Lessons

Lesson Info

How To Keep Fans Excited

A few ways that you can keep your fans excited as I mentioned, the reason we're talking about this now is because, depending on your frequency, sometimes your sale will your sales will start to lose its novelty. It's not as fun anymore, or maybe your fans get kind of burned out. What some things that you could do is start to think about some different ways that you can sell some of the products you have. So if you have been selling it this one way, they try to innovate on that and get creative on how you can sell your products, so one way you can do that is to change the type of product you're selling, so introduced to them, something new every now and then, to kind of keep things interesting for them. Another way you can do that is to also introduced different price points. So at the start of this workshop, I showed you a few examples of different price points that I had, so my necklace is typically range between twenty three, two, twenty eight dollars, and I would normally discounted...

by about ten percent if they were from my regular line. Otherwise, if I was selling an exclusive piece, I would normally sell it for about thirty eight dollars, thirty five dollars, um, so that's around what I normally range in what I've done before in the past and I talked about this a little bit briefly in a previous slide is that I've done mystery grab bags, so this in itself is kind of a different product it's kind of a bundle, and I tell people that they're getting a mystery grab bag of three different charms, so I don't give them the necklace chain, I don't turn into no ear rings or bracelets for them, I'm just giving them the charms that can do whatever they want with it. Some of my customers can be kind of d I y crafty people themselves, so they like to use those charms to like glue onto their cellphone case or, you know, whatever creative projects they have going on. So the way that I had the structured out on the reason why I did this, wass I started accumulating a lot of charms that we're not good enough for me to sell to my regular customers who are placing regular orders on my website, so I have a certain standard or quality level where I go through with my production assistance if something isn't good enough, we kind of just start accumulating in this little basket that we have in my studio. And eventually it takes some time toe kind of grow that number, but eventually, when it starts to pile up, I take and you've seen one of those photos where I would take kind of ah, zoom in photo of all of the different charms. They're in it and people really go nuts over that. They like seeing all the different pieces together. But then what I would do, which is actually a really great idea that one of my assistants came up with this is why I love working with people is that they come up with better ideas than I do. Then I have to. So she came up with this great idea for having a mystery grab bag and they get three charms, right? So two out of those three charms were mysteries. I would randomly pick it for them from this pile of charms that were less than perfect, but so that no one is left feeling like man, I didn't get the one that I had my eyes set on. I would then give them the choice to choose one out of those three charms. So if we recall early on in one of those slides I had, all I did was take a picture of all the charms together and I kind of place them out kind of in a grid fashion and I took a picture kind of like that and I had everything placed out, so he had it all pictured placed out in a really pretty piece of card stock no nice pretty background, but all I did was take one picture and I had all of those terms laid out and what's really interesting is that you can't even really tell from the details of the photo what the charm is I mean, you can have a general idea, but it's not a great product photo it's a group product photo of all of these different charms, they're all in little ziploc bags and and then I would just tell people that this is how the structure for this sale is you pick one charm from this grid from this photo and then we'll send that to you but will also send you to other mystery charms in your order and all of that three charms would be fifteen dollars and I think because the price point was lower than what might jewelry normally sells for for something like that, I could get a ton of people ordering from me for a silly sale like that, you know it's not even it's and it's great because it's not stuff that I could sell anyway, but its going to a place is going to a home where people can make use of it and people have that expectation it's not perfect and what's interesting about it that whole concept I find is that to our eyes as the people who are producing and making our own work all of the flaws are very obvious to us, but when it comes to other people, if you don't say anything, if you don't point out what's wrong with the product that you've made, they probably won't notice so to other people it's not as obvious as it is to yourself, so to other people they can appreciate the less than perfect charms because for the most part it's still pretty good and you're getting it at a really great discount it's five dollars per charm where normally it would be twenty two twenty two about thirty dollars, so for a sale like that, I could normally get about seven to eight hundred dollars just from selling charms that I couldn't have sold anyway, which is amazing and like the set up costs for that, all I'm doing is taking one picture and it works really well, so consider fun and different ways that you can have sales like that and introducing different product types introducing different price points another price point that I would have is that go on the on the higher end so what I would do I don't normally sell bracelets on my website I normally sell necklaces on dh the on ly bracelet the charm bracelet that you can get is with just one single charm on it with a little swarovski crystal but what? I've had a lot of requests customs special request by email from my customers were like can you special? Can you especially make for me a charm bracelet and I can pick can I pick out like three to five charms for this so I would get a lot of requests for that so you know when you when you start getting feedback from your customers that way try to listen to that and it's light bulb moment right? Like they've told you they want this then it's a good idea to stay well you can give it to them. So so then what I did was I had this concept of having a pick your own charm bracelet and so that started at seventy dollars and that's way more than what I would normally sell my jewellery for and so they get to choose they got to choose three charms at a minimum and they could go up to five charms and then it would come all assemble with little pearls and crystals and will be the complete set and then I would in the text description just list all the different charms that I had available and that people could pick from that list and for something like that you know it's a higher price point you're not of course going to be selling in quantity far fewer people are going to buy from you but there will still possibly be those people who will be open to buying it so even for sales like that it's really easy I don't have to design a new product from scratch per se but because it's more exclusive because it's not something that I normally sell online on my website because you can't buy it on my website this gives people the opportunity to well this is this is a great chance for me to get something really sweet from my daughter or as a gift for my niece you know so think of how you can really spin your existing product line and introduce new ways to sell to your customers so as I mentioned you can mystery grab bags we talked about that and I don't know depending on your own business I don't know how you could if you're selling jewelry or what what have you like think about how you can apply this to your own business I think in some way you probably could if you really sat down to think about it you can even offer things in bundles and sets so if it's possible for you to maybe like group two different products together or group three different products together that makes sense to go together and then for a total set of three of your products maybe lower the price just a little bit and that then makes things a little bit more interesting, so what I could potentially do is, for example, have b f f waffle necklaces for example, you get to waffle necklaces like the one I'm wearing right now and you can keep one for yourself and you can give one away to your best friend and then I would sell that for a little bit less than the retail price so make things kind of fun like that and I think your customers it would be kind of fresh to them it would be a little bit different and as I mentioned it's, I think for some of us we might feel like if we were to sell our less than less than perfect products and give that out to the world in some way I guess you could argue that well, you don't want to have your lower quality products out there because then people might get the wrong idea that this is the standard of all of your products and I think that's a good argument, but as long as you're communicating to your customers that these are pieces that you won't be selling but you don't want to toss them because that be a waste some, you know, like for a lot of my jewelry I have pieces how do you work that way for the oh, sorry, go ahead and say. So how would you word that on your side, your mystery grab bag? If you don't say this is less than perfect r d u I actually do, I do. Oh, yeah s o I say it's less than perfect. Um, what else do I say? Oh, I also say didn't make the cut charms, but I think people kind of like that if you could spin it in kind of a cute or quirky way or a charming ways you do, but I do say that, right? I make it very obvious that these are products that I can't sell, and I think when you communicate that people have more respect for you, they're like, wow, you really have quality standards and you won't sell products to us if we paid pay full price for it, you won't sell to us something that doesn't look good enough to you, but really communicated really spell it out to them that this is what they're getting that it's less than perfect in some way or other. But if it's possible, you know if it's usable for sure. I definitely make sure that all the charms can be used so if there was some way that they couldn't turn it into a necklace on their own or if they couldn't say glue it onto a ring base that I wouldn't sell it like if it was completely broken and tearing apart then I wouldn't sell that for sure I would just toss that right away if I couldn't fix it myself to even any questions on that so far so free you want to know can you do that give away its sale buzz does this work on not an actual product but if you're doing pre orders for that product? Yes, yes yes so I think pre orders do really well with this social media with this selling on social media thing but I think you definitely can if you have a prototype of the product at least have a picture of it ready so people know what they're getting but definitely this whole this whole pre buzz marketing schedule that I had in the previous segment khun definitely work for pre orders too so other ways for you to think about how to introduce new different products with to your customers is think about how you can collaborate with other artists eso like if you're a graphic designer if you make your own cards how can you work to get your designs and say like a t shirt or stay like a purse there there somebody people like going at sea and find other people who you can somehow work with so what I've what I've tried doing is a lot of my jewelry sent it right well actually all of it is scented and the problem that I had was that I could not design products fast enough and it was just too stressful for me so what I did then I went into etc and I found all of these amazing talented other miniature food artists they told them how about I buy a product's wholesale and I take them and then I give them the scent that would match what they look like so then I in return then I would sell it at the price that I could sell it for and then I would also kind of give them some I would kind of feature them I would tell my customers that the this is a collaborative product this is made by so and so and then I just added the scent to it you know there's nothing to hide and I think your customers would like you for that was that like wow you know you're really cool toe work with other artists like that so that's a great way for you to bring in new products that still have your style and your aesthetic which is what your friend your fans care about but to also introduced to them that new product type that you otherwise couldn't create on your own and as I mentioned before it could also be a great idea to do kind of a spontaneous giveaway to just the people who have bought from you in a particular sale so that would kind of kind of enhanced that brand loyalty feeling and give your current paying customers a really good experience so it gives them something to be excited for it it makes them feel like while you really take care of them you really think about them so occasionally you know this is something that would keep them excited for the giveaways for the paying customers are you publicizing that in the way that you normally do where they have to enter or is this just completely spontaneous like hey, I drew your name out of aa hat today and you're getting some earrings so I would make a little bit of an announcement for it so at the time that I launch a sale I would say we're doing something different today I'm giving away one extra necklace to a random customer and so I would make that announcement but I wouldn't I wouldn't just out of the blue just announce who it wass so I would make the announcement and if you wanted to you could you couldn't make a further announcement to see who won the prize but you don't have to if you don't want to you can just kind of keeping it a secret so the person who won doesn't expect it and then when they do see if they're going to when they open their package there going like, oh my gosh I want and then they're gonna be like, we're really happy and excited about it, but yeah, I would make an announcement about it first, so what I would do also is and this is what I do for my cell and I would encourage you to think about this too when you're designing what products or when you're deciding what products to be selling in your sale is to think about keeping your sale items exclusive from your main line and keep it really limited quantities. So for those of you guys out there who are selling one of a kind products selling on social media is goingto work to your benefit it's going to be great because once you once that one piece is gone, it's gone there's no way for other people to buy ever again, so if you can keep it in tow limited quantity that would increase that sense of urgency that you gave to your fans but also keeping it exclusive so if they can't normally buy it on your website, this is a great idea to encourage people to come to your sale a supposed to buy it on your website because if you if you know you can buy it on your regular website, there's. No real incentive for them to come to your sale, um, into to be a part of that, you know? So we actually we're going to have our interview right after this with the co founder of spree z, which I talked about, which is that free version of soul see, so I'm really excited about that because he has a ton of information to share with us on his experience working with other makers. But before we get into that, do we have any last minute questions before we go into our interview here? If you make if you do a signed contract, I'm sorry. If you do collaborate with another artist, do you need tio have a signed contract? Like if someone's painting designs on, you're limited edition scarves or that kind of thing? I would say it's a good idea to have contracts, and it could just be a really simple agreement, just spelling out what you're expecting of them and what they're expecting a view. What does get complicated if you're trying to really work with a lot of different artists? Than managing them. And communicating with them can be kind of difficult, especially when you have scheduled that. Okay, we're well, my collaboration with so and so needs to go live on a certain date. And if they don't shift your products on time, then you're pretty much screwed. And then how do you deal with, you know, instances like that. So I would say whenever you can have it in writing. It's a good idea for you to do that.