235: The Holiday Revenue Roadmap: 5 Steps to Your Most Profitable Q4 Yet

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there friend Destiny here and welcome back to the Creators MBA Podcast. And today I have a question for you. When you think about the holiday season in your business, do you get excited about the possibilities? Or maybe you get a little bit panicky, wondering if you'll be scrambling at the last minute again this year? And here's what I know. Every November and December, I hear from business owners who are rushing around to throw together last minute promotions. They're stressed out, they're second guessing their offers and they're basically flying by the seat of their pants. And then there are others. The ones who start planning in October. The ones who already know exactly what they're promoting, when the emails are going out and what offers they're making. And those business owners, November and December are their strongest months of the entire year. And the best part is they're not scrambling at the last minute. They are sitting back eating turkey with their family, watching those Hallmark movies and actually enjoying their holidays while those sales are coming in. And that's the difference between scrambling and strategizing. And today I'm going to be giving you a holiday revenue roadmap. And this is going to be your checklist for Q4 planning so that you can head into the holiday season confident, prepared and profitable. And before we get into all of that, I really want to just zoom out for a second. Q4 is a big deal for many businesses. 30 to 40% of their annual revenue happens in October through December. Your audience is primed to buy. They are shopping for gifts. They are looking for tools to make their business and their holidays easier. And as we head into the new year, they are motivated to invest in themselves. But here's the catch. If you wait until mid November to figure this out in terms of what you're going to be doing to serve them, that's going to be too late. Black Friday will sneak up on you. You won't have your offers prepared and you're going to miss the window. And that's why inside of the Creators MBA lab, we're going to be doing something very special the first week in October and it's going to be called the Holiday Revenue System. I want you to think of it like A co working Sprint meets strategy workshop. You're going to sit down with me. You're going to map out your campaigns, you're going to decide on your offers, and you're going to leave with a calendar you can actually implement. There's going to be no guessing and no scrambling at the last minute. Now, more on that later. But I wanted you to know that if you have ever felt behind in past years, this is going to be your chance to get ahead of everything. Okay, so now let's get into all the good stuff. And I'm going to be giving you five steps. And if you work through these in order to, you're going to be head of 90% of the business owners out there. So step one, the first thing you need to do, you need to clarify your offers. So what are you going to be actually selling this holiday season? Is it some digital products, a bundle, a membership, maybe even a coaching program or a course? The biggest mistake I see a lot of people making is waiting until November to decide what they're actually going to promote. So you are going to decide now. And I want you to think about this strategically. Not everything needs to be discounted. In fact, some of your products may work better with stacking on bonuses. So this is where you would add in something special or something seasonal or maybe something that is time limited instead of slashing your prices. So I want you to ask yourself which offers make the most sense for my audience right now and which ones tie into holiday things? Maybe like either planning or fresh starts or gifting. All of those would make really good offers this holiday season. Step two, I want you to map out your campaigns. So once you know the offers, you need to decide when they are being promoted. So you're going to anchor your calendar around these big milestones. A couple examples here, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, right? That's the super bowl of online sales. You can also do something like early December for people buying gifts. You could do something at the end of December, in early January for that kind of fresh start, New year energy. And between those anchors, you can even sprinkle in smaller flash sales or holiday bundles or even bonus drops. The key here is spacing these out. Don't just run one giant sale and call it done because you can do these throughout the whole season. So I want you to think about momentum. How can you build excitement across the entire November and December holiday season? Now step three, I want you to plan out your content. So now that you know the offers and your timing, you're going to Back it up with content. So this means like writing your email sequences, your early access emails, your cart open and close emails, your last call reminders. It might even mean prepping your social media posts and stories so that they align with what's happening in your email. And I don't want you to forget, you can definitely repurpose content here so you can create a holiday gift guide. We have a template for that in the hello Content Shop. If you want to look at that, you can share behind the scenes of your prep. You can show your audience how you are using your own product to get ready for the holiday season. I just want you to know this doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to be consistent. And then in step four, you're going to prep your tech. So this is the unsexy part, right? But it definitely matters here. So you need to update your checkout pages, create your discount codes, test your timers. If you have timers on sales pages, you're going to double check that your product descriptions are up to date. The last thing you want is to have hundreds of people clicking on your Black Friday offer only to hit a broken checkout link. So make sure you are testing everything. So take an afternoon in October and make sure the tech side of things is all buttoned up. In step five, you're going to optimize your timing and here's the roadmap that you could look into right November 1st through the 15th, think about warming up your audience. You can talk about what's coming. You can share value, you can build anticipation like November 25th through December the second, that is the Black Friday through Cyber Monday. So you're going to go big there. That's your main event. And then maybe in December 3rd through the 20th, you can think about like holiday campaigns, giftable offers, seasonal bundles, or really just a second chance for those who may have missed Black Friday with the you could just still offer that again and maybe change the discount a little bit. And then December 26th through January 2nd, that's when you can think about Friday, Fresh start promotions, New Year. That's when people are thinking about goals, habits and investing in themselves. And if you map this out now, you're always going to know what's coming next. Now let me just say this. You don't need 20 different campaigns. You just need the right ones executed well. And if you just want to do one, that is perfectly fine. But planning right now frees up December for creativity, family time and actually enjoying that holiday season while your revenue keeps rolling in. And that, my friend, is the power of a holiday revenue system.