Are you planning to do any holiday promos for your business?
I find that many coaching, consulting, and service-based business either skip holiday promos entirely, thinking that they are only for product-based businesses, or they immediately default to discounting their programs and services.
The holiday buying season presents a great opportunity to bring in additional revenue in your business so I highly encourage my clients to offer a promotion.
But I also encourage them to think of ways to offer BONUSES instead of discounts.
While having sales and offering discounts is common for product-based businesses (and something I do every year for my jewelry brand Criscara), they can actually be damaging for a service-based business.
In episode 94 of the Lean Out Your Business Podcast, I share why you want to avoid discounting and some highly effective strategies you can leverage instead that do not include discounting (plus the one exception to this advice).
I also dive into how to prepare your offer suite for 2023 and how to leverage the holiday buying season when retiring or reimagining any of your offers.
In this episode, I share:
- Getting clear on your 2023 offer suite
- Why discounting is not a sustainable strategy for service based businesses
- How to offer effective bonuses instead of discounts
- Bonus examples that work well for service based businesses
- When you should start your holiday promotions
- How to leverage the buying season to close out the year strong
Tune into Episode 94 of the Lean Out Your Business Podcast or keep reading below.
With the holidays rapidly approaching, your first instinct might be to discount.
Although in theory offering a discount sounds like the right things to do, you need to be careful with offering special pricing because it tends to negative long-term effects on sales.
This time of year presents a unique opportunity to gain clarity on many aspects of your business...
- Get clear on your offer suite for 2023
- Decide what things you'll be retiring or no longer offering
- Reimagine the packaging for some of your offers
Leveraging the CHuCK Technique is a great way to look at all components of your business and re-evaluate your offers.
You need to get clear on what's working in your business that you want to replicate and bring into the new year and likewise, what's no longer for you and not currently in alignment with your vision.
Also, you'll have to ask yourself these questions to really nail down the clarity component:
Is what I'm doing aligned with the current vision I have for my business?
Am I actually enjoying what I'm doing in my business? Am I excited to keep delivering the service/product in 2023?
Is what I'm doing going to pay off and benefit my business in the future?
Once you've completed this step, we need to emphasize the 80/20 rule again - 20% of your offers/conversion strategy drives 80% of your results. With this in mind, looking back at your year and getting really clear on every single way you've generated money in your business is crucial. You need to assess the instances in which you got a really good return on your investment so that you can inform what you'll be focusing on for the new year.
The core of your service and/or product will stay the same, however, what you're focused on may shift in order to meet what your clients need most from you right now. Once you're able to get clear on what your focus will be, then it's time to start looking at holiday promotion strategies and how you'll leverage the upcoming season to generate revenue before the new year.
It is common for coaching, consulting and service-based businesses to think of the holidays as only being for product-based businesses and overlook the opportunity to leverage the holiday buying season. Or to think that they need to offer a discount if they are doing a promotion.
I would highly encourage you to not offer discounts as your promotional strategy. Discounting your service inadvertently devalues your offers and while there can be short-term revenue that comes into the business, you will often see impacts to future sales where leads are hesitant to buy at full price since they now associate your sale price as the value of the offer.
The best thing to do instead of discounting is offer irresistible bonuses…
Here are some ideas for offering something so highly valuable and irresistible that it become a brainer for someone to invest in your offer:
- You can give your time: "Enroll in _____ by the end of the year and you get a bonus 60 minute strategy session with me!"
- Digital bonus: "First 3 people to sign up for ______ get access to ____ program."
- Special Closed Door Session/Workshop: 60 min workshop that you can only get access to by investing in Small Business Saturday special
- Bundle: create a bundle of 3 items together that are the price of 2
- BOGO: Buy a ticket to our workshop and you can bring a friend with you as a gift
- Last Chance Offer: give a last chance incentive to motivate someone to buy a course that you're planning on retiring OR emphasize that this will be the last time anyone will be able to get your offer at the current pricing
- Swag Bag: bonus merchandise that comes with a purchase
Disclaimer: If you are certain that you'll be retiring a course forever, discounting the product is OK.
As you're building out your marketing plan, start your promotions early so your offer doesn't get lost in the noise of all the other emails and posts hitting people's inboxes and feeds.
Creating value-based bonuses for your clients during the holiday promotion period will set your business up for a great start in 2023!
Work with Crista:
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by Crista Grasso
Crista Grasso is the go-to strategic planning expert for leading global businesses and online entrepreneurs when they want to scale. Known as the "Business Optimizer", Crista has the ability to quickly cut through noise and focus on optimizing the core things that will make the biggest impact to scale a business simply and sustainably. She specializes in helping businesses gain clarity on the most important things that will drive maximum value for their clients and maximum profits for their business. She is the creator of the Lean Out Method, 90 Day Lean Out Planner, and host of the Lean Out Your Business Podcast.
