Stop Discounting Your Hero Product, Do This Instead

I see WAY too many ecommerce founders playing the discount game with their bestsellers, and it's absolutely killing their margins. Listen – once you train customers to wait for your 30% off sale, you're screwed.

The brutal truth? Discounting is lazy marketing. It might juice your numbers for a weekend, but you're trading long-term brand value for a quick hit of dopamine from your Shopify dashboard.

The Discounting Death Spiral

Let me walk you through the typical ecommerce discount death spiral I see all the time:

1. Sales are slow, so you run a 20% off sale

2. You see a revenue spike (hell yeah!)

3. Revenue drops back to normal (or worse) after the sale

4. Customers start waiting for the next discount

5. You're forced to discount deeper or more frequently

6. Your margins get crushed

7. Rinse and repeat until you're unprofitable

One apparel founder told me, "We were running sales every month until we realized 68% of our customers had NEVER paid full price for our products. We'd trained them to wait."

The Value-Stack Alternative That's Working

Here's what the smartest operators are doing instead: Value-stacking without touching the price.

I was talking with the founder of a $42M fitness brand last week who told me, "We were running monthly sales until we realized we were cannibalizing our full-price purchases. When we switched to value-add bundles, our AOV jumped 34% and our margins improved by 8 points."

The math is simple:

• A 20% discount on a $100 product = $80 revenue

• That same $100 product bundled with $30 COGS worth of complementary items = $100 revenue with perceived value of $130+

Real-World Success Stories

One skincare brand I advise was discounting their hero serum every holiday. They switched to adding a free travel-size version with purchase – cost them only $4 to make but had a $25 retail value. Their conversion rate stayed identical while their margin improved dramatically.

A home goods company stopped their perpetual "20% off" promotions and instead created a "Founder's Bundle" that included their bestselling product plus two complementary items. The results were staggering:

• Same conversion rate as their previous 20% off promotions

• AOV increased by 42%

• Profit margin improved by 12 percentage points

• 23% of customers came back to purchase the complementary items individually

The Psychology Behind Why This Works

This strategy works because you're appealing to a different part of your customer's brain:

• Discounts trigger the "bargain hunter" mindset (lower perceived value)

• Value-adds trigger the "maximizer" mindset (higher perceived value)

When customers feel like they're getting MORE rather than paying LESS, they actually value your core product more highly. This protects your brand equity while still giving customers the "deal" they crave.

How To Implement This Strategy By THIS WEEK

Here's how to implement this strategy by THIS WEEK:

1. Identify your hero product that you typically discount

2. Brainstorm 3-5 complementary items with high perceived value but low COGS

   • Travel/mini versions of your bestsellers

   • Accessories that enhance the main product

   • Digital content (guides, tutorials, etc.) with zero COGS

   • Limited edition variations or colorways

   • Early access to new products

3. Create a limited-time bundle offer instead of your usual discount

4. Emphasize the total bundle value in your marketing (not the "savings")

Pro tip: Frame your offer as "Free X with purchase" instead of "Buy X and get Y free" – it's the same offer but performs dramatically better in testing.

The Hidden Benefit: New Product Discovery

The genius part? These value-add strategies actually boost customer lifetime value because they introduce people to complementary products in your ecosystem they might not have tried otherwise.

One beauty brand found that 37% of customers who received their mini facial spray as a gift-with-purchase later bought the full-size version. These weren't just one-time transactions – they were creating new product adoption.

Think Long-Term: Build Value, Not Discount Dependency

Every time you discount, you're training customers to wait for sales. Every time you add value, you're training customers to get excited about what's coming next.

Which customer behavior do you want to encourage?

The most profitable ecommerce brands I know have transitioned almost entirely away from discounting their core products. Instead, they use strategic value-adds to:

• Drive urgency without sacrificing margins

• Introduce customers to new products

• Create genuine excitement instead of bargain-hunting behavior

• Protect their brand equity and price integrity

Your Action Step For This Week

What products in your line could you bundle with your bestseller to create massive perceived value without sacrificing your margins?

Make the shift now. Your immediate revenue might look similar, but your P&L will thank you in the long run.

P.S. The next time you're tempted to run a 20% off sale, ask yourself: "What could I add to this offer that would create more than 20% additional value in the customer's mind while costing me less than 20% of the product price?" That's the value-stacking sweet spot.