We’re Nik Sharma superfans here at Privy.
He’s hosted Masterclasses, come on our podcast, and been featured in our book (I wasn’t kidding…we’re huge fans). And he never disappoints.
He always brings his A game and tons of actionable advice small ecommerce brands can use to grow their businesses.
The latest BFCM Masterclass he came on was no exception.
He shared his favorite BFCM campaign.
4 ways to drive sales during BFCM (outside of paid ads).
And 3 landing page ideas you can steal.
It’s a jam-packed post, so let’s get to the good stuff.
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Nik’s favorite BFCM campaign
Remember when BFCM was all about getting things you didn’t necessarily need?
Fist-fighting people to get your TV at Target, standing in line for hours on end to wait for your favorite retailers to open…ahhh, the good ol’ days.
But now more than ever, people are buying products and responding to offers for items they would’ve purchased anyway.
That’s why this is one of Nik’s favorite offers.
At Hint, he and his team ran a 9 for $99 campaign that performed so well that it wasn’t just used once.
Each case of water normally sells for $20, but they ended up selling nine cases for just $99 with free shipping. And that offer crushed it. In part because people were getting something they wanted to or would have purchased anyway.
And it was a total win-win because the customer gets a 45% discount, but the brand is driving a much higher AOV. And, as a bonus, getting rid of some of the less popular flavors that weren’t moving as quickly as the fan favorites.
Nik’s prediction for BFCM 2020? “Some of the best campaigns we’ll see this year are the ones that are high AOV bundles with high discounts.”
? Think about that as you’re coming up with your offers this year.
4 ways to drive sales during BFCM outside of ads
I know, I said this wasn’t about advertising, and it’s not. But hear me out on this. Advertising is paying for distribution. To get more eyes on your brand and products.
But what if you could do that in ways that don’t require you to spend money?
Bet you’re listening now. ?
Nik’s advice here is simple.
“You basically want to look at as many distribution channels as possible, and you want to get in front of as many as possible.”
Here are 4 channels he recommends to help you accomplish that.
Lean in to Facebook and Instagram
At Hint, Nik created a Facebook event for their BFCM offer. He drove people to the event because he knew the second they dropped their sale, people would get a push notification from Facebook saying, “The event is live. Hint Black Friday.”
The amazing thing about this one is you probably already have a Facebook page. So it requires very little effort on your part. Which, this time of year, is truly music to any ecommerce founder’s ears.
Especially because you don’t even have to include the details of your offer just yet. Just put, “Hint mystery Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer.” And then as it gets closer you can update the event and when that happens, everyone will get a notification from you.
Another clever hack is to set up Close Friends on Instagram. Then you can create exclusive offers for this group so they feel extra special and appreciated.
Pair your FB event or Instagram strategy with email and texts and you’ve got yourself a serious strategy. Create that surround sound effect.
Because if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that people’s inboxes are going to be a mess. So the more touch points you have across different channels, especially channels you’re not paying for, the better.
Look into Product Hunt
When Brightland launched their vinegars, Nik put it on Product Hunt, a site that curates some of the world’s best new products, every single day. And it became the #1 product that day, driving a decent amount of revenue for the brand. With categories for pretty much everything in the DTC space, it’s definitely worth a shot if you’re launching a new product.
If you’re new to the world of Product Hunt, check out this guide their team put together to help you get started.
Test Reddit and Twitter
As an ecommerce brand, you know how important it is to be where your customers are. And it turns out Nik has had success doing just that on both Twitter and Reddit.
On both platforms, the magic is in the threads and the replies. You don’t (and when it comes to Reddit, you mostly can’t) pitch your product in a way that feels salesy. You have to answer a question, share helpful content and generally provide value. Essentially it’s content first, then sell.
On Twitter you can use search.twitter.com to search for certain keywords that are relevant to your brand in order to chime in and respond to folks that might be a great fit for your products.
Both definitely require getting creative, but if you don’t have much budget to play with, these are exactly the kinds of strategies you should be looking for.
Partner with another brand
Find a brand that has a similar audience to your own. Let’s say you have a couch company and there’s a blanket company that would fit well with your brand…
You could create an offer around a couch purchase that would incentivize a blanket purchase with your partner brand (gift card, free gift, etc.). If you both share the offer, you’ll have twice the audience seeing it.
You’re both acquiring new customers and it’s a total win-win. This is one you can definitely play around with and test. And if you’re stuck, try asking your customers which brands they’d love you to partner with. That should give you at least a couple places to start.
3 landing page ideas to steal
If you’ve seen any of Nik’s work, you know he’s a huge fan of landing pages. And the analogy he used here is incredible.
“I like to think of my customer as Kim Kardashian, and the brand as Kim Kardashian’s assistant on a red carpet.”
Which really just means you want to do all the work for them. Don’t make them think. The only thing your customer should have to do is check out.
You don’t want them coming to your site and having to dig around to find what they’re looking for. Which is why landing pages are so amazing (Nik is a fan of Unbounce, btw). You want to bring them to a landing page that gives them everything they need to know.
He loves combing through things like customer reviews, comments on Instagram, the highest-performing posts on social, etc. to figure out what will resonate best with the audience.
Then it becomes more about finding the right content vs. creating the right content. Which is SO much easier.
And Nik’s formula for success when it comes to creating killer landing pages is simple.
“Basically the way I think about building these pages is you just keep answering questions that pop up in your head as you go through it. So you play devil’s advocate the entire time while you’re building them out. And you just keep answering these questions to the point where you don’t have any more questions left.”
Here are some of his favorite landing page examples you’ve gotta see. So you can steal your favorite elements for your own brand.
Landing page example #1: JUDY
JUDY’s entire website is insane. But we’re actually going to talk about a specific page for their Ready System.
It’s for a bundle of existing products, which makes pulling the contents of the page together much easier than starting from scratch.
Right from the beginning, it tells you exactly what you’re looking at. You’re not left wondering, “What even is the Ready System?”
You get $100 off. It was $490 now it’s $390, or you could get it for $43 a month with Affirm. It includes 75 items, three hand-picked emergency kits. There are customer testimonials, tons of photos, social proof, and when you click add to cart, it takes you straight to the cart and automatically applies the code.
Like anything in ecommerce (and life), the more friction you can remove at each step, the higher the chances you’ll succeed. AKA your conversion rate will be insane and you’ll be making more $.
Nik’s secret for a seamless checkout experience: “It’s a super easy formula to create a link that drops people into the cart. It just requires you use the variant ID of the product(s), then it’s just domain.com/cart/variant:quanity. And then if you want to add a discount, then at the end of that you do ?discount= and then you put the code in.”
Landing page example #2: Poo~Pourri
This lading page for Poo~Pourri was built for a product launch, not a bundle of existing products. Which means it’s definitely a bigger lift than just pulling together content they already had like the JUDY example.
You’ll notice they’re also trying to cross-sell some of the Poo~Pourri flagship products on the page, too.
But generally, the page follows the same formula as JUDY’s.
Easy-to-consume education, social proof, and super easy checkout experience.
Landing Page Example #3: Drink Sanzo
And the last (and simplest example) from drink brand, Sanzo, is for a welcome offer we can assume they’re driving paid traffic to.
And it still follows the same formula, but because there’s less education involved to sell seltzers vs. a bidet or emergency preparedness kit, the page isn’t as in-depth.
So if you’re ready to test the landing page waters, this is definitely the place to start. Especially if you want to create a relatively simple page for your BFCM offer(s).
BFCM 2020 takeaways
If you made it this far, you should have a ton of ideas to test out for BFCM 2020. But if I were you, here are a few key takeaways I wouldn’t skip.
- Test out high AOV bundles with high discounts like Nik’s favorite Hint campaign
- Don’t just rely on ads as a distribution channel: get creative
- Test out landing pages for your offers: handhold them through the entire process
You can also watch Nik’s full BFCM Masterclass. Now get moving! It’s time to get ready to have your biggest BFCM yet.
