Prep for the Holidays EP10: Tips for Planning Your Holiday Promotions

In Week 10 of our Prep for the Holidays series we're talking about planning and preparing your holiday promotions now, to reduce stress later! There's lots of actionable tips to plan all your holiday promotions - including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day - well in advance. I'll also share some tips on how to craft deals that not only capture attention but also ensure you remain profitable during the busiest time of the year. And why it's important to value your work - you don't HAVE to run promotions!

Whether you're selling products or creating content, this episode is packed with invaluable insights to ensure your holiday season is both smooth and profitable.

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

• 0:00 Prepping Holiday Promotions for Q4
• 11:57 Strategic Planning for Holiday Promotions
• 19:28 Average Order Values Episode Teaser

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number 10 in our Prep for the Holidays mini-sode series. So, yes, we're going to be continuing this series right through the regular season and, if you missed it, our season opener was back on Monday, so episode 169 with me and Heather, and we had a great chat about creative processes and how to create your own creative process or recreate your creative process, so it was a lot of fun to record. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you haven't listened to it, you can go back and listen to it on your favorite podcast app or you can watch the episode on YouTube. But we're still going to be doing the mini sewed series right through until pretty close to the end of the holiday selling season, and this week we're going to be talking about prepping your promotions for Q4 of this year.

Speaker 1: 0:56

So, as we all know, q4 is super busy. It is when we are making, it is when we are selling, it is when we are packing and shipping and doing all of that very active work, and so sometimes we tend to forget not sometimes, I think most of us tend to forget just how fast time passes when we get to Q4. You've probably already looked at your calendar If you listened to last week's episode, you've probably planned backwards, as we were talking about, and you already know how most of your weekends between now and the end of the year are going to be spent. So, whether it's kids activities or the markets that you're doing, or who knows, you've probably got a lot going on. It's just that time of year where we are in a state of constant busyness. So one thing that you can do to take a little bit of weight off your shoulders now in September, so that you're a little more freed up in October, november and December, is to start planning your holiday promotions. So we are talking about, of course, the big ones like Black Friday, cyber Monday, boxing Day If you're Canadian, you probably do Boxing Day, and I know most of us are but also any other promotions that you might want to do in between those big sales. So things leading up to the holidays, early birds, pre-orders, all of that kind of thing. Now is the time to start planning them, set the dates that you want to run them, figure out what kind of offer you're going to be making during those different promotion periods and start prepping your social media graphics, your email newsletters. You can do all of that now and schedule it so that when the time comes, it goes out and you can carry on with what you need to do, which is going to be selling, packing and shipping.

Speaker 1: 2:52

So let's talk a little bit about promotions. So, obviously, the big one that we all get very excited about is Black Friday, cyber Monday, and I am just going to call it Black Friday for ease of talking. But yeah, let's talk about Black Friday because I think one of the things that we tend to forget when we are selling for Black Friday is how we like to shop on Black Friday. So, if we're really honest with ourselves, when we're shopping on Black Friday, we are looking for deals and not just little deals. We are looking for good deals. We are looking for the big discounts. We are looking for the really great buy one, get ones. We're looking for good deals and I think when we're selling, we forget that and we realize how much those good deals can cost us, and so we're a lot more reluctant to go with the big discounts and we settle for the 10 or 15 or maybe 25% off. And I'm going to be really honest with you.

Speaker 1: 3:58

I spent years in retail. I have done many boxing days, a few few Black Fridays. Black Friday was just starting to become a thing in Canada when I left retail, but those are not the deals that people are looking for. They are looking for the good deals. They're looking for the 40 off, 50 off, and so you need to start strategizing how you're going to manage this.

Speaker 1: 4:21

One of the things to remember with Black Friday is that people are inundated with messaging from businesses like inundated. You know what your inbox looks like the week of Black Friday it is bananas. You're getting five or six emails during that period maybe a lot more than that, actually, if we're really honest, from every single email list you have ever signed up for, you may not hear from them the entire year, but suddenly Black Friday shows up and you're getting inundated with emails from these companies that you haven't heard from in months. So you really need to stand out from that noise. It is so much noise and this is one of the things that I have heard over and over again the last couple of years is that the deals weren't very good this year and we're in a bit of a rough economy at the moment, so people are even more likely to be looking for those good deals.

Speaker 1: 5:16

But can you afford to sell your products for 40, 50% off? You probably can't. Or if you can, you're going to be making virtually no profit. So, especially if you haven't priced your products for wholesale, you won't have any cushion in there to do that kind of sale. So how do we deal with that?

Speaker 1: 5:37

There's a few different strategies and these are things that I learned from my retail days that are very effective and that work really well and allow you to give those really deep discounts. First up is clearing out inventory. So if you have a few designs or items that have been hanging around and it's time to get rid of them you know you're probably not going to make them or offer them again this is a great time to run some deep discounts on them. It's costing you money to have them taking up space in your studio, in your bricks and mortar shop, in your house. So let's clear them out. And this is where you can offer those deep discounts 40-50% off on these items that you just want to go out the door because you don't want to carry them anymore. So this could be a style of earring that you're no longer going to make. This could be some old illustrations or artwork that is just not your style anymore or that you know hasn't been selling as well and you've been thinking it's time to probably retire it. This is a great time to do that. This is when people are looking for those deals, so give them those deals in a way that isn't going to affect your bottom line as deeply.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Another thing that we did in bricks and mortar retail and this is very popular is we brought product in specifically for Boxing Day or Black Friday. So this was items that we got at a very low, low cost but were able to sell at a very high margin and still be competitively priced. So we're not talking about buying something and then jacking up the price to some ridiculous amount that nobody's ever going to pay and then discounting it. Regular retail price was very competitive with other items in that niche, but, for whatever reason, we were able to get a deal on it, and there's so many reasons you might have been able to get a deal. Maybe the wholesaler is clearing it out or that company is getting rid of it, and so they're willing to offer it at a very low cost.

Speaker 1: 7:40

So think about what there is that you could offer, that you could make at a very low cost but still sell at the regular retail. At a regular retail that is very competitive and that you have a lot of room to run a deep discount. Is there anything that you could make? And one of the things that I do for this is I look into my closet, which is over there, where I keep all my raw materials so cardstock, all the types of things that I use for making and I go through and I find the stuff that kind of I haven't used, or I bought it for a project and it just didn't work the way I wanted to, and I look at ways I can repurpose it and odds are pretty good. You bought that stuff when it was a lot cheaper than it would cost to buy it now. So you have a lot more leeway in the margin that you're able to create. And so when it comes to Boxing Day or Black Friday or even your market tables, you can offer those at a really great discount and still make some money off them, and people feel like they're getting a great deal, and they are getting a great deal because you were able to make it very cost effectively and there you have it. So that is another strategy that you can try.

Speaker 1: 8:59

If you are a digital seller, if you make digital designs or digital products or you sell eBooks, bundling is a great way to offer a good discount for those big Black Friday, boxing Day sales. So if you make digital content, your time and energy the cost of making those products happens at the very beginning. Once the product is made, you're selling it on repeat and there is really no cost attached in the same way that there is to a physical product. So in those instances, you can easily offer deep discounts and you're still making money and you can bundle items together and give people an even better deal, and there's people who wait for bundles for Boxing Day and Black Friday, so that's a really great option as well. I work with a lot of ebook clients. That's one of the things that I do is design recipe ebooks, and most of my clients will offer some kind of bundle deal for the Black Friday weekend or for Boxing Day, so that's another option.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Bundling for physical products is also something you can do. You can give a deeper discount when people buy in bulk or when you bundle, and bundling is also a great way to up your average order value. Just throughout the year. You can sell bundles at regular price and people will often buy those over an individual item, and we're going to be doing an episode a regular season episode on increasing your average order value a regular season episode on increasing your average order value. Probably, I think it's going to be airing next week or the week after, whenever the next episode is, and I'm going to be talking a lot about bundling in that episode for more information on that. But bundling is a great way to increase perceived value. It's not just perceived value, it's real value. You're giving them more stuff and you're giving it to them at a lower price than it would cost them to buy all those items individually. So that's also a great strategy for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Now, when it comes to promotions, you don't have to do Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Boxing Day or those big ones as I mentioned. Those big ones, as I mentioned, customers, consumers, are inundated with messaging around those particular promotion days and it is totally okay if you want to skip them. You can skip them and run a promotion at a different point in time when people aren't expecting it. That is a okay and may in many ways, be a better business decision for you because you may get seen more, because you're not battling to be heard against all these other brands. Your customers may be more receptive to it and you may not have to offer as big a discount to have to make the sales. So you might be able to run those 20, 25% off discounts and do really well with them. And that's another option that you can do too.

Speaker 1: 11:57

So the strategy that I use for Boxing Day or for Black Friday I don't really do much for Boxing Day but for Black Friday is I do a sale. It's not a great sale, it's usually about 25% off, so it's not like a huge sale. But what I do is I do a much better sale the week before Black Friday and it's only available to customers on my email list and I advertise it as such. It's a great way to get email subscribers or people who've been on the fence about subscribing for your email list. They'll sign up because they want the deal and they usually stay. Very few of them ever leave and then I wind up making pretty good sale. I price for wholesale, so 30% is a very manageable sale for me, but it's still a good discount and those customers get that. And then I do a 20 or a 25% off sale for Boxing Day or Black Friday. I am getting these all mixed up, but you know what I mean and it's less chaotic. My messaging gets heard, people are waiting for it, they're expecting it, and now I've been doing this for several years now and my regular diehard customers know it and expect it and are waiting for it, and so it sparked loyalty as well.

Speaker 1: 13:17

So you don't have to do your promotions during that frenetic period. You can spread them out. You can offer them at different times. There's different types of promotions you can do. Another one that's very popular is doing like 12 days of deals, where you'll offer a deal on a specific, one specific product on day one. It'll be a deal on a different product on day two. Day three might be a bundle. You don't have to do 12 days. You could do five days, you could do seven days, whatever works for you. This is also a really great strategy for content creators, because if you're a content creator, you don't have an item to sell. You're making your money this time of year from traffic and so doing something like a 12 days of cookies recipes or 12 days of holiday appetizer recipes, and you send emails out to your list each day during that 12-day period with a different cookie recipe or a different appetizer recipe, and it results in more clicks. So you're getting that increased traffic. You're getting that increased traffic at the point of time in the year where your ad revenue, your CPMs and your RPMs are at their highest, so that traffic is worth even more money. So that's something that you can also do. So there's a lot of different ways that you can promote your items. You don't need to run promotions every single week between now and the holidays.

Speaker 1: 14:39

I just want to remind you all that the vast majority of you here are making things by hand. You're artists and artisans, you're makers, you're crafters. You're creating digital content from your knowledge, and that should come with a price. You don't want to cheapen what it is that you offer. You are not Walmart, you are not Target. You are an artisan, and so you don't want to train your customers to always be looking for a sale or for a deal. Obviously, you have revenue goals that you want to hit, and if you feel that offering a deal might help you hit that revenue goal, that's totally up to you. But just remember, don't devalue your work. You don't need to offer a promotion every week. There are people out there who are more than willing to buy your items at full price. I have even had customers who have told me they do not shop my Black Friday sale because they think I deserve to be paid full price for the artwork that I create. So there are people out there who want to pay you what you are worth. Don't devalue what it is that you create and don't devalue your knowledge and what it is that you have to offer. So I just want to give you all that little reminder lesson.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Now the next step once you've set the promotions that you want to do and you want to make it manageable because, remember, you have all that selling, packing and shipping and market days that you have to deal with. So you want to make your promotions manageable so that you can actually get things out on time and fulfill the orders and you'll have enough product to fill the orders, because you have to do the making too. So once you've set your promotions, the, you have to do the making too. So, once you've set your promotions, the next step to do and I really strongly recommend you do it in September, before things get really nutty is create your social media graphics, create all your promotional materials for those promotions. So, whatever that's going to be, for most of us it's social media graphics. It might also be signs for your markets if you're going to offer a promotion at market. So, however, you're going to do your signs for your markets and you get all of that ready and then you go into your meta dashboard and you schedule those. You schedule them to Facebook. You schedule them to Instagram.

Speaker 1: 16:56

I don't know about scheduling for TikTok. Can you schedule to TikTok? I'm on TikTok, but I don't know about scheduling for TikTok. Can you schedule to TikTok? I'm on TikTok, but I don't ever schedule anything. So can you schedule to TikTok? Create your reels and your videos and all the things that you're going to need. Have yourself a little bucket of promotional assets, get them all prepped and then start creating the posts and the content and schedule all that content before the end of the month. It will be a huge weight off your shoulder to know that that content is going to be going out when it needs to go out.

Speaker 1: 17:27

The worst thing is to remember that you're doing a Black Friday sale and you've forgotten to get. You're scrambling at the last minute to get your content ready to go out, because you just got overwhelmed with market stuff and packing and shipping. So get that all done in September. Get it all done in the next week or two. Once you've decided what you're going to promote, it's not a big deal to create the graphics or get some help somebody to help you with the graphics.

Speaker 1: 17:53

The next step is to write your emails. So just remember when you're promoting things, you have to let people know that you have a promotion. They don't just magically know. So you've got to write your email campaigns. You're going to want to let them know that you have a sale coming. You're going to want to remind them when the sale starts. You're going to want to remind them before the sale ends.

Speaker 1: 18:11

So think about all the emails that you need to write for each promotion. Get them written. Make sure in your emails that you let them know very clearly when your ship deadlines are, and if you did the task last week in episode nine, then you have already worked out what your shipping deadlines are, because you want to make sure people are very aware. Any opportunity you have to remind people when shipping deadlines are, use it, and email is one of those opportunities. So make sure it's in every single email that goes out between now and whenever your shipping deadline is. So get those emails all written.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Most email platforms, if you are paying for them, will give you a scheduling tool so that you can schedule those. If you're using a freezer version, you may not have scheduling options. If that's the case, go into your calendar right now and put a task or a reminder or whatever you need to do of when those emails need to go out. Again, you're going to work backwards a little bit, just like we did last week. But once you do all of this and you get it all done, you can easily have all of this done before the end of September, and it will be a huge weight off your shoulders. And then all your promotions will run like clockwork and your job will be to handle customer service and do all the shipping and packing and making to fulfill those orders.

Speaker 1: 19:28

So that is it for this week. I hope you found this episode helpful and we'll be back next week with another brand new prep for the holidays episode. And we'll be back next week with another brand new Prep for the Holidays episode and we'll be back the week after that with a new episode for season six of the podcast and, as I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about average order values in that episode and if you didn't listen to the season opener, you can go back and find us in your favorite podcast app or I'll put a link to the episode in the YouTube show notes as well. That's it for today. Thanks for joining me.