In the last 2 weeks alone I've had three brand owners come to me, all with the same story. They've been told by marketing "experts" that every single EDM, every Meta ad needs a discount incentive. Every website needs a countdown timer or some other kind of FOMO bells and whistles.

One of them showed me her email marketing calendar. Every. Single. Week. A different discount code. Flash sale this, 20% off that, "last chance" the other thing.

And here's the part that really gets me — some of these countdown timers? They're not even counting down to anything real. They literally reset when you refresh the page. It's manufactured urgency. It's fake scarcity. And it's everywhere.

So today, I'm going to be blunt with you.

This advice? This "discount everything, all the time" approach? It's not just lazy marketing. It's actively destroying premium brands.

Over the next half hour or so, I'm going to unpack why constant discounting is eroding your profits, repelling your best customers, and training shoppers to never buy from you at full price.

And I'll share what's actually working for quality-focused brands right now. Spoiler alert: it's not another 20% off code.

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you'd like help to achieve your goals, I invite you to have a chat to find out how we can make that happen together HERE By booking a Free Growth Strategy

https://productpreneurmarketing.com/lets-talk

Book Your Ecommerce Website Audit

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Let me paint a picture that I see all the time with ecommerce brands.

You're spending money on marketing. Ads, SEO, social media, maybe influencers. You're driving traffic to your website. And you can see in your analytics that people are visiting. Some of them are even adding things to their cart.

But then... they just disappear. They don't buy. They don't come back. They vanish into the ether.

And you're left wondering — where did they go? What happened? Why didn't they buy?

This is what I call the leaky bucket problem. You keep pouring traffic into your website, but sales are draining out the bottom. And no matter how much you spend on ads or how clever your marketing is, if your bucket has holes in it, you're never going to fill it up.

The frustrating part is that your website won't tell you what's wrong. At least, not in plain English.

You can stare at your analytics all day, but unless you know exactly what to look for, you're just looking at numbers that don't mean much.

If it's been a while since you thoroughly and objectively reviewed your website — specifically, whether it's actually doing its job of bringing in and converting customers — you might find that it's quietly leaking sales every single day without you even realising it…

In this episode, I go through the 3 layers of a website audit: are the right people discovering your brand (including via AI search), are they getting to your website, and are they converting into buyers?

And given AI search is so new, there's a real first-mover advantage if you master this now!

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you'd like help to achieve your goals, I invite you to have a chat to find out how we can make that happen together HERE By booking a Free Growth Strategy

https://productpreneurmarketing.com/lets-talk

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January is supposed to be about. It's goal-setting season. It's "new year, new you" energy. It's the time when every business podcast – including, historically, this one – tells you to set your revenue targets, map out your marketing calendar, and basically plan your way to world domination.

And look, I'm not going to tell you planning doesn't matter. It absolutely does – all of that stuff IS important. I'm not saying ignore your metrics.

But somewhere along the way, we started treating the metrics as the goal instead of as indicators of whether we're achieving the actual goal.

The actual goal – for most of us, if we're honest – is freedom.

Freedom to do work we're proud of. Freedom to spend time with people we love. Freedom to not be constantly stressed and reactive. Freedom to build something sustainable, not just something that looks good on Instagram.

When you plan for revenue without planning for how you want to feel, you often end up optimising for the wrong things.

So here's what I want to talk about today: what if most of us are starting our planning in completely the wrong place?

What if the reason so many brand owners end up exhausted, burnt out, and quietly resentful of the business they built... is because they planned for the wrong thing?

In this episode, I'm going to share with you my alternative approach to planning for the year ahead. Plus, as always, share some steps you can take today to put this into action yourself.

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you'd like help to achieve your goals, I invite you to have a chat to find out how we can make that happen together HERE By booking a Free Growth Strategy

https://productpreneurmarketing.com/lets-talk

Episode 281 - The hidden cost of wrong customers (& How to attract the right ones) With Dr Ross Honeywill

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