Prep for the Holidays EP5: Get a Jump on Holiday Marketing with Product Mockups & Samples

Getting featured in print & digital gift guides, getting accepted into big holiday craft markets or selling your items in small boutiques for Christmas all require a lot of advance prep work - that happens way earlier than we think! 

This is where prepping mockups and samples of whatever it is you create can help you get a jump on things! You might not be ready to go into full production mode yet but having a few things prepped and photographed means you have something to show your work when asked! Now you can apply for markets, investigate additional PR or marketing opportunities and get your product into shops! 

Tune in and gear up for a successful holiday season.

This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout

You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.

Chapters

• 0:10 Prepping for Holiday Sales With Mock-Ups
• 7:08 Preparing Mock-Ups for Market Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the and she Looked Up podcast. Each week, we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, melissa Hartfield, and after leaving a 20-year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six-figure-a-year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. As always, I'm your host, melissa, and this week we are back with another episode in our Prep for the Holidays mini-sode series. So for those of you who are new to the show, this Prep for the Holidays series that we're doing is a whole bunch of mini-sodes that we are running every week during the summer and into the fall and early winter, probably designed to help all of our makers, artists, creative service providers and content creators who listen to the show get ready for the busy holiday selling season. So for most of you, q4 is when you bring in the bulk of the revenue in your creative business, and to do that, it requires a lot of prep, and, unfortunately, a lot of that prep has to be done during the summer months. So that is why we are doing this series now, and the idea being that, each week, the episode that we air, the one task that we cover in that episode, is a task that you should be working on right now. So what are we going to be talking about this week? Because we are, I think, on task number five this week, and so, for this episode, we're going to start talking about getting into production mode, and we're going to be talking about a very specific part of production mode. So production mode is when you actually start making the thing that you're going to be selling. So it's when you start painting the paintings, printing the greeting cards, making the jewelry, crocheting the coasters, whatever it is that you make that you're going to be selling. This is the time where we start producing that product, that product.

Speaker 1: 2:47

If you are a content creator, this is the time where you are probably starting to write your blog posts, get your content shared on social media through Pinterest, so that you can start getting all your SEO juice in time for the actual holiday season. If you're a creative service provider, this episode might not work as well for you, as I've been trying to think of how we can incorporate something in each episode to appeal to content creators and creative service providers, and I think this might be the first episode that we've done that. May not work for those of you who are creative service providers, but have a listen and see if you can pluck something from it that you're able to use as you get ready for the holidays. Because what we're going to be talking about today is coming up with mock-ups, and there's a very specific reason why I wanted to talk about mock-ups before we get into the actual production episode, which we'll probably do next week. Mock-ups are when you create basically a mock-up of the products you're going to be making. So that could be for our listeners. It could be so many things it could be. You know, maybe you make cute little crocheted stuffies, so now is the time where you want to get one or two of those whipped up really quickly. If you are a painter, you want to have some of the things that you're going to be selling already ready to go, so that people can see what they look like. And there's a very important reason for this because and we're going to be getting into all of this in coming episodes but if you want to pitch yourself for gift guides whether they be magazine gift guides or blog gift guides or anywhere where people put together gifts, curated lists of potential presents for the holiday season If you want to get your product on any of those, you are going to need to be able to send photos of those items out really early on.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Those things are prepped months in advance. In fact, if you are looking to get into print magazines, it's probably too late. Usually those need a six month lead time. So if that is something that you would like to do in the future, you need to start thinking, probably about that for next year. So if there's one or two items that you hope to get into Christmas gift guides in print magazines next year, you probably want to make sure you have your mock-ups and your photos done in February, march, so that you can start getting those out. But if you are looking to take part in things that are more online so whether it's a lot of bloggers put together gift guides for the holiday season, a lot of websites put them together. Even local newspapers put them together. They start looking for things around this time of year. So August, september they start pulling together ideas and coming up with themes that they're going to use for their gift guides. So now is the time where you're going to want to start pitching those. We'll get into that in another episode. But before you can pitch, you need to be able to show them what it is that you're going to be selling, and the best way to do that is with a photo. So you're going to want to create mock-ups for that.

Speaker 1: 6:09

This doesn't have to be a perfectly finished product. It doesn't have to be all the colors of the rainbow that you might be making it in. It doesn't have to be every single product that you're going to be making. So you know, if you're a jewelry designer, it doesn't have to be earrings, rings, necklaces, everything. It could just be one or two particular items that you think are going to do well. So maybe it's one set of earrings or one necklace, or maybe you're bundling them together into like a gift box type thing, where they get the necklace and the earrings as a set. That might be something you want to feature in a gift guide, and so you're going to want to be able to create photos of those, and that means you're going to need to show it in the gift box or a lifestyle type photo something so that the people who are evaluating products for their gift guides can get a really good idea of what it's going to be, but also so that they can see your pictures and see how that might fit into the overall theme of what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 7:08

This is also a really good time to write up a brief blurb about the particular product that you want to get out there, because they are going to want something along those lines too. They're going to want to know pricing and, like I said, we'll get into that in a future episode. But this is why you need to start prepping mock-ups of your products now and, like I said, it doesn't need to be every single color that you're going to be selling. It doesn't need to be every single design. It just has to be one or two carefully chosen items and if you think that you know what your big seller is going to be or what you're kind of banking your season on, you want to make sure that's one of the items.

Speaker 1: 7:47

You're also going to need these if you want to do in-person markets. A lot of in-person markets ask for pictures of your work as they're deciding who to include in their markets. We're going to be talking about finding markets to take part in again in a future episode, but for now, you're going to want to start having a little bit of a photo gallery that you can send off to the markets that you're interested in, particularly juried markets. Juried markets are the ones where they evaluate you against other people in the same niche, you against other people in the same niche. So, using jewelry as an example, if they get 20 jewelry submissions, they may have already decided they only have room for five jewelry booths, and so they're going to be evaluating you against those other 19 jewelry submissions to decide. And so this is where things like your photos and your little blurbs about what you're going to be selling can be really helpful to the market organizer.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Market organizers also like to have images of your items so that they can market the market. They want to be able to show people who might be attending the kinds of products that they're going to have. They want to be able to feature vendors all of those things. So it's really important and these things start early. I know it seems really weird that you need to have your pictures ready by August and or very early September at the latest, and, to be very frank, I'm terrible at doing this. This is something I really struggle with, and so you know it really does require working in advance and having a very clear idea of what it is that you're going to be getting out there.

Speaker 1: 9:27

It doesn't mean that you can't come up with something else that you don't have photos for. It just means you need to have enough photos to put before somebody, to show them, to give them a sense of the type of work that you do, so they can see if you're a good fit for their market. Same with the gift guides and things like that. You really are just trying to give them a sense of what you're all about, what your style is, what your branding is, what you know. Are you bright and bold? Are you more like calm and neutral? Are you for kids? Are you for adults? Like where? Where do you fit into the mix? As they start to put together their uh market vendor lists or their gift guide products, they need to have a good sense of what you're all about. So this is why it's so important to start getting mock-ups done and start getting them photographed, um, start writing up your blurbs.

Speaker 1: 10:22

One of the things I do uh, to make it easier for myself and hopefully for the vendors that I work with is I've created a Google Drive folder and in that Google Drive folder I keep product photos, and these are the product photos that I don't mind the vendors using in their marketing. So I'm able to give them a link to my Google Drive and say you can use any of the photos in here. Or, if I'm applying for a market, here's a link to all of my product photos, as well as a link to my website and my Etsy shop to show them that these products do sell online and all those things. So you can't do that if you don't have the photos. So that's the first thing you need to do. You need to create some rough, mocked up products, get them photoed as beautifully as you can to show what you're all about. You can also use your older products for this.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So if you've got things that sold really well for you last year and you've got photos of them, or you've already got the product on hand and you can take some photos of them. You can do that too, but it is nice to be able to show new things. Particularly if you do the same markets over and over again or if you've already submitted those items to gift guides, they may not want to feature them again. They're looking for new things this year, so it is nice to have one or two new things that you can showcase to whoever it is that you're trying to convince should be doing business with you. So that is our tip for this week.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Um, mock-ups are something that you need to get on top of now before you're in full on production mode, whether that is soldering, fix jewelry, fastenings or crocheting your stuffies or, in my case you know, making greeting cards. I'm not going to be doing my full production mode just yet, but I do know it's really important that I get on top of creating product photography from mock-ups and at least getting one version of the new things printed out or packaged or all those things. And going through this process is actually a great thing to do before you're ordering your shipping and packing supplies, because once you've got the product mocked up, you have a very good idea of how large it is, how much it weighs how it's going to be packaged, and that can really help you as you order your packing and shipping supplies so that you're not caught off guard at the last moment. We talked about that in a past episode, so if you missed it, you can go back and have a look at that. So that is it for this week's episode. I hope this was helpful and we have.

Speaker 1: 12:52

If you've missed previous episodes, you can listen to them on your favorite podcast app of choice or if you're on YouTube, we have a playlist which I will put in the video description that has all of the prep for the holiday episodes, and I also just want to remind you all that if you are loving the podcast or you're loving the videos on YouTube, you can support us through either Patreon or Buzzsprout. So Buzzsprout is our podcast host. They have a fantastic way for our listeners to support us directly through their podcast app and for those of you who are more familiar with and comfortable with Patreon, you can support us through there. All the money that comes in through our premium subscriber support goes to the production and promotion of the show, and it also helps keep me motivated. It's really just really nice to know that there are people out there who are enjoying the show, and as a thank you for your ongoing financial support, you get a free bonus episode every month that is only available to premium subscribers. I will put links to all of that in the YouTube show notes and they are also in the podcast show notes on your favorite podcast app of choice. So that is it for this week. I will be back next week with another tip to help you get prepped for the holidays, and we are in August now, which means that we are just two weeks away from us starting to work on production for season six of the show, which will be back in September after the Labor Day weekend. So that's it for now, and I will talk to you all soon, thanks.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Thank you so much for joining us for the and she Looked Up Creative Hour. If you're looking for links or resources mentioned in this episode, you can find detailed show notes on our website at andshelookedupcom. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter for more business tips, profiles of inspiring Canadian creative women and so much more. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the show via your podcast app of choice, so you never miss an episode. We always love to hear from you, so we'd love it if you'd leave us a review through iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Drop us a note via our website at andshelookedupcom, or come say hi on Instagram at andshelookedup. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.