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These guys may be able to provide a plan to get you more clicks and purchases, but they definitely aren’t the ones to tell you how the business of selling stuff

These guys may be able to provide a plan to get you more clicks and purchases, but they definitely aren’t the ones to tell you how the business of selling stuff works. For example (from the article): We have that there to remind ourselves that everything in ecommerce (in all business, really) comes down to only three factors: - How many visitors you get - How many of them purchase (conversion rate), and - How much money they spend when they do (average order value) Multiply the three together and, voila, you’ve got a formula for how much money you’re making. That’s it. That’s the whole game. No. That's the formula for revenue. Not for income. And to show you how shallow their thinking is, later in the article: At least 20% off (anything less than this tends to be ineffective unless your discount is at least $100 in raw dollar amount). Don’t bother with coupon codes. Just mark down your site (or a particular collection, if that’s your style). This makes it easier for your customers, especially on mobile. If you don’t discount much, you can keep that sale discount down at 20%. If you give people 20% often, you probably need to go higher to get people to take advantage of the offer. Indeed, giving away your profits does tend to motivate a customer. Unless, of course, your competitor is paying people to buy stuff. So give these guys consulting money, give Google and Facebook ad money, and give your customers your profits. Everyone gets to declare a big victory, except the person making the sale.

nerdponx 8y ago
They're also (anecdotally) wrong about coupon codes. As a consumer, I am most easily "converted" by a tasteful, non-spammy email campaign (maybe 1 or 2 emails a week) that offers short-term, deep discounts on products that I already want to buy. And I don't mean stuff like a LABORDAY25 discount. I mean "You're a valued customer! Enjoy 30% off for the next week, use code NERDPONX30 to save!" I know the economics of every industry is different, but if you're just interested in moving a lot of product (whether it's digital or physical), it seems like the good old "randomly mail people sweet coupons" works great. Lyft, for example, does a great job of this. Lucky Jeans and West Elm have great sales but they send me too many damn emails, so I never bother.
- THCTC 8y ago
  We are speaking about how to manage a BFCM sale and the data definitely says that coupon codes are a significantly worse alternative to a site-wide markdown. It is all about friction reduction. Asking users to type in a coupon code adds a step that doesn't need to be there. This doesn't mean that coupon codes are never useful, but in this particular case we would recommend making the experience as seamless as possible.
soared 8y ago
Your critique makes sense knowing you're on HN, but this site is built for marketers and not startups/one-man shops, etc. Most readers go in knowing they want to drive sales, and that profit isn't something they're directly concerned with. (I work in marketing, we drive sales, and someone else tells me what product to sell more of because it drives more /profit/. I can never see profit numbers, only revenue). This is a marketing company, writing a post about marketing. All marketing does is drive revenue. Profit is not a function of marketing, but of another group (operations?). They're telling you how to drive sales, not profit, and don't claim otherwise. There are similar articles that talk about increasing profit margin that never discuses marketing.. would you fault those for claiming to increase profit but not talk about revenue?
- THCTC 8y ago
  Again to reiterate the point about WE DO CARE ABOUT PROFIT! Every client has different goals as to when they realize that profit (on the intial order vs. second or third order for example) but our ROAS targets with our client are built off of their total cost of fulfillment to ensure we are making them money!
  - soared 8y ago
    I've used mindsumo a number of times for their wp plugins, but this is not the forum for a hard sell or typical lead gen. I'd cool it a bit. Also your reply doesn't respond to anything in my post. FYI ROAS doesn't take into account profit, so thats a bad example.
  - vageli 8y ago
    > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
puranjay 8y ago
Can't blame them. This article was probably written by one of many ghost writers and content producers. They seldom have niche expertise or any hands-on experience. In fact, people with hands-on experience are rarely, if ever, sharing it for free online. If you're taking marketing advice from anyone online, you need to know two things: a) Have they actually applied this stuff themselves?, and b) Do they have a paid course or program? Because that's where the real juice is
- THCTC 8y ago
  Nope written directly by our lead strategist who has personally managed tens of millions of dollars. You will be hard pressed to find people with more hands on fb media buying experience than our team. No paid courses or programs here.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
AFCTC 8y ago
This all makes for a great argument for REALLY knowing your numbers. I'm amazed sometimes at how little grasp of both unit economics and OpEx some clients have. I'll just say that for us an agency (with the strategy I outlined in this post or really any other at all), the better a client understand their numbers and has clarity about goals, the better we can build a strategy (including the discounting strategy, which you bring up here) that makes sense to meet those goals. From there it's just a matter of tailoring the strategy to the best practices.

nerdponx 8y ago

They're also (anecdotally) wrong about coupon codes. As a consumer, I am most easily "converted" by a tasteful, non-spammy email campaign (maybe 1 or 2 emails a week) that offers short-term, deep discounts on products that I already want to buy. And I don't mean stuff like a LABORDAY25 discount. I mean "You're a valued customer! Enjoy 30% off for the next week, use code NERDPONX30 to save!" I know the economics of every industry is different, but if you're just interested in moving a lot of product (whether it's digital or physical), it seems like the good old "randomly mail people sweet coupons" works great. Lyft, for example, does a great job of this. Lucky Jeans and West Elm have great sales but they send me too many damn emails, so I never bother.

THCTC 8y ago
We are speaking about how to manage a BFCM sale and the data definitely says that coupon codes are a significantly worse alternative to a site-wide markdown. It is all about friction reduction. Asking users to type in a coupon code adds a step that doesn't need to be there. This doesn't mean that coupon codes are never useful, but in this particular case we would recommend making the experience as seamless as possible.

soared 8y ago

Your critique makes sense knowing you're on HN, but this site is built for marketers and not startups/one-man shops, etc. Most readers go in knowing they want to drive sales, and that profit isn't something they're directly concerned with. (I work in marketing, we drive sales, and someone else tells me what product to sell more of because it drives more /profit/. I can never see profit numbers, only revenue). This is a marketing company, writing a post about marketing. All marketing does is drive revenue. Profit is not a function of marketing, but of another group (operations?). They're telling you how to drive sales, not profit, and don't claim otherwise. There are similar articles that talk about increasing profit margin that never discuses marketing.. would you fault those for claiming to increase profit but not talk about revenue?

THCTC 8y ago
Again to reiterate the point about WE DO CARE ABOUT PROFIT! Every client has different goals as to when they realize that profit (on the intial order vs. second or third order for example) but our ROAS targets with our client are built off of their total cost of fulfillment to ensure we are making them money!
- soared 8y ago
  I've used mindsumo a number of times for their wp plugins, but this is not the forum for a hard sell or typical lead gen. I'd cool it a bit. Also your reply doesn't respond to anything in my post. FYI ROAS doesn't take into account profit, so thats a bad example.
- vageli 8y ago
  > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

puranjay 8y ago

Can't blame them. This article was probably written by one of many ghost writers and content producers. They seldom have niche expertise or any hands-on experience. In fact, people with hands-on experience are rarely, if ever, sharing it for free online. If you're taking marketing advice from anyone online, you need to know two things: a) Have they actually applied this stuff themselves?, and b) Do they have a paid course or program? Because that's where the real juice is

THCTC 8y ago
Nope written directly by our lead strategist who has personally managed tens of millions of dollars. You will be hard pressed to find people with more hands on fb media buying experience than our team. No paid courses or programs here.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

AFCTC 8y ago

This all makes for a great argument for REALLY knowing your numbers. I'm amazed sometimes at how little grasp of both unit economics and OpEx some clients have. I'll just say that for us an agency (with the strategy I outlined in this post or really any other at all), the better a client understand their numbers and has clarity about goals, the better we can build a strategy (including the discounting strategy, which you bring up here) that makes sense to meet those goals. From there it's just a matter of tailoring the strategy to the best practices.