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Create Your Monthy, Weekly, & Daily Action Plans

Lesson 17 from: Build Your Holiday Marketing Plan

Megan Auman

Create Your Monthy, Weekly, & Daily Action Plans

Lesson 17 from: Build Your Holiday Marketing Plan

Megan Auman

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Lesson Info

17. Create Your Monthy, Weekly, & Daily Action Plans

Next Lesson: Take Action Today

Lesson Info

Create Your Monthy, Weekly, & Daily Action Plans

Now we want to dio as we want to create your monthly, weekly and daily action plants, we want to take what we did in the calendar and give you really concrete steps to take as you're doing your holiday marketing because ah, plan is nice, but if you don't follow through and do it doesn't mean anything so here's what you're gonna do and I'm actually gonna walk you guys through how I do this again in my business and then we will pull somebody up so first you want to identify those major marketing dates and deadlines. So what are those first hear promotions and then figure out what the sales cycles are? So if you're doing a first year promotion, how long in advance are you actually building out that anticipation, I usually say seven to ten days is the most that you want to go out from whatever your first year promotion is any longer than that your audience gets bored, they get tired, you want to keep it really quick on guy, you know, when we did the panel on the future of handmade sales, I...

mentioned susan petersen from freshly picked who I think is a really fantastic marketer she's amazing, eh? So she just did a new product launch and it was a new she makes children's baby mocks but was a new hard soled shoe and you just know by looking at that that that's a product that was in development for you know, six maybe eight months because it's a manufacturer product her launch for it she started eight week before it actually dropped so even though she'd been working on it for a long time and I'm sure she was sending samples to people to get product photography it was on ly a week because she wanted to keep the enthusiasm up in her audience she wanted them to very quickly go from this is the coolest thing ever to I must write and I must have it as soon as it comes out so we want to keep those launch cycle short and then we also want to insert our pre holiday marking task so you know if you know you have a lot of prep work if you have to get those email lists ready get that email capture going you have to do lifestyle photography scheduled those out a little bit further in advance so that they're there on your to do list not in november december but in july august september on dh then we're going to add weekly tasks like email marketing with the what and how details so what's going in this email you know if you want to go as far as writing the copy in advance you can but certainly you know this is going to get a couple of pictures that are about this this is going to be the call to action and then even add your daily tasks like social media posts so we'll talk about how much structure you need you may be really specific or you may just say ok I know every day you know during the launch cycle it's two posts during non launch it's maybe one post today you can decide how much of that you want to chart out in advance so when you're mapping this out you want to use your first year promotions as a starting point for mapping out your launch cycles so I did this and then it's very very possible but I moved a lot of things around on my calendar so things that still holds true but you can see these air kind of my first year promotions and then these are my top three second tier promotions so things that might not get a full week long launch cycle but might get a little bit of anticipation building or might require more than one email are more than one reminder to my audience so I've plotted these into my calendar and I chose to do this and ever know because this is actually how I do this you can use any system that you want but for me I'm an evernote list making girl it's just how my brain works so I guess going here and this is literally how they work through this so plot those out and now I'm gonna figure out so here's an example of my whole sale reach so what are the things that I'm doing? We're doing mailings doing e mails to my wholesale email list and then I'm doing individual store outreach meaning I'm touched touching base with stores one toe one so my mailings I've got a catalog mailing and then I scheduled in the week of august twenty fourth I'm gonna male line sheets to the stores that I didn't see at the show then I got my wholesale emails I want to dio one with a link to my line sheet kind of a did you miss us email for those people who again we're in the show I want make sure they didn't miss me on dh then I'll do another email the beginning of november just to remind stores what my shipping turnaround time is what my reorder deadlines are and this email I'm certainly not gonna plot in advance because they might change I might get busy so that number might change a little bit but I know that that week I want to remind people what's going on and if I'm really busy I might send this email a week or two earlier if I want to have more lead time for a store so you want to have that flexibility in there but at least you won't have an idea I know around this time I'm targeting stores I'm in the same thing individual outreach so this week I'm going to follow up with leads so the people who gave me their cards, the email on ben you know I'll give it another week or so and I'll follow up with existing customers who didn't order for fall so I'm gonna mail the malign sheet I'm going to send them an email and if I still haven't heard from them in another week or two, then I'll reach out to them individually so that's, how plot that out on by I'll do the same thing again slightly different content as I'm building up. So this is my buildup for my birthday sale, so I've outlined my marketing e mails so one week before I'm just going to say this is coming in a week that way if they want to ask for something for the holiday or they want to plan their shopping now they've got a week to do it and then on the twenty seventh so two days before all just sent out a little teaser email a reminder of what's coming a highlight of a couple of products in the shop so they can really start to shop in pregame they may even add things to their cart in advance and just wait for the code that would be really nice we want them to pre game then because my mailing list get to twelve hours early on october twenty eighth at nine p, m eastern time, they'll get the link to the discount code so they'll get it. They can start their shopping on dh, then one of the things that I like to you in a launch cycle, as you can go through and male chimp and you can segment people who either didn't click or didn't open your last email. So the next morning I'll do another email to everyone who didn't open, reminding them of the sale is going on so that no one misses out because people's inboxes they're full, so you go to a second email with people who didn't open that will actually make a big difference. It could really up your conversion rates for something, then I've got my social media posts so again, I'll start only a week out one week until the sale I'll start, you know, posting on social media with the reminder that mailing list members get to shop first, so make sure you join the list and then I'm going to do some, you know, behind the scenes and product images, so usually what happens before sales? I have to sort through some inventory, make sure that I know what my stock levels are. So just post some behind the scenes of stuff that I'm sorting out, you know, sometimes I'll throw necklaces on myself and take a quick little necklace selfie so people can see this is what a necklace looks like on a real person, just some little tease your stuff like that. And then I do give the discount code to my social media, so on the day of the sale, all posted to facebook and all posted to instagram, but of course the mailing list members have gotten it first on dh, then I just set my target goals. So my goal is that every day I'm doing in the lead up in doing one, two, two daily posts on instagram and usually for me, that's something in morning or midday, depending on my work flow. And then I like to post on instagram at night because it tends to be a little higher engagement, and then I know I'll do one daily boosted post to facebook, so I'll do the post and then I'll pay to boost it to my audience. So that's, what that looks like for my sail, and then I'll go one step further, so I'll create my to do list. For all of those things that I know I need. So one week into the sale, I know I need tio create marketing graphics for the email, right, and schedule the email and then even listen, a marketing task. I do want to go into my shop update product quantity is kind of clean up a little, so those are things that you want to count for if you're doing a big push because you want people to show up in your shop and have everything be a hot mess, right? So you might wanna add that to your to do list is well on dh, then I'll say, ok, this is my product teaser email. So my to do is that I'll select five images of products I want to highlight. So one of the things that I want to tease for the sale and then right on schedule my email and then you know, the night of the discount code, I've got the discount code create the code for that you put those things on your to do less cancer, and I just can't do it if you haven't made it create the click here, a graphic for email that I talked about that really important click here to shop now and right on schedule the email and then the next day, I'll have to create a segment of email subscribers who didn't click are open. So this is one that I can't schedule for in advance because I have to wait to see who's actually clicked unopened, so I'll create that segment and then right on schedule that email so that gives me my very clear to do list, and then, you know, ideally, this will be pack and ship orders will be the next to do us after that happens. So that's, how I go ahead and kind of plot all of this out, and then what you'll d'oh is you'll repeat this process for each first and second tier promotion again. Second tier promotions will mostly take the form of a daily or a weekly task rather than that larger launch cycle, so might get one email maybe too, depending on the promotion. But it doesn't have to be this kind of full element. You have questions about plotting that out. I know that was a time kind of stuff on d c everyone's head kind of spinning from the visual scribe. There is a slide that you had on there that separated marketing, email and social media post yeah, and I think at that moment it really clicked in my mind that they're two separate. He served two very separate functions and so that was very useful to see because I tend to clump it underneath marketing and I just get super overwhelmed yeah, yes, I definitely think of them as two separate things and some of the content gets reused so a lot of times what I'll do is I will actually post some images to social media first of you know kind of the teasers and the promo and I'll see what people are responding to the best and then the ones that people really like those actually get pulled into a teaser email so sometimes I'll reuse the content but I always think of them as two distinct activities with two distinct goals because the goal here is to get them to sign up for the email list and then the goal here is anticipation anticipation boom shop it go so what I actually want to do now and is before we jump into this idea that we're going tio kind of then put all your tasks in your calendar because you can see what I've got right now if we go back is like this is happening in our marketing email this is happening in our social media posts but these two things are happening on the same day, right? So we're going to reorganize them a little bit but I want to walk through this process with one of you just to kind of see how it feels for one of you, too, because they walked through in plan your marketing so who's feeling brave, I saw I saw firsthand, so coming off, and if we could get the flip chart, here is fantastic. It's, fun and it's really helpful I've loved really hearing your guys is plan and want meadow throughout the throughout the week behind our flowers here. Thank you, and so just remind us who you are, what your business is. My name is ashley scott, and my business is andy boutique, and it is my eighty boutique on etc and on instagram fantastic and so it's actually go back to our, um our little plan here. So the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to have you out. What are the major marketing dates and deadlines? And just to kind of keep this easy, let's, pick one first year promotion and focus on that? My first year promotion that I want to focus on is my holiday line, which is going to be centered around ornament okay, so holiday line with your ornaments and what is the date for this promotion? It's november, the third november third perfect okay, so now we can go ahead, we've got that on there, and now we want to start with our sale cycle, so because it's a new product you might do slightly longer say maybe more like ten days as opposed to kind of the short seven so when do we want to start this I would like to have it started by at least the twenty seven ok so if I started by the twenty six give me an extra day but I don't want to start on sunday perfect yes I think that's a really great point is to figure out what day you're starting on and when people are engaging eso starting in kind of the weekday is probably better especially because even though I just said labor day was last weekend where everyone goes outside there are still a few nice fall weekends so you want to kind of stay in the weekday there so one of the things that I didn't kind of do here but we won't in my example but we want to do for years because they want to insert any of those pre holiday marketing tasks so what is it that needs to be accomplished in order for you to start the launch cycle on october twenty seventh what are the things that you have to dio I have to have um relevant samples made to show all of the different products okay and different options I need to copyright my listing so that their perfect and on point when they go live everything needs to be photographed so I have um both products photos and lifestyle photos and behind the scenes photos so that I'm not rushing at the last minute trying to get a picture on a little standup tree that I have it happened it's you know it's happened for me too so it happens all of us but this time it's not gonna happen all right, so you've got the photos what else for your pre I plan on scheduling um alarms in my calendar that alert me every single day um as I work up to it, um ted manage each of my email listing so I'm reminding myself to write my emails I reminding myself to write each of the, um posts um that are going to be listed on um instagram and I plan on using, um, my facebook more after this you know, this week I have kind of let it die that yeah, and some of the things that you can dio depending on how much you want to kind of pre do all of this is you can write the emails in advance and schedule them so that you don't have to remember hey, write the email on this day because you could write the email now and schedule it around twenty twenty seven u s so what is I want to put some deadlines to this so what's your deadline for getting the samples done? My deadline for getting the samples done is um september fifteen perfect and then when you going tio copyright those listings I want that done no later than september thirtieth perfect so that way you know and this is great too so you can get this done but then as you're kind of working through the launch you'll be open to what language is triggering people because you may end up doing a little bit of editing here you may realize hey, you know I said something in a social media post that people really got excited about on maybe something that you can then pull into your copyrighting as you start to learn more about your customer on dh then what's your deadline for your photos september thirtieth as well perfect I think two weeks is plenty time after I have samples to get everything photographed great and then when you want to get these guys scheduled by um sometime in october but I want to have everything done um no later than october twenty october twentieth that's a week out that way if I've missed anything or something needs to be changed I haven't entire week before I plan to go um on my campaign perfect all right so we've got this now we want to go ahead and schedule what's happening in that actual launch so the from october twenty seventh to november third so what's actually happening in terms of our content in those days so we can actually start we'll start with your social media posts so on each of those days leading up what's the content going to look like what's the goal um leading up to it the twenty seventh I want t to instagram posts one earlier in the morning and one towards the evening I'm oddly getting like really weird hours on mine like really early four o'clock in the morning pacific time because at seven a m on the east coast that's why you're getting it because we all get up in we all wake up at seven a m and check our phones and then late at night like an eleven o'clock and I've noticed I thought it would be really odd but I noticed that um when I go to bed at night sometimes I'll remember all I took a picture of that and I will immediately post because if I think a wait till like twelve o'clock tomorrow two o'clock tomorrow I won't do it right and that's really usually not a time that people are super active anyway so perfect you know like ten o'clock at night I'll post something and I'll wake up the next morning with likes and I'm like while people are this label are absolutely so chi syracuse to depose and what what are you gonna dio in these posts to start to build that anticipation maybe close that previews and behind the scenes photos of working on it everybody likes glitter, right? You think tio yes, how many glitter pictures have you seen on instagram and you're like oh yeah, so focusing on that yeah, and one of the things that you can do to with this is even though you're prepping a lot of this in advance, you can pull people through as if you were developing it in real time so you know, starting with sort of the close ups in the behind the scenes and the in progress and then moving teo the lifestyle shots as you move along so but so are you going to stick with two instagram posts every day is that could be your goal through the launch sequence I was going to go like two one two one perfect so it's not like really overbearing okay, perfect on dh then what are you putting on other social media platforms during it'll be posting on facebook and I plan on boosting those posts? Are you thinking one a day there? Yes and depending on what you're doing and it's ok, if you're running over a weekend, maybe you don't boost post on the weekend if you find that you get less engagement it's less bang for your buck you might go facebook posts on the three calendar days leading up to the weekend keep I g going over the weekend and then come back to the facebook post when you get to monday again this is all you know you want to pay attention your audience to see when they're on when they're engaged you might find something completely different on daz the weather gets colder again changed that much here but for the rest of us as the weather gets colder you'll find that suddenly where weekends were nothing was happening now suddenly everybody is online because they're just vegging in their house, you know, bundled up in blankets and the hopping once they're shopping, they're not shopping it's cold out like they are yes, they're online shopping, they're not in person they are browsing absolutely so you'll see it pick up on the weekends as the weather gets colder so and something to remember for those of you who don't live in places where the weather changes people's online activity is very affected by the weather when you live in a place with weather perfect. So you've got those now let's talk about your mailing list which you're going to have by then we'll have by then and what is your email strategy for this? My email strategy is on the twenty sixth or twenty seventh to send out my first little not little but big hey guess what, um there's huge new things coming right um and invite people to make sure that they're watching yes and actually I really so that word that you just said is a really good one to use an email marketing, so I'm inviting you your invitation to that's one that really seems to work well. And I actually can't take credit for knowing that tar swagger was talking about how effective that it has been for her, like that's. Great. I'm going to use that so that you know, the fact that you're thinking about inviting people to watch and keep tabs that's a perfect language there on dh. Then what else from there was, um, the night before send out an email so I catch that earl that later group or or in my case, that earlier group, right. I have a small child in school, so I don't actually start work until at least ten. So if I wait around, I plan on having auto. But yeah, other parents are, and they voted me. So if I hit that later group than that later group is going to catch it at seven o'clock in the morning time and depending on what plan you're on in male chimp, male chimp does. A couple of fancy things that you can play with some of them, I don't think are available in the free plan, but one is that you can actually ask male chimp to tell you what time you're scheduled post is going to be most effective, so you'll say, tell me on this day and then they'll say the best time to send this is eleven a m you say, ok, good send it then, but then they also have something called a time warp that lets you send it based on the person you subscribed, what time's on their in so that everyone would get it seven am, regardless of where they are, so those might be things against it, or to thinking about your moms and and what time they're using it. Now in your social media post, I want to come back to this for just a second what's the incentive what's, the reason that they should join the mailing list as they're getting excited about this launch because they'll know when everything's put live before everyone else will, it won't. Actually, I won't actually post the information on my social media until later on in the morning, perfect, so if you're not on the mailing list, you're not going to know when you can go there and see you're not going to get those first options of the idea fantastic, right? So making sure that you're really emphasizing that in your social media on guy would probably throw one more email and here may be just what day of the week is your launch wednesday um, it's a team tuesday so I might throw one in the day before the launch with just a couple more teasers so that they know that it's happening in twenty four hours so I would put something like on either the first or the second for that email that's coming out in the third so again, if this is like a watch and pay attention, then that one before might be just a couple more lifestyle images that says, hey, this is coming, you get excited for it twenty four hours away, whatever it is, so just one more because your email list is going to be the people who are most excited, so we want to pump them up, especially if they are not following along on social media because if they're on your email s they made it decided I'm not on instagram or I don't want to get I don't want a brand to promote to me on facebook, so we want to make sure that they have got one more teaser email in there as well, so I think that's it doesn't feel good to you, yes awesome it feels like a lot less stress god right now you have a strategy and then what you can dio is you can actually go ahead and do this for every promotion and so you can go in here and now you can say these are the images that I need and then and repeat this over and over again for each promotion awesome awesome you way want to do one more person jump out up here while you're going up? I just had a quick question from the chat rooms amy from low sherry jewelries saying if you have an email list but you have been good about emailing very often do you recommend just jumping in with weekly e mails or a gradual increase like monthly for awhile and then by weekly and then weekly so that's a great question and I would say because we're still far enough from the holiday season it's not a bad idea to go that monthly bi weekly, so to kind of start to build up the intensity but what you never want to dio is say, hey, I know I haven't emailed you in a while because they remember that they have no idea that they haven't emailed you, so go ahead and just jump back in as if you never left that's really the secret they're perfect all right? So let's dio one more plan here all right, so remind us of who you are and what your business is where we can find you my name is anne track and you can find me at reflection design dot com reflection with the k I'm also on instagram at reflection design fantastic and so what is your promotion and what is it happening? I'm doing a new floor pillow collection on november the third number thirty found the nearly dish of it on and so what are you going to start that launch sequence so my thinking is because I want to reach out to retailers ok? I have to back that up some yes perfect I love that we're doing this so this is the november third is the shifty right? This is one they can they can bite they can actually it could ship to their stores yes ok, yeah so let's back it up. So how far do you think we need to back it up for stores now? Yeah, yes, that is the right answer her so let's talk about what you're thinking about for your promotions then and we can kind of put them into dates. I'm thinking about doing um actually let me back up where is this is it is it designed? Is it bill? What do your pre tasks for this what oh uh, because that will influence your tio source final textiles I have some in hand but I want to get a few more specific types of patterns are perfect on dh then you have to dio photography at two yes ok so both product and like style yes the good news is that you know you can push to retailers with predominately product and not a lot of lifestyle so that helps you move faster because I know that this always take so much more time you can you can start pushing the retailers just with products so because we're on such a tight time frame here let's go ahead and you know make your main goal good clear product photography on dh then you can focus on communicating some of the lifestyle stuff with the information that you give retailers in the line sheet so things like size type of pillow how awful things like that all right so now that we know that you have to sort your final textiles and get that product photography done let's talk about your timeline so what do you thinking for starting to reach out to retailers I'd like tio get those first two items done at least by september nineteen so in about three weeks about week so from the nineteen start reaching out to two uh retailers no later than the twenty fifth of september so what I might d'oh I mean what's your lead time for stores when they order how quickly can you ship that um seven to ten days okay on do you have a store target list already built? It sounds like you might or you're pretty close to getting one bill it's in progress. Okay, so that actually is part of the studio? Yes, here our store contactless. So one of the things that I might encourage you to do even though it's going to feel a little bit panic and do thing is if you can all push this timeline forward I would absolutely do it because what's your price what's your wholesale price one on the pillows wholesale for the floor pillows are eighty dollars eighty dollars and what's your minimum order minimum is five hundred dollars ok, so that's a decent commitment for a new product so we want to get in potentially before they have blown their budgets. So anyway that you can push this up is really great and one of the things that you could d'oh is do you at least have some of the collection done? I've been photographed so I would do some kind of teaser mailing to stores earlier probably within the next two weeks if you could get it together. Yeah, a postcard or if you can track down email addresses a teaser email and just let them know we're working on this new collection launch our target ship date is november third ordering is going to be available starting september twenty fifth so just like we build anticipation with customers, you can do the same thing with stores, let them know that you know, this is coming, and it will absolutely still be available before the holiday season on, and you may find that in doing that, that some of them go to your website, they look at your existing designs, and they might even one order some of those as well. So even though we're building anticipation, you can go ahead and maybe generates and sales before the struck even happens as well. On, do you have a line sheet ready to go, or how do you handle wholesale ordering? Perfect, so that's all good, ok, so we're going to dio let's pick a target date for a teaser and a teaser mailing or a teaser email let's, see, probably first, uh, by august twenty eighth, I think you could probably even go the next give you, like start due at the start of the next weeks of september september first that have our first I think you're buying two d'oh, um, a teaser. What are you thinking? You're in a dio postcard mailing try to drop by email? Email, you know, ok, so cheese or email so this you want to really kind of make sure that you're picking a great subject line because you're asking you're asking them to open it when they don't know you so thinking about something that excites them to explore a new textile collection are there's way better one on and then what I just said but you can go ahead and start to think about something that you want to do a teaser email and you want to be really clear about what the dates are so again that the line is going to be available for ordering starting september twenty fifth and it's going to be available for shipping starting on november third ok so you do your teaser email then you've got this so september twenty fifth then is really when you'll be ready to actually start pitching stores correct yes okay so that will be september twenty fifth we'll be your pitch date so this is great too because again now this is not the first email this is the second email and then with this launch what we want to dio is is your goal in this september twenty fifth to already start taking pre orders for november third perfect so you'll do this on dh then I want to set one more date for you which is teo follow up from this and enough times to still order for that november third shipping so we kind of want to split the difference you know two to three weeks out so sometime in mid october so it's looking a calendar and figure out what that one is for you october is actually more birthday nice so we'll do october thirteenth the october thirteenth you'll do another follow up to your stores perfect on dh then the same thing this is a case where because you're e mailing stores individually you won't be able to put them on a mailing list because they're not your stores yeah, but you can absolutely craft templates for all of these e mails so that you're not reinventing the wheel you know and and actually and sell your products to retailers I walk through a new email you know how to build an email temple first door so there are certain elements you wanna personalize but you want to keep the rest the same that you can just send the email, send the email, send the email on and make your life a little bit easier now while I'm doing this I'm envisioning an eighty twenty breakdown eighty percent wholesale ten percent retail um so while I'm doing this well I still would like to let my retail customers know what's coming and absolutely okay so this then this is your drop date for your web site as well. Ok, so now we can work backwards from this and do that same anticipation process but focused on social media and your mailing list so we're working through november third on the nice thing is that actually what we picked as we picked so tomorrow thirteenth is your sort of last store pitched eight and of course you can keep following up with stores again and again especially if you have really key targets that you like you follow up with them if you want to follow up with them one more time like the first week of november because even if it's not for holiday it might still generate something for january or february so you can continue to follow up but if most of your store outreach is done by november thirteenth that gives you time to now spend october thirteenth it gives you time to spend the rest of october focusing on this is a retail okay yes. So what is the target date for starting the anticipation campaign then? Well, I would like tio probably a week tenure that in the end days out so what's that so from november third ten days would be october twenty fourth ok, maybe give or take somewhere in there. Yeah, so and I think if I saw that october twenty fourth is a friday okay, okay, okay, so I would because you're going to have so much stuff prepped in advance and because you have something that's a little bit more of a think about it how does it fit in my home? I think they pulled back a couple more days I would never I don't like to send e mails on friday because I think people's brains are kind of checked out in effect that's friday on everyone's starting to get a little a little loopy, so I would probably go the thursday as sort of the first email to your list so what? We'll put the date on there of october twenty second, so I would do the twenty second as your first preview email and really the start of your list, so what's your social media strategy, what are their platforms that you're focusing on for this right now? I focused on instagram, but my goal is to include interests, okay, so uh so pinterest we're going to start you earlier as well. So what you can do with pinterest is again you're building these things by, you know, september twenty fifth is that target date? So when I would you know how many products are in the collection it's going to be? I have eight different patterns, so eight different patterns, so you're probably gonna have between product shots, details, lifestyle shots, you know, you've probably ideally got, you know, easy thirty to forty images, a lot of them are the same, you know, the pattern of the whole of patterns crop, but you should easily have that, so what I would say is that gives you enough that starting on this day, every day you're gonna pin one to two images of two penn dress and because they're not for sale yet you're going to craft a couple of preview pages what's your website what do you built on big cartel? You're going on big cartel, so you don't have a blogger anything. Okay, so we want to figure out a way teo, put some content so that you can pin it and drive people back before it's in your shop. So I think big cartel, can you put up a product and have it say, coming soon? Yes, yes, so that's, what we're going to do for you is you're going to put all of your products into your big cartel shop, actually by this september twenty fifth deadline. But here is where it's going to get a little bit a little sneaky and tricky you're not going to put a link to that collection from your main page yet we don't want toe show it to your audience, but we wantto kind of again trickling into pinterest, so you're going to do that. And then in the listing description, the first thing is getting, you know, it'll say coming soon, and you'll say this product is arriving november third if you want to know when it's available to purchase, join the mailing list so that we have traffic is clicking through from pinterest they're getting to your shop and they're landing on a page but we're driving the email sign up so you'll start on september twenty fifth you know one to two images every day putting them on pinterest and you want to put them in the context again of other things so if you're doing one to two of your own images every day you also to make sure that you're on pinterest repeating at least ten to twenty images that are already within pinterest so what that'll do and for you you know, focus on images that are on pinterest of people in your target market so if you went on to interest and even just search you know, just tina blake inlay and everyday pin years in combination with her stuff that's really going to put your products and a really great context so bill let into your several and the nice thing is that there are scheduling platforms for pinterest really? Yes so I use viral tag but tailwind also does it and now sweet lets you do it as well some of them it depends on how many platforms whether they're free or a couple of dollars but if pinchers to his main marketing platform it's worth paying for because what you can do is create all these listings spend one day where you go in and you schedule all of those pins that are going to go out in the next month so wanted to every day one in the morning once at night and then you can you can still go in and do all the repenting and things but save you a ton of time you won't have to remember every day so now your calendar might just say september twenty fifth spend an hour scheduling pins instead of having to remember every day I got a pin one more thing and I have to pin one more thin so we'll do that so that's when we'll start your pinterest and then your instagram we'll start around this october twenty seventh on dso twenty second and so the instagram what you thinking for target like one to two post today? Yeah ok that's about it's about good with that really serious? Yeah email sign up called action and then you'll do your email preview on october twenty second and then one other emails are you thinking you're an ascent? Um I was thinking about doing an up so ok um because I'm also going to make matching sofa pillows ok perfect so that may be something that you d'oh more as an action email or towards the end unless it's really just going to come out it's part of the collection so then what you could do is you could do a preview email on october twenty second that highlights the floor pillows and then you could come in to maybe what's the next monday or tuesday the sea the next monday is the twenty six so either the twenty sixth or the twenty seventh you could say oh by the way also sofa pillows throw in a couple of lifestyle teasers you may want to do one more so it's the third again one more on say november second that's just a kind of reminder don't forget this is launching tomorrow so one more little teaser preview and then november third is your final email okay was there a better idea for the instead of doing the sofa pillow post you think there might be a more powerful one to push the floor pillow specifically if you're trying to really push the floor pillows specifically then I think this should focus on maybe that entertaining idea on and especially even though it's not quite the holidays thinking about the holidays so maybe reminding people of all of the gatherings that they've got coming up so this feels far thinking about christmas even though it's not really but it's really not far if you're hosting thanksgiving right? So this instead of me doing this is a reminder of like how great these are for entertaining and especially if you're kind of hosting you know you're not hosting traditional thanksgiving dinner you're hosting that kind of alternative thanksgiving dinner that's got more chill vibe maybe it's with friends as opposed to family you know, thinking about what are your new thanksgiving traditions so really pushing this idea so that you get people thinking, oh, yeah, like I do, I could actually use those floor pillows for thanksgiving that's it great idea, I hadn't even thought about that. So I think that's actually a much stronger email then just saying, hey, buy a sofa patio. Yeah, okay, so now I don't know tio going take all these steps, and then, you know, obviously on some days you're going to be working on on multiple aspects, right? Some days you're going to be doing the wholesale, you're going to need sieving, pinterest you're going to be doing this. But now that you know all of these action steps, you can plug them all into your calendar would have helped for myself and maybe other people who are reaching out to wholesalers during this time. Would it help to focus on certain geographic areas to make the best of our time? I wouldn't. I would focus on the stores that really feel like the best fit for you, regardless of where they are. I mean, in your case, I think they're going to be certain geographic areas that are more naturally drawn to your prints in your products than others, but I would say, don't limit yourself it's better to pick the right stores in any geographic area, then to say, I'm just going to do this if you were pounding the pavement actually going to stores, then yes, you should focus, but if you're new emails and reaching out that way, go with the best fit stores, regardless of where they are, okay? But the other thing that I would do for your store outreach in particular is make yourself a spreadsheet so that, you know, here's the store. Here's what day I sent the email here's, if I got any response so that you can really visually see what's happening with that because especially once you start getting into all of this, too, that store outreach starts to get crazy and you want a record and the spreads a spreadsheet is really the best way to track that actually have your selling to retailers class awesome, and that spread sheet is everything already have it already hard fact, it is everything. Yes, you're right, there's a lot of things to keep track, right? There's so many more moving parts in you're reaching out to stores, so use that as part of your launch planning strategy so that you know what you're doing and who you've reached out to and who you've heard from and who you have it and you that's really sort that out, okay oh, fantastic, alright thank you thank you way think we are done with our flow chart now that's perfect you know I didn't I just say one thing that came up in the chat room um spooky laughter actually said I love how unsweetened e this marketing plan would feel and what I really love about that is that that's that's a big common problem that I feel like a lot of our makers have is that marketing feels just kind of pushing your sales e to them and I really love how this is all laid out because it just it just feels like a plan that you're executing on rather than about thinking all the time about how it's me me me exactly and we're really and that's the thing is we also want to keep again these e mails is customer focused is impossible so by giving them you know, entertaining ideas you can use this to make a more interesting thanksgiving table it's not hey look by my new product it's look how this fifth so beautifully into your life you need to have it without ever having to say you need to have it they're going to say that themselves so you guys are all going to do exactly what we just did with our in studio audience you're going to pick every promotion you're going to map it out, you're going to come up with your to do list and then depending on your needs, you know, put them in chronicle. Logical order. Put them in your calendar. Figure out the best way for you one products I would love to recommend if you need help. Kind of sort of your action plans. So they get to work. Book some of you may know elise goetz. Crafty. She has a great podcast. She created this. Get to work book and it's a very action oriented planner that you can purchase. I get to work book dot com I have I get no kick back from that. I've just seen how people use it online. And I think it's a really great product if you're the kind of person who needs a lot of structure and really needs to be able to put your to do list on a calendar. So I actually want to answer that question. Is this idea of how structured does your action plan need to be? We went into a pretty decent amount of detail, but the reality is that you could go into even more detail. So what I want to say to you and answer that question? They're like, what is how much structure do you need? So for me, personally, I might I know that if I know okay wanted to social media post today. I know I'll do it, I don't need more structure, but if you're the kind of person who thinks wanted to social media post today and then you get there and you're like, I don't know what to post like, what do I do? And then you just walk away, build more structure into your plan to start, so go ahead and say on, you know, one thursday, october twenty second, I will post an image of x, and my copy is going to be like this, and this is another place where ever notice really great. If it takes you a long time to write an instagram description pre right, those and evernote go in, copy it and paste it with your photo. So you controls used to like that to make it really easy for you, and if you know you're going, I'm kind of like chicken out or panic in the moment, especially with platforms like instagram that go, I need to do it right now. The more you can pre plan that, the easier it is to just execute it when the moment comes.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with RSVP

Kick Start Your Profits

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Holiday Marketing Workbook
Improve Your Holiday Sales Sketch Note
Canva Bonus Video HD

Ratings and Reviews

Loralee
 

It was SO helpful to actually see Megan's (tentative) schedule for her marketing plan. It's great to see people who are makers and how they run their business rather than teaching what they 'would' do or 'could' do. Thanks Megan!

Student Work

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