265 | 8 Tips to Prepare for Black Friday Sales with Mei Pak, Creative Hive Co.
Have you started preparing your business for the holidays? In today’s episode, we’re sharing a portion of Mei Pak’s holiday sales training that she shared with our LABS community. In today’s episode, Mei is walking us through 8 tips to get your product business ready for holiday sales!
Today’s episode is brought to you by LABS, our 12-month group coaching program that was built for product based business owners who want to streamline their systems and revenue. If you’re already a LABS member, make sure you review Mei’s full training! If you’re not a member, but want access to the full training and are ready to join, make sure you’re on the waitlist for when we open enrollment!
8 Tips to Prepare for Black Friday Sales
Black Friday and holiday sales offer your business an opportunity to grow your revenue, expand your audience, and hit your annual sales goals. Joining us today to share her expert knowledge is Mei Pak, who you may recognize from episode 176, where she talks about not relying on social media to pitch your products. As you prepare your business for the holidays and Black Friday, Mei has 8 tips that will guide you into a smooth holiday sales experience!
Try Different Types of Marketing
For the most part, in November and December, product-based businesses will see their best months for sales. Since you already know that you’ll have great months around the fourth quarter, this time is a perfect opportunity to test out different types of marketing or advertising. The benefit of trying out new tactics over the holiday season is that you’re naturally going to do well during this time because customers are ready to buy!
Optimize Your Conversion Rate
Your website plays a large role in the success of your online store. One of the very first things you’ll want to focus on within your website is your conversion rate. A conversion rate is the percentage of people that come to your website and convert into a paying customer. A healthy conversion rate is at 1%. Imagine raising that to 2%—you’re essentially doubling your sales.
In order to optimize your conversion rate, you’ll need data to review. There are tools like Hotjar and Mouse Flow that offer tracking of user behavior. Essentially these tools record the navigation and experience of customers coming to your website. You can use these recordings to find patterns between customers and make improvements based on what you want to happen.
Increase Your AOV (Average Order Value)
A really great focus for your holiday season is to work on increasing your AOV. A great way to approach this is through offering incentives! You can offer free shipping when customers spend a specific amount or even create upsell opportunities with your products if upsells align.
Finding that sweet spot for offering free shipping can be a struggle, but a great rule of thumb is to take your current AOV, increase it by 25% and offer free shipping at that amount. Otherwise, if you’re looking to increase your sales through upsells, you can use a tool like Candy Rack that will allow custom upsells on specific products.
Stock Up On Extra Inventory
While it may seem obvious, it's important to keep in mind that inventory and restocks for your items are going to happen more frequently and inconsistently during the holidays than at other times of the year. Keep this in mind and set thresholds that match your business needs better during more profitable times.
Hire & Train Help
If you’re in a place that you feel like you’re going to need help during the holiday season, it’s vital to prepare for this and hire early so you have time to train. A few places you may want to consider outsourcing or hiring help are customer service, production, and shipping.
Set Expectations with Your Team
If you have a team, take time with them to set the expectations of what the holiday season will potentially look like and what you expect from the team. This could mean more hours for them, stricter deadlines, etc.
Brace Yourself
When you head into the holiday season, you are entering a marathon—brace yourself. You can set your own expectations and boundaries as well.
Set Clear Shipping Deadlines
If you don’t set clear shipping deadlines, you’ll experience customer service troubles. Shipping providers will provide their own deadlines, so you should set your deadlines based on those and your production or fulfillment time. Put these dates and details all over your website to avoid unhappy customers. Another consideration with this is to offer faster shipping options for customers who may want that option.
By implementing these 8 tips that Mei has shared, you’ll have a smoother holiday season for your product shop! If you want more on this topic from Mei, the full training for holiday sales is available inside of our LABS community, where Mei also shares how she structures her ladder sales strategy and plans out her marketing leading up to the sales!
If you’re already a LABS member, make sure you review Mei’s full training! If you’re not a member, but want access to the full training and are ready to join, make sure you’re on the waitlist for when we open enrollment!
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MEET MEI
I teach makers, artists and designers how to start a handmade business from scratch and grow it into a full time living (and more) with consistent traffic and sales to your website. I've been running my own creative, handmade small business since 2006, started coaching in 2014 and in 2019, taught my husband how to start his own online store selling personalized art for the family, which now makes $55,000/month in sales. My goal is to help you make a consistent income from selling your handmade products online, without using Etsy or relying too much on social media!
CONNECT WITH MEI
WEBSITE: creativehiveco.com | FACEBOOK: facebook.com/creativehiveco | INSTAGRAM: @creativehiveco | YOUTUBE: youtube.com/c/creativehiveco | WEBSITE: sprinklecharm.com
Connect with Katie Hunt
Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.
Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct
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