186 – Bake the Cookies, Spin the Dreidel, Capture Those Holiday Sales!

This is gift biz unwrapped episode 186 there's still time to

throw some tinsel on your marketing plan and capture more sales

than you ever have before.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters,

and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Before we get in To the show,

I want to make sure you know about my newly released

free masterclass.

It's called how to turn your hobby into a business.

How do you know if this is for you?

Well, if you're starting a business right now,

you've gotten that dream,

but you're just not sure what steps you should be taking.

This masterclass is for you if you're already in business,

but something just isn't clicking.

It's not bringing in the sales or it's just not performing

the way you think it should.

This masterclass is also for you to check it out.

Just go over to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash masterclass I look forward to seeing you over

there and for now let's get into the show.

Hi there,

it's Sue and thank you so much for spending a little

bit of your time with me today and guess what?

No guests today,

it's just you and me talking about this time of year,

how important it is for your business and I'm going to

give you loads of tips and how to capture sales for

the fourth quarter.

If you're listening to this episode right as it's going live,

A chill is in the air.

There's Apple picking here.

The trees are all changing colors.

Everyone's pulling out their heavier sweaters and lighting up the fireplaces

because we know what's coming in here in Chicago.

If you're just getting a chance to know me now,

I am all about the snow and the snowflakes and cold

weather comes a little bit with that but not too cold.

I think actually if you get too cold it doesn't even

snow. But anyway,

I am anticipating that season of winter and flurries and all

that and you'll definitely see on social media that I will

be playing around in the Snell,

but first we have some business to attend to.

It is fourth quarter and I'm not talking about a football

game. I'm talking about the retail world.

I know many of you who make 50% or more of

your sales during this quarter,

so this could not be more important to pay attention to

and to put some energy and focus on.

People are opening up their wallets at this time of year.

They're expecting to buy,

so they're standing right in the path where you can capture

their sales.

As the season goes on,

people start to get desperate.

They start seeing that their gift lists are still as long

as they once were because they've been procrastinating.

And as it gets closer and closer to the holidays,

people are willing to spend more and more because they just

have to get these things done.

The parties are coming.

There's hostess gifts to buy.

There's presence for the family,

some local,

so they can put it off a little bit longer,

but some have to get mailed,

which means it's going to become urgent.

How do you make sure that you get your fair share

of the sales that are happening all around us?

Well, for sure you can't just do the same thing that

you've been doing all year.

You need to up the energy of your promoting and marketing

just like the energy for the holiday season has increased and

perhaps you've already been doing so,

and if that's the case,

kudos because you have been planning,

but no worries if you've just been going along promoting the

business in the same way that you have all year,

there's still time to throw some tinsel on your marketing plan

and capture more sales than you ever have before.

All predictions are that this holiday season will be stellar.

Let's work on setting some new sales records for you,

shall we?

For clarity,

I'm separating my business building strategies into three different categories,

visibility, promotions,

and price.

Under each of these,

we're going to talk about specific things that you can do

to attract business,

increase revenue,

and increase sales.

Now, this does not mean you need to do all of

them. I don't think at this point,

nor even in planning.

You should do all of them,

but take a few and do them right and please do

not think it's too late.

Listen to this episode a couple of times.

Select the tactics that you want to use and then employ

them. First up is visibility.

This is a wonderful time for new people to learn about

your business where they may have never even known that you

existed before.

There are four ways that you can get additional visibility during

the holidays.

The first one,

which I advocate all year round,

those of you who have been with me for a while

know that I talk about this a lot,

but it's flat out simple,

easy. Yet for many people,

a little nerve wracking and scary networking.

If you're a member of the chamber or some other business

building lead passing group,

are you attending the meetings?

Are you going out there and showing what your business can

help them with?

Every single company now is thinking of how am I going

to thank my customers for their business throughout the year.

Send holiday greetings to prospects,

et cetera.

You could be the solution that they're looking for.

Plus, remember two business owners have families and there's that whole

list as well,

so if your product doesn't really fit in with the corporate

environment, you can still help them out with their personal list.

Number two,

holiday markets.

There are craft shows galore.

I know in my community every single weekend you can drive

one direction or another and land upon some holiday markets.

Sometimes they're in churches,

they're in schools,

and of course there are professional organizations who are putting on

holiday shows and craft markets,

particularly during the season.

There are lots of opportunities.

Just check in your local area and see what you can

do in terms of getting a table.

At one of these shows,

right in your local community.

The great thing about that is you're interacting with people who

could also purchase from you throughout the year.

Perhaps they didn't know about you before,

especially if you're home-based and now they will.

Plus you'll have their contact information so you'll be able to

promote to them later.

Next up,

visibility. Strategy number three is having a holiday open house in

your shop.

Now, if you don't have a shop,

if you're home-based,

you could partner with somebody who is local in the community

and have a holiday,

get together,

open house in their location and promote together.

If that's the case and you're looking for someone to partner

with. The important point here is to make sure that you

both are looking at a similar audience.

In other words,

your product serves a similar audience,

so someone who is coming into your open house will be

able to use products from both of you.

The nice thing with that is both of you have customer

lists and prospect lists and you'll be able to share your

audience to each other.

So you both benefit from this type of a setup.

With an open house,

of course there's a little bit of planning.

You want it to be festive,

you'll need to send out invitations.

I'm not going to get into all of the events set

up here,

but the concept of having an open house and getting some

celebration going on,

it's a great way for new customers to see and interact

with your business.

And you.

And finally,

what about having a holiday popup shop?

Many big office buildings now are seeing the value of bringing

people in,

having you set up in the lobby and providing service for

the tenant of the buildings.

If you're not familiar with popups,

I would like to direct you to a podcast episode I

did just a short while back with a net per Dawn

of fill my jar.

You can find that episode at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash fill my jar and it will give you

everything you need to know about setting up pop up shops,

not just for the holidays but all year round.

However, during the holidays,

corporate buildings will be much more interested in having this type

of a concept so it could jumpstart your whole popup shop

strategy. You can come back and thank me later for that

one. Let's move on now and talk about the second category

and that is promotions under promotions.

I want to talk about your product and then also how

exactly to approach it in terms of wording and messaging to

your customer.

Let's start off with the obvious thing.

If you have a product that is specifically themed to a

holiday, those are,

of course,

I know I don't even have to say it here,

but those are the products that you want to be highlighting

in your materials online,

whether you're doing print or even when you're going out into

your community for networking events.

What I'm talking about in terms of special holiday designs are

those earrings that look like little swigs of Holly or the

scarves that are embroidered with Santa Claus or happy Hanukkah cards

or dreidels on cookies,

whatever it is that signifies or is a symbol of the

different holidays that are celebrated this time of year should of

course be the ones that you're promoting.

And I know this sounds so obvious and you're all probably

saying SU,

duh, I know I need to do that,

but I can't tell you how many people at the last

minute think about putting up advertising because they're like,

Oh my gosh,

yes, I haven't even thought about advertising.

I need to put something out there.

And then they pull some type of content from an ad

that they did the past summer.

So I do feel that it's important to point out that

you should be promoting your holiday merchandise.

Having said that,

I know that a lot of you don't do specialty themed

products in the manner that I just described.

You too can still spruce up your products so that they

have a more festive look.

So that even if they're the same core product,

they look different.

They're glammed up and take on an added holiday feel for

this time of year.

How do you do that?

One way is simply in your packaging.

You could have special bags or special labels or you could

put together holiday colors that are your product normally throughout the

year, but by combining them together,

they take on that festive holiday.

Obviously the red and the greens,

sometimes the holidays are the bright blues and pinks are the

more metallic colors.

Merge those together and then put a festive bow on it

or some ribbon or Tencel or glitter.

You're taking your base product and you're just packaging it a

little bit special,

a little bit different so that you're focusing and in the

spirit of the holiday season within your packaging.

There's a great opportunity this time of year too for merging

products together that specifically work well for the holidays.

Examples of this could be three candles that are all put

together that are white,

red and green and their sense are spruce peppermint and I

don't know,

fresh baked gingerbread cookies,

but you can merge all of those together and they then

create your holiday package.

The same type of idea could be done with spices,

cinnamon, nutmeg,

Rosemary, and time could all be put together.

Although individually they're spices that we use throughout the whole year

combined as one and packaged in a festive holiday wrapper.

They become a holiday product.

A huge advantage with this technique is after the holidays,

you're still able to sell that inventory in January.

When you have a scarf with a Santa Claus on it,

you're not going to be able to sell that as easily

in January.

Of course,

except for close out sales,

you know,

end of season,

getting rid of stock.

But the great thing about merging just regular nonspecific holiday season

products together is you can always unpackage what doesn't sell and

you're not stuck holding onto inventory going into the next year.

The final point I want to make here on promotions is

it's really important and you're going to get the most play

off of your promotions.

If you specifically point out to your purchaser what the benefits

are of your product,

why is your product something that they would absolutely want to

have for the holidays,

either for themselves or for gifting?

This could come in the form of how to use a

product. Are there special ways to use your lotions or your

fragrances that enhance your spirit,

serve some medicinal purposes to get you through,

to create more energy to make you look more beautiful on

those really special party nights?

We've had a couple of people on the show recently who

do candy nuts.

They do blog articles that talk about how you can use

their product,

what the lifestyle is around the product,

and then also recipes of how you can take their product

and then use it and apply it to making a bigger

dish. You know,

possibly pie crusts or putting it into cakes or merging it

with other types of things for a tray.

All those types of things are options.

In terms of additional information you can layer on not just

talking about your product,

but how can be integrated into the lifestyle of your recipient

recipes, how tos,

holiday tips,

all of that are things that you can think about to

apply to your messaging.

Then you can also talk about why your product is so

useful. They're a solution for stocking stuffers,

hostess gifts.

Think about how many parties they're going through for throughout the

season. I don't know.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and

say people are going to three,

four, five parties during the holiday season.

Stock up on your hostess gifts so you don't have to

worry about it at the last minute and all important,

and here's an idea.

I don't see people promoting very much at all,

but so useful.

You ever been in a situation where someone presents you with

a gift,

they've come to your house and they've come with a gift

specifically for you and you're like,

Oh no,

I don't have anything for them,

right? You forgot,

either you forgot about them or you didn't think they were

going to give a gift and it's awkward because you don't

have anything for them.

Could your product possibly be that forgotten gift back up?

Have it all wrapped,

all labeled and already so someone in a situation like I

just described can say,

Oh wait,

I have something for you,

and they can run in the other room.

Put a little message on the tag of the gift and

bring it on out as if it was planned for all

the way along.

Another benefit of your products could be services that you offer.

Do you mail directly from your shop to the recipient so

a customer can order right from you?

They don't have to wrap it.

They don't have to go to the post office and mail

it. It can get directly sent from your shop.

If so,

you want to promote that.

You also want to promote any customization that you do.

Do you add names?

Can you add special messaging?

Can customers select a certain color that they want,

that they know the person who's receiving the gift loves all

this type of customization are things also you want to point

out and I bring up all these topics in terms of

benefits for your purchaser because they're all reasons then that they're

going to come and buy from you and not go somewhere

else. Finally,

I don't want to forget.

What about the idea of promoting what your product can do

directly for your customer.

The one who's making the purchase.

We're so busy at this time of year with all the

hustle and bustle of the season of getting things checked off

our list because we're buying for others.

Does your product provide value for the purchaser as well?

Maybe with that three pack of candles along with that is

another little candle that the purchaser then can use for themselves

to celebrate the season and find joy in the season as

they're doing all the package wrapping or the cooking or all

the various activities that we do as we're getting ready for

the holidays.

So these are all messages and benefits that you can present

to your customer as reasons why they should buy from you.

To summarize again this holiday focus in terms of promotions.

Does your product have a special holiday theme?

Those are the images that you want to have in your

promotions. Secondly,

if your product can be used year round,

how can you merge things together so that they look more

festive made for the holiday season,

but really afterwards you can pull them apart and sell them

separately. And finally,

don't forget to point out the benefits to the purchaser of

why they should be buying from you and not just walk

out of your store or jump over to another website to

continue their search for that perfect gift.

The final category I want to talk about here is price

and get this.

Really think about this.

So sit still,

pay attention if you were multitasking while we're talking,

stop. Listen,

holiday promotion does not always mean you have to drop your

price. I want to focus here on pricing,

but it doesn't mean how do I continue to drop my

price lower so that I can attract more people in?

No, because remember every single time you drop your price lower,

you are dipping into your profit.

Okay, so what can you do?

All right,

so Sue,

I get that.

That makes sense.

What do I do then?

What are my options?

One of them plays off of what we were talking about

just a minute ago about merging some products together so that

they make sense and are more themed to a holiday.

This same strategy helps you when you're considering pricing because as

you merge products together,

whether it's the candle idea that I presented earlier or the

spices, when you start merging products together,

the overall cost begins to be masked.

For instance,

when I was talking about candles,

if you merge those three candles together and maybe in the

bow at a personalized ornament or a package of cinnamon popery

or a beautiful,

cute, adorable plush reindeer,

there's a perceived value over and above what the individual pieces

are. So the more you merge things together,

the more you're masking your price.

It's not to deceive the customer,

but it's so that you can keep your margins higher and

people will still buy the product and they're feeling like they're

getting a deal because they're getting all of these pieces together.

Candles, as I said,

was a great one.

Why do I always gravitate to candles?

You guys,

I wonder,

so candles,

but how about a holiday plate with cookies and hot chocolate?

So it's a whole little treat center all packaged together.

People aren't going to go back and say,

okay, how much was the cost of the holiday play?

Thomas was the cost of these cookies?

How much was that hot chocolate?

Oh gosh.

Throw a mug in there too.

That would fit nicely.

The mix,

all of this together.

Then again,

you can command a decent price at decent margins,

so that's the first one is bundling multiples.

The second is ad-ons.

What types of things can you add onto your product that

then increase the perceived value?

We talked about this a little bit as we were talking

about what messaging can do,

but what if you actually created a physical piece of paper?

Well, you'd make it nice,

right? Printed on card stock or perhaps a little pamphlet,

but different guides.

Perhaps it's what are the top tips of how to burn

a candle correctly?

What about all different types of ways to wear a scarf?

So it comes with a scarf and then it comes with

all of these ideas of how to tie the scarf.

How about health tips?

What is it that makes your chocolates so healthy and a

reason why it's all right,

have wanted so good,

but it's also really,

really healthy for you.

Also included are a whole list of other healthy heart and

weight friendly snacks for the holidays.

Okay. I'm making this up on the fly,

but you get what I mean or combinations.

If you are talking shop again,

maybe you would recommend certain wines from your neighbor.

Here we're getting into a power partnering concept.

Your neighbor is a wine shop.

You have the talk klutz.

What type of combos could you recommend that would work well

for both?

Remember, you're the expert within whatever the product category is that

you create and a lot of this insight and knowledge you

have about your product,

how it should be stored,

how it can be worn are of great value and interest

to your customer.

I don't think we take advantage of this nearly enough in

terms of writing it down,

documenting it and adding it to our product.

Sure, it takes a little bit of time to put together

what I'm describing,

but you only need to do it once and when you're

able then to increase the price of your product,

you get paid for it over and over again.

That's the beauty in some of these ad-ons that are intangibles

that you're putting down your knowledge on paper as the guides,

the tips,

checklists, health benefits,

all the things that I've just been describing.

Another thing I want to bring up here is the opportunity

to get rid of single piece items that have been sitting

around in stock for a while.

Maybe they're sitting back in your warehouse or on your sales

floor, but they're sitting in a basket of items you are

trying to get rid of because you only have one left.

Now, make I make a point.

The product is still good enough,

top quality but doesn't seem to be moving.

You have that cheese knife that is so beautiful,

but just nobody seems to want to buy it.

It's this certain turquoise color.

Add that onto a shiny silver platter.

Add a couple of other things together.

Top it off with a glittery bow.

Boom. You've got a new year's hostess gift.

So what products do you have in singles or maybe you

just have two or three left that you'd like to try

and get rid of.

Consider bundling for this.

Another idea in terms of different ways you can get around

the pricing issue.

Consider doing kickback offers.

By this,

I mean if someone buys a holiday gift from you in

December, they are going to get a mailing for Valentine's day

with some type of additional promotion.

Now you might say,

well wait,

that sounds like discounting because if they're buying in December,

they might be buying at a regular price,

but then you're offering some type of a discount in February

on Valentine's day.

Yes, that's true.

But this is a potential customer that you would never have

for Valentine's day.

So the upside is still there.

Kickback offers.

Now having said all this about pricing and suggesting that you

should not just automatically jump to dropping your prices,

we all know about black Friday and cyber Monday and these

are great opportunities for you to offer some type of a

discount or something special with one of your products so that

you can take advantage of at least one of these days.

Black Friday of course is the Friday,

right after Thanksgiving when people are like,

okay, this holiday is over.

Now I got to get started and get really serious about

Christmas and cyber Monday is the exact same thing online.

So black Friday usually is retail based and cyber Monday of

course is all of your online promotion.

I do suggest that you take advantage of one of these

if not both.

And the reason is this way you're putting yourself right in

the path of someone who's ready to purchase.

If someone's going out to the mall on the Friday after

Thanksgiving, you know that they're ready to open their pocketbooks and

they are ready to buy.

That's their whole intent is being out there and not just

looking around like people sometimes do,

but they're actually ready to purchase.

They want to start whittling away at their holiday list.

You want to take advantage of their mindset,

which is to buy,

which moves me perfectly into the whole psychology of selling and

buying when it comes to the holidays.

Little bit of an ebb and a flow to people's thinking

here because as we were just talking about right after Thanksgiving,

everyone's in the mood,

you know,

black Friday,

cyber Monday and taking advantage of all the deals.

Then people get back to work,

they start attending holiday parties and many things get in the

way of them completing all of the tasks.

And of course there are a lot of us who are

procrastinators. So we think we have a lot of time before

Christmas, but we really don't.

Business owners get involved in selling of their own products and

the fulfilling of gifting lists kind of slips and the preparing

for those holiday dinners,

the holiday parties and getting that perfect dress,

all of that kind of slips to the wayside.

So at some point they transition into desperation mode.

They've got to go out and get something and price becomes

less of an issue.

It's getting that nice gift or near the end getting just

something, anything because so many stores,

of course their inventory starts to whittle down,

especially in years like this when it's anticipated there's going to

be a lot of spending for the holidays and so they're

just looking for that great purchase.

You can take advantage of that by not automatically dropping prices

or dropping prices too early and of course near the end

as the holiday is only days away,

that is a fine time to start dropping prices on strategic

products. Those products that you've bundled together,

that can be pulled apart later.

I wouldn't drop the price as deep,

but Santa Claus themed products,

frosty the snowman mugs or lollipops.

Those are things I definitely would discount so that you can

move the stock away.

Perishable items can't last a year so you want to get

them out but you want to do it at the right

time. It seems like these are little points perhaps,

but if you do this properly it can wind up being

big dollars that stay with you when you don't drop your

price too early and there you have it.

Gift business nerves,

tips for visibility,

promotions and price strategy all wrapped up in a neat little

podcast with a bright little bow for you.

Now I recognize that I gave you a whole lot of

information, tons of tips and possibly if you new to this

podcast some strategies that you haven't heard before,

so I have a few resources for you that I'm going

to put over in the show notes.

I've talked a lot about networking in the past.

I also have a mini networking program that you can go

through. I'm going to give you the link to that in

the show notes.

I also have several episodes on how to put together a

proper open house.

I'm going to connect a net popup shop episode for you

and I'm also going to connect up information on power partners

because that may also be a new concept for you.

So I want to be able to give you the complete

package of everything you need to make this holiday season the

best one yet.

You'll be able to find all those goodies over at gift

biz, unwrapped.com

forward slash holiday Saleen And as an additional holiday gift to

you. If you've been listening to the sponsor of this podcast,

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Here's to you and your business in a very,

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