I think that’s what’s really frustrating about the newer ones, is they might be a very solid customer in the future, but right now, it feels like you’re pulling teeth, but it is beneficial for you to create that education and awareness of your brand. Because even if you’ve been around for a few years, a lot of people probably don’t know who you are. So I think keep that in mind.
[Jordan Brandon]
Excellent. Mike, I’m gonna throw the next, oh, unless you have something to add before I go to the next one.
[Michael Rutkowski]
I’ll just say quick, I mean, anytime you have an opportunity where you can do something that feels exclusive to your existing customers. People like that feeling, right? They like knowing that they’re on the inside, that they get something that other people don’t.
And so certainly, right, you want to leverage whatever you can for Black Friday for new business. But if you do have that core, you know, if you do have that developing community or fan base, and you can do a little something special and extra for them, that’s going to make a difference and that is the kind of thing that people really value and remember.
[Jordan Brandon]
Yeah, I’m gonna throw this next question to Mike, but I’m gonna give everyone some context first. Mike was on a panel that I attended and I consider Mike the anti-marketer.
He is like completely against marketing, but that makes him one of the best marketers I’ve ever met. And I love that. So I’m going to ask Mike, when should we start either teasing or sending out our Black Friday offer?
And what are some creative ways to do that without feeling market-y?
[Michael Rutkowski]
Yeah, it’s a great question. And it is true, I don’t actually believe in my own profession. And the reason why I say that is because it does require such an accumulated effort.
I think a lot of times, in marketing, we get really confused looking at signals that don’t actually mean a whole lot. And we try to get this really granular understanding about what, what matters and what works. And you can do that much better if you are in a world that’s more transactional.
You know, if you have a product, and you have a customer, and they have to decide, and that’s the end of the story, you know, you can get that quick feedback loop on if the things you’re doing are actually getting the results that you want.
In B2B, and especially enterprise B2B, where where my experience lies, it’s a much longer slot. And so I think this is a great question from Jordan here about when should you start and things like that.
I was thinking about this recently because I was at Costco and they’re already starting to get holiday stuff up for the end of the year. And this was after it’s been a month now that they’ve had a bunch of Halloween stuff up.It’s crazy to me. And I love Halloween. But I think when you’re looking at the timing of certain things, you can take it from the perspective of what’s going to be expected.
Because expected doesn’t cut through the noise, expected is what drops out. So if there’s a twist that you can do, on what’s expected, that’s going to open up the opportunity for you to have that engagement. And I do want to give credit to a team member of mine, and mentioned something that she did last year around Black Friday.
And with the holidays approaching, she developed a campaign with our sales team, they identified a bunch of accounts that they would like to build relationships with. And it occurred to her that, you know, with the holidays come parties, and people like to have fun things at their parties. And, you know, charcuterie boards are pretty cool right now, it’s really fun to go someplace and see a charcuterie board.
And there’s a lot of pride that people feel when they make a cool charcuterie board. So she got some charcuterie boards. And again, looked at that list with the sales team, and coordinated with their her BDRs to reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, you got the holidays coming up. If you’re going to host a New Year’s Eve party, would you be interested in us sending you a charcuterie board?
We’re educational technology, right? Like the charcuterie board has nothing to do with the software that we have. And they actually got quite a few people that were like, yeah, that sounds really cool. Definitely be happy to get that. So that got delivered.And then that was followed up with, hey, if you want us to help fund, you know, getting some like, some cheese and meat and stuff like that, we’d be happy to send you a gift card if you’re willing to take a look at a demo of our software.
And so again, the response to that was great. So, you know, being unexpected, that’s what’s going to break through the noise and you can take advantage of the timing. You know, to look at what’s everybody else going to do? And what’s the thing that we can do a little bit differently, that’s going to stand out from that. And that’s ultimately what’s going to get a really positive response.
[Jordan Brandon]
Awesome. Thank you, Mike. Brooke, I kind of skipped over you on the last one.
So I’m going to shoot this one to you. And then we’ll go back to Kyle. What’s like the best way to build excitement for whatever promotion you’re running?
So we’ve talked about like, be unexpected, kind of get the word out early. That’s kind of normal now. No one’s gonna be surprised by that.
What’s a good way to get people excited for whatever promotion you are running?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
I think a tease campaign is a big one, because they’re already expecting a discount. But I think if you build that excitement of, well, what is it? And is it a discount? Is it a BOGO? Is it a bonus feature that you’re providing? I think that can help. But also, don’t take away from your normal posting. Don’t flood with teasing because that gets so annoying. Make sure you’re still sticking to your normal campaign. But put that in
I would say if you really want to start teasing, four weeks before. You get them excited and then you slowly start adding a little bit of a nugget and then more and then at the final week, really tell them what it is, where they can get it and why it’s so important to them. I think that would really help build excitement for Black Friday.
[Jordan Brandon]
I love that. And it’s not like you’re revealing everything and saying save the date because then people are like, oh, I know what’s coming and then they’re leaving.
But if you kind of tease it, it’s going to be really good, it’s going to be this and there’s something more. Wait for this day. Kyle, I know you’ve done a ton with ecom.
What’s a good way to bundle things that you already are selling to maximize that event? Or maybe you’re doing it as a bundling for things as that teaser campaign? Any thoughts there of ways to get them the most out and get the excitement going?
[Kyle Shurtz]
Yeah, I think a really important thing if you are in ecommerce, and if you sell multiple product SKUs is trying to increase your average order value during the holidays. And so anything you can do to get people excited about spending more money with you, whether you’re throwing in something that you normally wouldn’t, anything to do to get those dollars up per sale, because the sales are going to be higher just naturally.
So a brand that I love, I’m actually wearing one of their shirts, Poncho, they never do discounts. Never once have they ever done a discount. But what they do is they’ll tease a free hat or free this or free that and I think I really liked what Michael said about talking to your existing customers and like giving them exclusivity.
Maybe it’s, if you know they’re already a customer throwing in some once in a lifetime, one type of generation, something that’s really going to excite them. Like, oh the first 100 get this amazing. I mean, you’re going to sell those 100 really fast.
[Jordan Brandon]
I love that. And honestly, I feel like that still works. If you’re in a service business, or you’re selling some sort of service, right?
Find out what your audience loves, throw that in with a class or their first class, or if they’ve been a member forever, maybe you have something that’s for like the lifelong members and you throw that in. I love it. Mike, I’m going to come to you for my next one.
What’s a creative way of managing, because you’re more in the b2b space, but I feel like a lot of businesses need to manage these leads so that you don’t just have one day sale and then they forget about you until Christmas or Black Friday the next year or whatever, right?
Like, you’re getting more than one a year. So what’s a good way to manage these leads, or these customers if they do buy between now and those lull periods?
[Michael Rutkowski]
Yeah, so the thing that you’ve got to be really disciplined about is making sure if you’re ever going to initiate an interaction, you need to make sure that you can provide some value. Now, Black Friday, oftentimes the value is going to be very clear, right? It’s going to be, there is some sort of sales special or something like that.
But you really just have only so many chances for people to trust you, that when you reach out to them, it’s not just to flood their inbox, or it’s not just to be self promotional, but actually give them something of value. And so really thinking about what would be of value to them, right? What’s the unexpected interaction that you can bring to them that’s going to open their mind about something. It’s a really unique way to do this.
And when we have the time afterwards, I talked with Jordan about doing something a little bit different than the Black Friday planner. One of the things that I found is really effective is helping people to feel smart. And you help them feel smart by having them learn something new that they didn’t know before.
And you can do that really effectively and pretty easily using surveys and polls, even of your own existing customers. And so I’ve developed a simple method to figure out how to ask really good questions that are going to produce the sorts of data and results that give people that insight that helps them know something now that they didn’t before, and helps them feel smart. And if they’re associating feeling smart with interacting with you, then those transactions become a lot easier, right?
They’re going to increase their cart size, because they’re going to feel like there’s something there that’s a little bit more meaningful than just the exchange of cash for goods.
[Jordan Brandon]
I love that. And that leads right into our next question, Brooke, I’m gonna go to you. How is Black Friday just the beginning. Like that you’re going to get a lot of interest, you’re going to build a lot of hype. You know, surveys is a great way to do that. But how do you take it to the next level?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
Well, there’s already a momentum, sSo you can cheat that way, which is kind of nice. It’s already there. There’s already holidays going on.
I think another thing that would help build the momentum is making sure that there is a customer value there. Like, why are they investing in you? You know, I think a lot of people value customer service over product and service. And I think they’re like, well I want to go to this company because they value my time, they value my money, they value me being a better person, whether it’s like personal care products or better shirts, they’re trying to increase my quality of life. I think that can really help the momentum and being like, I had a great experience with this company for Black Friday, because a lot of companies are super pushy. And I think if you can be very sincere and really talk to your customers, they’re going to be like, I respect them. And I think that’ll help you in the rest of the year.
[Jordan Brandon]
I love that. Using a sale to not just get dollars, but to build a relationship. We’re going to jump to our last question here.
And I’m going to let each panelist go through and kind of give their final thoughts. Kyle, we’ll start with you. But how can a small business maximize their return on investment with their Black Friday campaigns? What’s some strategies they should look at there?
[Kyle Shurtz]
Yeah, I think the big thing, I love what the previous question of Black Friday is just the beginning. If you aren’t planning to capitalize on post Black Friday, that’s a big miss.
So you should have campaigns designed and built to capitalize on that excitement, that interest that initially comes in from Black Friday. And going back to speaking to people differently, whether it be your current customers who didn’t end up buying from you, you should have campaigns talking to them.
Whether it be people who said they were interested, right, they raise their hand, they subscribe to a newsletter, they sign up for your texting, you should have a campaign designed to them as to why they should buy your product or service at the end of the day.
And to Jordan’s point, it shouldn’t be all just about getting the sale, it should be building, you know, long lasting, positive energy around your business and if you do that, then you will see long term effects and ROI.
[Jordan Brandon]
Love that. Brooke, we’ll go to you again, or unless you want to skip to Mike, just answering that question again of how can a small business maximize their ROI for Black Friday?
[Brooke Rosqvist]
I like what you said, honestly, but I would want to just tell everyone that owns a small business, make sure you can handle what you’re promoting. Don’t overdo it. Make sure you have the money, you have the resources because you are a smaller group of people. And if you’re having friends and family come and help you, that’s great, but understand that it’s hard and plan well, so you’re not overwhelmed and you can enjoy the experience. I think that’s my biggest takeaway from that.
[Jordan Brandon]
Awesome. Mike?
[Michael Rutkowski]
Yeah, I second everything that’s been shared and I would just add, look for the reactions. The reason why I say that, it’s probably not a surprise, I don’t believe in marketing. I also don’t like reading business books, but there is one book on the restaurant business that I find very interesting. It’s called Raising the Bar. It’s by Jon Taffer. He hosts the Bar Rescue Show, if you’ve ever seen that. And one of the concepts that he talks about is this idea of reaction marketing.
And the basic idea is that every experience that you provide to a customer will elicit a reaction of some kind. And so as a conscientious small business owner, what you want to do is figure out what the reactions you want are. Some of them are going to be making the sale, some of them are going to be having the relationship to lead to future business. And if the experiences that you’re providing are not giving you those reactions, you want to go back and evaluate the experience and improve the experience so that it gets you those reactions.
And so you have this opportunity, as Brooke mentioned, you can kind of cheat, there’s some momentum there, you’re going to have a higher volume of activity. You can learn a lot very quickly from the reactions that happen there, that like Kyle said, can set you up for other business and other interactions in the future.
[Jordan Brandon]
Awesome, thank you.
