17. 6 Steps to Maximize Holiday Sales for Your Creative Business

It’s time to start prepping your calligraphy business for the upcoming holiday season, and in this episode of Calligraphy Biz Corner, we’re sharing everything you need to know to boost your small business holiday sales! Whether you’re launching holiday products and services for the first time or you’re a pro at navigating the gifting season, this episode is packed with tips to help you succeed.

We walk through a simple six-step guide to ensure you're ready, covering essential topics like deciding what holiday products to offer, choosing the best platform to sell your products (whether it's online channels or local markets and craft fairs), and creating a solid production timeline. We also dive into setting the right prices for profitability, running pre-sales to gauge interest, and crafting a marketing plan to get your products in front of the right audience.

This episode will help you streamline your production process and maximize your revenue. Put on your favorite holiday sweater (we've got ours on!), grab your notebook, and let’s get your calligraphy business holiday-ready so you can end the year on a high note!

🔗 Links to resources mentioned in this episode:

• Alane's Holiday Sales Post
• Shaochen's Product Launch Blog Post
• Order free boxes through USPS
• Get discounted shipping rates through Pirate Ship

Transcript

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Introduction

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 0:32

Hello and welcome back to Calligraphy Biz Corner. Believe it or not, the holidays are right around the corner and Xiao Chen and I showed up in our holiday garb today for this episode.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 0:44

Yep. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see our cute little holiday sweatshirts. I've got one with a bunch of dogs with reindeer ears and Santa hats on.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 0:54

And mine is from Christmas Vacation. The, what's the cousin's name? Oh, I'm blanking on the card. Yes, Eddie. Thank you. Oh

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 1:03

Joe's family watches that movie every single year, and they would be so embarrassed if I didn't know. The name Yeah,

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 1:15

but yeah, my sweatshirt is Christmas vacation inspired with Eddie's RV on the front of it and it says Merry Christmas I don't want to curse so that we don't have to mark this episode as explicit, but you know, the rest of that saying, if you know that movie. But anyways, since the holidays are right around the corner, we thought that we would kick off October by bringing you an episode all about preparing your business for the upcoming holiday season.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 1:43

I know it might feel early. We're recording this in the last few days of September, but if you are planning to run a Black Friday or small business Saturday promotion right now is the perfect time to start planning because the steps that we're going to share with you today are going to take a little bit of time to plan and implement.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 2:02

Yeah, I had started making Christmas ornaments and holiday cards, things like that back in 2017. So I guess I was like a couple of years into business. But when I first started offering like a holiday product line, if you will, or holiday services, I feel like I was always just flying by the seat of my pants until I like actually got the hang of it. So in this episode, we are bringing you the guidelines that I know I personally wish that I had. Back in 2017, because that would have saved me so much time and so much stress. And I feel like I would have had a much smoother holiday production process.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 2:39

Yeah. And it's so funny because Elaine and I actually both wrote blog posts on this topic after, you know, because learning what we learned, we wanted to help other people who are in the same boat. And so we basically kind of combined the knowledge that we shared in those blog posts and created this like mega episode of all of our tips. And so if you want to read those blog posts, we will link those in the show notes. And

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 3:04

we get started, we want to just shout out our latest podcast supporters. Thank you so much to Kelly of Swirls and Scripts Calligraphy. Blanca of Blanca Lewis calligraphy and Allie of Allie cat calligraphy for supporting us through our buy me a coffee page. If you've been enjoying our show, then you can hit the support, the show link in our show notes to buy us a coffee, and we would love to give you a shout out too. So thank you so much to those three for your latest donations.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 3:33

And we also love hearing about and celebrating your successes. So keep sharing those with us in the DMs. Heather of Lee calligraphy shared with us recently that after listening to episode 15 about live events with keeping up with the calligraphers, she was motivated to take action and she reached out to some wine and whiskey festivals and ended up booking 15 hours of live calligraphy work. So we want to say congratulations, Heather. And thank you so much for listening to our show. So let's dive into today's topic. We're going to go over six steps to your holiday launch in this episode, and they are all super tactical. So make sure you grab your notebook and pen for this one.

Step 1: Decide WHAT You're Going to Sell

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 4:19

Okay, so our first step is figuring out what you're actually going to sell. So this might seem obvious, but we'd be remiss if we didn't start at the very beginning. Before you do anything else, it's important to decide what are you going to sell this year? Are you going to be making products by hand? Are you going to be designing something like Holiday cards or holiday attire, something like that. And then having it mass printed, are you going to be fulfilling custom orders or are you going to be offering any onsite calligraphy services? By getting really clear on what you're going to sell, the remaining steps that we're going to cover today to launching your holiday products and services are going to be so much easier.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 5:00

And an important step as you're thinking about what you want to sell is to also get your customers input on what they want to buy. This also generates revenue. So um, I think that the first thing you want to do is buy in an excitement from your audience from the very beginning because people love feeling like they're a part of the process and they get excited when they see that what they voted for becomes like a reality. Getting that customer feedback can also help you narrow down your ideas because you might just have ideas kind of across the board from products to services and everything in between about what you want to offer or can offer. And so getting the input will help you stay more narrowed and focused. Um, As far as what you're going to create so that you don't overwhelm yourself by creating too many things at once. An easy way to gauge interest is if you have an Instagram account, you can do an Instagram poll um, just put some ideas up there and see what people vote for. Or if you have an email list, you can also send out a Google form and that'll allow you to get a little bit more like in depth. With your survey, you can do both and I kind of like the idea of doing the Instagram pull first to kind of get a general sense. And then if you need more details about those specific products you're thinking about, you could send a Google form to follow up with that in your mailing list.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 6:22

Yeah. Both of those are such great ideas and really great tips because it can get really overwhelming with like all of the different ideas or products or things that you could be making for holidays. Like you could do cards, wrapping paper, mugs, ornaments, like so many different things. And I know it was really helpful for me when I was starting out. Doing holiday products a few years ago to get that, you know, customer buy in, like you said because then it also told me like, where should I even put my time and energy? And it's like, for me, year after year, custom ornaments were always like the number one product. So there were a couple of years where I tried like some cards or I tried designing some wrapping paper, but. Yeah. The ornaments always were what sold. So like, I really learned to just hone in on that because that's what my customers wanted. So like, I enjoyed making them, then I should be listening to them with what's actually

Step 2: Decide WHERE You're Going to Sell

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 7:14

going to sell. Okay. So step two, once you know what you're going to sell, the next step is going to be to figure out where you're going to sell your products. you are newer in your calligraphy business, this might be a big decision for you. So I would love to encourage you to think beyond only selling on Instagram or your own website. Although both of those are very viable selling paths and are also important. But if you don't have a large audience yet, then I would suggest consider setting up a shop. Via an online marketplace like Etsy, because they have built in SEO. So your products have a higher likelihood of being placed in front of prospective buyers for you. Etsy is also a really great place to start. If you don't already have e commerce set up on your website, or if you don't have the capacity to like build a shop from scratch this holiday season, either using like Squarespace's e commerce site or something like Shopify.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 8:09

if you do already have your website, you could also experiment with having both e commerce through your website and Etsy. So I tried that one year and it worked great because basically it allowed me to drive my warm traffic, which is like people who already followed me were on my email list or on Instagram. I could drive those people to my website. And then also take advantage of Etsy's kind of, like you said, built in audience there to reach new people that didn't know about me yet. And I ended up making sales on both platforms. I felt like I was able to optimize and reach out to people that wouldn't have bought from me or known about me otherwise, while at the same time saving on some of the fees, the Etsy fees for people who did already know about me, because it was a little bit cheaper to sell through my own website.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 8:59

That's a really great point because we talk about diversifying our marketing efforts, but you're now also talking about diversifying your selling efforts and like where you're actually selling your products and services. And I think that's so smart because we don't always want to have all of our eggs in one basket. So kind of small Spreading them out between multiple platforms is a really good idea because you never know who you're going to attract on those various platforms. And then that also brings us to another option is depending on the products or services that you're selling. The holiday season is a really good time to try out in person markets as well. A lot of potential customers who already value supporting small and local businesses will be at those marketplaces ready to shop. And then also getting in front of a local audience helps cut down on the need for online sales. And then it also helps spread word about your business for other events throughout the year, like weddings, baby showers, et cetera. So I know when I would do. local holiday markets in Hoboken. It was a great opportunity to also just meet people who maybe needed other custom calligraphy commissions throughout the year or needed, you know, calligraphy work for weddings or events, things like that. So it was nice to be able to have that like in person face to face connection. And then by participating in an in person market, you also have the ability to showcase your unique talents. Talent, because you can do interactive elements, like actually doing custom ornaments on site for shoppers. So if somebody is coming up to you and saying, you know, can you write Merry Christmas to this person? Like you can actually write that for them in real time, which just, I think, creates even more like buy in for you and your service or product too.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 10:41

Yeah, I think it's such a unique way to market your services too because you could do it like a live calligraphy demonstration. And I think that that gives your table your booth, this like, unique draw that most other ones don't have. And so you can definitely bring some pre made inventory for people who are kind of in a tight time crunch, you just need to grab something and go. But But you can also offer live calligraphy on ornaments as part of your services and be like, yeah, write down what you want, purchase the ornaments, shop around, come back and pick it up before you leave type of thing. And the other thing I love about that is. If you are looking into getting into live calligraphy for events, you can also have someone take some pictures of you or videos of you and use that as marketing to book, you know, live calligraphy gigs and brand activations and corporate events and stuff like that. So I know that my first year when I did a holiday market, I did do some of the live personalization and I got photos from that. And I put that on my live events page. Once I was ready to start promoting that service. So,

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 11:46

That's really smart. I like that. Like two for one there.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 11:51

yeah, it's all about thinking of how you can take advantage of like content, repurposing it and using it for marketing and stuff like that. The other suggestion that I have for markets is to see if you can get in on some of the earlier dates. Because I just from my experience and everyone's experience is going to be different, but I tend to have inventory left over from the markets. And so it was nice to have some time after the markets to be able to still sell that inventory. And then if you do sell out at the market and then still early on in the season, You also have time to then order more supplies or inventory for your best sellers on the flip side There's also people who are last minute shoppers So if you find yourself with a lot of inventory on hand You could also sign up for a later fare as a way to kind of quickly you know, sell some of that inventory

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 12:41

Yeah, I'm definitely a last minute shopper. So I need people with last minute inventory

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 12:46

same

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 12:48

every year. I'm like, I'm going to do better. I'm going to do my holiday shopping in November. And it's always like a week before Christmas. If that.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 12:56

I know

Step 3: Create a Timeline for Production & Promotion

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 12:57

Okay. So then step three is going to be figuring out your timeline for production as well as promotion. So once you know what you're going to be selling and where you're going to be selling your holiday products and services, then you can start to plot out your actual calendar. So you'll be able to determine the dates that your holiday products will be available. And then you can decide on your official launch date, any promotional sales dates. Order cutoff dates. That's something really important to, especially if you are shipping, like you want to take into account when is actually realistically like the last possible date that I can be shipping these products to someone. So working backwards from your launch date, then you can create a schedule for actually ordering your samples and supplies, which we'll get into next.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 13:44

Yeah. Once you have those key dates related to selling, I would also use that to help build your marketing calendar. So like, When do you want Instagram posts to go out or newsletters to go out? And make sure you're scheduling some time for sneak peek posts before even your sales go live. Maybe some behind the scenes teasers as you're working in your Instagram stories. So you want to keep the momentum going even before you're ready to sell so that by the time you are like dropping that sales link, people are like, yes, yes, I want this.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 14:18

Yep. That's such a great reminder. Cause I feel like we forget to build in that kind of time to these types of launches and promotions.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 14:26

Yeah and we'll talk a little bit more about marketing ideas in a later step too,

Step 4: Prepare Your Products

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 14:32

but now we are on step four. And you are ready to create your sample products and get your listings ready. So this step is going to be a really meaty step. It's like a three part step because basically we want to have you be ready to sell your product at the end of this step. We're kind of. Framing this as though you're selling a brand new product. And we want you to be able to come create the sample and do all the prep work in order to have your listings up before you go into like full scale production mode. So step four, a, or the first part of this step. Is that you want to order supplies to create your samples, you want to order just enough supplies to create your first samples, because your goal at this point is to make sure that the vendors that you're working with are going to give you the quality you're looking for. You don't want to put in a full order of supplies and then realize, oh, this ribbon isn't the color look like online or, you know, this. paper doesn't take calligraphy well or whatever it is. And so this step is really about doing like quality control. You want to just order enough supplies so that you can get your samples created.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 15:48

Yeah. I used to do this all the time with ornaments because what you see online versus actually being able to hold an ornament in person, like some of them that I would order as samples were just. crappy quality and I was like I cannot in my good conscience sell these to people. So this is a very important step because you just never know what you are getting. in real life versus what you're seeing online. It's also a great way, like for example, if you're getting anything printed through a manufacturer, then you'll probably want to order a few samples just to make sure that everything is printed the way that you want it to be printed, you know, that the design looks right, that the colors look good, all that kind of stuff. And then I also recommend ordering a few samples of shipping supplies at this time. That way you have an idea of how much those will cost and how you can best package up your products because some things might take weird boxes or you want to make sure that you can, you know, fit an ornament inside a certain size box along with, you know, bubble wrap packaging, things like that.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 16:49

One quick tip there on packaging is if you are in the U. S., you can get free boxes from USPS. So you can either pick them up at the post office, or you can also them online for free. So definitely take a look on there and like see where you can maybe save a little bit money on packaging supplies.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 17:09

Yeah. When I found that out, I was like, my mind was blown that I didn't have to buy boxes to ship. Like I started to get, you know, Packaging tape and bubble wrap and all that kind of stuff. But like, yeah, my, my post office doesn't really carry a ton of stuff. So I went online as well. And I think that you can get, I think I could order like a package of 25 boxes at one time or something like that. So you can really like get everything that you need right away. That way you're not scrambling at the last minute. So that's a great tip to remember. Okay. So then. Part B of this step four is going to be establish your pricing. So once you know what you're selling, where you're selling it and you have an idea of how much your material costs, things like that are going to run you, now you can figure out how to actually price your products. So there's a few things that you want to take into account here. And that includes obviously the time that it's taking you to create the products. The cost of the supplies. So for example, if you're. making ornaments and each ornament costs you a dollar, you want to be factoring that into your pricing. Any printing or production costs that are involved if you are having things printed. And then the other thing you want to remember is any advertising or transaction fees, depending on where you're selling. So like, Etsy charges you a listing fee, and then you also get transaction fees on top of that. So you want to make sure that you are factoring those small things. Cause even though they don't seem like a lot, they do add up over time. So you want to take that into account when you're determining your pricing. And then you also want to. Figure out your shipping costs. If they're not going to be added on separately. Etsy has like a shipping calculator that does a pretty good job of figuring out how much to charge. And then you could also like make up a sample package and either if you have, like, I have a little scale that I had bought from Amazon. So you could either use something like that or just take a sample package to the post office and ask them, like, how much do you think that this would cost to ship, you know, within state, out of state, things like that.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 19:12

Yeah, having a scale is so worth it. if you're going to be doing a lot of shipping for your products, because you can also use a, like I use a website called pirate ship. And that's in the U S as well. I'm not sure if they are available in other countries, but they're definitely available in the U S and you can basically get Discounted bulk pricing, cheaper than if you were to go to the counter for UPS or USPS or FedEx, and if you have your own scale, you can weigh your stuff, put in the dimensions of the box on your, in your pirate ship, and just like print out a label at home, and you don't need to have a label printer, you can print it on a normal piece of paper and cut it out, and that's going to save you so much money when it comes to shipping.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 19:55

Yep. That's a really, yeah, I feel like we could do a whole episode just on shipping. We're not going to do that, I feel like it could be boring while very informative. Okay. So then our third and final part, part C to step four is to take photos and videos. So once you create your samples, you have your pricing figured out, you're Now you can take some photos so that you can actually create your listings as well as any social media content that you're going to need in order to promote your holiday products and sales. So I like to try to get creative here. Like people like to see videos, so maybe film yourself making an ornament or packaging something up or creating a holiday card and share that as a real or behind the scenes stories or something like that to just drum up some excitement around your holiday launch.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 20:42

I really like scheduling a content day to just help you get a lot of photos and videos and basically batch create those like assets so that you don't have to be like creating content as you're also creating products. And so here are a couple ideas for getting more content with the same products. The first one is take photos of your product using different settings. So style your product in a couple of different ways with a couple of different backdrops different angles, maybe a couple of them with someone actually using them, like some a person holding them so you can see their hand Or maybe like a mug where they're like drinking coffee out of it or something like that. And so like, this will keep things fresh so that you will have more images to use when you're promoting that same product over and over. You can also think about getting. Photos of your products individually as well as together. Do you have products that are complimentary that might make a good gift set or something like that? Or even just thinking about like when you're creating your posts and you're saying like, Maybe it's like Black Friday, 20, 20 percent off all your products. You might want a shot that shows everything you offer in one shot rather than just all individual products. So kind of think about how you might mix and match products in the same photos as well. And then Elaine already mentioned this, but like keep the camera rolling as you're working on stuff um, film behind the scenes. People love that and being able to see the finished product, but also all the work that went into it. And I think that really helps to elevate the value and how much people appreciate the like handcrafted nature and all the work that you put into creating that as well. All

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 22:27

Yeah, absolutely. And then don't forget to also draft product listings for places like Etsy or your website. In addition to the photos, you're going to have to write some copy to go along with the product listing. So I like to just kind of keep a template of that and like copy, paste, change, you know, the details, if it's color, size, dimensions, things like that. And then just. Paste that into all of my product listings. So once you have your photos and your product listing copy drafted, then you can update all of that online really quickly. Like in one, you know, one sitting, you can just bang all of that out.

Step 5: Run a Pre-Sale

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 23:02

So at this point you have everything that you need to actually start selling your products. You have your samples, you know what vendors you're going to buy from, you know how much you're going to price it for, you have your photos. So step five is to run a pre sale. And I love the pre sale strategy because it gives me more information on how a product is going to perform, especially if it's a brand new product I've never sold before. And it helps me to determine like how many supplies I should order or how much inventory I should carry. So what you can do now is take pre orders which is basically selling the product before it's ready to ship out. And you might want to offer a discount to incentivize people to purchase during the pre sale period, because it's also probably going to be. Pretty early as far as like in the holiday season. So maybe a discount of like 10 percent to 20 percent for the pre sale. So with the presale, you're essentially collecting capital or money before you produce the products. And like I mentioned, it helps gauge interest in your products to determine how much to stock and predict. What your best sellers might be, but it's also a great strategy to help you have a profitable sale. Rather than ordering like too many supplies and ending up in the red. I feel like that's always kind of a risk with selling products. So make sure since you're not going to be shipping these products. Pre sale orders out right away that you're communicating clearly on your website. on the checkout pages, on any marketing materials, like Instagram posts and things like that, that the items will ship out in like two to three weeks is what I generally suggest because that gives you enough time to place the larger order of supplies that you need in order to produce the products for your pre sale and then also gives you time to create the products that were ordered, assuming that those are like handmade products.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 24:54

Yeah, I agree that I love this presale strategy. I've done this in the past with holiday orders. And it was really helpful to like you said, kind of gauge what what products were selling. The most and also create like a little bit of urgency to write. Like if one ornament color was selling really quickly during the pre sale, then I could be like, Oh, I only have four more of this one left. And like, maybe I wasn't going to be ordering more for whatever reason. So I feel like it just helps you have a profitable sales period in general, like by doing some of the things that we had already talked about, where it's like, you're getting. Your customers buy in, you're bringing them on the journey. You're showing them what's going on. Like you're talking about it before it's actually launching. Like you can't just roll up on December 1st and be like, Hey, I have ornaments and expect them to sell. Right? Like, I feel like just with whatever it is that you're selling, any kind of services that you're marketing, doing this sort of presale and bringing the buyer on that journey with you of creating the product, launching it, all of that is always a really smart strategy.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 26:01

To add on to that expectation setting is essentially what you're talking about there, right? Kind of giving them a heads up, a preview, all of that. And so another tip here is that before you actually launch your presale, put up a story saying presale is going to open tomorrow or send a newsletter to your audience, like give them one to two days heads up that the presale is coming so they can be looking out for it. like you said. Bring them on the journey, set the expectations like the entire way through.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 26:32

And as I mentioned before, you're also going to want to make sure that you do have shipping supplies on hand. If you are going to be shipping any of these pre sale items, even if you are participating in in person markets, you're still going to want shopping bags or maybe even have some gift wrap available for customers who are shopping in person with you. And then it's also like little things like I like to make sure that I have updated business cards and little like thank you cards that I can write a thank you note on. Maybe you want to order some branded tissue paper or, or some other kind of branded, you know, packaging. Um, That way your business is also getting promoted through your buyers, whether it's via shipping or via in person. And I feel like this is kind of bringing us to marketing a

Step 6: Spread the Word!

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 27:14

little bit.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 27:14

Yeah, that brings us right to step number six, which is all about marketing and spreading the word. So once your pre sale period is over, it's time to open up the general sale. So at this point there's no more two to three week lead time. Now you should have enough supplies on hand so that you can go straight into production when an order comes in. Or you might even be able to create some inventory to have on hand. And so at this point, your focus is all about promoting your holiday offers.

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 27:43

Yeah. So you can spread the word through your email newsletter, through social media. One of the things that I love to do around the holiday season, if I am doing any sort of holiday products is to do an Instagram giveaway. That's a really fun way to drum up excitement around your launch. You could also partner with other local shops in your area to help spread the word. So like, whether you're going in person and seeing like, Hey, do you want to carry some of my ornaments? Or maybe you're. getting a couple of your favorite local shops and you're all going to do an Instagram giveaway together. That's a really great way to market your holiday products and bring some new eyes and new customers to your business. And then of course you could also participate in in person holiday markets. I just feel like the holidays in particular are such a fun and exciting time to, Like be selling things. And so it's like tap into that holiday joy and the holiday spirit with whatever your promotion is doing. Like, there's so many different ways that you can create excitement and get some creativity going with the way that you're marketing your products and services.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 28:47

Yeah. And just remember that people often need time to make purchasing decisions. They'll shop around for the perfect gift. So you're going to be wanting to talk about these offers over and over, even though it might feel like a broken record to you people need to hear it multiple times, sometimes in order to move to the point of purchasing. Most people see like a small fraction of your posts. That's just the reality of it, especially with the Instagram algorithm these days. So you never know when the next post that you create is going to be the one that incentivizes someone to buy. I know personally, I've seen posts where it's like, I have this sale going on that ends in a week and I will literally forget about it until I get the email. That's like, three hours left of the sale, you know, and it's like, okay, yeah, you got to keep reminding people because just remember that like this sale is a top priority for you, but it's probably not the top party for your customer. It's your job to keep like talking about it and reminding them. And so a couple ideas of how to keep that going. Things like interesting as you're talking about your offers. So going back to that content day that now you have a bunch of your pictures of your products at different angles and things. If you have multiple products, try showcasing them like one at a time. Maybe as you plan out your content for the week, you're literally showcasing one product on Monday, a different one on. Wednesday, another one on Friday or something. And sometimes this helps your message to stay focused so people don't get overwhelmed with too many choices or that if they see one product they'll go to your website and see what the other options are there. But that just helps you to kind of hone in on one thing at a time for them. Uh, You can repost stories from customers who are talking about your product. So maybe give them some incentive to tag you in a story. Maybe it's like, Get a coupon code or, you know, some, some kind of thing for your shop. If you post a story of your product and tag me or just make sure that your Instagram handle is on your business card or like Elaine said, or your packaging or whatever it might be so that they know how to share the product that they bought from you. And then. Tell your friends. I feel like a lot of people forget to tell their friends about their business, about their sale. Like we're so in our business owner bubble sometimes, because we follow, I know I do, I follow a ton of other calligraphers, a ton of other small business owners that a lot of times I don't actually post anything on my personal Instagram account, or when I see friends, I don't actually like tell them what's going on in my business. So just remember to share your products on any like personal accounts, talk about it with your friends and family. And then the last suggestion that you could tap into is investing a little bit of money in ads, like paid advertising, Etsy, Facebook, Instagram, all have ad options. And you could, if you're, especially if you're running some kind of promo, like the presale is a great example. Or if you want more eyes on your page, when you're doing the giveaway, you could boost a post for that in Instagram or run a little bit of ad spend on it and see how it goes. One thing to remember is that I know with ads, especially on meta, it can take a little bit of time to get approved and shown to your audience. So just make sure that you're getting anything you need for ads like the copy or the image, getting all that stuff ready well in advance of like your pre sale or whatever it is so that by the time the ad is approved the sale's not over. I

alane_1_09-30-2024_132354 32:20

Yeah, that's a really smart idea to be working that into your, the rest of your like promo calendar as well. Okay. So there you have it. That is our six step guide to preparing your business for the upcoming holiday season. Just to quickly recap those six steps. Cause I know that we covered a lot. We've got step one is figure out what you're going to sell. Step two, decide where you're going to sell. Step three, determine your timeline for production and promotion. Step four, create your sample products, establish your pricing and get your listings ready. Step five, run a pre sale and step six, spread the word. Just two reminders as we wrap up this episode. First, you don't need to do all of these steps. I know we covered a lot in this episode. So just remember that this is your business. You get to choose what's the right approach for you, for your time and energy. A lot of figuring out what works for our business is purely through trial and error. So just remember that the most important thing is that you're learning and you're having fun along the way.

shaochen_1_09-30-2024_112354 33:25

And then along those lines, you don't need to do these steps in the order we suggested either. So maybe like we say, step two of figuring out where you're going to sell, maybe that actually comes after. You figure out your products and create your samples because maybe you decide you want to bring your best sellers to a craft fair. Or maybe it was step one of figuring out what you're going to sell. You could again, take like your best selling product. Maybe it's like a calligraphy banner and you decide you want to create more designs of that because that's going really well. So it's all about like. Like we were saying, trying stuff and iterating on it, looking at the data that you're getting back from your customers and trying to figure out how to apply that moving forward. And so this is also why we suggest getting started early, because that gives you more time to actually like capitalize on what you learn for the same holiday season, rather than like taking your learnings to apply to next year. We would love to hear if this episode was helpful as you are planning out your holiday products. And we'd also love to hear what you're working on for the holidays so that we can support your business. So send us a DM and let us know.