Build Your Holiday Marketing Plan

Lesson Info

Plan Your Holiday Promotions: Who?

Now that we know what you're thinking about running, I also want to make sure we're clear on who you're promoting tio because and a lot of these promotions that we're talking about you can target different audiences you can target consumers you khun target you know store buyers so making sure you understand who it is you want to reach with your holiday marketing will help you be a little bit more focused so who is it that you're trying to target? Are you trying to target online shoppers? Are you trying to target craft show attorneys are you trying to target wholesale buyers and the answer might be all of them but the answer should never be all of them in the same promotion because that goes back to a confused mind always says no so whenever we're doing your holiday promotions whether it is your first year you're second tier we want to think about the customer that we're trying to attract and what we want to dio is we want to create ideal customer profiles for each of our promotions we'...

re not going to dive super in depths into it but you want to at least have an idea of who you're targeting because it can help you with your marketing it could help you with the language that you're using now I'm a big fan of going really deep on ideal customer profiles but for this we can keep it a little more you know vague so in your case it might be stressed, you know, time crunched moms, maybe that time crunch but stressed mom's during the holiday season who are looking to relax that's that's I mean, first of all, it's a huge but there's a lot of opportunity there, but it gives you something to sort of focus on and a language to speak in. So the first and second tier promotion strategy can be applied to both wholesale buyers and retail customers. But the types of communication may be different, so you can run a tap here promotion to wholesale buyers when I build my holiday marketing plan. One of my top tier promotions is the trade show that I do in august, and I run through a launch cycle with that. Now, some of that launch cycle involves me sending physical mail to my stores, but then some of it is emailing my stores as well, and I know this is a question that might come up two lists one for wholesale buyers, one for retail customers to email lists and male chimp. So you want to make sure that you actually have them separated out so you and you would also do a new collection launch as a way for wholesale buyers, you could even start teo, you know, show them sneak peeks this is what I'm working on that really works great. If you've got existing stores, you may decide I'm launching a new product in november. Here I want to show you guys what's coming. Your stores may even write orders before it's finished if you give them enough sneak peeks so you can actually absolutely use these strategies to hit stores and then the same thing with, you know, second tier promotions for wholesale buyers. So if you have the sex brit wholesale buyer list every week, send your stores e mails highlighting a featured product no does this doesn't really look much different. Then what we talked about retail customers were just tweaking the language a little on sending it directly to stores, so you want them to know this is a great best seller. This is a perfect gift. This is a good up sell item stores love up cells because it adds to their average dollars for sale. You might have a pre packer starter set you might want say, I know that you have a lot of time to pick through orders so this is, you know, five of this product three of this product to of this or hears this collection. I did that when I launched the contra collection said if you want, if you want, you know you could get starter pack one, I think was about a six hundred dollars wholesale order and then starter pack too was around one thousand dollars and then you have to think about it was really easy yeah, I'll take starter pack to done so that's a good thing to promote a story is this sentir promotion on and then just order deadlines again as a promotion to store, so let your stores now if you're wholesale turnaround time is two to three weeks or four weeks or whatever it is remind them that you know the last day I can take a ah wholesale order is november fifteenth or november first or whatever it is to guarantee that you have it in the store by december. So now what we want to d'oh is the link your holiday promotions with specific buyer segments and again we're going to keep this easy we're going to customer profile and a lot more detail in a couple of the other classes that I run we do it in so your products to retailers we do it and make a living selling what you make boot camp. So if you're really confused on customer profiling, go back to the beginning in those classes and really watch it in detail, but for now we're just going to kind of think about general buyer profiles, so if you're following along, if you bought the course and you're following along in our work book, you'll find this in here and so what I want you to do is math out for both your first year and second tier promotions so you're gonna list your promotion and then in just a couple of sentences you're going to say who you're targeting so I'm launching the adult coloring book and I really want oh, you know, focus on stressed out mothers even if you don't do the kids peace that's already your audience right? So stressed out moms who need permission to relax that's your by your profile and then if you want tio you can you can draw that down a little further, right? You know, how old is she exactly for within a pre tight range? What social media platforms is she using? Where is she going online? You can start to build it in a little more detail, but even just knowing that I'm promoting the adult coloring book too, you know, stressed out moms that gives you language to use in those anticipation emails and are in those in anticipation in those act females because what is it that a time you know stressed out time crunch mother needs to hear and if you write thinking about that, all your marketing is going be so much stronger so I want to actually have people my test this out I want to make sure we're on the right track so what you have you describe one buyer profile that you're trying to target this season, and I want you to tie it to one of your promotions, so we are you. You got to be the example so that what's a buyer profile that you can tie to, that one of the promotions that you're working on top of mind would be maybe like a ceo or a team lead, who wants just to change things up? Um, so I think that would be my buyer profile. Yeah, and I think for you, you want to be a little bit more specific because your b two b, the buyer profile in the type of companies, so you're not targeting the ceo of general motors. Yeah, but you're targeting ceo of a certain type of company in a certain size of company, and I think in your case, a certain location, so all of those things would go into your profile as well, so that you can really pinpoint who it is you're reaching out to. Who are you talking, making no professional men twenty five to fifty five um who are fashion conscious? Perfect. So that's a good a good place to start, and you may find that the different price point items get you certain different age ranges you can kind of play with that a little bit, you know? Because some of the needs of the same between twenty five to fifty five year old man and some of them are not that some of the shopping habits are a little bit different so thinking about maybe who within that you're a little more specifically targeting may help you but I think you're on the right track there targeting home to poor boutiques in major cities that have ah they're known for their vibrant patterns say it may have a uh, cultural aesthetic to the products that they carry yeah and I think for you there's definitely certain not just major cities but certain geographic area I have a couple of mine yeah so perfect definitely the, um amateur chef slash foodie event thrower holidays perfect yeah someone who and I think right someone who just wants a little bit more flavor and excitement in their cooking to elevate their dishes were usually perfect who are you targeting? Um I I should be able to answer thiss week over um yeah, I'll just pick out of thin air like a youngish current modern sort of grandmother that has um you know isn't isn't sitting back and playing golf is definitely very culturally involved and physically, you know, active and in the world I talked her to her name is bernie bernie an empty nester downsize er who's ready to get her life going again second second time around nice and you may also think about for the holiday season how do you target her children who might come together to buy a gift so something else to think about as well and it may be making her feel ok about telling her kids it's what she wants for christmas in a subtle way so that may be a big piece of it is you know and and she might just decide you know I'm treating myself she might not care that anyone buys it for her but I think it could be something that's such a nice from the whole family gift especially you're talking about the empty nester and so that's something maybe play with us well complete opposite way baby great um new changes in life too celebrate right excuse me of the customized ornaments so young people who are celebrating a major first this year yeah excellent what we're getting online well, we are getting some questions for you making for different type of scenarios so people are asking so when promoting on social media do target the wholesale buyer or the end user say there's somebody who's selling toe wholesale usually you target the end user cell but that doesn't mean that stores aren't going to follow you because they might but I keep my social media communications because their public I keep them targeted at the end customer and then if stores interact I usually follow up with them off social media the three email because we want to keep those communications private because the store kind of needs that exclusivity not even explosive e they just need to feel like the communication isn't happening in the public space, so I always talk tio, then retail customer, and then pull any buyer conversations into email okay? And that might be similar similar question from brenda j is but for the holiday sales are each targeting the purchaser and not the end you? Yes, so well, so if you're doing, if you're targeting buyers, store buyers for your pieces than less of your anticipation piece is going to happen on social media it's going to be more through, you know, reaching out to stores, emailing them, sending them mailings, things like that that's, how you're going to build and anticipation with your stores. So the other thing that you can d'oh is if you're not planning on selling something on your website and you're just selling it to stores, you can still on social media hill the anticipation and say to people, I'm only selling this to stores if you have a store that you know might want it, give me the name of that store or tagged that store on here so you can get people excited enough about your product that they're going to push to get it in their local store. Cool, I think that actually may have gone back to, like, say, you're trying to reach the husband that is buying something for his wife or yeah, the mom is buying something for the kid, right? And yeah, so if you're trying to reach the husband, reached the wife and give her permission to tell him that's what she wants, remind her, give her easy ways to say, this is what I want because it's really hard to target the husband it's doable, but it becomes a whole other profile, so just target her and give her permission to ask for it on dh then, you know, obviously, if the if it's a gift that a mom is buying for kid, you're targeting the mom so kids giving it is different because you're always targeting the gift giver. But for someone thing where you're thinking the husband buying for the wife still target the wife and just make it easy for her to tell, tell the husband, well, we'll give some shout outs to people who are getting pretty specific, which was great to see ten, three six says the profile is the twenty two forty how, though I don't know if that's too wide of a spread and arugula. The twenty two forty year old female who was in a book club or a wine club that exchanges gifts at the holidays so yes so there's a price point there that they're kind of focusing on yeah that even though the age is a little broader, I think there's still a lot of specificity they're so good and then unspoken laughter says people who like to have a unique living space and who love halloween not to know what your products I know now I don't feel very curious too so this sounds like a case too with a halloween product where and this is actually that's something really great that we haven't touched on is if your product sell well a different holiday in the year you can use all of these same strategies year round just slide you know, adjust the dates for your season so you're selling for halloween adjust these dates forward a little bit so that your anticipation becomes a little bit earlier and with most other seasons the buying season is shorter so I wouldn't pull back your halloween activity is all the way until july or august. You can probably still run anticipation, you know in september and even the beginning of october because people don't want to be reminded about halloween quite assume though if they're big homie fans they might they might be reminded for they're on the same thing using same thing for valentine's day for mother's day for father's day. So for graduation. So all these things that we're talking about, you can apply throughout the year to other seasons as well.

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