8 Holiday Sales Tips for Boutique Owners

All right. Hey guys, it's Ashley Alderson. I'm the founder at the Boutique Hub. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet today, I am so excited to talk to you guys about being in the crunch of the holiday season, the last minute rush of the holiday season. If we haven't had an opportunity to talk about holiday marketing yet, I just have to tell you, holiday marketing is my absolute jam. Marketing for boutique owners is probably my favorite topic in all the land. So today we're gonna dive into your business and I want to talk about the eight things that boutique owners should definitely be working on right now to make sure that you're maximizing the holiday season. Good morning, you guys. So I'm gonna get right into it. If you guys have questions, feel free to drop them below. I'm happy to come back after this video and answer all your questions, talk about your marketing specifically. But I want to talk about these eight things right away. Alright, so number one is ads. This type of year, if you are a boutique that's used to running Facebook ads or Google Ads, you know that everybody that owns a business this time of year is trying to maximize that business. And so they're all going to be running ads at the same time, right? There's businesses that don't spend money on ads all year until they get to the fourth quarter and they start to buy ads, which supply and demand. When that happens, the price of advertising goes up. So you guys know that ads are going to get a little bit more expensive right now if you guys are used to running ads. So one thing I want you guys to be aware of this time of year is make sure because ads are expensive that you're maximizing all the other options you have available to you. So if you do text marketing right now, you should be running a massive giveaway to grow your text marketing list. Last night I was looking around online the number of boutiques I follow and I was thinking to myself, gosh, the thing that all these boutiques have in common right now is that they're all running giveaways to either a download their app, to join their text list, to get on their Facebook messenger bot, or to get on their email list, right? Because when it comes to social media, we don't own social media, right? We don't own any of our followers and our opportunity to reach our followers is highly dependent on the algorithm. So why not continue to work on the list that we do own? So right now, you guys, please put your focus into growing your list Especially your text list, since 99% of texts are read within the first five minutes. Pretty crazy, right? So, giveaways, whatever you have to do, every single week, pick a different channel and maximize growing that channel. And just kind of a tip here. Every product post that you make throughout the day, if it's comments sold or if it's a link to purchase this item on your website, or if you're saying, hey, come in the store and buy this, the bottom line of every post you make right now should be, hey, just a reminder, we have a giveaway going on to enter our $200 or whatever you're gonna do store credit giveaway. Make sure you opt into our text list by texting keyword to this short code. You guys give me a thumbs up if you're with me so far, right? Tip number one is grow your list so that you don't blow all of your money in ads and you can continue to reach your customers long into 2020, long into the next year after your advertising campaigns have run out. All right? Thumbs up. Tip number one. Tip number two is this time of year, I know everyone's thinking about, what am I going to do for Black Friday? What am I going to do for Small Business Saturday? And you guys have heard me say this before, but stop running blanket sales, right? Stop. I know. It's so easy to throw up a coupon code and go, the whole site is 40% off. Congratulations. Stop, stop. Don't even think about it right now. The point is, when you do that, you're going to throw out the diamonds with the dirt, right? You're going to throw out your brand new, 100% fresh merchandise that you could get full price for, along with crap that's been on the sale rack in onesies, twosies for the last six months. Okay? Don't do that to yourself. So right now, dig into those reports. What do you have that's aging? What do you have that naturally is a slow turner? Or what do you have that you got on special from your vendors? If you are a boutique that has great relationships with your vendors, give them a call and say, hey, I know you have closeouts because it's the end of the year and every vendor, just like every boutique, is going to have closeouts. They are not in a show season right now. They have this entire month of November and December off. So talk to them. What do they have on special? What kind of specials and deals could you get? Those are what you can use as loss leaders throughout the entire holiday marketing season. If you get something on a great discount. Now when you come in and you, you put it on sale in your boutique at, say, 20 to 30% off, it doesn't matter that you put it on sale at 20 to 30% off because you got it on discount to begin with. So look, for what you guys should know as loss leaders, okay, the loss leaders are the things that you market hard. Just like when you see Macy's saying they have a 70% off sale, does it mean that all of Macy's is 75% off? No, it means that their loss leaders are 75% off. And there's other specials throughout the store. So. So your store operates the same way. So look for that loss leader that gets people into the door, that picks up the dirt, and then you sell the diamonds at full price. Got it? No more blanket sales. Give me a thumbs up if you agree with me. Or write no more blanket sales in the comments. Deal. No more blanket sales. All right, number three. Number three, Are you guys with me? Are you here today? Perfect. Okay, there you are. All right, number three is just like Amazon, just like every big box retailer. Number three is make sure you guys have great retargeting ads in place. You all are going to do so much work to get traffic to your doorstep, to your website, to your group, to your app. You're going to do all this work. You're going to hustle all season long to simply get eyeballs onto your business. So, 2%, maybe over the holidays it bumps to 3% for your business of that traffic will convert. Maybe it's 4% if you're lucky, but that means 96 to 98% of people are going to leave without buying anything. So make sure the most important Facebook ad, you guys, that we could run any time of the year, but especially in the fourth quarter, is a good retargeting ad. They're simple to set up. They're called catalog sales ads. If you go into your Facebook ads manager, you set it up. If you have your Shopify store connected to your Facebook store, your Shopify catalog will be connected and it can show people the actual products that they were looking at on your site. Maybe you set up your ads that way. Maybe you need to set up a conversion ad or set it up a little bit different. The point is make sure, because all advertising is going to be so expensive. At minimum, please make sure that you have a retargeting ad set up for your site during the fourth quarter, because I'm going to tell you what happened to me. Yesterday. Okay, so our son, Easton, he loves Minecraft and he wants to come into my office all the time and work on my computer. And work on my computer, right? No, it's actually he wants to come and look at Minecraft. So he was in here yesterday wanting to look at Minecraft and what happened? All the tabs that I had open, he shut them all. So I'm a person that keeps like a hundred tabs open all the time because there's always something I'm working on or, like going back and forth between. And it just so happened that yesterday I was doing some shopping for some outfits that I needed for the holidays. And so everything I had in my cart in all these different tabs was gone. And so poor Easton. I crushed him because I probably, like, overreacted to this whole scenario. I was mad that he closed all my tabs and he didn't understand what the big deal was. The point is, it's really easy whether it's me, whether it's your customer that they get distracted while they're shopping on your site or they're on your social media. Right? They're at work maybe, and they aren't supposed to be shopping. Everyone's busy and they have all these different things going on. So it's easy when they're on their site that they pop off and go somewhere else. So make sure that you have some kind of mechanism in place to catch all those people who came to your site and loved it but didn't get to make the purchase that they had come there looking for. Retargeting ads are definitely the answer for that. And if you guys have a great email service provider, Klaviyo or Omnisend or activecampaign or mailchimp, whatever it is, making sure that you also have those retargeting emails, those abandoned cart emails, set up, that's equally as important as having a really good retargeting ad in place. And if you're like me, make sure you teach your kids now the importance of the minimize button versus the X button that closes out of all your flipping tabs, because it will drive you crazy when it happens. And I guarantee you it's probably going to happen if you have kids. All right, tip number four. Four is this time of year, it's perfect for you guys to run a spend more, get more type of event. Meaning how are you going to get people back to your business in January? Right. January is a J month. We all know the theory about the J months. And let me just go on A J month tangent for a second. If we go into a J month thinking that it's a J month and we perceive that it's going to be slow, guess what's going to happen? It's going to be slow, right? If we think that our business is going to slow down, chances are it will because we're kind of willing that on ourselves, right? But if we go into a J month knowing that it's going to be a J month and we're prepared for that, and we're still going to be marketing as if it's every other month out of the year and we're still showing the same excitement and enthusiasm for what's new in our boutique in a J month, we're going to have a good month. But psychologically what happens is when we perceive our business to be slow, we buy slower, we don't buy as much, our goods become aged, right? We're focused on sale and clearing out clearance and we lose the excitement and the newness of all the products in our store. And then our customers do too, right? It trickles down to them too. Chances are, whatever you are excited about in your business, your customers are going to be excited about in your business. So remember that when you go into a slower time of year, alright? Getting back to tip number four though, which has to do with the J months is this is a perfect time of year. The closer we get to Christmas, I'll say is the perfect time of year to do this Buy More, Save More event where if they spend $100, let's say they're getting $10 back for January or you're doing some kind of bonus cash that's only available for them to spend in the future. And you guys, this isn't just a holiday idea, but you can do it all year round if you know based on your own sales records that there's other months that are slow, right? If the first two weeks of July are super slow for you, make sure that in April or May, at some point you've got July bonus cash that you're giving away with every purchase that's being made. All right, tip number five. Five. Make it simple, right? Have you guys heard of the KISS method? Right? Kiss? Keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple, stupid means keep your promotions simple and easy to understand. No more promotions by every single hour. Or like this category is 15% off and this category is 30% off. And then there's a free gift with purchase and then there's free shipping and then there's this and then at 8:00, because it's Black Friday, it all changes again. And now it's this category. Is this right? Nobody can remember that. So make sure your promotions are simple enough that a 10 year old can see it, understand it, and repeat it. Keep it simple, stupid, right? Your customers want to know what they can expect when they see your promotion that's happening. And they want to be able to calculate it in their head when they're shopping on your site. Because if they know they're going to get 15% off or whatever it is if you do something that is site wide, they can start to calculate that in their head because chances are they're coming to your site with some kind of a budget and, and you want to make it easy for them to remember. So keep it simple, stupid number. What are we on? Number six? Make it simple again for your customers to cross off their lists, right? So some of you I know have already done this where you've gone in and you've made a mock gift list. Like, you know, you've got gifts for your husband and for your sister and for your mom and for your grandma and for your kids, teachers for your babysitter, right? There's all these random ones. I don't know if you guys are like this, but I'm like this. All the random ones I don't remember until the very last minute. Like I was at a coffee shop earlier this morning and I always forget about, like I get some of the teachers, but then I don't get the daycare teachers, right? Or the wraparound teachers. And then I feel bad because I'm like, all these teachers are gonna get gifts and God bless these people, they ain't gonna get nothing. So last year I was like, on the way to school, I pulled into my favorite coffee shop and I went in and they're like, oh, I'm sorry, it's a $20 minimum gift card purchase. I was like, $20 at a coffee shop? Are you kidding me? Okay, fine. The point is, make it simple for mothers like me who are usually a hot mess and don't remember that stuff. Make it simple for them to remember the gifts. So make a mock gift list and then go through your store and make like mock gift ideas, right? So here's five ideas for teachers, here's five ideas for babysitters. Don't forget to get your daycare teachers just like your regular school teachers, gifts all also, right? Make it simple for your customers to remember and make it just a freebie that you put in your Group and invite your group to add people to the list. Like, did you forget someone? Someone in your group might add it to the list and then together with your customers, you could come up with gift ideas. When you find the things that really stick and the things that your customers really love, go ahead and bundle those things. Right? Or really promote those things. I talk a lot about bundling inside of our holiday marketing masterclass for this very reason, because I think it's so, so easy to say I'm not going to bundle like this specific mustard yellow top, but I'm going to bundle, you know, a $35 top with a $10 candle with a $10 beauty product, right? And it's going to be a seventy dollar bundle for $60 or whatever it is, right? You're, you're pairing price points and products, not specific products. That way when inventory starts to run low in one area or the other, you can start to kind of supplement and rebuild that bundle and again, make it really easy for those people that are on that gift list. You guys got me. Give me a thumbs up if you're still with me so far. And you're like, I also am a hot mess. And forget my kids. Teachers too. God bless them. All right, number seven, Number seven, repeat after me. Upsell and cross sell. Upsell and cross sell. And not just you, but train your staff to upsell and cross sell. So at every single purchase, if you guys have a brick and mortar, your team is saying, is there anything else or is there anyone else on your list that we can get a gift for? That was something I was always trained to do in retail. At checkout, we always ask people over the holiday season. We had a specific holiday training that our managers gave to us. There's always a question, is there anyone else on your gift list that I could help you fulfilled today, right? Or hey, I see that you got these boots or I see that you got these jeans. They look so cute with blah. And there's always another recommendation made. Because the old theory in retail is you only sell what you show, right? So you show, show, show until they go, go, go. That's also an Ed Olvera quote from Nordstrom. So the more you can upsell and cross sell and make offers, the more people are, chances are they're going to take advantage of something and take it home with them, right? So, so that's if you're in store, if you're online, you guys, there's loads, there's boatloads of Upsell and Cross sell apps that do different things. There's Upsell Cross sell apps that go on the bottom of a product page or there's some that pop up before checkout or I was on the Macy's website yesterday. One of the many tabs that poor Easton closed on my computer. God dang it. But I did find I had two jackets in my cart. I had this beautiful. Sorry to sideline tangent, but you guys, I love fashion and I know you love fashion too. I got this beautiful red like double button double breasted jacket that like goes down to my knees because I've got this outdoor event thing coming up. And then I got a leopard like a moto jacket that looks kind of like a leather jacket but it's leopard fur but it has that like zipper detail. Super cute. Anyway, when I was on the site, the thing I love about the Macy's website and if you guys are ever looking for ways to optimize your website, I highly recommend going to a Macy's or to a Zappos or to a Nordstrom. You know, someone who has a huge IT team and take some tips away from there. One thing I appreciate is every time I looked at something, there was recommended products. You know, down below what I just viewed, there was a line of recommended products based on what I recently viewed. There was my own like previously viewed products and then more from this collection. So you have those options to do that on your website too. And the point is you never want your product page to become a dead end, right? You always want to give your customers another option of somewhere else to go because if they land on this mustard yellow top and they just don't love it, what's their option? To hit the back button, right? And maybe go into another collection. Or you give them recommended products that are upsells and cross sells and now they've got 10 options of things to click on to continue to shop with you think about that. I know it's. It's hard sometimes to see the forest through the trees when it comes to our product pages because we get so used to them. But go on some of those bigger box sites and see how easy it is to navigate those little things. You guys make such a huge difference in your bottom line and in your conversion rate. Alright, tip number what are we on last? Tip number eight. Number eight is this. Everyone has an opportunity this time of year to, to sell lots of things, right? Everybody. No matter if they practice Christmas or they celebrate Hanukkah or whatever it is they do this time of year, this is the time of Year everyone's buying something. Maybe it's because the weather's changing and they just need a warmer wardrobe. Everybody is shopping. So you guys, I came from a farm and ranch. My dad always said you make hay while the sun shines. The sun is shining, right? So how are we making hay? The point is today you guys, I invite you just to show up, right? Step outside of your comfort zone. If it's live videos that you feel intimidated by, if it's the number of emails you're sending a week, if it's text messages, if it's Facebook ads, if it's putting yourself in front of the camera on your insta stories, whatever it is you guys show up. Just be there for your customers. Show up. Step outside of your comfort zone this time of year because it's time to make hey while the sun shines and your customers are looking for you to do that. And I might also add this because I was thinking yesterday a lot about 2020 and the new year and vision and goals and if there's one hope I have for everybody next year, right, it is for more self love. I think sometimes we get intimidated to show up on live video or show up for our customer because we fear not being enough, right? Or not perfect enough or we don't do lives as good as Mindy or someone else down the street does. We take that out on ourselves. And because we are not confident, we are losing an opportunity not just in business, but to show our customers what it's like to be a confident woman that can show up and make it okay for that customer to show up in her own life and for herself too. You guys, I know that sometimes we feel like being in business is just about being in business, but it's not. You being in business is about being a light for your community and being a leader for your community and and showing other people how to show up for themselves the way you show up for you. So make hay while the sun is shining and show up for yourself and show up for your community and just be a leader. Build a relationship with them this time of year. Guys, I hope these tips have been helpful for you. If you have any other questions about your own holiday marketing, feel free to drop them in the comments. Like I said, if I don't mention them on the video, I will come back and personally respond to you the comment section. If there's anything the hub can help you with. We do have a free download that I'll drop the link below this video for you guys on. I think it's 12 additional holiday marketing tips that I think are different than the ones I just talked about. And there's all of these and many, many more inside of the holiday marketing masterclass, which is only available for a couple more days before this crazy, busy time of year ends. So thank you guys for watching. I'll jump into the comments and I'll answer some of your questions. All right, what do we got? I'm scrolling questions. Hey, Tori, thank you for your question, Ashley. We're in a weird place. We're mostly new arrivals right now because of a big, big sale we ran at the end of September. We're struggling with discounts because of that. I thought buy one, get one for Black Friday, but still a blanket sale, actually. So, Tori, great question. Congratulations. That means your inventory is turning and that you've got fresh goods. That's a good thing to have, right? So actually, Buy One, Get One is one of my favorite promotions for Black Friday. And can I let you in on a secret? At the Hub, rather than do Black Friday because you guys are all so busy with your own businesses, we're gonna do our Black Friday a week before, which I believe is the 22nd. It's gonna be pink Friday. And buy one get one's actually one of the promotions that we're gonna run. So you're still getting margin. You're not taking as much off of everything out of the store, but probably specific categories. You might do buy one, get one in a couple of key categories that you have in the store and then offer like, a gift with purchase. You might consider finding some swag. Like, there's a really cool vendor in the Hub, the no Melt Lip balm. Right. I think she can customize your logo on the lip balms. There's a million other things. I know there's a couple threads about, like, gift ideas or swag inside of the brands and vendors group, but find something that you can layer with that that's a good gift with purchase. Just an idea. All right, what other questions? How long should you do the bonus cash for, like a week or now through Christmas. So you could. There's not a right or wrong answer here. You could do it a couple different ways. Andrea. You could do it for different amounts. Like maybe I always think about it in figures of 10%. So spend 100, get 10. You could mix up the, like, make it variable. If there's one bonus cash amount where you do, like, double bonus cash over Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Whereas, like, all of December is A different type of bonus cash. So you could, you can definitely mix it up. There's not a right or wrong way. I've seen it done both ways. Does Shopify have tools for future store credit use? Oh, angel, that's a good question. And I'm not sure. I'm trying to think if you can do gift cards, but then in setting those up, they are for certain dates only. You could do a coupon code that is for that like future date only and then share the coupon code. You could do it on a little like you could do it electronically or you could do it on a flyer that you put inside of packages or inside of bags as well, where that coupon code is only available for future use. If anyone else has any other ideas, feel free to jump on Angels comment as well. What is the best way to list gift cards for the holidays? Kendra, what is the best way to list gift cards for the holidays? One thing, so a couple ideas here. Make sure that gift cards are their own separate product category that shows up in like your top line navigation bar. So right where you've got your featured collections and new arrivals and tops, bottoms, dresses, everything else. Make sure gift cards has its own category so that it's showing up in a standalone position on your navbar. And then the other thing I would recommend is that you put a line for gift cards in the footer your site. It would really be the only product category you would likely put in the footer of your site, but make sure it's there because gift cards are hard to find on most people's sites. To be honest, I've also seen some people where they make it a sticky product in their new arrival. So there's always a gift card showing up in new arrivals as well. But definitely make it a standalone line item for sure. All right. Any other questions? What's the best practice when you're restarting the holiday season with minimal cash flow? Cal, you know, I would say it's okay to have minimal cash flow. First of all, I want to normalize this for you. There's some people that go into massive loads of debt and seem to never get out of that. And that's, that's not always the best idea. So having minimal cash flow, that's okay. Make sure number one, that you're getting enough margin out of the items that you do have. Right. And make sure that your sales are maybe going back to that buy one, get one type thing or whatever you do have that's aged that you're marking those things down and trying to get as much margin as you can out of your new arrivals. Focus on things that are value ads, maybe versus percentages off if you're struggling with cash flow. So like free gift with purchase or bonus cash or percentage off gift cards or something like that versus taking percentages off of everything. I hope that helps. I would also think about too, like, how do you get more, how do you get more bang for your buck out of this season? So retargeting ads, right? Making sure those are set up so you get more people converting, adding more value. I just had something else pop in my head now. I lost my train of thought. Shoot, I will come back to that. It's just, I don't want you to get lost in the fact that you need to go into debt to make a holiday successful. But just be smarter about your cash. Oh, I know what I was gonna say. This is a good practice for anybody, right? Sometimes I think it's easy to go, gosh, I've got all this inventory. What is that worth to me? Right? Sometimes we need to do our numbers backwards and go, okay, hey, if I want to sell 10 grand, let's say, or 100 grand in the month of December, what do I actually need in order to do that, right? So how much inventory, if a quarter of my inventory turns right, how much inventory do I need to have on hand to actually make that work? Make sure that you've got those numbers in place. Because if you only have $2,000 worth of inventory, but you're wanting to sell $10,000 in sales, the math doesn't add up and it's not going to work for you. So make sure that you have worked your numbers backwards and you know what your goals are and they're realistic to the amount of inventory you have on hand. Knowing that no one's going to sell through 100% and have 100% blank shelves tomorrow, right? So be smart about working those backwards. I would also say look at that in your social media and in your marketing. How many new products did I post today if I sold through, you know, 50%? If I turned 50% of what I actually marketed today, what's my sales potential and where am I leaving money on the table, right? Do I actually have enough inventory on hand and do I need to go into debt and make a small investment to get it up there based on what I'm currently my sell through currently is? Hopefully that makes sense and kind of gives you a little bit of food for thought. Upscale children seems kind of Impossible for Black Friday. I feel like our margins aren't as big. Ronnie, good question. Gosh. Actually, I kind of look at it in the inverse, in the opposite. I think that Black Friday for children's is a huge opportunity. I know you may not have as much margin because I know usually in children's you're at what probably like a 2x markup. But if there's ever a time for a more, I'll say, like affordable customer to buy something that's upscale children's, it's Black Friday. Right. So how can you reach that? I don't want to say bargain shopper, because that's not what she is. How do you reach her? How do you also reach the grandparent? How do you also reach the first time mom? Because they all have a little bit different buying pattern and you can market to them each a little bit differently. So go back to how can you add value? Can you add. Your store is perfect to bring Santa to. Right. If you have a storefront, how can you add value into the new year? Is there some type of experience you can offer? Is it gift wrap? Is it a free toy with a purchase? Or what else can you do to continue to push that for Black Friday to those three main customer groups? Sammy, you're welcome. Thank you so much. Amanda, thank you for being here. All right, Ingo, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Where are you from? That is a beautiful name. I hope I didn't butcher it. A lot of customers have exchanges after Christmas. Does it hurt when we have bonus cash for January? No, actually, I think that's helpful. I think it's a great reason. Let me back up. I love the holidays because not only is it an opportunity to sell, but it's a customer acquisition season. So having an exchange, I think sometimes in boutique land, we take that as a negative. Truly, I think it's a positive because it's an opportunity to wow people with your customer service and to truly make them happy with their purchase. So much so that they're going to take a picture of what they're wearing and they're going to share it on social media and they're going to tell their friends about your business. So look at every exchange as an opportunity to wow your customer. So I think it's another way to get them in the store. And having bonus cash. Yes. Is that going to take away from your cash flow at the time? Possibly. But it's an opportunity for them to buy more than they would have bought in the first place. All right. Buy more, save more works well with upscale children. Buyers too. Amanda, thank you for that. Add in. Awesome. Alright, that's it. Those are all the questions I see. Do you guys have anything else for today? Anything else I can help with? Thank you for Julie. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Alright, eight tips, you guys. I hope these all helped you in one way or another. I wish you guys the best this holiday season. I hope your businesses are growing. Make hay while the sun is shining. You guys have an awesome day.