October’s here. Boo! At the beginning of Q4, the retail landscape can get spooky for jewelry brands. If you haven’t already planned your marketing strategy for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, then now’s the time to brush aside the ghosts and goblins and give yourself a competitive advantage for retail’s busiest time of year.

In this blog post, we share some important jewelry marketing tips that you can start implementing today, so you can be as prepared as possible for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and every other day leading up to the holidays.

Choose Your Promotions Wisely

When most consumers think of shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they only think of the steals and deals. However, consumers don’t realize that promotions only play a small role in a major retail puzzle, which requires jewelry brands and other retailers to decide how each promotion will fit into a greater sales and marketing strategy.

Long story short: you can’t decide you’re going to run a promotion the day before you’re going to announce it and then expect great results for your jewelry brand. Instead, you must be strategic about your promotions and plan them in advance, like…now. The best part about planning your promotions is that you can get creative with them and strive to delight your target customers, who likely have already seen hundreds of holiday advertisements before they see yours. Do you want to bore them or inspire them to visit your store?

This week, brainstorm a list of unique promotions that could work for your jewelry brand. These promotions can include:

Buy More, Save More – We don’t often see jewelry brands running a “buy more, save more” promotion. Usually, grocery stores use this promotion to sell canned beans. However, you must remember that many people shopping for the holidays are trying to fill stockings or buy for many family members at once. If you have some lower-priced items like colored gemstone studs that could work as a bulk gift item, consider offering this discount.

Flash Sale – Keep your customers on their toes. Some consumers actually won’t buy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday because they’re simply so overwhelmed by all the options and deals, and they can’t commit to any one thing. By announcing a flash sale on a random day, you’ll catch them off-guard, when they’re not feeling overwhelmed. A flash sale is refreshing, daring, and fun.

Free Gift with Purchase – Who doesn’t love a freebie? Your free gift doesn’t have to be extravagant or expensive, but it should be memorable and unique. Even better, you’ll want to consider offering a free gift that the purchaser can re-gift for added value. I’ve seen jewelry brands offer free gifts like silver stud earrings, charms, jewelry boxes, jewelry cleaner, jewelry rolls for travel, stuffed animals, gift cards for future purchases, and more.

Donation – During the holiday season, consumers are typically feeling extra generous, and they want to support their favorite charities as much as they want to buy meaningful gifts for their loved ones. Consider taking one day out of the holiday retail season to donate a portion of the profits to a non-profit organization, like a local children’s hospital or food bank. As a business, you’ll feel great contributing money to an important cause, and you’ll also earn customers who want to help you support that cause.

Create Content, Social Media, and Email Marketing Calendars

Now that you’ve put together a list of the promotions you’d like to execute during the holiday season, you’ll want to create a calendar that designates when you’ll be running each promotion. You can use whatever calendar system you already like best, whether that’s Google Calendar or even an old-fashioned day planner.

Next, you’ll have to plan your marketing initiatives around your promotions by creating calendars for content, social media, and email marketing.

Content Calendar – By content, I mean your blog, podcast, YouTube channel, customer stories, or any other content-based marketing strategies you already use.

Social Media Calendar – Technically, social media is a form of content marketing, but I think it deserves its own calendar. For Instagram and Facebook, start thinking about the imagery and captions that you’d like to use for any posts about your promotions. Then, make sure you plan your posts accordingly, so that you create enough lead-time before a promotion begins.

Email Calendar – Email is also technically a form of content marketing, but your email marketing efforts should get their own calendar. Ideally, you’ll be sending emails to your customers at least once per week during the holiday season, but you may want to consider increasing the frequency to twice per week the closer you get to Black Friday. The best time to send promotional emails is whatever time works for your customers, but according to sources compiled by OptinMonster, “Tuesday has the highest open rate and click-through rate, as well as being the most popular day to send emails.” Weekends have the lowest open rates.

Put on the Pressure

You’re putting the pressure on yourself to increase your jewelry marketing efforts during the holidays. Are you also putting the pressure on your customers? Many consumers are so busy with their day-to-day responsibilities that they don’t realize they actually have very little time left to shop. The holidays will be here before we know it!

Remember to create a sense of urgency in all your marketing outreach and on every consumer touchpoint, from your website and social media profiles to your emails. Use a strong call to action in all your copywriting and frequently remind customers how much time they have left. By urging customers to buy as early as possible, you’re not only securing those holiday sales, but you’re also make life easier for yourself, since you won’t have to worry as much about last-minute holiday shipping.

Now that you know about some of the best ways to prepare for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season in general, you should close this tab on your browser and start planning – the clock is ticking! What are some of your favorite ways to prepare for Black Friday, and what strategies have yielded the best results in the past?