👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. This is Shan and I write every Sunday on business and marketing. We are in Q4, and the biggest month of year is 15 days away. The three biggest days for Singapore market are
Singles Day - 11.11
Black Friday - 29.11
Dec Double Day - 12.12 (the last day of the year when people splurge)
Before these major events, here are the things that needs to be ready
Sale forecast - This is the projected revenue you plan to do. This is a mixture of past performance, aspirations and planned interventions.
Inventory readiness - At the core, we sell physical inventory. We must have the inventory ready to ship. We cannot take orders otherwise. Yes, we can take pre-orders but it does not provide a great experience to customers.
Campaign and Promotions Plan - Okay, we know that it’s 11.11 and black friday, but how do we execute it? Which dates, which platforms, what promotions, key highlights and new launches. This guides the execution during the period.
Operational Readiness - Do we have enough resources to pack and ship orders? Do we have enough packaging boxes? Can the last mile delivery company take the extra load? What happens if something fails? What is the backup plan?
Here is our existing readiness -
Sale forecast ✅
Inventory readiness 🤞 (timelines running pretty tight on this)
Campaign and promotions plan ❌ (this write up is supposed to solve this)
Operation readiness 🤞
Ideally, campaign planning and promotion planning should have happened in Sep, but we couldn’t do it. I cannot delay it further, so I am going to write down the plan here (talk about killing two birds with one stone 😏).
Here is the outline of a campaign plan.
Core Story - Product focus, Deals and Product Launches
Timeline of activities - When do we start deals and marketing activities?
Marketing Activities - How do we distribute and share the core story with prospective consumers?
Customer Experience - How do we ensure customers always feel good?
Marketing Spend Plan - How much should we spend during period, including the specific campaign days?
Backup Plan - What if we run out of stock? What if we overspend marketing budget or are out of money? What if the inventory does not come on time? And many such questions to be answered.
Let’s get to these. Here is an almost 90% plan for the these mega events.
#1 The core story - Products & Deals
Okay yes, deals matter the most. However, this is an excellent time to launch new products as well. The traffic will be high, buying intent will be high and customers would like to try.
Product Focus
NMN - NMN 500 mg capsules and New NMN Pure Powder
Pre-orders for new launches - At least 5 new products are expected to be launched in November.
Daily Essentials - Magnesium Glycinate, Turmeric Curcumin, and Zinc
New Product Launches
Protocol X, our advanced longevity blend. This will be a major launch for us. You can join the waitlist for the product here.
LPC DHA, another major addition to our product line up. Targeted for brain health, this is the first in the world krill oil (aka fish oil) that crosses blood brain barrier.
Liposome NMN, this delivers a higher absorption rate than regular NMN.
NMN 250 mg capsule, this is the existing NMN in lower dosage for marketplace new customer acquisition. This will bring down the average price of one bottle to SGD 30, instead of 60-65 right now. Great for users getting started on NMN journey.
Pure ingredient lineup, expand the single ingredient line up - Our existing product line up is at least 4 months old now, and the top sellers are a year old. The “pure” line up needs to grow and we will launch some of them on pre-order mode.
Deals, or Mega Deals
This is the time for the best deals of the year. Customers are hunting for deals online and offline. So, this is how we are going to satisfy their needs.
11.11 Singles Day Deals
SGD 1.1 deals (almost freebies) - We will either do limited inventory or provide these with purchase above SGD 200.
SGD 11 deals - Hoping to launch NMN 250 mg capsule and Magnesium glycinate limited stocks at this price point. This could also be purchase with existing order above SGD 100 deals.
SGD 111 deals - These will be bundle deals, for eg, limited stocks of NMN powder, NMN powder + other products. I will finalise these bundles by 20th October.
SGD 1111 deals - This is great time to push the AOV up. We could launch a few mega bundles with almost distributor like savings for a limited duration. While the first two deals (above) will drive traffic, the last two deals (including this one) will drive overall revenue.
1+1 deals ( and B2G2 )- Evergreen buy one, get one deals. I think we should be able to offer this for most of our products (again limited by stocks).
Some of these deals will only be open to our email subscribers and they will get early access to claim the available stocks.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals
Black Friday and Cyber Monday will focus on percentage offer deals. Again, we will release limited time bundle deals that provide consumers these discounts -
70% off deals - Very High AOV bundles, upwards of SGD 500
60% off deals - High AOV bundles, upwards of SGD 300
50% off deals - Med AOV bundles, upwards of SGD 150
Christmas gifting - We will promote gifting for Christmas during this period. In fact, we will start earlier from 13th Nov. (Imagine the copy - “This Christmas, gift long life” or “Make this Christmas immortal with NMN” - okay okay, pardon me. I will let the copywriter do their job on this 😆)
I will need to keep the deals simple and easy to understand with little to no friction. Too many deals impairs decision making and hampers conversion. One way could be that some deals are only released on email to valued customers. While others could be open to everyone. The deals can also be segmented by platform - some are meant only for website, other for TikTok and some others for Shopee.
#2 Campaign dates
Each campaign will have a hype and main event dates. How are hype and main sale periods different? I will need to think more on this.
11.11 Singles Day Sale
Hype period - 31 Oct to 4 Nov
Main sale - 5th Nov to 12th Nov
Black Friday
Hype period - 11 Nov to 25 Nov
Main sale - 26 Nov to 3 Dec
After Black Friday, we will jump to Christmas gifting and promotions. Then we jump straight into CNY celebrations.
I need to stop here today, since I am out of time. I am planning to cover the other items in the list next based on how this edition performs.
Thank you for reading again! Please do like this post, and comment if you found something useful. It’s always good to hear readers share their opinion, or views from the reading. Commenting is quite fast - takes less than 30 seconds.
I finally had a peaceful and restful weekend after a long time. My best weekends are when I don’t have to see anyone. Just be myself at home or going around the city by myself. It recharges me. Am I an introvert? I don’t know. Guess it depends on the situation. For myself, I do like the solitude and peacefulness around me to feel good.
Before I share Jisoo’s cute GIF, here is a song that has been on repeat for the past two days. If you like K Drama, then this one of the best OST ever.
Jisoo knows what’s a perfect weekend
Relaxing and chilling, or lying down somewhere (or anywhere), with no idea what’s going on or happening in the world. 😴
That’s it for this week. Have a great week ahead! Cheers. 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛
Our 11.11 and Black Friday plan