There are over 20 major public holidays and national celebrations every year.
Each one of them creates a unique opportunity for you to run a flash sale to promote your products.
The Flash Sale strategy has the power to generate an instant surge of cash flow to your business without increasing your cost in any way.
Got your attention ?
Great.
Now let me explain…
The Flash Sale funnel is a perfect strategy for businesses that want to turn their existing prospects into paying customers. It works best if you have a large list of unconverted prospects.
Okay Nicolaos, cool, but…
What is a flash sale ?
At first, it sounds kind of obvious.
A flash sale is when you offer a limited heavy discount on a front-end offer for the purposes of acquiring new customers.
Just offer a discount on a product and put a deadline on it? Sure.
However, let’s be very specific about the purpose of doing this.
The purpose of a flash sale is customer activation.
The primary purpose of the flash sale is to take people who are not currently customers and turn them into customers or to take inactive customers and re-activate them into one of your funnels that lead into your core offers.
Flash sale offers is usually a low or mid-level price offer. Its goal is to gain a new customer at a low barrier entry offer.
Since a flash sale is a heavy discount, you’re not usually making big profit out of it.
But that’s not the point.
The point is the convert prospects into customers. And when you have a funnel in place, this low offer will lead your customers to an upsell or continued marketing through email or ads and try to sell them your core product.
So, what we’re doing really doing in a flash sale is giving a big discount on a product in order to put people directly into one of our upsell funnels and ultimately sell them a higher priced core offer.
Why should you make flash sales ?
The simple answer to this would be: because flash sales work!
Not satisfied with this short answer ? Alright alright, I’ll keep going…
Flash sales are a proven time-tested way to turn more prospects into customers of your business by purchasing one of your products.
If you think about it, “Black Friday” is one of the most popular flash sales events in the world.
But… why do they work like crazy ?
Okay, I’ll tell you … because they effectively do three things REALLY well:
1- They offer a big discount.
Having a discount encourage your prospects to make purchase on products that they are interested in but never got the courage to make a purchase.
It’s a way to nudge people who are on the edge of buying and create a desire in those who are interested in your product.
2 – They offer scarcity.
Flash sales exist for a very short period of time.
This scarcity factor plays a major role in pushing people to take action on the spot so that they wouldn’t miss out on the big discount.
When a product is being sold at a discount, prospects that are interested will jump onto this offer.
But when this same discount is offered for a limited time only, people that MIGHT be interested in this product in the future will also likely jump in to benefit from this opportunity. Fear of loss is a VERY powerful motivator.
3 – They turn inactive prospects on your email list into active customers.
Many prospects on your list have been there for a while. They might be engaging with your content and your emails but never really took action or made a decision to become a customer.
Flash sales give you the opportunity to change that and give them a good reason to make a decision now.
The power of turning an inactive prospect into an active one has massive positive consequences on your marketing strategy down the road and increases customer lifetime value.
These three factors work together to make flash sales such a powerful strategy to promote your products and create a bigger customer base.
How to promote a flash sale ?
Cool so far ?
Great. Now let’s get you up and running with your own flash sale in 3 simple steps.
1- Choose your Offer.
First, you’ve got to pick the product you want to promote.
You can choose any front end product or service to be your Flash Sale, but the best ones are usually your new offers or the ones that really stand out.
This product is usually not your core product but a small product that can function as a stand-alone product.
(Learn how to do product splintering here: How To Turn More Leads Into Customers With One Simple Strategy)
2- Choose a specific start date and an end date.
It’s essential that you have a start date and a deadline for your flash sale because scarcity is at the heart of why flash sales work.
The best way to create the urgency for your flash sale is by using countdown timers to make it very clear that it’s limited to a short period of time.
Remember: Deadlines inspire action !
There are dozens of counter plugins and software to add to your sales pages.
I personally use deadline Funnel, Scarcity Samurai, and Countdown Monkey for my businesses and my clients.
3 – Let your audience know.
This step is where the rubber meets the road…
Of all the ways you can drive traffic to your website, there are only few that are dependable and quantifiable.
The best ways to drive qualified traffic to your flash sale offer that ensure the best results is to Email your list.
Your email list is made up of people who have expressed interest in you or your brand/products/services in the past.
So they are they most qualified people to hear about your flash sales and they’re the most likely to jump on the offer, so it makes perfect sense to let them know about it.
Just be careful not to send these promotional emails to people who have already bought this product. It’ll just be pointless and might piss some people off if they had purchased your offer previously at the full price.
Now during the promotion period, which probably goes for 3 days (but you could bump it up to 5 days), you’re going to be pretty heavy on the promotion.
You’ll be emailing your list once every day, and twice on the last day. And as the days goes by, your emails should be more directed towards the sale.
Looking for Flash Sales Email Templates to send to your list ?
Thought so too.
Check out my flash sale email templates to get a solid email copy for your flash sales and promotions.
What About Facebook Ads ?
I’m glad you asked.
Facebook ad are a great way to retarget people who are on your email list. Think about it like a support mechanism to maximise your offer awareness to your email list.
That’s basically using retargeting to make sure that people on your list hear about your flash sale.
Using Facebook ads is a great way to grab the attention of those who haven’t seen your emails about your offer or maybe have seen it but didn’t check it out or purchase it.
These ads play a major role in creating offer awareness around your flash sale AND to remind your prospects that your offer has a great discount for a limited time.
Either way it’s powerful and it inspires action.
(In case you’re not sure what Retargeting is, or how to do it correctly, I explain exactly how to do it in details here: How to Generate more customers using Retargeting Ads)
So what you have to do is set up a Facebook ad campaign targeting people who are on your email list with an ad pointing to your flash sale page.
4 – The Final Push.
In my last 5 years in online marketing, I learned (the hard way) that people leave their purchases until the last minute.
Like literally, the last MINUTE.
On many occasions, I’ve had over 60% of my sales on the last day and most of it in the last few hours.
Sounds shocking, right ? But if you think about it makes sense.
You probably do the same thing when you’re about to purchase something that has a deadline in the future. Right ?
Its okay, I’m not a psychic reading your purchase behaviour through your screen. I just know that because we all do it ! we all procrastinate when we know we still have time to act on something.
Same thing applies to your prospects when it comes to your flash sales.
Many interested people will have a look at your offer, think it’s great and want to jump in and take it. But they see that they still have 2 days left and …
BAM.
Hunger strikes. Door bell rings. They remember an important email they have to send. The dog died. Whatever.
So they run to the kitchen to fix a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and… the purchase is gone.
It might stay in the back of their minds but it’s still okay for them to push it back for later since they still got 2 more days to act on your offer. They won’t lose anything by procrastinating a day or two – and it’s true.
So as business owners, we have to be aware of this purchase behaviour of our prospects when it comes to limited time offers. So to counter this behaviour, we need to create a strong promotional push on the last day of your offer.
This will nudge people to take action NOW because they’re running out of time and they don’t want to miss out. FOMO kicks in. (Fear Of Missing Out)
So on the last day, you must send 2 emails to remind people that the deadline is getting closer. And 3 to 5 hours before the promotion is set to end, email your list (third time) with one last final reminder to jump in.
You’ll be surprised by the increase is sales you’ll do with these last few emails on the last day. It’s like everyone was sleeping on the idea of your offer until you screamed “WAKE UP” with a megaphone to their ear.
By the way, I made sure to also include these “urgency infused” emails in my Flash Sale Email Templates. These last few emails play on the factor of scarcity to drive people to immediately jump in on the offer.
Sounds cool ? Great.
So … What Next ?
After running your flash sale, you should follow up with your new customers who purchased the flash sale but didn’t take any upsells.
You should have a follow up campaign already in place to automatically follow up with these customers and help move them down the funnel and get them to upgrade to your core offer.
The awesome thing about a flash sale is that you can put it in your marketing calendar anytime you wish.
But be careful ! Don’t do it too often.
I would recommend once every 2 months. The last thing you want to do is to train your list to expect flash sales and discounts from you all the time.
A business that depends on discounts to sell is a business racing down to zero and killing their long-term growth.
Bottom line: you’re not Groupon.
So to sum up real quick: The flash sale is a short period, heavy discount on a front end offer with the sole purpose of the of taking people who are not currently customers and turning them into customers.
A flash sale is a pretty easy campaign to run. The emails and ads you set up for a flash sale can be re-worded slightly and reused for future flash sales.
Its real power comes from creating a new list of buyers that you can upsell and market to them your more expensive products.
Check out my flash sale email templates to get a solid email copy for your flash sales and promotions.
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