The holiday shopping season is right around the corner, which means if you haven’t already started preparing your online shop for holiday sales, you’ve still got time – but the clock is ticking!
Here I'll share 5 tips that artists and makers can use to get your creative small business ready for a successful holiday selling season.
Whether you've got an Etsy shop or sell on Shopify, these handmade business marketing tips will also help you sell more products all year round!
1. Create at least one gift guide.
Whether you're a blogger or an online shop owner, gift guides can play a key role in growing your income during the holiday season.
Curating gift guides for specific niches and target audiences was a huge part of how I grew affiliate income via blogging. (Check out this post on what I call The Content Upcycle Method for the full scoop.)
I wish I'd realized the power of carefully curated gift guides back when I ran my own e-commerce shop!
If I could go back in time, I would tell my past online shop owner self to write a few in-depth gift guides to boost my SEO, focusing on specific types of gifts or gift recipients, like “fun gifts for co-workers,” “educational gifts for 8 year olds” or “gift for nerdy husband.”
These gift guides wouldn't just feature a few pictures and a link or two.
I would take the time to write detailed explanations about why each product would make a great gift idea for that specific type of person, so that there would be plenty of on-page descriptive content for Google to analyze.
2. Update your product pages for SEO.
Speaking of Google analyzing your on-page content... I would definitely take some time to update my product pages and add more specific and relevant keyword phrases.
Want to help Google understand more about your products?
You've got to be descriptive and write detailed product listings that talk about your products in all the different ways that your potential customers might naturally search for them.
You'll want to use variations of keyword phrases - you don't want to just repeat the same thing over and over again. That's called "keyword stuffing" and it can actually HURT your SEO.
Think of all the different synonyms and ways that your ideal customer might describe your products when they're searching for them online.
Need help thinking of ideas for what to include?
Turn to Google and use their autocomplete and "Searches Related To" or "More to ask" features to get inspired:
Most SEO efforts can take up to 3-6 months or longer to have a big impact on your search engine rankings. That’s because Google’s bots need time to “crawl” and find the updates on your website.
So you'll want to start adding these keyword phrases as early as possible to help boost your revenue this holiday season.
3. Reach out to local media for gift guide features.
It may already be too late to get featured in the holiday issues of most national print magazines, as many of these publications are finalizing their holiday gift guides by late summer.
But if you act quickly, you might still have a chance at a mention in a local newspaper or other local press!
I've had a lot of success over the years by developing relationships with local journalists and reaching out with press releases as well as personalized emails whenever I was involved in a local event or had something newsworthy going on.
I shared holiday gift ideas with host Sheba Turk on The 504 TV Show in November 2015.
Journalists are always working on tight deadlines and need help finding great stories and content.
Be helpful, be interesting, and put yourself out there this holiday season.
Check out episode 3 from the Badass Creatives podcast archives to get more tips on PR and getting publicity for your creative projects.
4. Don't forget about the power of Pinterest!
Pinterest is often a misunderstood and forgotten tool when it comes to marketing products online.
Many people think of Pinterest as a social media platform, but it helps to think of this powerful tool as what it really is -- a search engine!
(And it's a shoppable search engine at that!)
If you make one of those gift guides that I mentioned earlier, I HIGHLY recommend creating a Pinterest-friendly VERTICAL image to accompany that gift guide or blog post. Be sure to pin it to Pinterest!
You should also take advantage of shoppable pins for your products and even consider advertising on Pinterest.
There are a few different advertising options that Pinterest offers if you want to try this. You could run ads for your shoppable pins or run ads that are "conversion" focused which means the goal of the ad is to get people to buy something from you directly.
But what I'd recommend if you're first starting out with advertising is to do a Brand awareness or Consideration ad for one of those gift guide images I mentioned.
If you publish a gift guide on your blog, you could promote the pinnable image for your gift guide to boost your engagement with the image on Pinterest:
I used to create a LOT of gift guides like this, and by paying to boost the engagement for the pin when the gift guide was brand new, it helped contribute to the long-term growth and success of that pin and that blog post.
Basically by paying a little bit for ads at the beginning, I was helping to ignite the fire that would turn into this burning flame on Pinterest that would then send traffic back to my website for a lonnnngg time.
If you want to learn more about Pinterest, check out my Skillshare class, The Power of Pinterest.
5. Create an email campaign designed to drive sales.
In an age where every small biz owner seems obsessed with social media, I see far too many small businesses neglecting the power of email marketing.
Social media channels may come and go, and the algorithms are constantly changing, but your email list is worth its weight in gold.
Back when I was working at a marketing agency here in New Orleans, a local t-shirt company came to us for help with their online marketing.
One of the big things they were focused on was social media. And they had very popular social media accounts!
BUT, after analyzing their efforts, I immediately noticed that they were neglecting their email list.
I knew it was a missed opportunity that also needed to be a part of their plan.
They hadn't sent any emails to their list for more than 6 months, but we created some new e-mail campaigns and email automations, and we began to nurture their list.
We even helped them generate more than $12,000 in revenue during one weekend flash sale alone!
I've got a series of videos on YouTube dedicated to this topic: Email Marketing for Beginners: Artists, Makers & Handmade Business Owners.
What will you do to increase your holiday sales this year?
Plenty of small, positive changes really do add up over the long-term.
I hope you found these tips helpful!
I’d love to – what are YOU doing to get your online shop ready for this holiday season?
Head over to YouTube to leave a comment and let me know your plans to boost your holiday sales!
