Here’s our entire NH Black Friday Strategy 🖤

The Rising Conquer Podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land which this episode is being recorded, the Yugen Bear region. We further acknowledge country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Terrestriid islander peoples today. Hello and welcome back to the Rising Conquer Podcasts. This is the podcast for ordinary people who want to do extraordinary.

Things Black Friday.

If you're an Econ brand who takes it seriously, it's not just sale right, it is as important as a product launch, like it's a huge marathon. It takes. It's the biggest marathon that we do all year. Not many activations take as much time and prep and thought as a sale like this.

Hello and welcome back to the Rides and Conquer podcast. It is your host, Georgie Stevenson, lawyer turned entrepreneur, business owner, mum wife all the things. Today's episode is a juicy one. I sit down with Mel and we literally tell you our entire Black Friday strategy for naked harvest. So some of you may have already seen on socials, but there's a lot happening. We actually revealed last night that we have a mystery Moon Milk dropping that is limited edition

And they actually shared some secrets.

So many secrets. Tea was like shocked, so many secrets. Mel has so many golden nuggets for you guys. So I just want to quickly jump in because when we were recording, me and Mel thought the episode was going live the day the sale starts, but then we went rogue and a Tea is like, I really want to post it before, so the RNC gang are getting the insight before the stale goes live. So you'll have a thing. Thank a Tea for that one. And Mel was like

You go fuss mine is and I'm watching this purely on principle. I'm not sure if I like it yet. But a TV show on Netflix called Blockbuster, it's called Recommendations A tier. Yeah, no, it's good.

I recommend people watch it out of principle too. What do you mean out of principle?

So, Netflix, when they first started went to Blockbuster the company for investment.

Do you know this story? Yes, that's so interesting and.

Got turned down and you said, this is not happening. DVD's are going to be here forever. What are you doing with your life? This is a shit idea. And now they've actually released a Netflix original series of a sitcom of the last blockbuster to ever exist. And if you like like Brooklyn nine nine Superstar kind of vibe, you'll really love this show. I like them, I don't love them, but I am watching the show because it's it's good.

Don't you just love the audacity?

Yeah?

Literally, I'm like, I'm going to give you the ratings for this.

It's just on principle, if nothing else, that's my recommendation.

What about you, guys. I've already recommended It Ends with Us by Colin Huber, and since then I have read two more of her books. I started It Ends with Us this week. Oh good, and it's like, I know, this is like a basic bitch recommendation because it's all over TikTok, and I'm a bit late to the game. I'm obsessed with here, like I love myself a romance novel now, and I just I can like I consumed

And which one, which one would you recommend over It Starts with Us or Ugly Love?

I think I like Ugly Love better. It's so good. It's just beautiful. And then now I'm reading Verity, which is a thriller. Oh but like still still a romance novel. I'm told I'm only very at the start, so okay, I will let you know. But what I wanted to recommend is what I love about this is I don't go on social media. As soon as I put Ivy to bed, I get in bed, I put my little moisturize around my hand and feet because I'm a dry human. And then I read my book and boisterize.

Let me get into that.

Yeah, it's like we're old ladies.

I love it.

I love that I'm not the only one, but also self care. Yeah, and then I read my book and I just get engrossed and I'm obsessed and it's so good because I used to read self development books but then it used to make my mind go a big you know, I'd have all these big ideas right before I slept and then I would have a sleep as good. So this is amazing and I feel like I get lost in the book and it's beautiful and that's my recommendation.

Amazing.

All right, let's get into show. Guys. You're going to be obsessed with the sex side, all right, So what I want to get into mal I want to chat about our Black Friday strategy, cyber Monday, all that she'snit, but I also want to chat about things from you know, what we do just in general before a big sale or.

You know, an activation that sort of been wanted me to tell them everything.

I want you to, well, yes everything, No, I think it. I think it's so fun. Yeah, tell them because Georgie's our boss, and what do we know about her?

She can't keep a secret.

Guys, Why do is I love for all the campaign strategies making fun of me, honestly, but I just I think it's so interesting because people's you know, it's not going to take away from the campaign because people are still gonna want to see it. But it's just I love knowing, like you know, the ins and outs and how we did so fuck it, let's be super transparent. Let's tell them everything. And I'm pretty sure you did promise this and.

I did, I did, I did.

So look, we've got to deliver. So first of all, let's just get into it, because I want this to be like a quick to the pointp before you know, a big activation or this is like our biggest sale of the year. What do you do in prep to I guess, just get your mind around, you know, maybe targets we want to do, maybe some ideas, like what's the very.

First thing you do? Okay, So the very first thing I do is I pull my entire strategy and I guess, like what we achieved from last year's Black Friday sales. So I do this six months. It's so midyear. I pull this in at the end of June. Once I end a financial year sale starts. That's when I start my Black Friday strategy planning. So I'll go and do an audit, a complete audit of our entire Black Friday strategy from the year before, and then from there, I

My Christmas present to you, is just gonna be like a black book here you go go, No, it's a Google doc.

But that's majority like where my strategy planning starts. So yeah, I just have a document of ideas every year that I go through. I love it.

So first step, do it audit of the previous you know, time that you did a similar activation, see what worked, see didn't. And then also go back to your ideas Google doc where you're like, oh, what can we kind of do here to spice things up to make it a bit crazy?

Absolutely, and then once you're doing the order as well, and you're kind of seeing where you landed at the end of the year and if you're going into things like your profit margins and what your sell through was and what you're expecting like. We then set huge.

Goals, huge uplift goals, which targets targets which you know as you follow on and you start planning that strategy, you have to make sure that your strategy starts far enough in advance where you are taking care of all the little nitty gritty things that you essentially need to be able to hit that goal, Like it's not going

Obviously I know, but okay, So in terms of targets, obviously we set like a gross budget budget that we want to hit more new at the end of that, it's the bottom line of any sale. And then I will set so kind of like growth targets across our main marketing channels that are our main sale drivers. Okay, So this goes into you know, how many people we want to have downloading and inside and subscribe to push

Yeah, and so something I know we do is you set those targets. And that's why we're planning so far ahead because it's then giving us time to do smaller activations to hit those targets for those channels exactly.

So that's why I personally planned that far in advance.

Well, you need to otherwise it can like, yeah, you can't.

Roll if you if your goal is as big as outs, which most econ brands are during Black Friday, you can't make that happen in a month.

So run us through maybe some smaller activations that we've done this year that have contributed to reaching those targets. And this is you know, before Black Friday even starts.

So for example, if one of the main goals is to drive and just to be transparent, like our app goal, our app growth goal was double what we'd already had inside the app, so you know that's huge. For example, you know, creating app only emotions where we're using our organic marketing channels and our paid channels to drive people to download the app to get access to this offer that's app only. That's a strategy that we implemented.

Then you've got things like the five K giveaway, where part of it was like a sweepstakes giveaway, so not only did they have to enter by opting in and essentially subscribing, they got extra points if they downloaded the app, followed us on Instagram, followed us on TikTok, joined the Facebook group.

So that's a lead gen strategy.

So we just recently did the Little Freebee, which is ah yes, so it's like obviously to get emails and in exchange, someone gets the one hundred activities to tick off on your summer vaka. I guess not Vaka but Holidays, which is just like a really fun little thing we did.

It's so cute. Yeah, and then even it can go into like B to B partnerships that I just didn't think of, but it's something that we rolled out. So, you know, recently we collaborated with Lust Minerals and a bunch of other brands to put this like scratch and win order it. You know, if you wanted to win this prize you would subscribe and then all five brands are working together to build an email list that's then shared.

So that's a strategy to build our email list. I'm so excited to see how that go same amazing. Okay, So that is like, that's very pre pre and that's literally happening, you know, six months before to increase those channels again to get us to your point where the Black Friday strategy then rolls out.

Yeah, so that's part of the strategy, right. But something I'd also like to touch on is like it's all well and good to create these growth goals and have these people inside your channels as a potential new pool to sell to during your biggest sale of the year, but you then have to work on nurturing those customers. So how are you nurturing them towards Black Friday?

Like?

Are they customers who've been engaged but they've never purchased. How are you trying to get them to purchase? Are you pushing a sample packed to them? Are you giving them an exclusive offer? How are you trying to answer their objections to purchase so that they're coming to purchase?

I love that. So it's like, don't just think of this as a sale, think of this as a whole you know, marketing activation.

Absolutely.

Okay, amazing. So we've touched on sort of the pre the pre stuff. Let's get into our actual strategy. Tell we're going to tell them everything. So what did you want to put into the pre hype strategy?

Okay, so part of our hype strategy, So this is like how you're priming your audience and how you're letting them know that your Black Friday sail is around the corner. So we start this seven to ten days out. One of our key drivers this sale is the Mystery Moon Milk and you will know about this because we will have been posting about this like crazy people during our hYP strategy. Yeah, and that is a huge driver. That's an app only release, so you have to download the

And like, I just I love that this is our hype strategy and then just our Black Friday strategy because I just know no one's going to be disappointed, not one person.

And the kicker is this is limitsed edition. We only have two thousand units, so if you're not getting it in Black Friday, You're not getting it.

Yeah, so sad.

Yeah, So that's kind of like our biggest driver for our promotion side of things. We have a very simple sale. It's up to fifty percent of site wide. We found in the past that with a sale that's too complicated, you really struggle to you get the online site traffic, but then the conversion doesn't reflect that.

It's well, maybe let's just go straight into the sale and then we can kind of go you know, hype and during just because otherwise I guess it's not going to make sense. So obviously mystery Moon Milk app only new product kind of talk them through the mystery side of things. So how is it a mystery? How have we done it there? Okay, So the reason so.

I got this idea literally during the middle of our Black Friday sale last year because I just we hadn't launched a moon milk flavor in a while, and we wanted to do something MIW milk related and I think I saw another brand do some sort of mystery product and this is when we tested it. So obviously for our mystery boxes, the boxes this year, that was the test, right, went off exactly, so then we knew that we just absolutely,

Yeah, as soon as you taste it, you'll know exactly what it is. But I just it's so exciting. Yeah, us like giggling, smiling, giggling, like we are so smart. Well, it's just like I guess, it's like putting fun back into things, not just being like, hey, here's up. And if you're a marketer, like something like this gives you that edge over competitors during a sale, right, Like everyone can just have a percentage.

Off or a dollar off or a gift with purchase. That's not really the exciting factor. We have to bring the excitement into a promotion like this. And yeah, one of the ways we're doing that is a mystery mim milk sale. So with our.

Actual sale, like Mel said before, we've obviously tested out all the different ways we've done, you know, the tears we have to spend a certain amount and then get off, you know, a dollar amount we've done, just a flat percentage, we've done you know, all by buy one, go on free.

Right so that it is so easy for them to come to our site, see their value purchase and then they're happy.

Yeah, and then what we've done so and that's another thing too, is like someone who literally just wants to buy one product will get such a good deal, but then someone who wants to buy five products is going to get such amazing deal. So we're trying to hit everyone. And then also we are doing the bonus things on top, yes, and that's where the fund comes in. So yeah, we talked about moon milk, talk about the other bonuses we're doing all right, gals and boys.

So I just kind of want to walk through, like during a sale like this, you've got your first three days, they are the hottest days for sales, right, and then you've got you know, your final hours. That's usually another huge peak during a sales period like this, but Black Friday is a marathon, it's not a sprint. And during that middle period, you've got these days where you really need to make the extra effort to keep the traffic coming to your site, to keep people converting, to keep

And I love it too because the prizes are so like, yeah, I want an iPhone DA. So we've got obviously like some physical things that we've literally gone out and bought ourselves, like the iPhone, the dice in a couple other fun things I think we've got like an Apple watch and shoes and stuff.

And then we've got you know, brain contributions from like Bang and Body, LSKD, Yeah, Last Echo, last Ye. So we have some really cool prizes from them.

As well, and so we're literally putting them in orders from day dot obviously to make it very fair for everyone, but when we're strategically not telling them until midway through. Yeah, So then we see ye an uplift. Yeah, yep, amazing exactly. Guys. Let's be honest, when we're not sleeping, we're pretty much our worst selves. When Ivy wasn't sleeping as a newborn, I turned into just the worst. And she's sleeping now, but it just made me realize how important sleep is.

Things that you know are little on the smaller, more achievable side, if you're a smaller Econ brand or you're just starting out something that we do like for example, this year we say it through our hype strategy, but we're having more fun in the app. So if you've subscribed to our app, you're getting exclusive deals that you

And then so another thing that is personal one of my favorite little marketing things. We've done this so much, but like our like race code sales.

Yes, yes, so if you're listening to this and you're not subscribed conscribe, what are you doing? But basically we have these race sales in our for our EDM subscribers. So love how we have with these like things. It is fun to gamify things though people interested and gets people clicking on emails or clicking on push notifications or clicking on a post. Yep. But yeah, so what do they have to do for the race, they have to

The first four people.

Who open up that email and apply the code to your car. And if you get it, you need to check.

Out real fast, yeah, otherwise the codes go. So that's what we call like a race Salem stressful, I know.

And you know it gets people clicking. But then in conjunction to that, if they miss out, they've got the full back offer of the already heavily discounted store, so they're not actually disappointed at the end of the day. They've got that full back off up. That's very important if you're doing a marketing activation like that.

Yeah, are there any other smaller sort of activations that we're doing that, especially maybe a smaller business could implement. So on socials in our Facebook group, we have exclusive Black Friday bundles and we're going to give our community on their the chance to win one. So we're gonna have a giveaway little then on Instagram, for example, we do like a win.

Your order backs. So if you place an order during our Black Friday sale on a certain day, screenshot your order guys and get ready because we will tell you when to tag us in your stories with your order confirmation and we'll pick one that day and we will literally refund your entire order. So little things like that just all part of the strategy. I love, very fun.

Guys. Mel's getting so excited, right. It took me six months to plan this, so amazing. Okay, So the pre launch is obviously we're telling people about the what's the reason to shop with us? So that's when we're like, hey, we're actually launching a mystery Moon Moon milk. What's then kind of the strategy after that.

So one of the biggest things we like to do is to get people to subscribe to our Black Friday vip list. So this is a customer segment that you can and then target differently to how you would target the rest of your consumers. So by subscribing to our vip list, you actually get the first exclusive look into our Black Friday sale. So we have a discovery guide that we send out in an email after you subscribe to that list. And that has literally all the information

Amazing. And then after the discovery guide, what are we doing then?

So then we basically get them ready to launch. They're encouraged to create a wish list, they're encouraged to you know, they are encouraged to download our app. They literally think, we get them to do all the things so that they are one hundred percent ready come sale to make that purchase. And they obviously they know the dates, they know all the detailer everything, I know, the discount and everything like that.

Amazing. Okay, So then the sale has started, we've obviously, you know, told people about what's on the you know, on sorry, the discounts and what's on the app. And I know something you know we do do is we don't tell them everything. It's like, go check out the website because we want to get them on the website. What's some other things we do, like on the really initial days, I know, like you were just saying, the first three days, which is the most important.

So the first three days, when you've got your sale. It's not actually way you need to put in the majority of your effort, right, Like people during your hype strategy, you should have done such a good job that those first three days customers know you're having a sale and they're ready to purchase. It's only in that middle period, not only but it's in that middle period where we're really starting to get creative to get that uplift.

All right, So let's just answer some last little questions. These are just some questions that we've had from the community. So when you're like planning targets, I obviously know this is something that you know, we have a discussion about, but how do you kind of do that from a very strategic you know, looking at the previous year sort.

Of Well, I would say, you know, like what did we do, Yeah, like what did you actually make from last year's Black Friday sale? And what was the uplift from the previous sale, like so that you can get that projection, right, so you can kind of see like we're on track to reach that again the following year.

I think something to touch on, and this is something that we've always been very conscious of and people will know this. With our sales, you don't see us do a super super high percentage off because we would not be making a profit and there would be like no point. That's just like not the way you know, we do things.

So you look at your gross and you're like, yeah, that's amazing, and then you look at your net and you're like oh.

And like like high volume doesn't always mean best, so that's like something you do have to be very conscious of exactly. But do you want to just say so, I know, last Black Friday, we tripled what we make called.

Our net revenue from the previous year, so we had to set.

It was the girl year. We had to start a realistic goal.

You know, you have to factor in a lot of things, like this year has been interesting for eCOM. It's we've seen definitely a slower burn than we did the previous year. So yeah, transparently, I think we've got around one hundred and twenty percent uplift goal of this year, which is double on a bit.

It's a bit scary. Yeah, and also I feel like some of that goal, like it honestly kind of doesn't even make sense with how this year is gone.

But we've just gone fuck it, but we're like we can do it. Something I would do though, Like if you're an e comm business owner and you're listening to this, something I would really consider, is I don't just set that goal and then hope we get there at the end of the sale. Like I will quite literally break down the entire month of November and you set daily budget targets, yeah, to see if you're on track, and you kind of look daily what sales did you make

Well. Even that's something me and mel were discussing in one of our meetings because last Black Friday, I was literally giving birth.

She quite literally was giving birth. I think the day after Black Friday started, told me she was in hospital, like on Black Friday.

Yeah, do not contact me. I'm giving birth. So last Black Friday we were we had planned so far in advance, obviously percize pregnant, and it was very different and it was like very planned and that's it. But something that we're doing this year, we want to be more reactive. Yeah, And so me and Mel literally every day of Black Friday, like we said, we're gonna have that little meeting and

Something, Yeah, like we can see you know, our site traffic was nuts, but our conversion rate didn't reflect that. How can we get people to convert on our site? Is there something that we need to put on our website to get that conversion or alternatively, are we just not getting the site traffic that we need to. It means we're not hitting our marketing channels. Those channels or the paid channels, and we're not driving enough traffic over to our site in the first place. How can we

And it's going to be very interesting because I'm interested to know if it does. Obviously I hope it does, but if it does make a difference being so reactive day to day rather than almost just like setting and forgetting it, which has obviously done so well previously too. So that's also something new we're trying. Is there anything else new we're trying this year that you're like, I'm really interested to see how this goes.

Something we're doing this year is it's the discounts, for example, are automatic on the site. You don't have to apply a code to that, so that we're really taking away those barriers for people to get the discounts. So we are locking a site for twenty four hours before the sale starts so we can get our site prepared and ready so that come Black Friday, so you literally won't be able to purchase or get on our site for the whole twenty four hours. That means zero sales for

Yeap our tears just asked, what is your favorite Black Friday strategy that we haven't done that you've seen other people do.

Something that I think is really smart that I actually saw last year was I think it was Muscle Nation. They during their sale one of the biggest incentives to purchase was they were giving away ten thousand dollars. So the more I remember, say, for example, fifty dollars equaled one point equal to one entry yep, so you had to purchase, like it drove us. Not only did it drive up AOV, but it was like, shit, I got to get my hat in the ring. I've got to make a purchase so that my hat's in the ring

Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. I love So I feel like, yeah, I feel like we've gone through everything so insightful. We've literally just told you, guys, everything no gate keeping here.

In up to fifty percent off sit wide and you can purchase our mystery mid milk through the app. Guys, it's going to sell out. You have to get on it. If you don't, you're going to be very disappointed when you see everyone else trying it and we're reposting their fun stuff. And also just what I like if you've gotten not a lot happening in your life, Like what a fun thing? So fun?

And I also like as you try it, before you peel off the sticker, try and guess the flavor and then like message me yeah mensage us on Instagram and I and tell us because I'm like genuinely, I'm like.

Same, so so excited. I'm so excited. The team actually we haven't let them try yet, so like you're listening to this, we're recording this, what two weeks ago from when you're listening this, Yeah, a couple Georgie Cooper and I and I think a couple of other team members have but not everyone's tried it, and where this week we're getting them to do a first impressions, which we are going to post, which will be so really interesting

Such a good Christmass.

That's actually seven weeks until Christmas. I think, get your Christmas shopping sorted. Something I said to Ellie is like Black Friday sales. Can you remind me to do my Christmas? Absolutely? I'm steady early November when I'm sure, because I don't want to do it in December. Things are sold out and they don't come in time post off day.

Way you can catch me to shopping center December. No chance, no chance, no chance. All right, my love, Thank you so much for joining us. It's always so much fun. But I hope you guys enjoyed this, and please let us know if you like these, like very transparent here's our strategy sort of episodes, because yeah, they're a bit of fun. Helping his sister out enjoy Thanks so much, Thank you so much for listening to another episode of