Matt: I can't stand the holidays. But not like, in general? Like, I like the holidays with my family and my friends. I hate holiday planning. Right? So for us, the holidays is like... honestly, it's terrible. I'm not going to use the words we use around here, but. Because the planning is insane. So I hate the holidays, but I hate the thought of losing money or revenue even more.

[0:46] – Episode Intro

Matt: So. We're gonna do an episode to help people sell more during the holidays.

Lauren: I think that's all we can do, honestly.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Because we're, I mean. The collective groan that goes up among the team in July. And to everybody listening, I'm genuinely not exaggerating about that. We start talking about holiday prep and holiday planning in July. So the fact that this, if you're listening to this when this episode comes out, late September, and you're like, oh my God, why are we talking about holiday now? Trust, we've been talking about it for two months already. But there's a reason for that. And, and it's really, you know? It's, it's really important. For a lot of creators and a lot of entrepreneurs, this is the make or break season.

Matt: For some creators, it maybe doesn't have quite as large of an impact, but that doesn't mean they still shouldn't... you know. Especially if they're selling direct, they still should optimize their store or think about, you know, alternate or alternative products. You know, in June, I wouldn't expect somebody like Justin Moore to think about doing a calendar.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: He wouldn't. But if Justin came out with a really cool calendar as a cool holiday gift you could buy, you know, friends or coworkers or things like that, and had helpful things from his book or whatever, right?

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Like, he's a character. If he just had pictures of all the funny costumes and things that he's worn over the last year, he would sell tons of those things.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: So Justin, if you're listening, this is for you. So, yeah, I don't think it's... I think there's a lot of creators where maybe Q4 or holidays isn't super important to the business. But I do think for a lot of creators and authors, Q4 is important to their business. And even for businesses like ours, it does make up a very large percentage of your annual revenue, so you really need to nail it. Which is why we spend so much time on planning and put ourselves through the yearly litany of torture to make sure it comes off right.

Lauren: Accurate. Accurate for sure. But I do think that even, even in the case of people that are maybe not... it's not the end all be all for them. I think that the, the holiday season and we're talking, you know, Q4 in general, pretty much. You know, October through the end of the year.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: This is the, this is a kind of unique time of year compared to the rest of the year, in that this is a season where people are already primed to spend money. Normally throughout the year you are fighting a little bit of an uphill battle of having to convince people why they should spend money in the first place and why they should spend that money on your product in particular.

Matt: Not me. I make terrible financial decisions.

Lauren: I mean, same.

Matt: Yearly.

Lauren: Same.

Matt: All year long.

Lauren: It's fine. We're doing great.

Matt: That is the definition of a Disney Adult.

Lauren: Absolutely it is.

Matt: Somebody who makes terrible financial decisions.

Lauren: It's not a terrible financial decision. It's investing in my mental health and emotional well-being.

Matt: I like that.

Lauren: I can find a new way to justify this every single day.

Matt: Put that on a t-shirt.

Lauren: I absolutely should. But, you know, this is the time of year that people are actually actively seeking

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: things to spend money on. So really the the framework shifts to you just making sure that your business, your brand, your products, whatever it is, are the thing that they see when they are seeking out gift ideas and purchase possibilities.

Matt: Right. So we're going to talk through kind of how to prep yourself and your store, your marketing efforts, whatever it is that's going to help you navigate Q4 holiday season and hopefully put a little extra money in your bank account and maybe some new clients on the back end come January February March. What we're not going to do is lay out some sort of promise, hollow at best, that if you do these things you're guaranteed to sell thousands of books.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So. We want to be very clear about that.

Lauren: Right. Right. For sure. This is also the kind of episode that's going to be more of like a high level overview of: here are all the things that you need to think about, that you should be thinking about. This is not, it's not possible. We could sit here for eight hours and do a step by step breakdown, and Matt would himself and me before we ever got that far.

Matt: I don’t think you can say that.

Lauren: I don't think I can say that either, I’m gonna have to cut that.

Matt: You might have to edit that. Might be the first time you have to beep something.

Lauren: No, I have.

Matt: Have you ever done a beep? Like a censor?

Lauren: I have. I think I've done two.

Matt: Really?

Lauren: And they were mostly for, for comedic value.

Matt: Nonetheless, your statement was correct.

Lauren: But, but yeah, no no. Somebody, somebody would not be leaving this room, by the – if I made Matt sit here for eight hours. So this is going to be kind of a high level overview. And I am actually going to link in the show notes a breakdown of other resources that are available by topic in this episode. So anything that you need to click further into go check out the show notes. We’ll have a ton of stuff in there to help you out.

Matt: We'll kind of break it down into to roughly six sort of areas or buckets or however you want to look at it. The first is going to be trying to figure out or know what you're trying to accomplish this holiday season. And that might be something as simple as like, I just want to sell a ton of books. That's fine. But you need to know what you're, what you're trying to, to get out of this holiday season. And it might be a number of things, but you should have at least one specific thing you're trying to accomplish.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: You need to get your products holiday ready, to a degree. Like, for some, there's not much you would really need to do, and for others, you might need to do a little dusting off and heavy lifting and polishing. You need to get your storefront holiday ready. So if you're selling direct, which most of you should be, there are some things that you should probably do. At the very least, you know, there needs to be some added language around shipping times and things like that. But there's definitely plenty more than that you can do to get ready. Again, along those same lines. From a customer support aspect you're definitely going to want to add language around, you know, potential delays in shipping or, you know, dates where they absolutely should probably get their order in if they want to get this to that person on time for Christmas, or to themselves, or for whatever holiday they're, they're doing. Marketing plan is really important. It's gonna be slightly different than maybe the marketing plan you follow throughout the rest of the year. Will definitely be some things that you want to do, or even create a small micro marketing plan just for, for the holidays. And then hopefully, you know, we'll be able to lay out some actionable items that you can, you can start putting in place today.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Even though it's only September.

Lauren: I mean, if you're listening to it when it comes out. I will actually, though, to that point, I wanna give just two disclaimers at the top. Yes, a lot of those probably did sound like things that were specifically if you are selling direct, and that is true, but there are definitely some, some good things that you should do in here, even if you're not selling direct. So if you want to just skim through some of the sections there, there's still definitely some value in there.

Matt: Yeah, the first one being if you're not selling direct to start selling direct.

Lauren: Well, that too. Which is easier to do now than ever before, you just use the Lulu Direct Buy Button. But also, even if you are not listening to this when this episode actually comes out, a lot of the things that are in here are valuable things to do at any time of year. Just maybe if you're like, hey, I'm getting ready for a new campaign coming up. Or I just want to like, church up my content or my store or a little bit.

Matt: Church up?

Lauren: I – Chelsea just – I just opened my mouth and Chelsea came out. That was

Matt: That does sound like a very Chelsea thing you just said.

Lauren: That was a Chelsea-ism. I've never heard anyone else say it before, and I don't know how that just happened.

Matt: The funny thing is, I instantly knew what you meant.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: That's...

Matt: Gotcha.

Lauren: Shout out to Chelsea.

Matt: Church it up Chelsea.

[9:01] – Know Your Campaign Goals

Lauren: Alright. So I think the first, the first and kind of most important thing that we're going to talk about here is know what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Which also probably seems really stupid and really obvious because like duh, it's book sales, right? Like, obviously that's, that's the point.

Matt: Yeah, or sales in general.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: We’re, we're gonna assume, obviously, if you're listening to this, that it's book sales, but a lot of people have other things in their stores too, or will be adding other products. But yes, we're going to assume it's, it's sales, and primarily books.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But I still think it's important to kind of define for your own intent, for your own goals, specifically what you mean by that. So, you know, is your goal the number? Like, you want to max out the number of books you've possibly sold, even if it means like a lower overall profit. Maybe you're trying to get through a milestone number of books sold or get through an offset print run that you're trying to like, you know, burn through that inventory ahead of time. That is a different goal than book sales. where you're maximizing your revenue and you're okay with maybe selling a lower number of books if you're maximizing the total profit off of each book.

Matt: Per unit profit, yeah.

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. Or even something like is there one specific title that you're hoping to really put all your focus on promoting this title or this new product or whatever it is? Or are you trying in general to see, you don't really care where

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: the sales are as long as you are seeing sales on your product line. So I think that's, you know, if you're, if you're just saying my goal is to sell books or my goal is to sell whatever from my book store... Yeah. But what else? So.

Matt: Yeah. I think the next one that's really important is sort of along the same lines. Do you have specific customer related goals? For a lot of people Q4 holidays is a great time to find a new audience, new customers. For others, not so much. It takes too much. And so they're better off just kind of optimizing their existing customer list and going out with something either new or, you know, something that is related to the holidays in specific terms. Maybe, you know, when we talk about churching up your content, you've added some new stuff in, so you've got a new revision to the existing product, and you're going to go out to your existing customer base because they already exist. And they're the easiest ones to talk to, and they’d probably find the most value in it, so. Understanding are you, are you looking for new audiences, are you servicing existing, a little of both? And, and that's where the marketing plan piece later, that we're going to talk about, is really important. Because again, Q4 can be a good time to find new audience, but it can also be a really hard time.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So really know, like, for your existing audience and your existing customer base, people have already bought your book or books. What do you actually have to offer them? I think that's super important. I think people sometimes really gloss over that, So.

Lauren: Yeah. No, I do think that's really important. If you are... I mean, this is – again, this is going to inform the, the rest of the efforts that you're going to make here. If you are trying to reengage past customers then you have to have something new to offer them. Whether that's a brand new product or a holiday edition or whatever. Or you have to, you know, if your goal is to get former customers to buy your products as a gift for somebody else, how can you convince them to do that, entice them to do that? Maybe your goal is just, again, cast a really wide net and you're just trying to sell as many books as possible, and you don't care if those people never come back ever again. That's fine. That's a fine goal to have. But then you're still going to approach this differently than if you are reaching out to existing customers. Or reaching out maybe to people that have shown interest before but didn't make the purchase then, now is the time for them to do it.

Matt: Yeah. Examples of that would be like, you know, again, we talked about the potential to do cover variations or revisions to your content, but I think more popular would be things like creating gifting bundles. So create a bundle of five copies of a particular book, you know, obviously with a discount to it. That's a great incentive for somebody who, you know, again, would probably want to gift a few copies of the book to, to friends or family or colleagues. You could do other things, again, like creating other new products, complimentary products, stuff like that. But the one that I've seen the most often that I think is really cool are those gifting bundles.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So bundle of five, bundle of ten, whatever that might be, with a nice discount attached to it.

Lauren: You know what actually would be really cool? I just thought about this. A, a gifting bundle that even if it wasn't discounted, you know, especially if you're, you're trying to achieve the goal of reaching out to, reengaging, and maybe even rewarding past customers. A gifting bundle that has some kind of exclusive content for them in it. So it's like you're... buy three copies, like buy this bundle that has three copies of my book in it that you can give to friends, family, whatever, and included in there will be something for you. Like a short story that is never before, and you can only get it this way, or a really cool notebook or journal or something, that is something for you to keep. I would love that.

Matt: Yeah, I think

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: that’s really cool. If you're an API user with Lulu, or you already know you have the ability to customize and personalize every single order.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: So you could do really cool stuff there as well, along those same lines. Yeah, I just think there's a ton of stuff that you could do. Now, you, you touched on something that I wanted to get to. A lot of people are very quick to discount for the holidays.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: A lot of people don't, though, and that's okay too. Or some people will mark up in order to mark down.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Not everybody's looking for a discount. You know sometimes they’re, again, just the idea that this is something different and cool is enough to drive the sale. You don't necessarily need to discount, you know? And you can always play around with that too. So I think this idea that you have to discount everything at the holidays, I think is a terrible sort of philosophy or strategy. I think there are things where you wouldn't have to discount it.

Lauren: Yeah, I think there's, I think there are a lot of ways... First of all, I think there are a lot of ways that you can entice shoppers to buy from you that don't involve discounting. Especially around this time of year. But I also... I don't want to say selfish shopping. I'm accusing myself of this, and that's not the right phrasing. But I will look for deals, especially around the holiday season, that are a little bit of something for everybody. Something like, you know, spend $75 and get a free gift with purchase. I'll, I'll be like cool, let me buy enough gifts here to hit $75. And then that free gift with purchase is for me.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So one for you, one for me. That's how I holiday shop all the time. And that's not necessarily discounting anything. That's an incentive that does not involve a discount.

Matt: Well, you guys all heard it. This how you get Lauren to buy stuff from you.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Give her something for free.

Lauren: Yeah. Absolutely. Just, you know, make sure that before you dig into the rest of the content in this episode, the rest of the strategizing in this episode, you know what your goals are. Because having those goals clearly defined is going to inform how you plan out the rest of this stuff.

Matt: Yeah. And again, that's probably the easier part of all of this, is just understanding what are my sales goals and what are my goals as it pertains to, you know, existing customers versus new ones and how I want to approach that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You know, again. Don't get caught up in the discounting trap. Like, you know, do, do what's best for you.

Lauren: Yeah.

[17:22] – Get Your Products Holiday Ready

Matt: So along those lines, you know, we've already touched on it several times, getting your products holiday ready. This could mean different things to different people. But at the very least, you know, review what you currently have as a product lineup. Whether it's one book and that's the one book you've been selling all year, or it's multiple books, or multiple products and a book. Review them, make sure everything still seems relevant. Again, if there are ways where you can, and if it's pertinent, church it up. Make it holiday specific, if that helps. But again, at the very least, just make sure everything looks good. That, you know, end to end testing always helps. Making sure that everything still works properly with your store, how orders are processed, things like that. Make sure you are very much in the know with your vendors. Your print-on-demand vendors and anybody else you're using, whether that's Lulu or anybody else for that matter. We'll start publishing our timelines, our production timelines, as does everybody else. If you use Printful or Printify for, you know, t-shirts and hats and stuff like that or, you know, any of those other vendors and providers. They will also start publishing their holiday deadlines. You know, whether or not there's price changes, things like that. So just making sure that your products are ready to go and that you're not going to get hit with any surprises is super important.

Lauren: Yeah, I think that it is something that... I don't want people to hear get your products holiday ready and immediately assume that we're talking about like, revisions. Go in there and, you know, put out a second edition of your book or whatever, blah - it could it could be as simple as, you know, do a, a test run as a customer and order a copy of your book, not directly from Lulu, but from the different retailers.

Matt: Well, it also doesn't mean using Canva to put a Santa Claus hat on every, every thumbnail and every picture.

Lauren: Absolutely. It does not. But you know, just knowing

Matt: Cause I've seen that.

Lauren: Fair. Just doing the, the general checklist of, you know, is, is everyone, has anyone changed anything? Has all of a sudden Amazon has suddenly switched to 40 pound paper instead of 50 pound paper, and now every copy of my book that prints through Amazon the spine is messed up on? That is something that maybe you should be, like, now is the time. If you have not been checking on your products recently, just make sure everything looks good. If there was something, if someone told you recently that there was a major typo in the first chapter of your book and you've been meaning to update it, now's the time to go do that. You know? What, whatever that is. It doesn't have to be a massive overhaul. Just, just a quick, you know, just a quick, quick, skim through and say everything look good? Everything, like, everything is what I want it to be. Even something as simple as, like, maybe you do put out a calendar every year, and for whatever reason, you keep that calendar up. Like, I know a lot of creators that do like academic year calendars instead of the like, you know, January to December calendar. And that's great. But you do want to make sure at a certain point that you pull down last year's calendar so that you don't have confused customers

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: buying that. Because people don't read, people aren't going to look at it and see 2027 or 2026 on there. So, you know, just a simple going through your products and making sure that everything is, is looking good and looking ready to go.

Matt: This is also a good time to think about adding a new product.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Matt: And again, you know, the easiest one is always something like a calendar. It's a great gift, people give... I'm still amazed every year when we look at the number of calendars sold in Q4, it's just crazy, like. But you know, when you made that calendar for Publish & Prosper last year, it was actually pretty cool. I was like oh, this is... so I can see how people really get caught up in it. So again, you know, this is a good time to think about, like, if you've never offered alternate products or complimentary products to your books, or your book singular, this is a great time to experiment with that. And it's, it virtually cost you nothing, for the most part, to do it. Right? Especially something like a calendar. It's actually really easy to do that. So this is a good time to do that, but not go overboard.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Don't make six calendars and two journals and three notebooks and... maybe try one tasteful new product.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And run it for Q4 and see what happens. At the very least it’s some extra revenue that comes in and something cool your, your fans and existing customer base will enjoy. You know, and after that, if you decide you don't want to keep running it, you pull it. And maybe it's just something you do yearly around the holidays.

Lauren: This is a great time of year to experiment with low lift products.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Not – and, and I want to caution you against like not... by low lift, I don't mean cheap or half assed junk. Like that's, you know, there's a fine line. But if there is something that you've been toying with, like maybe I will try like, one run of stickers. Or maybe I will try like, adding art prints of all of my covers instead of just, or bookmarks, or something like that. Whatever it is.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: This is the time of year to try that. And then, you know, if it doesn't work out, it's just really easy in January to be like oh, that was a limited time run. Sorry guys.

Matt: Yeah it's true. Yeah.

Lauren: So yeah. So definitely think about that. But also do think about timing. Like do think, you know if it's, now is not the time to spend four weeks perfecting a holiday special edition gift edition of your book that you're going to spend more time like, making it, making the product itself and, and less time actually promoting it, especially when you’re in crunch time.

Matt: Yeah for sure.

[23:25] – Get Your Storefront Holiday Ready

Lauren: Hand in hand with that. With the, with the product, and we did start to touch on these things a little bit, is getting your store holiday ready.

Matt: Or wherever you're selling from. Like if you're using the Direct Buy Button, for example, you might not have a storefront, you may be selling from your newsletter or your social media channel. But wherever it is that you're selling from, you know, ideally a storefront, but. This is what we're talking about now.

Lauren: Yes. And I would actually even say, even if you're not selling direct, there are still some things in here that I would, I would bucket under this category that I think are relevant, because one of the things that I would say in here is, is to think about your marketing copy. And that is something that even if you are just selling through third party retailers or global distribution or something, you might still want to update your book’s cover copy, your description, whatever it is, or your various product descriptions around this time of year.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So there are some storefront things that you can do. What I don't mean, necessarily, and Matt’s already said this, is to do a massive holiday-themed overlay on your website.

Matt: There's only one place that pulls that off well, and gets carte blanche to do that every year, and that is...

Lauren: Disneyland. And the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay that is Nightmare Before Christmas.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: I don't even like Nightmare Before Christmas. And that is still probably the coolest ride overlay that I've ever seen in my life. You... surely you know this.

Matt: I don't know this.

Lauren: This episode’s about to turn into a whole new kind of holiday nightmare.

Matt: Yeah, I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that. We're just gonna move on.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Wow.

Lauren: Okay. There are some fun little things that you could do if you really wanted to. But maybe, maybe your, your website is not the place to do holiday theming. Maybe you update your Instagram profile picture to be your logo with a Santa hat on it, if you really have to, like, do some kind of holiday branding. But your store itself is not the place that I would do that.

Matt: Well, I think to go back to where you originally going with all of this, before you really went sideways and tried to goad me into a fight on air. Look at your copy specifically.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So you may not go around and add a bunch of Santa Claus hats to all your images or whatever, like. And please don't. But your copy... Because your customer base, their intentions may shift as to why they're purchasing. And so you want to speak to that and you really want to talk to the idea or speak to the idea that your content, your products, whatever it is you're selling, makes a great gift for somebody. And why does it make a great gift for somebody. For that person in your life that's maybe struggling with this thing or that thing, my book is perfect for that. Or, you know, if it's fiction or whatever, like, you know. For all of the, the, the other horror lovers in your life, you know, my book is perfect for them, or whatever that might be. So at the very least I would go through and I would update some of the copy to really speak to the idea of your content making a great gift for somebody. And then, of course, you know, when January rolls around, you go back through and you update the copy back to the way that it was.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But at a minimum I think that's, that's what we're talking about here. And then you can actually take that much further, depending on what types of product you sell. And you know just how much you want to get into the holiday spirit.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. This is

Matt: Which clearly you don't, but.

Lauren: I do think that that's the most important part. Is making sure that your website is clearly defined – or I'm sorry, not your website. Your products are clearly defined and, and clearly valuable as gifts or you're, you're presenting the value as gifts to people that are not your primary audience. Because this is the time of year the people are shopping for gifts.

Matt: everybody's trying to sell more books and products this time of the year. And everybody's out there trying to find that perfect gift for somebody or for several people. So this is why we say pay attention to some of these things. You know, again, updating that copy. Making sure that if you don't have a really good image of the product or the book or the thumbnail of your book cover, make sure you get one loaded, or you take a couple extra. There was a study done last year products with more than one image tended to sell better than products with only one image or no image.

Lauren: Oh I, I believe that a hundred percent.

Matt: So, you know, even if it's a book, having a couple of different images, like. I think psychologically we're just drawn to that. And we feel like it somehow gives that product more validity, right? So something as simple as adding an extra picture or two of the product itself, whether it's a book or t-shirt or a hat or whatever that might be. If you don't already have social proof on your site, you know, some testimonials or things like that from, you know, peers or customers or fans or readers, get those up there. Now's the time for that little bit of extra like, push that a potential buyer might need to get them to throw that in the cart and make that purchase. So I think all of those things are what we're talking about. Many of you already know what we're talking about and feel that pain. There probably things you've been wanting to do all year and you just been putting it off and put it off. Now's the time to do it. Just dedicate a little bit of time, an hour or two in one day, and just go through and make these changes. Or these updates, I should say.

Lauren: Absolutely. I, that's, I have no doubt about that survey. I believe that entirely. And that is – I mean, think about yourself as a consumer. Put yourself in consumer shoes. Think about the things that you do when you're shopping online. I know for me, I was going through this recently, I absolutely hate hats that have vel-, like the the adjustable strap in the back is Velcro. I will not wear, I don't care.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Like, I will not, I will – It could be the coolest hat I've ever seen. And if I turn it around and it's a Velcro adjustable, I will not buy it. And I was shopping like, specifically online recently for a hat, and I was shocked by the number of hats that didn't, did not explain, it didn't have a photo of the back of the hat. And I wouldn't – like, there were hats that could have been exactly what I was looking for, but because I could not confirm for myself that they weren't Velcro, I didn't buy them. So think about yourself. Think about, you know, if you're adding a notebook or a planner or journal, would you buy a notebook that you couldn't see the interior pages of? Or that you didn't see in the description that it clearly says lined pages, dot grid pages. Like, at the very least, you need to know what's going on inside that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So so think about that. Think about what you're moving forward with. And, and make sure it's as obvious as possible to the people that are coming to your website to hopefully buy your products.

Matt: Yeah.

[30:38] – Proactively Provide Customer Support

Matt: The next one is customer support. A lot of people probably don't think about this throughout the year, at least not as a, as a category that you would need to put some extra attention towards. You might get one or two inquiries throughout the year, somebody’s book got lost in transit or something like that. But this is the time where, you know, obviously, if you're generating more book sales or product sales, there is the potential for more inquiries from your customers, things could go wrong. The shipping carriers are notoriously...busy. To put it nicely.

Lauren: Such a nice way to say it.

Matt: And, you know, there is an uptick in lost packages damaged packages, you know, tracking that's inaccurate, things like that. So, you know, getting ahead of that to save yourself a little bit of trouble and time answering emails and things is really smart. So, you know, thinking about, you know, if I was a customer during this time of the year, what might be some of the things I would be asking? Do my hats have Velcro, you know, sizing enclosures in the back or not? If you don't have an FAQs page, this is a good time to create one. It's a great place to point people to. It saves a lot of time. And you can use it to answer a lot of the questions. Especially if you utilize print-on-demand production, FAQs is a great place to answer the question how long is it going to take to get my order? Well it takes anywhere from, you know, two to five days to print the book, and then shipping’s gonna depend on what you chose. If you chose ground, you know. It's a really good way to get ahead of all that stuff and maybe save yourself some, some frustration and save your customers and fans frustrations.

Lauren: We've actually done an entire episode on this, and I will make sure that it's linked in the show notes, where we like, really dove into a bunch of different ways that you can proactively and then I guess retroactively, I don't know, whatever, provide customer support for your, your direct store. But, I mean, this is, just to think about like the proactive efforts that you can make here. Everything that Matt just said, even the things like making sure that your product descriptions are accurate

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: adding a few extra photos. Those are all ways that you are, you know, mitigating the number of, of inquiries that you're gonna get. Hopefully. You're weeding out at least like the super, super high level ones. But if you are in a position where you think that there’s gonna be, like an influx in customer requests. If you don't already have very clear guidelines on your website for: this is how you contact me, expect a response in X window of time. You know, if you reach out to me here, I'm not going to see that. I'm not going to respond to you. So I'm putting it out there right now in the world. Like, I do not answer Instagram DMs, but if you email me here, I will guarantee you that I get back to you in 48 hours or less.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Like that’s – This is the time of year to make sure that you have that very clearly in place. Because there will be an increase in demand if you're, you're doing the rest of this stuff right. But also there will be an increase in demand on your time. The last thing that you want to do is successfully execute a holiday sales campaign and then like, have to divert all your, all of your free time and attention to answering customer support requests. So, you know, just make sure you're proactive about that. I will link in the show notes, for sure, the the episode that we did, which also had some other different resources within it too. But, you know, think, again, think about how you approach the holiday season. Even something as simple as like... like if your package goes missing, you have to reach out to, like the customer has to reach out to the shipping provider and not you. Like there's not really anything you can do. But maybe you have something on your website that's like hey, all of our products are shipped through FedEx. Here is a link to FedEx Customer Support where you can submit your support inquiries. So that they don't have to go out and now track down that information for how to do that.

Matt: Yeah, that's always a tough one. But absolutely, that would make things a lot easier and more helpful.

Lauren: I'd be very appreciative of that. If someone help me out with like here, here's how you – like I can't help you with that, but here's, here's the first step

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: in getting that done for you.

Matt: I've definitely been in that situation before and it sucks.

Lauren: Yeah, it's not great.

[35:09] – Build a Realistic Holiday Marketing Plan

Matt: Okay, so on to a holiday specific marketing plan.

Lauren: Yes. Which this is going to be the most high level overview possible. Because obviously this is a huge, huge part of this. So we we can't dive into the, the nitty gritty of it. But it is also something that we can't dive into the specifics of it because it's going to vary based on what your goals are that we talked about in that first section of this. What you answered when you were defining what your sales goals were, what your customer goals were, or whatever. Your marketing plan is going to vary based on that.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren: So instead we wanted to just kind of give like a high level, here's what you should think about as you're building this. And I think that a really, really important part of this that I want to emphasize is the, the actual title of this section is: Build A Holiday Marketing Plan That You Can Actually Execute. And I think that last part is a big deal. Because it’s very easy to go down

Matt: Yeah, because it's intentionally short.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So we're gonna give you like, basically five things. And they're, you know, essentially these are questions that you'll answer, but it will inform kind of how you, you approach your marketing strategy for the holidays. And it's, it's meant to be easier and quick and fast, because it's meant to be for this very specific time of the year. So.

Lauren: And meant to be doable.

Matt: Exactly. Yeah.

Lauren: And that's the point.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: This is not, this is a thing that's really easy to bite off more than you can chew, and think that like, you have to do everything everywhere all at once. You don't. And, and you're going to wind up dropping the ball if you try to do that.

Matt: It's a little bit of sales and marketing combined. So the

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: first thing is offer, right? What's your offer. What do you, what are you wanting them to purchase? Is it a single product? Maybe you only have one book, or whatever that might be. Or is it something that you're really highlighting for the holidays, like a bundle? Or something completely different? But what are you asking them to buy? What is your, your highlighted sort of product or products? And really making sure when we talked earlier about copy and things like that, like why should they buy that from you? You know what I mean? Like, what's that going to do for the person that they're gifting it to? How's that going to impact their life? What's that gonna... So, what is your offer? Right?

Lauren: Yep. Next thing, which we've already talked about, is your audience. Who is the target of your marketing campaign?

Matt: And you can't say everybody.

Lauren: Obviously you can't say everybody. But this is what we were talking about when we were talking about, are you retargeting existing customers? Are you trying to reach new customers? You know, that's going to be a big difference between are you if you're retargeting existing customers and you're going to focus a lot of your efforts on your email subscribers, your social media followers, past customers, things like that. If you're trying to reach new customers, then you want to focus a lot of your efforts on maybe lookalike audiences, or reaching cold audiences or paid ads or something like that, that are going specifically to people who aren't already in your ecosystem. So very important to answer that question.

Matt: Yeah. But again, if you already have a customer base, if you've already been selling direct and you've got segmented lists of purchasers and buyers based on things they purchased when they purchased it, and an email list of people who haven't purchased from you yet, but they're still in your email list. Those are very distinct segments that you can talk to differently and encourage them to purchase in different ways. So.

Lauren: Absolutely. I would, you know, not to deviate too much, but this is, this is a guideline for, for one campaign. You can run multiple at the same time. And, and that actually might make it easier for you if, if you are thinking, well, I want to do... I want to reach three different audiences, I want to reach a new audience, and I want to retarget existing audiences, and I want to reach out to people that had been – interacted with me before but didn't make a purchase in the past. Okay. You can you can absolutely do that. But do three segmented campaigns for those three very different audiences and approach them differently.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And that actually, while it sounds like you're doing extra work, it actually will probably be a lot easier for you to narrow focus and do those differently.

Matt: Yeah. Next, you know, what channels are you going to use for this? We’re talking social media. We're talking email. We're talking about, you know, a combination of those things, paid ads versus organic stuff. Maybe you're going to do some collaborative marketing, you know, with some other creators or authors or some brands or something along those lines. Maybe you've already got some really good relationships built up where you can do that. You need to figure out what those channels will be and set a budget for yourself, if there's going to be a paid aspect of that. But also set a budget for your time. Like how much time you're going to spend doing this stuff. We always say this and we'll say it now, too. It's it's really stupid to try and cover all channels. Like, it just never works. I don't care who you are, how much you're spending it's, it’s – there's always going to be one or two, maybe three channels where you're gonna have more success by keeping it limited to those. Usually the channels that you're most comfortable operating on personally, I think, are the ones that you have the most success on, but. Just pick a couple, really focus on those. Again, figure out what is the offer. Who are you talking to? Find the channel that makes the most sense for that, and move forward there.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You're also going to want to keep your calendar in mind, just like any other launch or product campaign that we've talked about. You, you cannot just, you know, launch it whenever and end it whenever. Especially something like this that has a deadline that doesn't just exist in your brain, but as an actual legitimate deadline that exists in other people's calendars as well. So, you know, make sure that you know, if you're, if you're running a specific promo, make sure that you know when your start date is for that, when your end date is for that. Make sure that you know then, I mean, that's where I would start, honestly, is know your, your promo start date, your promo end date, and then know what kind of marketing you want to do around those things. Are you announcing, are you teasing the promo before it launches, or are you just going to start right away with the promo? If you

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: like, if not, you know, what are you going to do to? Is it going out around a specific time? Are you, are you timing the launch of your holiday sales marketing with, you know, Halloween was yesterday and now it's, now it's the holiday season, let's go. Start, start getting ahead on your, on your Christmas shopping. Or maybe you're waiting until Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever it is. But then you also need to know things like your order deadlines. What is the absolute last day that your customers can order from you? What is the last day that you can order from us, or whoever else.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: If you wanted to do some last minute fulfillment, you know, make sure that you're communicating that. Not just for you, but you're communicating it to everybody else. And also, on top of all that, something to keep in the back of your mind is your post- your, your post-purchase follow up. You know, maybe when the, when the promo ends is the time to reach out to everybody that, that interacted with your promo over the time and say hey, you know, thanks for making this a great holiday season.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Thanks for your purchase. If you have any issues, let me know. Or maybe if you bought a gift for somebody like, make sure that they're able to find me at XYZ website here. But just make sure that you have, you have at least a high level calendar in mind for this. You can't just, just go off the cuff on this one.

Matt: The fifth one is budget.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So money and time. Money part is easy. It's easy to say, okay, I'm going to spend, you know, $100, you know, in a ten day period, and you just split that up amongst whatever channels or platforms you want to do that. Whether that's, you know, Facebook, Instagram ads, whatever that might be. Or you might say I don't really want to spend a lot of money, you know, and that's fine too. But knowing what that is is really helpful. We just did an episode on, you know, calculating the return on your publishing efforts and understanding if I'm spending $100 on a ten day period leading up to the holidays, what is my return on that? You need to be able to calculate those things. You need to track it. That's really important. The one that's a little harder sometimes to, to really not only sort of calculate but ration out is your time. You know? Some people know exactly what their time is worth, and some people just know that they don't have a lot of it. Or some people have more of it than others, and that's okay too. But know how much time you're willing to spend, that you have to spend, and really try not to overshoot that. That's, that's a relatively easy one as well. Budget. It's, it's fairly black and white. Aside from the time spent part, but. Yeah.

Lauren: I think that's a really important thing. I mean, a really important thing and a really overlooked thing. To the point where I didn't actually include time management budget in there. And that was an oversight on my part, because I absolutely agree. That is something that you have to be very cognizant of, especially around this time of year. You know, are you, are you running a Black Friday sale that's going to start at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, that you are going to have to have some kind of manual oversight on, and your family, like, has Thanksgiving dinner at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving. That's not gonna work. That's, that, you got to budget your time and figure out where you can spend time, where you need things to be automated, where you need things to be... you know, maybe I'll do this this day instead of this day, however that works. So yeah, budget is more than just how much you spend financially.

Matt: Yeah.

[45:53] – Recap and Resources

Matt: It probably seems like a lot or probably seems overwhelming. There are other resources available on our, you know, YouTube channel and our blog, some other places. It's really not. Like, if you break down the, the five or six sort of sections that we talked about, you know, there's one or two very specific things you can do for each section. They're pretty quick and easy, for the most part. Again they're, they're basically a series of questions you need to answer for yourself and then make changes accordingly. At a bare minimum, you're just going to make sure your products look good. You're going to make sure your site looks good, at the bare minimum. You're going to want to update some of the copy to speak, you know, to the gift giving, gift purchasing aspect of what's going on. You know, at a bare minimum, use that really quick sort of five step campaign frame that we just laid out. These are all easy things. I don't think it's a lot. And again, it's very specific to holiday. You come back through in January and change a lot of stuff back to the way it was, if you want. Or if you like how it ended up, you know, just remove any trace of holiday stuff and keep the rest. You might find, you know, some really, I think, helpful, tactics that you maybe have not tried throughout the year. There's a lot of money that floats around globally during the holidays. There's no reason why you should be leaving any of it on the table for yourself. You could do some of these easy things and really set yourself up to have a better holiday year than you normally would.

Lauren: Like I said in the beginning, whether or not this is a make or break season for you, there are a lot of ways that having even a mildly successful Q4 can really set you up for a strong year in the next year.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And there are a lot of things that you can do that, you know. To Matt's point, this was a long list of different things. Some of those things might not apply to you. Maybe you're very, very confident about where your products are on your website right now, and you can just skip that whole step of reviewing everything. That's fine. If you're very confident that everything looks good on your site right now, if you've very recently set it up and you've done the full customer walk through and you're, you're confident that everything looks good there, great. Don't waste your time on that. That's fine. There are absolutely things that you can get done today, next week, in the next few weeks, that are minor tweaks, will just take a few hours of your time here and there, that can set you up for the next year.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: Which is also the one, the one closing thing that I want to I don't want to overwhelm people. So we're not going to touch on this too much. But don't forget, we've said this before and we'll say it again. Every campaign should end with you doing a review of how the campaign went. If you put all of this effort into preparing for the holiday season, and then all of the work into actually having a successful holiday season, if December 27th rolls around and you say, alright. That was good. Pop the champagne. See you next year. What was the point? What was the point? You don't know. You don't know what worked. You don't know what didn't. You don't know how much money you made. You don't know how much money you spent.

Matt: Yeah. It's easy for people though, if, if they felt like they had a good holiday season, it's easy for them to do that. So I think the point really is, again, if you had a good holiday season, if you felt like you did, if it seems like you did. Yhe only way to truly know and then to be able to take action on that and apply that throughout the of the following year is to go back through and look at the data. Look at your sales data, look at your ROI, what did you spend, what did you take in? You know, all of those things. Yeah. You can't just sit back and celebrate it and then go on with life as if, you know, nothing happened, or everything's normal. So yeah, you need to go back through that data. I mean, you should be doing that all year, every year, not just at the holidays. I think the really important thing to, to think about here, though, again, is that - and you touched on this earlier, and you were touching on it just now is, you know, post-holiday, post-transaction. You know, it's highly likely that you probably acquired some new customers or new followers, new fans, new readers. Again, just sitting back and saying I had a great holiday season. And then, you know, not really touching base with those people is a huge misstep. You know? Those post-transactional emails are extremely important. Continuing that communication with them is really important. The next time you're releasing a book or a product, you want to be able to go back to that group, that segment, and talk to them and, and, you know, generate more revenue from those segments, not just that one time gift giver. If that's how it ends up, fine. But if they've bought from you once, you can get them to buy from you again.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So.

Lauren: Yeah. And that's, that's where it all ties together from that initial question of who are your audience goals? What's your audience goal for this campaign? If the goal is to retarget to existing customers, reach out to them at the end of the season and thank them for being loyal fans and customers.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: If your goal is to engage gift givers, reach out to them and encourage them to have the recipients of the gifts learn more about you. Or make sure, preferably this option. Make sure that your books, your products, whatever it is, have lead magnets in there so that people that receive your book without buying it directly from you

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: know where to find you if they like it and they want to find more.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You know? Whatever, whatever your goals are, make sure that you follow through with them at the end of the campaign, and then you just take it from there.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Easy peasy, happy January. Look at that, it's 2027.

[52:09] – Episode Wrap Up

Matt: Oh God. What do your bracelets say?

Lauren: Oh they're kind of weird today. I was going on colors, I actually picked blindly based on the colors. So, one of them says Tis The Damn Season. One of them is an acronym for the song title I Can Do It With A Broken Heart. And the last one says From The Vault. So they're all three Taylor Swift references today.

Matt: Yeah, but at least one of them was seasonally related.

Lauren: That's true.

Matt: So for a blind pick, you did pretty well.

Lauren: That's true.

Matt: One of the three.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. That counts.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Alright. Well, I think that we have covered as much of this as we can, and that Matt is willing to stomach. So again, if you have any questions about any of these things, please check the show notes. We also, by the time this episode goes live, we will have a dedicated landing page on the Lulu website that's going to have a bunch of holiday readiness resources.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Many of them will also be linked in the show notes, but there will be a one stop place for you to have, like, a complete guide to all of this. So that will be right at the top of the show notes for this episode. If there's anything that you still are like well, you didn't, you didn't give me resources for this... reach out, leave a comment, leave a review, email us at podcast@lulu.com. We have so many different pieces of content that can help you get through this holiday season and get through the things that we talked about in this episode. I guarantee you there is something that we have that I can send you to help you out.

Matt: Definitely.

Lauren: And then come back next week for another new episode.

Matt: That won't be about holiday.

Lauren: It won't be about holiday. It's actually going to be a really fun one.

Matt: Good. Okay.

Lauren: So you'll have to come back next week and find out what it is.

Matt: I will too.

Lauren: Yes, you will.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: And until then, thanks for listening.

Matt: Later.