August Plans for Holiday Jewelry Marketing

0:00
Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and innovators, so they can thrive by doing what they love. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands, and I’m excited to share my passion with you.

0:18
This is Episode 138, and today I’m going to discuss how you can start planning your holiday marking marketing. Yes, I said holiday. I know it’s August, but now’s the time to start planning. What should you be doing this month? And how can you position yourself for optimal holiday profits? Keep listening to this episode for all the tips and tactics that will lead you to your best holiday sales of all time.

0:45
But before we get to this episode, I want to share some marketing related news and insights from the past week that caught my attention. So first, I saw an article from qz.com all about live stream shopping. So live stream shopping is only becoming more and more popular, and it’s expected to become more prevalent in the years ahead. This is mostly being seen in a place like China. So insider intelligence forecasts that China will actually generate $132 billion in livestream sales on social media in 2021. Alone, that is so crazy. By 2023 it will generate an estimated $281 billion 60% of social commerce in China. brands in China are already using live stream shopping to sell just about everything including food and beverages. In the United States. It hasn’t caught on as much shopping on social media is definitely far behind. But it’s a slow moving trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic. So Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Amazon are all implementing and testing out features that brands can use for to host live stream shopping events. Live shopping events on social definitely give brands the perfect opportunity to reach customers early on social media is the new concept of a mall. If you can imagine that people are going there to discover products and different types of trends, especially during the pandemic.

2:23
So next I saw an article from Yahoo Finance about the company Square, which announced on August 1 that it is acquiring the buy now pay later giant Afterpay in a $29 billion all stock deal. How is this relevant? Why am I talking about this? Well the buy now pay later craze definitely coincides with marketing because if you offer customers more flexible payment options, this is something you can communicate to customers in your marketing messaging. And I think Afterpay is a huge player in this space. I thought it was super interesting that they were acquired by square, so the transaction is expected to close in q1 of 2022. And the combination of the two companies together are expected to create a payments giant unlike any other. Square co founder and CEO jack Dorsey said that the two FinTech behemoths will have a shared purpose. Together, they can better connect the cash app and seller ecosystems to deliver even more compelling products and services for merchants, like you and consumers. Putting the power back in their hands, giving them more flexibility in shopping. So Square is planning to integrate Afterpay into its existing seller and cash app business units so that even the smallest of merchants, maybe that’s you, my listener can offer buy now pay later at checkout. So look out for these coming changes.

4:00
And then finally, an article from JCK is all about the Federal Trade Commission. And their announcement that they will start reviewing their green guides next year and its jewelry guides in 2028. So if you’re not aware, the green guides cover environmental claims and they instruct marketers for sustainable brands, and how they can discuss topics like sustainability, recycling and carbon offsets when it comes to their businesses. In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission actually sent warning letters to 8 lab grown diamond in simulant companies advising them that their advertising did not comply with the green guide. So this is pretty strict or they’re actually going after brands that are not being fully transparent or even honest in their marketing. So the green guides will likely affect not just every product in the jewelry industry but really every industry in America. According to this article from JCK, the Jewelers Vigilance Committee or JVC really wants to make sure that the jewelry industry is at the table, and has a clear point of view on what will work for the industry, the environment and the consumer.

5:16
If you want to get the links to the articles, I share in this segment of the podcast, you can sign up for my email newsletter by visiting joyjoya.com/signup, and you’ll get a digest with the links whenever a new episode drops. Okay, let’s start talking about holiday marketing.

5:32
So if you’re listening to this, when it comes out, it’s the beginning of August, you’re probably still in summer mode. I hate to break it to you. But you really should be planning your holiday marketing at this point. So how can you get started, even when you’re still maybe taking your summer vacations, enjoying the last of the wonderful summer weather and summer activities? First and foremost, you want to set some SMART goals. Smart stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time based. I had a mind fart, I had to think about it. But basically, it just means that you are setting goals that are really tailored to your jewelry brand that can actually be attained, that have a timeline associated with them that can be measurable. You also want to establish your key performance indicators or KPIs and then decide how and when you’re going to track your progress over time. I hate to say it but if you don’t have any goals, then you’re basically just throwing darts at nothing. So if you hope to really exceed previous holiday sales, if you really want to achieve some special amazing things for your jewelry brand this holiday, you need to have some goals. And August is really the perfect time to set those goals.

6:52
Next, you want to take stock of what you have, by what you have, I mean, not only your products, but also your creative assets like your photography, your video, your graphics, what do you have in terms of packaging? What your website looking like? Do a full audit of everything, both on the product and marketing, and even the branding sides? And ask yourself how did you do last year? And what can you learn from the performance from last year? So what did really well, what’s been the most popular this year? What did you sell the most of last year that you could potentially replicate? You really want to sit down and do a thorough like think through of everything that’s going on with your brand. From a product perspective, you also want to make sure that you’re stocked for holiday and or that you can get stocked for many manufacturers with the products you think are going to move, or the ones that you’re specifically going to promote in a gift guide or for certain promotion for holiday. So now’s the time to really assess where you’re at where you’ve come through the year so far.

8:07
You definitely want to look at your Google Analytics data to see what are people viewing on your e commerce site? How much time are they spending on product pages, which products seem to be bringing the most traffic into your site? Where are people bouncing from your site? All of these things can help you better understand not only which products to focus on for holiday, but also maybe there are some changes you can make to your ecommerce site to update it for holiday. So now’s the time to start making a big list of those things, whether it’s to implement live chat, making your product pages more engaging, improving the navigation on your website. And then who’s going to help you with these things? If you’re not able to make the changes yourself, you want to start researching website partners who can help you implement these changes.

8:58
So next, you really want to decide which platforms you’d like to either maintain your presence or increase your presence on so these are probably going to be the ones that you’ve already been using this year that seem to be resonating with your target customers that you’re already having success with. I’m talking about social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok. I’m talking about your email marketing efforts. I’m talking about live or virtual events or any other content like blog content, YouTube content, other video content, whatever you’ve already been putting out that seems to be resonating with customers. Decide where you’re going to focus your attention and energy.

9:44
After you’ve kind of chosen your platforms, you want to make a content calendar and really dive into planning. So this involves deciding on your creative direction for holiday. Maybe there’s a certain look or feel or tone or color palette that you want threaded through all of your holiday marketing or some kind of phrase or language that you want to incorporate in. This is the time to decide on what that will be. Think about the products you’d specifically like to highlight, or even the ones you’ll be creating for the holiday season. Consider the promotions or discounts that you might like to offer at different points in the holiday season. Think about things like shipping cutoff times, which dates you’d like to get in front of your customers, when is it going to make the most sense for you to kind of give it last minute push for holiday. And when are you going to be too stressed out to be fulfilling orders.

10:42
It’s time to be honest with yourself practical and realistic about what can actually be achieved during the holiday season. Will you be doing a more traditional Black Friday sale, are you going to do something a little more non traditional, like some kind of month long discount? Or maybe you’re not focused on Black Friday and you choose a different date, because you find that that might resonate with your target customers better. Make sure you’re giving yourself enough lead time for each of these events that you’re going to put on a calendar. Like for example, maybe two weeks before you have to create some graphics or schedule, the email campaigns that are going to go out or even start kind of teasing these things on social media. So you want to make sure there’s ample space and room to breathe around all these things that you’re going to be putting on your marketing calendar.

11:33
And as a side note, if you’re not already using a marketing or content calendar, then August is the time that you need to decide which tool you’re going to use to do your planning and start getting comfortable and used to that whether it’s a Google Calendar, whether it’s a tool, like Asana, or any other project management tool. Don’t wait until November to start figuring out how to use it. Figure out how to use it now and get consistent with using it and get regular with adding to it. So make sure all of your ducks in a row, August is the time to get organized and plug all these things into your calendar.

12:13
You may even want to start testing some incentives or promotion for holiday now, to see what’s kind of resonating because you don’t want to get to Black Friday, and offer a 20% off discount and realize that’s not really like getting any traffic, no one seems to be really responding to it. Maybe instead you should have offered like $50 off a certain minimum purchase. But, you know, Black Friday is not the time to figure that out. So maybe choose a group of VIP customers and do some kind of early discount with them with a small group of customers, and maybe A/B test. So give half of those customers like your percentage discount. Half of those customers get a monetary value discount or whatever else you want to experiment with. So that you can get some early feedback about what customers really want when it comes to promotions and incentives. And you are super prepared to offer the right thing when it matters the most.

13:17
For any other photo, video or other content that you find needs to be created based on the audit of your brand and your marketing and your products. September or late August or early September might be the time you’re actually going into creation mode. So make a plan for how exactly you’re going to do that. What steps are required, are you going to need to hire a model are you going to need to interview some new photographers? Are you going to need to make moodboards? This is a time to figure out what all those things need to be because come September, a lot of people that support jewelry and other ecommerce brands get super busy because all the brands are suddenly thinking “Oh my gosh, I’m in panic mode, I need to figure out my marketing.” So get ahead of the game. Get make sure you book the talented, trusted people. Don’t wait till it’s too late when they’re too busy to take you on as a client if you need their services. So definitely make a plan for creating and generating that creative content.

14:24
Also think about maybe experimenting with one new piece of technology that you’ve never tried before for the holiday season. For example, if you’ve never offered virtual try-on to your customers, maybe now’s the time to implement it for holiday or something like live stream shopping, which I mentioned earlier in the episode. That way at least in one small way. I’m not saying overhaul all your marketing for holiday but one small way you can push yourself out of your comfort zone just a little bit, so you have that little bit of extra data for next year, you know, you know what the live stream shopping didn’t go so well or it went okay, but I would do this differently next time. So you have a starting point to kind of do things differently in the future and keep evolving your brand. So I would really invite you to try one new thing that makes you a little bit nervous but won’t burden you financially or take too much time, something you can just try to mix things up a little bit.

15:32
You also of course, want to think about your packaging, and any gift options or gift packaging. So will you be offering special packaging for holiday? Does your packaging need an upgrade or overhaul in general? Are you going to be doing any sort of gift boxes or gift packaging? Now’s the time to find those vendors maybe get in on those early deals because the longer you wait, the more you’ll be panicking about getting things shipped to you and perhaps prices will increase because demand is increasing. So getting an early jump on it will just make you feel more calm, centered and have a better idea of what you can promise and offer customers when the holidays roll around.

16:17
So those are my tips. What are you going to be doing this August besides sitting on the beach, you’re going to be preparing for holiday. I encourage it I invite you to to take advantage of some of the tactics I mentioned in this episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai