Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Host Your Giveaway

So let's, talk about hosting your give away this is the first step off this entire pre marketing schedule I want you to choose a product that is similar or at least the same to what you're going to be selling in your sale and this the reason for this is if it's too different from what you're actually selling, you could potentially lose out on the people who have who you've come a kind of gathered during your giveaway. If you're selling some, if you're giving giving away something that's similar to what you're selling, the people who didn't win are going to be like, oh, my gosh, she's also selling it, I didn't get a chance to win this, but she's having a sale on this so it makes it more likely that you're meeting them where they're at their desire in your product right now because of your giveaway, and then you're making it available for them to buy. And as I mentioned, the more attractive the product is that you're giving away the more buzz you're going to get. So if you can make it a ...

really good prize, if if it's possible free, you could even bundle through things together. You can think about working with other artists artists to bring in other of their products as long as you do have one of your products for sale as your giveaway price it's also a really good idea to give your keep your giveaway short so as I had it in the schedule, I believe it was six days until the giveaway ended and when the sale actually happened. So if you're giveaway was any longer than seven days, if it was ten days or fourteen days, you're not really giving people the urgency to join now and to participate now if they know that they conjoined fourteen days later, they're going to procrastinate and they're like, well, I'm just gonna let the dog out first I'm gonna take care of my kid first I'm gonna have lunch first and I'll come back later they're not going to come back later, they're going to forget or they're going to lose the link to your give wait hey, jj, so make your giveaway short so people feel like, well, if I don't do this now, the giveaway is gonna be over another going back to your product on the price that you're giving away. I know a lot of people can feel the need or the desire to want to give away prizes like money or paypal money or visa money or gift cards gift cards don't tend to do as well as an actual physical product that you're giving away, and if you're giving away money, you're just going to start attracting all of these people who may not be interested in your products at all, so try to refrain from giving away money. You also want to make your giveaway really easy for people to enter, the more barriers that you create for people, the more steps that you require for them to take before they can actually be considered as an entry in your give away, the harder it is for them to join and the more likely that they'll drop out or they'll forget ordeal glycol it's not worth it it's too much time, so make it really easy going going back to that point. S so if you're on facebook, a really easy way to do it is to just ask people to like in comment on your post and you choose a random winner between the people who have commented or liked on instagram a similar thing you, khun dio like the post, follow your profile or leave a comment or tag to friends. Those are all really easy and keep in mind the more of these things that you ask people to do, the harder it is for them to to join you or give away. So on instagram, I mentioned four of these things if you can keep it down to two that will make it really easy, so you're giveaway should also have that text overly, as I mentioned before, we're all visual creatures if you're giveaway doesn't have text overly and all you're doing is posting a photo of your product, people are just going to think it's another a product photo? They're not going to notice it's a giveaway unless they read the text that you had entered in, so make it really obvious for them you want to kind of stop them dead in their tracks and make it really obvious that give aways happening because people like giveaways, rights, free stuff and it's you don't there's no risk for them, so really make it easy. Grab their attention with using text over lease so here is some examples of giveaway products that I giveaways that I was doing and how I used text overlays on top of thes pictures. These were all I believe done with photo shop, but you can definitely do this with fun candy with word swag or with studio that I was showing you earlier. But the main word that you want to have at all times for your graphic is to have the word giveaway. You don't have to have all of this text on there it's great for it to be on there because it makes it really obvious for people what they need to do they don't need to read the actual text description, but um it kind of works so here's an example of a pizza necklace well, there's supreme pizza and then there's pepperoni pizza and then one winner gets to pick either one of thiss these necklaces, here's another one that I was doing recently? And this was for instagram for my carrot cake charms, so all it says give away when the scented necklace and then the instructions are super simple, so all they need to needed to do was to follow. My instagram account was to heart this photo and tag to friends in a comment and what I mentioned earlier kind of about watermarks. Is it's a good idea to actually type in what your shop you are? Ellis? Because chances are this photo is going to go somewhat viral, and you want people to see you kind of want to imprint in their minds what you're ul is or what your brand name is. If I didn't have that on there and someone just found this post because their friend tagged them in it, they may not even know this is tiny hands, right? So if you have a watermark or having a girl of her shop, at least for those people who might be interested in buying right now can jump over to your website to shop. I also include when they give away and just for important information to have on there. So hosting a giveaway um if you are on facebook or on instagram, you can ask people toe like and tiger friends or leave a comment to enter if you were doing to give away on facebook, consider turning that post into an ad um, and this I would turn that post into an engagement at or boost the post just so that it reaches more of your fans and that way really encourages people to see your post and encourages them to light and comment and share, and it doesn't have to be a lot of money you don't have to spend five dollars, it could be two dollars, I believe there is a minimum that facebook requires for you, and I can't run what that is, but, you know, even as little as three dollars, two dollars a day for the length of your giveaway period, if it's six days, you could only be spending ten or twelve dollars just to kind of get this to reach more people. And then, as I mentioned before, what you're going to do is you're going to announce the giveaway winner when you launch your sale, and the reason we're doing this at the same time is it gives people an incentive to show up during the launch of your sale at that exact time, so let's talk about what happens on the actual sale day if you're using an app like sould see or spree z, or even if you're doing this manually and you've got your, um, if you've got your sales posts scheduled out in advance, it's a good idea to go back and check all of the posts that you've created in advance and make sure that they have the right photos that they've got the right price is the right text descriptions and check for any type of was that you might have? Well, you know, I'm personally always thinking like, well, I always double triple check at the moment that I'm posting these, but I've definitely caught myself where after the fact the police schools live, and I'm like, oh, shoot there's an error she could have caught that if I had double checked or chargeable checked. So in terms of quantity, when you're setting up your sail, the fewer quantity in general that you have any specific design, the more urgency your fans are going to feel and that's going to really encourage them to want to buy it. So if you have one hundred pieces of something and the people are going to know that, well, if I don't buy this now, I can come back again later, they're still going to be some left, so really think about having limited quantities of what you're selling so this has a lot to do psychologically with social proof and the pressure that you're kind of a marketing pressure, a sales pressure that you're applying into your fans but it's not really very explicit. So what's, what will happen if you've taken all the steps to ensure that your facebook or instagram profile is you've gotten an audience that's really engaged with your page, people are going to start commenting, sold, and when other people see that people have been commenting, sold its social proof, they're like, wow, this is a desirable product, this is something that's in demand. People want this stuff and internally in their minds they're going to start wanting it to they're going to it's going to be a more desirable product that in their minds is going to look like, well, I really want this because everyone else has this a word about quantity in an app like sould see, you are able to set how many pieces you have in stock for any particular design, and what will happen is you have more people buying or if you have more people buying the product, then you have available you can you can take advantage of the waiting list feature that it has, so, as I mentioned before with sould see you have this waiting line feature where, um it's a first come, first served basis, so whoever comments sold first gets first dibs, they're going to get the invoice first if they don't pay up on time, then the program is smart enough to send the invoice to the next person in line. But what I like to do with quantity is for my sail, for when I was doing a sale a week, I would typically have about three to five quantities of all the products that I would have on sale that you could also buy in my regular shop and for the one designed that I had that was a little more of that exclusive piece that you couldn't buy in my shop you couldn't ask for you couldn't ask for a outside of the sale. I would have about ten to fifteen of them because I've done so many sales in the past, I could anticipate that in his in historically they would sell more than the other pieces. So even though I would say that I have ten pieces available, if it turns out that fifteen people wanted it, what I would normally do is actually make some extra pieces on the sale itself. I would say I have ten available, but maybe I would have five extra that I kind of reserve and have on hand. And so if it turns out that fifteen people actually wanted it then the five other people on the wait list I would just go back into sold c I would increase the quantity to fifteen the actual facebook post or instagram post that has been unpublished on your page it will still show the original amount but from the back and and for the purposes of the waiting list feature those five people are going to be able to go through and pay up for their purchase so on the actual sale day you really want and at least for your first few sales you really want to be there be sitting in front of your computer or with your phone to answer any questions for sure you're going to get some questions from people for the most part when before I signed on to work with sold see before I started doing a sale today I was asking them you know, it's kind of grilling them with all these questions like this is going to work out from you know? So one of the questions I asked was are people going to understand this concept? Is it going to be hard technically or even like does it will it will people understand how to, you know, comments sold it's pretty simple just comments sold right? But there are people out there who may not understand that so I was concerned with how that would convert in terms of people who are seeing it and convert that into sales turns out most people understand how to how to just comment sold, but you will get some questions where maybe the system bugs out a little bit, so you just want to be there to support them through that time. Um, I was present for most of all of my sales until the very last few ones where I felt like my audience is pretty familiar with how I do my sales, they know how it works, and if I wasn't there to answer their questions, my other fans would help them out, so you definitely want to be watching for any errors, mishaps or tech tech issues, so if you're using an app like sold sears crazy or have to have it, there are there is a chance that their programming or their air, whatever programming connection they might have with facebook or instagram might start to bug out a little bit. So I have had one occasion where I had a sale, and it was one of those moments where I think I had dinner with my friends, so I don't want to be rude with bringing up my phone to check on my sales, so later that night I found out that people weren't getting their invoices, so that was kind of a bummer and the thing about your flash sales is that it is such a short time period that if you wait until the next day to get to questions people are kind of going they're going to lose steam to want to buy from you so if you can answer their questions and five to ten minutes that's the best thing that you can do if you're doing this the d I y manual way where you're sending people manual papal invoices you definitely there's no doubt about it you have to be there sitting and making sure that whenever someone says sold with their papel e mail address that you create that invoice and send it to them right away here's a really cool idea that I saw another business doing with their own facebook sales wass consider doing a spontaneous free gift giveaway on ly to your paid customers so this is kind of a really fun exciting wait really reward the people who are already buying and purchasing from you so what you can say is you don't even it could be a total surprise like the day that you launched your sale on dh when it when it starts you can just say that oh guys I'm doing something really different today I want to do a giveaway on and I'll pick a random customer who has bought during the sale and I'll include an extra free gift for them that's going toe in a way it's a really good experience for your customers they're going to be like wow that's really fun that's really cool they're going to like it and it's just kind of a nice thing to do every now and then so here's that here's an interesting tidbit here during those moments in your first few sales when you're fearful or when you when you're scared that like man like I hope someone shows up you know there's always that fear that no one's going to show up to whatever it is you're having on dh for the most part that's normally like ninety nine percent not true someone's going to show up especially if you've done the work in section one and you worked on getting ideal fans to come to like your page and your profile and if you've taken the time to make sure built that connection with them build that engagement up this shouldn't be a problem for you but if at the back of your mind you're still like oh gosh like you know what if no one shows up what if no one wants to buy my stuff? You know, because the first time you're doing there's definitely going to be that anxiety there's definitely going to be that fear I definitely had that fear so what you can do before your sale just you know, start a conversation with some of your b f fs and just tell them like guys, can you just go in there and comments sold for me just in case you know, just it's social proof right? When you see that other people are commenting sold, it makes it more likely that someone who might be shy at first to be like, well, I'm not sure like how does this work or like are people actually buying this when you have other people to model after you're more likely to do it kind of going back to that analogy where you're sitting in a classroom just decayed and your teacher asks you a question no one wants to be the first person to answer, so once someone answers, then people become more comfortable with starting more of a conversation, so just keep that in mind that's always available for you so and if it totally flops you can always go back try to do try to get more engagement with your followers first and and really pay attention to your pre marketing schedule. Make sure that you're telling people that the sale is happening, that they can look forward to the sale what's going to happen in the sale how does it work so two of those together make sure your marketing your your sale but make sure you're also spend the first one to two to three months to really prep your audience to be comfortable with commenting on your posts so this is some if, if, if you've been in business for a while, if you pretty established and you've been selling things in your regular shop, you can kind of have a pretty good idea for what designs are going to do well with your customers. So as much as you can anticipate, what designs might fell out faster than others and then reserve a few extras. So this is where I talked about if I knew my exclusive designs that I was selling would normally sell out faster than others, because a lot of my fans are kind of, they're there in the collect collective mode where they've got already a few of my tiny hands pieces, they just want to start collecting all the other new pieces that I release, so I would tend to save a few other pieces and kind of keep them on hand, just in case more people want to buy it and it's really up to you if you want to, if you want to reserve extras, you don't have to, because and this is, you know, this is something for you to consider. If you turn people away to say there's, only ten available, you don't have any more that's a good thing, because for the people who didn't get your sail on time, if they're they're not included, they if they were too late or if everything else sold out what this means to them the message that they're getting from that is that wow like the shop is the real deal you know like people actually want this stuff next time I should just show up early instead of coming late because I didn't know that it would be so popular it would be such a hit so that's actually a good thing to consider if you turn people away it's actually a good thing because will encourage them to come back next time and to make sure that they come back on time but again having it is totally up to you because it is also extra sales for you right? So that's what I normally tried to do is I would reserve a few extras and I would sell it to some of my customers in a way it is a good thing that you're turning them away because it encourages them that them to come back later but at the same time I'm really big about customer happiness and making sure that everyone has a good experience so in that way I want everyone to be happy so I know for people who want to buy something but didn't get a chance to because it's all sold out there kind of bummed out so I reserve a few extras just for those few people who might who might who might still want it so you can find me if you want to. Follow me on instagram at creative hiko or a twitter at. May underscore park or at facebook at facebook. Dot com slash creative haif co. And if you have any additional questions after this workshop, or if you want additional support in any in any aspect of your handmade business at all, I do have a private mastermind facebook group, just for makers, artists and designers, and you conjoined that at bit dot ly slash maker mastermind.