Today's post is the fiftth in our series of Holiday Sales Mistakes you might be making. It's also part of 6 Days of Handmade Business Holiday Giveaway. That means you'll be getting blog posts like this one for six days (until Saturday), PLUS a chance to win a Maker Business Tool Bundle (scroll to the bottom to enter!). Hey, your business deserves a gift too! ;)
To recap, we've discussed why unbranded packaging costs future sales, how mystery pricing is a no-no, you probably don't have enough signage at shows, and that people need to be connected to you through email or social media so they will hopefully buy again!
Today we are going to tackle something that we will probably feel a bit overwhelming and superfluous. But I promise you it's a pro move for a reason. Plus, you can implement it how you see fit, so don't feel like this needs to be expensive and labor intensive.
If there is anything this brouhaha over Starbucks' red cups can teach us is that visual holiday cues are noticed! And why would Starbucks even change their cups for the holidays? That seems silly. But this time of the year malls spend lots of money decorating and so do retail stores. People often refer to this as helping people "get into the mood."
And you probably know that your mood does change when you enter a holiday decorated space. But you are probably thinking, "Who cares. I am not a mall or brick and mortar. What does this have to do with me?"
The same psychological cues for holiday shopping happen on the websites of brick-and-mortar brands too. They know it's important to set the mood even if someone is buying online.
So, you probably are wondering then, what this might look like for you. You don't have to implement ALLL of these. But consider one or two, just to give those holiday cues to shoppers.
Change Your Shop Heading
This is mostly for Etsy sellers, but it will take you like 10 minutes in Canva, Pic Monkey, etc. to change your existing shop heading to one that has snowflakes or holly or whatever you want to add to indicate holiday.
Add a Graphic to Existing Shop Photos
Again, this can very easily be done in Canva or whatever graphic program you use (if you are in Photoshop or Illustrator I salute you!), but you don't have to do a whole reshoot of your product. You can simply just add a graphic somewhere on existing photos that shows holiday. I did the one below in like 5 minutes. No joke.
You don't have to be as uncreative as me either. You could put mistletoe in the corner or however you'd like to add a touch of holiday that is on-brand for you.
Take Actual Holiday Photos
Yeah, this is some next-level, 2.0 stuff here. I realize photos are a struggle for many so adding this in seems too much. And if it is then you don't have to do it. But if you are the type of person who has photo shoots, make sure that as you are doing ones before the holidays, you take a few of each product that is decidedly holiday.
This could be as simple as adding a pine cone prop to each photo or red and green tinsel somewhere. You could even take it full out and have your product show in a recently "unboxed" state (i.e. the state after someone has just unwrapped your product as a gift). That is a huge gift trigger! Just make sure you are clear if that's how the product comes or if people need to upgrade to get the gift wrap.
How about you? I bet you have clever ways of visually cueing people that it's the holidays and they need to shop from you! Let us know in the comments.
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