5 Ways to Sell Legitimately on Black Friday and the Rest of the Year
Nov 25, 2022
With the recent Which? study (which.co.uk 23 November 2022) reporting that 86% of Black Friday deals that they reviewed from last Black Friday were cheaper or the same price six months before, how can you ensure that you get a legitimate deal as a purchaser or that you create one as a business owner?
It's pretty shocking to know that big businesses like Amazon, John Lewis and Currys have been caught up in this. You can read more about it here. I've seen a lot of polarity this year around Black Friday and quite a few entrepreneurs feeling torn and compelled as to whether to put their services on offer. In this blog post I've shared the legal tips you need to know to ensure that when you do sell your services you're doing so legitimately. However, I also thought it could be helpful to share our sale strategy at Lucy Legal because it is wrapped up tightly in our brand ethos and having clear principles mean that you don't get stuck about whether or not to run a sale or not.
A Sales Strategy That Doesn't Leave You Scrambling
We only run two site wide sales each year and we publicise this so that our customers know when the best time to purchase is. The rationale behind this is derived from my own experience. I would buy things full price and then a week or two later spot a sale and could have saved a lot of money (Sweaty Betty and The White Company I'm looking at you here). The experience tarnished my purchase, like it had lost some of its worth, although it hadn't changed at all. Therefore, I decided that in my own business that I didn't want people to feel that way.
Our two sales happen in February, with 14% off all templates for Valentine's Day. Our second sale of the year is in October when we provide my birthday age for that year as a percentage, that's the highest discount we offer across the whole website in one go
In addition to our two whole site sales, there are three other ways you can get a discount on our templates:
- Introductory Pricing - Whenever we bring a new product to market we do so with introductory pricing which means that for around 72 hours the product is available at a lower price point than the one we intend to sell it at. This works really well for our community who are usually waiting for the product on a waitlist (the strategy for this approach is a blog post in itself) and that means that they can get the benefit of a lower priced product.
- Affiliate Led Sales - We have some incredible affiliates who are industry leaders and it is so great that they are helping us to spread the message of how important it is to properly legally protect your business. Our affiliates run sales throughout the year for their communities, often creating incredible private sales which help to add fantastic value and our affiliates also benefit.
- Legal in my Pocket - Our membership provides all members with 20% templates as standard. When we run our two site wide sales we also increase this percentage with members recently enjoying 50% off all templates.
Having this approach locks in our sales process which helps to provide clarity on capacity planning. Of course as a small business we have the flexibility to make changes to this if we want, however, it's important to us that our customers don't ever feel like they could have gotten their template cheaper. We know that when we bring a new product to market we will be implementing a slightly lower price point. We support our affiliates to create sales so that their communities are enhanced and most of all, we always look after those in our membership, ensuring that they know the best place to get the latest news and best prices is right inside the membership. Providing affordable legal support is one of our core brand pillars and we can achieve that by having this clear approach for customers who can get confidence that when they invest they are doing so at the correct price.
Now we've covered the strategy side, it's time to look at the legal elements:
These tips should be your bible for sales all year round so please share this blog post so that we can all support each other in creating an incredible space to sell online.
Legal Tips For Selling Legitimately
- Watch out for incorrect terminology - Selling something new cannot be done as an "offer", a "discount" or a percentage off if it's never been available for purchase before.
- Previous Pricing - To create an offer or promotion, it's a legal requirement that you have had the product or service available at the higher price previously for a "reasonable period". This used to be 21 days but this changed, but that could still act as a good guideline of how long ""reasonable may be.
- Extending the offer - This is a big no no. It totally lacks integrity, plus if you've induced someone to purchase as a result of a lower purchase price.
- Cooling off period - do not purchase assuming that you can change your mind in the first 14 days. Depending on what you buy (perishable goods/digital downloads/customised products) and your status as a purchaser (consumer/business) you may not have the option to cancel your order.
- Like for like - When you put something on offer it has to be the same quality and quantity. So for example, you can't discount a power hour by 25% and only offer 45 minutes.
If you've read these tips and you're now thinking "I wish I knew this" or "How on earth could I know these legal things?" then I have just the thing. 'Sell Legit' is our super simple, clear and easy to understand course which covers off the legal things every entrepreneur must know about running a business. The course includes easy to implement tips on the legal side of selling and strategic ones too. It also includes everything you need to know about protecting your business from refund requests and how to handle one if it does arrive. You can find out more by clicking here. This course is part of an essential handbook you need to have in place in business. If you're tired of winging it and wish you knew how to run a "proper" business then this course will really help for you to understand how to handle those trickier aspects such as refunds.
I would love to know what you think of this post. Is there anything in here that you didn't already know? Let me know in the comments below.
Lucy
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