How to Increase Your SALES (before 2025 ends!)
It’s hard to believe we’re already nearing Q4 of this year. And with that comes one of the best times for product-based businesses like the creatives I work with on a daily basis. Whether you are an author, an artist, a maker, a musician, a photographer—you sell products of some sort.
Today, I'm excited to share a few ways to start preparing for the end of the year, which is a really big season for many creative businesses. There are a few reasons why this last season is so impactful.
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With the holidays coming up, many people are buying extra gifts for their friends, their loved ones, their family, as well as themselves. It tends to be a season of kind of treating ourselves toward the end of the year. The other reason is with positioning of the new year. A lot of people set New Year's resolutions. They want to have a better start to the new year and commit to new habits and things like that. So, if your products can align in some way with this timing, whether it’s being a great gift or product to use for family bonding for that holiday time or can apply really well to new year energy, it’s a great way to go.
So, we have both a gift giving aspect as well as a really strong timing aspect. That doesn't mean that your product needs to be Christmas related or anything like that, but is there some sort of messaging angle that you can have in your marketing these next few months to remind people why now is such a great time to buy?
Let’s talk about getting your audience prepared for this next quarter so see your products as the great gifts that they can be and they’re ready to buy.
Audience Growth
If you’re not focused on audience growth right now, that's okay. But about a month or so before Black Friday, the holiday season really kicks in, and people are really starting to think about gift giving. For this next month or so, I really want you to focus on audience growth.
What that's going to look like is dependent on what platforms you're using, what types of marketing you're already doing. If you're focused on email marketing and getting more people on your list, having a really juicy bonus or freebie to get people on that list and then collaborating with others in your industry or promoting that freebie on social media or podcast or whatever it is that you're doing is a great way to do that.
You could even consider running some low-cost ads to your freebie to get people on your list for a low amount per subscriber, and then that will hopefully pay off for you when you do a Black Friday campaign or holiday campaign in Q4. If you are utilizing social media, the next month is an opportunity to grow your audience with new people so that you have both people who have already been a part of your community, as well as new followers, ready to learn about your products and your offers for Q4.
One thing you can do is try running some visibility ads, for example $3 a day, $5 a day, if it's within your budget. If you’re a member in my Creative’s Content Club, I have a whole masterclass coming out about this in October. That will get you some extra traffic to your social media to get some new followers, who you can then convert with your content from an organic standpoint.
*Those on our wait list will receive an invite to join us inside the Club in early October.: https://www.marketingbyshelby.com/creatives-content-club-waitlist
Focus on visibility content. This is the type of content that's going to be likely to get shared, to get saved, which will increase our reach. We can't guarantee that every post is going to do this. However, the broader we go, the more likely it is to be engaged with. This is going to be your relatable content, your inspiring content, your educational content, if that makes sense for your niche and your industry, as well as just entertaining content.
Think about your target audience and what you know about them and how you can then relate to them. We want people to essentially be scrolling on social media and feel really heard, for your exact target audience to say, "Oh my gosh, this account gets me so much. I have a friend who also is a paranormal romance lover or a handmade jewelry lover and I'm going to send this to them because they would also find it so relatable.”
Right? So, this is the kind of mindset we want to be thinking about and reverse engineer the content we create based off of that. This content can be anything—funny, inspiring, or making your target audience feel heard or seen in some way. Just make sure that whenever we're creating this type of content, we’re really sitting down and thinking about who the person is that is buying my art, my work, my products.
These can be trends but they don't have to be. Try scrolling through social media, and see what comes up for you, what ideas you get, and focus on this type of content for the next few weeks.
Product Positioning
Now, once we have this audience growth happening, what we want to be doing on top of that is starting to position our products as gifts, keeping in mind that a lot of people are buying products as holiday gifts for their loved ones. If your products make great gifts, show them as gifts!
Show you boxing them up, wrapping or packaging them, and sending them out, things like that. It sounds kind of silly, but this type of visual can help people see your product as a gift if they never have thought of that before. We'll talk about these options more in the next post as well, but you could make it a little bit more enticing with a limited edition of some sort, and offer signed books.
Maybe you don't usually offer signed books year-round, so you do during this period, making a great gift that they can personalize for their loved one. Think about how you can present your products as gifts in your marketing content. This goes for not only social media, but email marketing, your website, and paid advertising if you're doing that as well. Making sure that visual is there can really help your customers.
Another thing that you can create is a gift guide for your industry or for your target customer. Thinking about not only how your products could fit into this gift guide, but other relevant products that would be a good fit.
If you're an author, maybe you're a cozy fantasy author and you pick a few cozy fantasy books for this gift guide, including your own. And then maybe you pick some cozy blankets, some bookmarks, some mugs, your favorite tea, and you put all of this into a visual gift guide that goes on your website as a blog post, or you share it on social media as a carousel. And you pin that to your profile so that for the next couple of months when people come to your profile, they're seeing this tailored gift guide that is perfect for them, perfect for the friends in their life who love cozy fantasy—with your products included!
Campaigns
The next thing you can decide upon is whether or not you want to run a campaign, such as during Black Friday or maybe another time in the next few months. Maybe something aligns really well with your niche. For example, if you’re a horror author, you might choose sometime in October with spooky season to run a campaign of your own.
Or maybe you want to stick with the typical Black Friday time or do it a little bit earlier to potentially beat the madness that can happen Black Friday weekend. I wouldn't go too much later than that because people are spending more around this time. Unless you have a really good reason for doing it in December, I would probably do it before that. December is usually more last-minute gifts, which can be absolutely great, but a lot of people have typically already spent their budget by that time or might be done shopping by that time. So do it a little bit sooner.
If you're doing Black Friday weekend, typically Black Friday to Cyber Monday is four days, or you could extend it a little bit to give people more time. I would say typically 4-10 days is a good range to really be leaning into your marketing. When I say campaign, I'm speaking about a certain length of time that is dedicated to selling your products with a certain bonus or messaging attached to them.
Decide on the length of your campaign that you're going to be really leaning into your marketing, posting every single day, maybe even multiple times a day, emailing more often than you typically do, making sure that your audience is really aware of this campaign that we're doing.
Buyer psychology has changed a little recently, and we all have so much noise around us. We need repetition more than ever, and it's taking more time to build trust with customers more than ever. What we used to say in marketing was that people needed to hear things five times, maybe seven times before they decided to buy. We're now seeing 15 times, 20 times.
So, don't be afraid to start leaning into this marketing for Q4 right now.
Coming Up
In part two, we'll talk about five different Black Friday (or other timing) promotional campaigns. So, if you're not doing Black Friday weekend, this will still work for you another time during Q4. And I'll share five of my favorite ways and how I'm planning my November promotions as well.
If you’re not yet a Club member, but you want to participate in that $3 a day visibility masterclass (we're also doing a 30-day visibility challenge in November that I'm really excited for), then make sure that you are on the wait list to join. Those on our wait list will receive an invite to join us inside the Club in early October.
I hope you found this helpful. It’s going to be a great Q4! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye!