The Time to Think “Holiday Sales” is TODAY!

It may only be the beginning of October but the Holidays aren’t far off. Especially when it comes to planning for your holiday sales.

If you are like me you get so busy creating, teaching, listing, and trying to keep up, that you wake up on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and think, “WAIT! I’m not ready!”

Let’s not do that this year. Let’s come up with a plan for holiday sales. And let’s start TODAY!

First, let’s set some goals before we start the actual planning. Here are some thoughts to help you with your goals:

• Set up your newsletter with specials, holiday themes, freebies and gift ideas
• Stock your shop/show display to the brim. What will you sell? Make sure to have a variety of price points available.
• What did you sell last year that did well? How can you improve on that?
• What does your marketing plan include?
• What are your sales goals for this season?
• Do you have a new product you are offering this season? How will you feature it?
• Are you trying to reach a new group of customers? How can you reach out to that community?

Let’s look at marketing in more depth. After all, without marketing how will folks know where they can buy your items?

• Think about offering discount codes for loyal facebook fans, blog readers or repeat customers
• Think about offering a discount code to include in bags and shipments that can be used AFTER January 1, 2013 to keep customers coming back after the holidays
• Connect all of your social media platforms and make sure to promote your specials and goods across all platforms. Schedule social media posts ahead of time where you are able.
• Don’t forget packaging – how will you package your holiday sales to help people remember your brand?
• Make sure to have plenty of business cards, brochures or other print media available
• Do you collect emails or other information from sales? How will you manage that data collection when things get really busy?

Some more things to think about now for a successful holiday season:

• Don’t forget to continue to make, make, make. Nothing hurts sales more than running out of goods to sell!
• If you are doing art/craft shows while also maintaining an online shop how will you keep up with both?
• If you sell one of a kind items at a craft show don’t forget to take them out of your online shop before you head out. There is nothing more painful than selling an item at a craft show and coming home to find out that it also sold online.
• Break down what you need to get done by the month October, November and December – then break that down so you can see what you need to accomplish each week
• Each night before you turn out the lights take the time to tidy your desk and make a list for tomorrow. That way you can “hit the ground running” in the morning.

Granted, this is a sort of generic list but YOU can fill in the details so that it applies to your business.

The important thing is to start TODAY, set some goals, plan your marketing and fill out your inventory.

What techniques have you used in the past that have helped you prepare for holiday sales?

By: Vicki O’Dell , The Creative Goddess