Boost Your Sales With Year-Round Planning
By Betsy Benn, Creator and Maker of Personalised Gifts & Luxury Stationery shares her winning strategy to boost your sales with year-round planning, for a smooth and stress-free festive season.
On 6th January I wrote and scheduled the three emails I knew I was definitely going to send this Christmas. The first was an out of office/we’ve left the studio/Merry Christmas to all kind of thing. The second was a “last orders today” email, and the third was “one week to go until last orders”. It’s what my business mentor, Jenny Pace, calls low hanging fruit and it’s a brilliant strategy when you have a deadline event like Christmas. Working backwards somehow makes it easier.
But why in January?
If you’re a small maker with a retail gift-based business, it’s likely that Q4 is where you do most of your selling, most of your marketing and most of your making. The same principle could apply though to any business that has a main focus in one part of the year – wedding season for example.
Depending on the year, Betsy Benn has ranged between 32-45% of our whole year’s turnover in those last three months, so it makes sense to spend between a third and half of my time across the year planning for the best possible festive trading season.
The most amazing aspect of Christmas for sellers who create products is its reliability. We’ve all probably complained when a customer places a last-minute order on the 22nd and expects it to arrive the next day, saying, “Why wait until the last minute? Christmas happens on the same date every year.” Well, just as customers know when Christmas is, makers know it’s coming too, offering us a fantastic opportunity to plan.
And while we say it’s about Q4, October is definitely a slow burn, with sales not really picking up pace until after the late half term, possibly not even until after Halloween or Bonfire night, so you can compress Q4 down into about sixty full days of trading.
Sixty days, where your customers are actively looking for the beautiful solutions you have for them.
Sixty days, when you don’t really want to be trying to write product descriptions and emails and creating reels all the time.
Sixty days when you really just want to be saying “here are my beautiful wares, thank you for your custom” or variations on a theme.
During these sixty days, you don’t want to overwork yourself, leaving you exhausted or unwell, especially if you have family, a spouse, pets, and friends who need your time and care. You also need to take care of your physical and emotional well-being to ensure you can continue your business in January and prepare for events like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Plus, you’ll need to find time to eat so you don’t go hungry.
However, if you spread these sixty days between January and September, you’ll have approximately seven days per month to complete various tasks. This includes creating Christmassy social media content, filming reels, writing newsletters, and more.
This is why we recommend starting in January!
But it’s not just about content creation; it covers a wide range of activities, including identifying gaps in your product range, supply sourcing, new product development, cost calculations, product photography, eCommerce listings, and outsourcing the jobs you can’t do. Maintaining focus on a seemingly distant event with so much to prepare for can be challenging.
Accountability
In the business world, being part of a supportive community can make a significant difference. There’s nothing like haveing people to bounce ideas around with. The sharing of ideas and experiences within a group can be incredibly beneficial. So many times I’ve been asked what advice I would give to someone starting their own business and it’s always this:
Find someone else starting their own business and hang out with them. No-one understands your journey quite like someone else on the same adventure.
So, when Jenny Pace invited me to lead a Christmas accountability group within her Better Business Collective while she was on maternity leave, I eagerly accepted. We also extended the invitation to the informal notonthehighstreet Facebook group that I’m part of, as not every business in the Collective focuses heavily on Christmas. It turns out there were lots of us who wanted to join. Our group discussions covered a wide range of topics, from managing stress during peak trade to finding ways to rest and refuel.
One practical exercise we conducted involved taking your best-selling product and answering a set of questions to create a comprehensive blog post. This content can be repurposed into newsletters, social media posts, and even reels. This approach streamlines your Christmas content creation and maximises its impact. Take your best-selling product and answer these questions:
- What is it?
- Where did the inspiration come from?
- When did you first design it?
- Are there any special skills or processes required?
- What is it made from?
- Was there anything tricky to overcome when making?
- What tweaks did you make to get it just right?
- Why do people buy it?
- How do people use it?
- Who had the first one (maybe you made it as a gift for a friend)?
- What problem does it solve?
- What emotions does it tap into?
- Any memorable orders or feedback?
- When did it become your best seller?
- How have you developed it since launch?
Include as much information as possible and then revisit your content to incorporate essential keywords. Whenever you’ve used “it’s,” consider replacing it with a relevant search term if applicable.
The text you’ve just written forms a blog post. You can either keep the questions as they are or insert additional sentences between your responses to enhance the flow. Here’s an example of how I implemented this strategy for our travel memory print.
Now, you can take bits from this blog post and turn them into a newsletter or three. You might want to spotlight the inspirational story or emphasise why our product is an excellent gift for a particular audience.
At the same time, your social media posts for the week could look like this:
Day 1 – This week, we’re shining a spotlight on one of our favourite products. Here’s the fascinating story behind the gift.
Day 2 – Let’s explore its unique features and benefits, and discover how it can make a perfect gift, especially for those who like xxx.
Day 3 – Sneak behind the scenes with us as we reveal the art of crafting this product. Learn why we love it.
Day 4 – An engaging anecdote about an unusual order for this product.
Day 5 – Hear what Customer X had to say about their experience with this product and how their feedback moves us.
Day 6 – See our products in the real world, it sparked the creation of an exciting spin-off. Its interesting features are xxx.
Day 7 – We’ve loved looking at this product, if you want to learn more, head over to our blog post here.
You could consider incorporating a reel showing the making, packaging, or unwrapping of the product, or sharing footage that inspired its creation.
I decided to publish the blog post I wrote in this way back in February because the product I was focussing on isn’t limited to the Christmas season. But all other related content has already been prepared and will be released in November to boost Christmas sales. You can take this formula and apply it to multiple products with slight variations.
But it’s not January anymore!
If you’re feeling inspired to create some Christmas content but think it’s too late, don’t worry. Jenny is hosting her Christmas Marketing In A Day workshop on Friday September 22nd. It will equip you with everything you need to boost your Christmas content plans.
Even if you can’t be there in person, the entire event will be recorded so youm can catch up when it suits you.
A final thought.
We all someones wonder if marketing is a bit much. We question question the value of our products and marketing efforts. In times of economic uncertainty, you might even contemplate silencing your voice.
However, remember that your ideal customers seek meaningful gifts to bring colour, light, and joy into their homes during the dark, cold winter nights. With Christmas, Diwali, and Hannukah all falling in Q4, love, actually, will be all around.
Your customers are actively searching for unique gifts, so showcase your offerings and let them decide if they want to make a purchase. Give them the choice of supporting independent businesses like yours rather than Jeff Bezos and crew. They are actively looking for what you have and just need the opportunity to discover it!
If you are a creator or maker and would like some help to create images to promote your beautiful products, please do get in touch for a chat and/or a quote!
