In late 2008, right in time for the holiday season, every single marketing dept in America got together in an undisclosed location in Boise, Idaho and conspired to commit the largest swindle the internet had seen since AOL. Basically, they were going to lower the bar for ALL their products and services, offering deals such as “20% off PLUS free shipping PLUS no payments for 60 days and a 200% money back guarantee”.
Well, I’m kidding… sort of.. The funny thing is, it worked.. insofar as they were able to survive an abismal 2008 holiday season, and get enough liquid capital to fund their spring buy and justify fall orders anyway. It wasn’t a pretty scene to say the least.
But with management pointing to the spike in sales, accounting facing the lowest return of the season, and finance balancing a shrinking budget, the marketing deptartment did the only thing they could. They threw more money at it and extended the promotion. But there is a point of diminishing return, and as we know you can only cut so deep before hitting bone.
So what happened? They severed a limb or two of course..Silly rabbit!
Now, what has that done in the eye of the consumer? Well, they now EXPECT 20% off plus free shipping, or something comparable. It’s gonna be kind of hard to convince them to buy from YOU otherwise. In the interest of survival, the expectation has been increased on the part of the customer. So what do the big companies do? Raise the price. An $80 skirt looks a lot more attractive when it’s retail is $99 and it’s marked down to $79.99, at least to today’s consumer!
See, in today’s online market, you need to give the prospect more then they signed up for, or else they will go somewhere else. But that can be easily accomplished. Take information products for example, they cost pennies to produce and can be given away or sold for small amounts of money, yet they provide immense value to the customer if done correctly. Click here to test drive the system I use to this day for my online marketing, you’ll learn how profit from the 97% of people who say “no” to your primary business, and that’s one key technique to any successful online business strategy.
It will be interesting to see how these large retailers retrain their customer base to take smaller cuts and less enticing offers, or more likely, how the customers continue to drive demand to an all time low while at the same time taking back some of the power they’ve had all along. The almighty dollar.
I’m guessing they will flock to the social networks and preach deeper discounts.. While the smart ones, the ones that “get” providing value, will scoop up all the offer seekers and give them more value then they could have hoped for… For a price of course. 
And the cycle continues…
So what do you think? How will the marketing companies keep the customers attention while scaling them back up to full retail process?
