Final BFCM Prep: What To Do With Everything You've Tested

On the 82nd episode of Marketing Interruption, your host Andrew Maff continues the Final BFCM Prep Series by touching on what you should be doing during this time with the results of all of the things you've tested over the year and how to leverage that knowledge best for this year's Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Tune in and enjoy today's interruption!

TODAY'S EPISODE:

00:41

Hello, and welcome to episode number 82. On the marketing interruption podcast, I'm your host, Andrew Maff stone. And today I'm going to be talking to you about what you should be doing with your time during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Specifically, what you should be doing with this stuff you tested, right? Yesterday, I went into the spreadsheet that you should have on hand ready to go. In a perfect world, you already have something like this running. So if that's the case, you should be spending this time looking at what happened last year and starting to look at trends for what's already happening. Now. The other thing you should be doing is fucking nothing, just nothing. There's been, Ah, man i three that I can remember that were drastic, where we had sellers we were working with who just got so antsy about results and about things that they thought were going to go a certain way that they ended up making a last minute decision to adjust a budget or adjust timing for campaigns or something like that, that screwed up a bunch of data, and then not only that screw up and bunch of stuff, and they didn't get the results that they wanted.

01:54

And it's because people get anxious and sellers start to worry about what if I don't have a good Friday, Black Friday like this is when I make my money. And voila, it's very true. However, you have to find a way to ease up. So you've tested all this stuff, right? you test it all year long, you've tested emails and subject lines, and whether emojis work or gifts or memes or blog posts and you've tested 500 different things. This is basically that time of year when you take all that information that you've learned, and then you start to leverage it and you go, you know what, all year long, my data has told me that emojis work, I'm going to use an emoji in my subject line. That's it, that's it, you're done. Don't tweak it anymore, don't run anymore A B testing, you need to don't run anything additional. Last thing you want to do is mix up your data, you have to be able to look at this timeframe next year, and know exactly what you did, why you did it and have no reasoning to doubt the information you're looking at. You want to be completely filled up an inventory for everything you think you need, you want to make sure that your warehouse or fulfillment center is ready to go. You want to make sure that everything goes off without a hitch, so that all the marketing that you did, can go untouched.

03:07

So that next year, you can look at it and go, Okay, here's where we did well, here's where we didn't do well, let's adjust there. So now, now's the time, you don't really want to be focused on marketing too much. You don't want to be changing too many things. You want to be focused more on the operational side, make sure that they can handle it, you're not going to get good data if you do a great campaign. But then all of a sudden, you completely run out of inventory or your fulfillment center can't get stuff out fast enough. There's way too many situations there where you're going to have to come back and look next year and go well, this data is great, except we capped out so I can only hit so far. So you got to be able to think about that. And obviously go back over your projections. There's a longer story behind that. But everything that you've tested over the year, builds up to today, think about as January through October is practice and November and December is game day, right? So you've practiced different things you've put yourself in different situations to see what would happen. And now it's time for you to actually leverage that stuff. So a lot of that stuff should already be in place by now. Hopefully it is if not, you're way behind but that's okay. You can still catch up You still have time. But I still drive home the point of now is not the time to test now is the time to act. Take what you've learned. Just go with that. trust your gut, sit back and relax. Most sellers I usually suggest clear your calendar to let's say Tuesday through through Black Friday, right that whole week, clear your calendar.

04:52

Go home, sit at home and just watch what happens. Enjoy yourself, make a drink, do whatever you got to do. Do Calm down, things will be fine, you'll be covered. If you have to have some extra hands in the office or you have to have some extra hands in the warehouse, that's fine. But we usually suggest especially we do it here at the agency, we're during that week, people look forward to it. Because we're typically having or catering in, we're all hanging out. We're not really doing anything over the top. But we're kind of like on call in case something happens. But changing things now is a horrible idea. So the test you did, should all be in place now. And then you're just letting them run. Don't test anything else. Take that data, put it in the spreadsheet I spoke about yesterday. And then a few months from now, when we're ready to talk about next year's Black Friday, Cyber Monday in July, then we can bring it back up about what worked and what didn't. That's all I wanted to touch on today. This week's gonna be more like a therapy episode for everyone just to take a deep breath, and we'll get through it together. If you have any questions, anything that I can help with, I love just giving my opinion, which I guess is why I have a podcast.

06:04

But if you have questions and you just want someone else's opinion on what to do during this time of year, it's a lot easier when I have context behind what product is you're selling your audience stuff like that. So shoot me an email, marketing option@bluetuskr.com I'm more than happy to chat with you and figure out what it is you should be doing. But that is all I had for today. So rate review, subscribe, all that fun stuff and we'll talk to everyone tomorrow.