Alternative health and supplements companies launch new products and promotions all the time. Whether they create a new product, launch a new bundle offering, or even add a service-based product to their customers. We’ll discuss more about launching new products, campaigns, webinars, and more in later articles. But for now, I want to give you the most powerful tool for making your sales explode through the roof.
And that, my friend, is with deadlines.
Here’s why:
I’ve been around the block once or twice and have worked with a variety of different clients. Many from the alternative health space, but I’ve helped other industries as well.
What I’m about to tell you is true across all industries:
You Could Have The Best Product, The Best Price, And The Best Offer But “Handicap” Your Sales By Not Having (And Sticking To) A Hard Deadline
Let’s dissect this a little bit with a common promotion you’re familiar with:
Sales.
You see this in the retail space all the time. Retail stores base their business model around sales. This is especially true for Black Friday. About 30% of all sales for retail stores happen between Black Friday and Christmas.
Of course, it’s not just retail stores who make a boatload of sales on Black Friday. Online sales have continually increased on Black Friday year after year. About 40% of all sales that happen on Black Friday now happen online.
Why is Black Friday such a powerful sales multiplier?
Well, it’s a cultural phenomenon that’s been around since about the 1950s. People know every year when Black Friday is. And they know that buying on Black Friday saves them the most amount of moolah — with most companies offering 40%, 50%, and even 60% (or higher) discounts on their products.
But that ain’t it.
The other reason Black Friday makes millions of people reach into their wallets and trade their hard-earned dough for products they want — and something that is easily applicable to your business year-round — is because…
Black Friday Has Baked In Deadlines!
This is why there’s a treasure trove of online videos about people fighting in line during Black Friday. It’s why people line up outside the store 4 hours before they open their doors.
Black Friday only lasts one day. Once Black Friday is over, companies don’t discount their products nearly as much as they do on Black Friday.
But many companies also offer “Early Bird Specials” and other “timed discounts.”
For example, companies offer 60% off until 10 am. Then only 50% off until 1 pm. Then, the rest of the day, it’s only 40% off.
This creates more scarcity — which is the whole reason why deadlines work.
Try using the “Black Friday Secret” more in your promotions and watch your cash register cha-ching off the hook.
Best part?
You don’t even have to do it on Black Friday!
How To Jimmy The “Black Friday Secret” In Your Company (Even When It’s Not Black Friday And You’re Not Offering Profit Margin-Eating Discounts)
Let me explain…
Black Friday is simply proof that scarcity and deadlines work.
And I’m not saying that you can run these types of promotions whenever and smackdown your Black Friday sales. Instead, I’m saying you can use the principles of Black Friday to make double, triple, or even 4x the amount of sales you would’ve made otherwise.
And no, you don’t even need to offer discounts to do this.
Discounts are a powerful motivator for getting people to whip out their credit card and pay you. But they pale in comparison to deadlines and real scarcity.
Here are a few examples.
Let’s start with deadlines:
My Profit First Product Launch System consists of several emails over a week or weekend — up to 14 emails in one week or weekend.
And you know what?
Most of the sales either come in on the first email or the last email.
Those who buy from the first email are those who your product or service benefits the most. If we’re continuing our weight loss supplement example from a few articles back, these are the people who feel hopelessly overweight and nothing they tried has worked. Every joint aches in their body with every step. And if they don’t figure out a way to lose weight now, they’re gonna cause a variety of chronic and life-threatening conditions.
These are the people who would’ve bought your weight loss supplement no matter what because they have a deep pain and desire to change their body before it’s too late.
But everyone else?
Maybe they're only a few pounds overweight. They can still get themselves out of bed, pick up their grandchildren, and feel confident when they look in the mirror.
They don’t NEED your product right now to help them prevent life-threatening problems caused by their weight. But they’d feel more confident, happier, and healthier if they used your weight loss product.
Some of these people will buy without a deadline.
But adding a deadline makes them buy today instead of waiting until next week, next month, or next year
Here’s the thing:
Even when your products do change people’s lives, they still aren’t motivated to act. Unless they're in excruciating pain like the first group we discussed.
That’s why sales and discounts are powerful. They encourage people to act who otherwise would’ve waited. (And more often than not, in a world of endless distractions, by the time this second group decides to act, they’ll have found a new company to buy their products from.)
But you don’t even need to offer discounts to use deadlines.
How To Use Bonuses To Create Deadline Scarcity (Without Offering Discounts)
The most powerful way of using deadlines without discounts is by offering special bonuses that they can only get when they buy by a certain date.
Here are a few examples of ways to add bonuses with our weight loss supplement example:
* Offer a free PDF about how eating the right types of food makes losing weight easier than gaining weight.
And you can talk about how eating high protein and fats satiate you longer. And give you more nutritional benefits than processed junk food. (Bonus points if you can also upsell them in this free bonus to check out more of your products or services.)
* Offer a free health coaching consultation with every purchase for free.
This works if you’re already a health coach and already offer a high-ticket health coaching service. Simply offer them a free consultation or a free month of your group coaching membership site.
* Throw in a free sample from a complementary product.
With a weight loss supplement, this could be something like a fat booster, pre-workout, or even a free exercise guide. (Again, bonus points if you can upsell whatever the sample is so you increase your AOV, or average order value, of your customers.)
And there are a bunch of other ways to do this. Your creativity is the limit.
The point here is this:
You want to offer bonuses that your customers want. Something that helps them achieve their desired goal faster. And that has a real dollar price assigned to it. That way, they understand the value of your bonuses.
And you only want to offer these bonuses for a certain amount of time. Either a few days or a week. Once the deadline hits, your customers can’t get these bonuses for free anymore. (This is extra powerful when you send lots of emails like we discussed in the previous article.)
If you get your bonuses right, many of your customers will open their wallets just for one of these bonuses.
This helps you convince the second group we talked about above into buying from you now instead of waiting.
Alright, now let’s chat about the scarcity idea:
Scarcity and deadlines go hand-in-hand.
In fact, the reason offering bonuses works so well is because your bonuses have scarcity. They disappear once the deadline hits.
Another way to create scarcity is with your products themselves.
If you have a best seller, you can mention you only have X available. And once they’re gone, it could take weeks or months to get a new shipment in.
This is the strategy I used to help one of my supplement clients launch a new product that ended up creating $70,846.22 in revenue from only 6 emails.
We sold out quick-fast. When I sent out emails explaining how we sold out fast but were still accepting backorders, sales continued to shoot through the roof (even though we didn’t have any products in stock).
This launch did over $100k total in revenue — after we sent a couple “we’re back in stock” emails.
If you’d like to hear the full story of this promotion, you can download the case study here.
Alright, before we wrap up here, let me explain why deadlines are so psychologically powerful:
I hang around in lots of different productivity circles with other entrepreneurs.
One of the best productivity hacks is giving yourself deadlines.
Why?
Humans Are Naturally Lazy — And Deadlines “Force” Us To Act
I recently got back from a weeklong vacation.
I accomplished over a week’s worth of work in the few days before I left for vacation. I call this...
The “Vacation Effect” To Getting More Done In Less Time
Since I knew I wouldn’t work much over vacation, my focus levels hit “methamphetamine levels” in the few days before I left. (Metaphorically speaking, not literally.)
And this happens whenever humans have deadlines.
It makes all distractions fly out the window. And makes you laser-focused.
And so it is in sales.
If it wasn’t for deadlines, nothing would get done.
When you give someone a deadline, you “ethically force” them to make a decision.
Whether it’s a decision to buy your product or not. Or work more instead of slacking off on social media. Both cases work the same psychological muscles that make us act.
Again, nothing gets done without deadlines.
If you need help injecting more deadlines in your emails and sales copy to boost your sales, I offer consulting services and a done-for-you ghostwriting system I call Profit First Emails.
You can set up a discovery call with me using the link below:
But I don’t always have more room for new clients on my schedule.
If you tried to book a discovery call and the link didn’t work, it means I’m not accepting new clients.
But you can join my wait list and be the first to know when a new client spot opens by using the link below:
Join my waitlist here: https://www.johnbrandtcopy.com/waitlist
John Brandt