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Build Your Own Etsy Marketing Campaign

So, now we're gonna look at Build a Marketing Campaign and so far we've looked at the bigger picture. We've looked at a year at a glance view, we've looked at the marketing calendar. Next we're gonna use your marketing calendar and work it into, work with that marketing calendar and a specific goal and turn that into an actual campaign. We're gonna build a marketing campaign. So before I show you examples, I want to show you the blueprint for a marketing campaign, and then I'll walk you through the examples. This is gonna, I'm gonna show you this blueprint, and it's going to stay empty while we talk about it for a minute. This is the basic blueprint for a marketing campaign. And it's a blank page, it starts out just like this, it's something you can fill out and reuse time and time again. And, what we need at the top, the first thing we're looking for is the marketing goal. And of course we remember that that's going to be short term, usually a 30-day or less period of time. It's going...

to give you a realistic stretch, you want it to push your goals, and then there's the buy below it. You're gonna need a specific deadline. A specific deadline. So if it's thirty days, write down the actual date that's thirty days away. And then the next thing you're going to do is think about the potential earnings: should you meet that goal, especially if you're investing in advertising budget, should you meet this goal, what would the potential earnings be? Because when you are using an advertising budget, you want that to make sense, you don't want your advertising budget to be $3,000 when your potential earnings for that goal are $1,000. It doesn't make sense. So you always want those two numbers to make sense. When you have a winning marketing campaign, and I'm going to show you a few examples, they're very worth the boost with the advertising budget, because you already know the system's working, you already know that that is attracting customers in, converting them to actual customers, and then it's worth finding new customers with the paid advertising, which we're going to be talking about in full detail. I'm gonna touch on it later today but we're gonna really cover it in full detail in Advertise Your Creative Business. Next, you're gonna brainstorm strategies with end dates so you understand when those strategies are going to run. And so this is the basic template. It's again, very simple, but a valuable tool for your business and a good place to start. After you have your marketing calendar established, and now you're gonna look at how to complete a short-term marketing goal. I'm going to show you an example of how I build campaigns. So I'm gonna start by showing you, I'm going to talk you through what I call the "Friday before Black Friday" sale. This is a sale I host every year, and I've hosted it since 2010, and it's a semi-annual sale, which means it's a great, big discount, for me it's 40%. And I put it the Friday before Black Friday because that time of the year is very noisy, and so I like to introduce my offer before that even begins. And so it's always run the Friday before Black Friday, and it's always been a very successful campaign. The sale runs a total of four days. Three publicly, three public days of sales, but four days total. And so my goal here is going to be 150 sales, so I want to make 150 sales. I hand-make my bracelets, and that is a stretch. Because if I put that goal at 150 sales, I guarantee I'll have 100 in stock, that would be my high, but I always want to try to stretch myself. If I can get 150, I know that I'm going to have a good campaign. But these are hand-made sales, so 150 would be a great turnout. Okay. Now, because my average sale, even with that promotion, even with that discount, is going to be $20, I can hope to earn $ from this four-day campaign, from this four-day period. So, the goal is actually high, and it's stretched, and I want to stretch myself, because I feel realistic 100 would be easy, but I want to stretch myself, and I want to try to get more inventory in there, I wanna try to make more sales, I wanna push myself further than the last sale went, I wanna try to do better this time. And because it's repeated, because it'll be going off for its fourth year in a row, because after four or five years in business my list has become sizable, I can count on it, I can trust on it, I'm gonna be fully stocked with my best inventory during that period of time. I'm gonna keep my advertising cost on this campaign to zero, just because everything we've talked about today are no-cost, low-cost strategies, and I wanna keep it that way. We haven't discussed paid advertising, but this is typically one I can trust enough to invest in a little bit. And I like to invest about 10% of my potential earnings, when it's low like this, to the advertising budget. So if I were needing a push, so much more spinning in my mind about that story, but if I were needing a push to this campaign I would limit that at $300, I would make that my max advertising budget. So, and I'm doing that because this campaign is proven to work, it's not its first time running. I'm going to show you examples of paid advertising in the next example as well, so we will touch on that today, we're just not gonna go too deep into it. So here's where the strategy starts to come into play for this marketing campaign. Now, with a product-based business like this, I don't wanna start talking about the sale too early. And the reason why? I don't wanna tell everybody six weeks ahead that we're going to have a 40% off sale. That's a launch schedule, to talk about something six weeks ahead, I don't wanna tell people six weeks before the sale runs off that we're about to go into a 40% sale. That's going to stall all my regular price sales. Everybody's gonna wait until that campaign comes. But, I am going to start showing the inventory that I'm building on Instagram at the beginning of the month. I'm gonna start showing big collections because I'm making 100 bracelets, might as well use that now and start to show them with Instagram the things I'm working on. So, you don't want to say 40% sale is coming, some people will know, especially if it's a repeated campaign, but you do want to show off the products, and show off the collections, and highlight the inventory. As you grow, and more people are following your business, and more people are watching what you're doing, they'll start to grab your inventory at full price because they know the sale is coming, and because they don't want to miss out. Because if you have a very popular item they're going to know as soon as that sale hits if they're not the first person on it, that particular product is going to be gone. So this is a great time to just take advantage of that, and sort of let people get the first look at the collection that's gonna be available. But you're not mentioning the sale yet. That makes great sense on Instagram, and one more thing about that, the other thing I know for a fact when I'm running these sales I like to really mix the inventory, I put very high-priced items in. In fact the only time you can see, there are some times my bracelets go, my average price point would be maybe $30, sometimes my bracelets go as high as $ because I've sourced very expensive material to make those. I'm always putting them in right before the semi-annual sale, it's a huge investment for me to carry $100 bracelets in my shop, and they're very rare, and so I know that they'll be gone throughout the sale price but what usually happens is customers are in the know, and they know how rare those very high priced gemstones are in my shop so they grabbing them, they're grabbing them right away. They're almost offsetting the cost that I have built up for this stock and inventory that I've build up just by buying those very high priced products during that time period. And then, the week of the sale, I'm really creating pre-sale buzz. And I'm not necessarily saying what the promotion is gonna be. I'm not saying it's gonna be a 40% off, but I am saying "This is the biggest sale of the year." And the point of all of that is to say "Get on my list. You want to be on my list "to be the first to the know." I'll say things like, "This only happens once a year." Or, "This only happens twice a year, these prices." The lowest prices of the year, because I only go low price like that twice a year, so I can say, "The lowest prices of the year." And you know you're getting the best deal that you can possibly get. I'm saying things like that but I'm not directing them to my shop, I'm directing them to an opt-in sign up. So it's a great time to take social and say "Something huge is coming in two days. "You need to be on the list, or you'll be the last to know." And you're really kind of pushing that all week long. And then, the night before the public sale date. So this particular... Say this particular sale starts on the 18th, runs the 18th, 19th, and 20th, the night before is the 17th, that's the night before the public sales date. It will be my most profitable night of the entire season. And the reason why is because I always offer my email subscribers first dibs on a sale. So... I write what I dub the $1,000 email because every time I write this email it generates at least $1,000 for my business. Coming up I'm gonna show you an actual clip from the email, we're gonna talk our way through that. But, I'm gonna send that the night before the public sale starts. The reason being to get all my interested, most interested buyers into the shop, honor the fact that they're email subscribers, and give them first dibs on the inventory. So the actual sales dates being November 18th to the 20th, during that period I'm going to share it all over social media, it's not going to be the most profitable part but I'm going to do my job and I'm gonna share it all over social media. But, let's be clear, that pre-sale announcement that I sent on November 17th is generating 80% of the revenue from that sale. It's time-sensitive, it's sent to just my email list, it's exclusive, it has a time limit on it, and it's gonna generate 80% of the revenue from this sale. So November 20th is the last day email reminder. And that's after I'm gonna email my list, I emailed them on the 17th, and this is one of the few times in the year I'm gonna email them in a close proximity. So, I'm gonna come back to them on November 20th and tell them, "The sale is ending, "you want to get there now." I want to also remind you that that second email will feel like overkill to you every time. The more you email, it's always going to feel like overkill. It will not feel natural to you, but you have to remember that you are always thinking about those customers, more than they are thinking about you. And so, a lot of them say that first email and did not opt to buy at that time, or were too busy, or tried to get back to it and completely forgot, they could have accidentally deleted it, there's a million things that could have happened to them at the time. But that is going to send the reminder. And then, I like to do updates and renewals in the shop throughout, so I'm using Etsy again as the platform that it is. I like to use third party apps to help mark sales prices, so I like apps like, I know of two, Etsy On Sale and Best Auto Renew, and I'm sure there are others, but what that does is that's on the Etsy listing where you see it crossed out in red, where you see the actual price crossed out in red, and then the new price, or announces the sale on your actual product listing. I love those because that's going to appeal to my Etsy fans, my Etsy admirers is what they're called now, so everybody that favorites my shop, when my items get renewed and when they get resold, they're gonna come up in their feed, and even if they didn't know about the sale they're gonna see that big red mark out to let them know that it's on sale, something that they wanna grab. And I'm also going to be using Shop Updates, which is a new thing on Etsy, which you need their mobile app in order to use, but that comes up on their home feed, it's about the third block down, it comes up in their home feed, and you want to be using that to announce the sale throughout as well. And that's very low-cost promotions, but I definitely want to keep using them throughout the entire time, so even if I go big with that, I'm going to spend maybe $5. Yes, please. For the three day sale, do you recommend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or does it not really matter the days of the week. Well, I actually strategize the sale dates based on when I like my emails to go out because it's always about that pre-sale email for me. So I like to send a sale email on Thursday, or Tuesday. I don't know, I don't watch those analytics to know, I don't A/B test, cuz that's not how I do my research. I'm going to learn that better, but I know Thursdays are really great for sales. So the actual sales dates I don't care about as much as I care about when is this early bird special going out, and when do I have the most likelihood to capture my customers' attention. That's the biggest deal to me. So I want that to be sent on Thursday. But if I have a one-off day, one day sale or I have a two day sale, I like those to run in the middle of the week, I think people are paying more attention, I feel like I always get a lot more traction than if I try to send something off on a Friday or Saturday when everybody's just concerned about getting off.