One strategy to maintain your brand’s integrity
I know two things for certain.
The first thing I know:
Always having a discount, special promotion, compare-at pricing, etc. devalues your brand.
This makes people not want to buy UNLESS they are getting a discount.
Further, it makes your products look cheap.
Your customer becomes uncertain as to your product’s real value.
And that eliminates one of the most important emotional states you want your customer to live in: TRUST.
The second thing I know:
Offers, discounts, specials, sales, etc… WORK.
They work by dropping your acquisition cost of NEW customers,
And your existing customers come back and purchase in droves,
If the offer is irresistible, your ads and emails get shared organically, creating even more lift!
But of course, we can’t be pedal to the metal 365 days per year.
What is the optimal frequency for driving big sales with everyone who even has an inkling of interest in your product?
The answer is: Every 90 days.
Before I go any further, there are caveats to this.
Big brands with large marketing teams and voluminous product catalogs have the bandwidth to run offers on individual products and collections almost daily.
This is an excellent strategy…
IF YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY… and the catalog.
Now, back to the 90-Day Cycle.
I have a theory, and this is by no means scientific.
We run our businesses on 90-Day Cycles.
We set goals, targets, and rocks (see: Traction) every quarter.
And for some reason, when we get to the end of each quarter,
The meeting that we had 3 months prior simultaneously seems like it was yesterday,
But also that a ton of activity has taken place in between.
We’re older, wiser, smarter.
It’s like a refresh happens every three months.
This got me thinking.
This concept absolutely applies to D2C eCom businesses.
So we tested it.
We planned a year of promotions with one of our clients.
One every quarter, with flash sales, and smaller promotions peppered in between.
The result was as predicted.
Revenue steady during the regular times,
With little blips for flash sales.
And when we lit up our quarterly promotion …
BOOM.
The months that had the sale in them were almost 75% bigger than the previous year.
And this is an established business.
Our year-over-year growth was attached at the hip to our quarterly promotion revenue.
Now, why 90-Day Cycles?
Here’s my hypothesis.
I believe it has to do with how humans evolved to cope with seasons.
Your mindset is different in the summer than it is in the winter. Fall is different than spring.
As a result, our memory is blocked into seasons.
Just a theory.
If you’re afraid of devaluing your brand by getting into the downward spiral of NEEDING to have a promotion to make sales, program this into your plan instead and go big every 90 days.
