Keep Your Sales Momentum Going After the Holidays

Picture this: The holiday rush has ended. The frenetic excitement of another massive shopping season has died down. Now we can all take a minute and breathe a sigh of relief as we look at the our sales numbers for the past few months. You did it… and did it well. Congratulations.

But now is no time to rest on your laurels.

Just because the holidays are over does not mean your profit windfall has to be  over too. Sure, it is most likely going to decrease a bit but by keeping your sales momentum going you can draw the decrease out over the next month or so. (Or you can sit back and watch it dramatically plummet. Your choice!)

Look, I know you are tired, the holiday months can be extremely draining, but we are talking about continuing to make above average sales here – that’s worth putting off your vacation for another month, isn’t it?

Luckily, keeping your sales rolling doesn’t require much extra effort.  It’ll involve some initiative (which we know you’ve got because you run a successful eCommerce store) and the normal amount of work you do for promoting sales and specials for your store. Think of it more as a continuation of your holiday promotions rather than a whole new set of work and ideas.

In this article, I’ll lay out the things I do with my stores and you can take the ideas and apply them to your products and markets.

You might think that it would be hard to persuade people to buy right after they’ve done so much holiday spending.  But quite often people don’t get what they really wanted as holiday gifts… or just not every single thing. Because they’ve been doing so much of it over the past few months, they are used to spending at this point… and now they have the chance to spend on themselves.

That’s where your “after holiday” profits come from. You’re offering discounted gifts for bargain hunters and for people to give to themselves.

Here are some things I do to keep the profits rolling in after the holidays:

Whatever sales you were running to get more out of the holidays will help also you get more out of the post holiday season. I re-frame my promotions so they are centered around the idea of “The Perfect Gift You Didn’t Get” or “Get What You Really Wanted This Christmas” or something to that effect. 

As long as the discount is good (I’d go with at least 10%) you won’t need to do that much convincing to get people to feel entitled to buying themselves a gift.

You will also want to get the word out about your post holiday sales via newsletters.

Again, frame it around ‘The Gift You Really Wanted But Didn’t Get” or appeal to the bargain hunters with something like “Huge After-Christmas Discounts”. One of the headlines I intend to use this year is “The Most Awesome Christmas Gift You Didn’t Get”. That particular newsletter is going to be focused on a single product but it could work for multiple products or even your entire store depending on how you want to frame your offer.

Get on the phone with your vendors.

Again, I know you did it just before the holidays to check stock, now it’s time to do it again. As I’ve said in articles past, getting to know your vendors is a good investment in your business. You don’t have to be buddies with them, but it’s good to be on a first name basis and have them happy to answer when you call. Being able to strategize with your suppliers is a great way to get more out of both of your businesses.

Ask your vendors what products they still have a lot of stock on and promote these products as overstock sales. Have a “Post Holiday Blowout Sale” or , “Holiday Overstock Clearance”, etc. You might be able to get a bigger discount on these products if your vendor is motivated to sell them. Let them know what you plan to do – show how you’re going to promote the products – so they can see how quickly you plan to move them. Remember – they’ll be interested in keeping their sales up too! If you can show them a way to do that they’ll be open to helping you achieve those sales.

Don’t be afraid to propose ideas. A good vendor will take a vested interest in your store because they know the better you do, the better they do. The worse they can do is say no, so if you have an idea put it out there. It may not be accepted “as is” but it will open a dialogue between you and your supplier and give you the chance to work together.

Use your store blogs to capture more interest.

Put up blog posts about your post holiday discounts. These can be very similar to your newsletters. Also post your single product promotions. Be sure to put nice, big pictures of the products you’re discounting and make the coupon code stand out so people don’t have to read the entire post or search your blog for it. The more you can put out there and the easier you make it for people to use, the more your post holiday season will be a success.

Along those lines, use your social networks to get more people into the bargain craze or the “I’m buying it for me” mindset. I use sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote my holiday sales and so I’ll also be using them to promote my post holiday sales. Whatever avenues work for you during the holidays should be approached afterward as well.

Network, network, network!

Now I’m going to switch it up a bit and I’m going to go back to what I said earlier about strategizing with your suppliers. When you talk with them you’ll probably come away with a few ideas you didn’t have before. This happens when you talk with other business owners, you get new perspectives. So a great thing to do in the New Year is to join a mastermind or attend local business meet-ups.

For example, I regularly attend local meet-ups in Philadelphia. Just by listening to other business owners talk about what they do or how they handle certain things gives me ideas that I can apply to my stores. No one is an island and no one knows everything. Passing ideas back and forth with other business owners is one of the best ways to expand how you think about your store and sales process.

Just as you might be able to spot an issue or offer a new idea to someone else, they will be able to do the same for you. Having someone outside your business look at what you do can give you fresh perspective that can totally change your approach.

Whether it is a new tool that you find will help you get better rankings, a different line of thought around your Pay Per Click advertising, some constructive criticism about your site design, learning how others create and distribute coupons and sales, etc – joining a business owners group is another good investment in your business.

I’m pushing this because the groups are out and ready to accept new members but a lot of eCommerce store owners think these groups are for Internet Marketers primarily focused on info marketing. Not only is this not true, it wouldn’t really matter if it was because…

You don’t have to work strictly with other eCommerce store owners! I mastermind with a group weekly where I am the only eCommerce person present. Sometimes the best advice or ideas come from people who are not enmeshed in the same things you are. They are not in the same box, let’s say, as you are so they can just throw ideas out there that aren’t constrained because they are not dealing with the same things you are on a daily basis. A broad range of views can help open up your way of thinking, which can lead to new ways of doing business.

So that’s it. Those are my main sales tricks for after the holidays. This is an oft-overlooked opportunity to sustain your holiday sales momentum and these are the basic steps I take to get the most out of my own products post-holiday. You might find some other things to do based on your specific business and product lines and I suggest you do them all and I bet you to continue profiting – even after the holiday rush has ended.

Checklist:
- Continue your holiday sales but re-purpose them for the post- holidays.
- Promote your post holiday sales through your newsletters.
- Talk with your vendors and find out what items they have a lot of stock on.
- Promote the items with a lot of stock as overstock sales.
- Promote your sales with blog posts and on your social networks.
- Join a mastermind or local business meet-up group to continue expanding your ideas.

Article Marketing Continued…

All right, so we established that you should be writing articles to get more content out there and bring more traffic to your site. But what do you write those articles about? A lot of people end up writing much less than they should because they get hung up trying to come up with topic ideas.

I’m here to tell you, it’s not that complicated. If you’re running a store, you can write at least one article about each of your products and you should be able to get a bunch out of each of your categories as well. The trick is thinking in terms of story. You don’t want your articles to read like feature list, make them interesting by adding a little something that imparts the ownership experience to the reader. If people are going to click through to your site wouldn’t it be great if they were excited about your products instead of just interested?

I’ll give you some examples of article topics I’ve used for The Tapestry Standard:

How are tapestries woven?

History of the loom

William Morris tapestry history

How to hang a tapestry

How to clean a tapestry

How to get folds and wrinkles out of a tapestry

Mille Fleur styles, what is the symbolism

Abstract art vs Modern art - what are the differences

Complementary colors and room design

I think I might want a tapestry, but I have never owned one before

What should I look for when shopping

What style should I choose?

Why should tapestries hang an inch or two away from the wall?

It’s not hard to come up with a huge list of easy-to-write articles that people will be interested in reading and will find helpful.

Get on this. Next post we’ll talk about the final step in awesome article marketing… outsourcing the writing and distribution.

What Is StomperNet?

I just got an email from Brad Fallon over at StomperNet. I thought the email was so good I’m just posting it to you.

Here it is:

I had a GREAT call with the Faculty last night, answering
questions we had gotten from you and your colleagues.

It occurred to me – based on a number of the questions
you sent us about “what StomperNet is” – that should
write to you and just net it all out for you.

And that’s hard, because StomperNet is BIG.

We know that, and sometimes even WE have a hard time
getting our arms around it.

So today, I’d like to take a moment to simplify.

First and foremost, StomperNet is a TRAINING organization
- we will train you in every facet you need to be successful
online.

Our Library has over 1400 individual pieces of training -
we’re pretty sure it’s the largest Internet Marketing library around.

But it’s not just what we teach – it’s HOW we train that sets us apart.

Frankly, it’s pretty straightforward: some of our most
successful customers are the ones that just did EXACTLY
what we TRAINED them to: No fancy jiu-jitsu, just get the
basics right, ESPECIALLY the customers that were just
starting out.

Our training cuts through all the clutter out there to ensure
that the shortest distance between you and success is through
StomperNet.

But we support all that training with things that frankly, no other
organization on the planet can duplicate – all geared
around making sure that ALL your questions get answered and
QUICKLY:

We strongly believe that STRATEGY is critical to online success:
the proper business model, the most profitable niche, and ensuring
that you understand which are your *money* keywords.

Our 21 FACULTY members build all the cutting edge
training content, and answer your questions via Faculty
Office Hours, patrolling the forums, or backed into a corner
at a LIVE event.

Our state-of-the-art PORTAL delivers the over 1400
individual training pieces, plus 200,000 forum posts that
probably have 95% of your questions already answered (and
are well-organized and easy to find).

And if after that you STILL have questions, we have the
COMMUNITY: other Members and Moderators gladly helping
you out in the portal.

Sometimes you might need more strategic guidance – that’s
where our Professional COACHING comes in – they can
help you either in a group setting via our Masterminds, or
one-on-one if you prefer.

Our EVENTS are designed to support you face to face – we
have LIVE events several times a year for hands-on in-person
training. And we’ve even announced the StomperNet World
Tour – 18 cities next year – and StomperLocal to bring
StomperNet to the rest of the world.

And that’s what StomperNet WAS…for 3 years. And that was
enough for many of our members to build great businesses
for themselves and their families.

But it wasn’t enough for us.

In order for us to stay out front as the leading online training
company, we took a long look at how we could deliver MORE.

And we came to the conclusion that the one thing our members
were missing from us is TOOLS.

So we went and got some.

TEN of them…

…we call them StomperTools.

We hand-picked the Software and tools we considered to be
MUST HAVES for online success and to create competitive
advantage for your business — all INCLUDED in StomperNet
Membership:

• Market Samurai – best-in-class Market and Keyword Research tool
• Traffic Geyser – automated video submission tool to Social Media sites
• StomperStorm – incredibly easy to use split testing and Taguchi testing tool
• StomperCommerce - easy-to-use, SEO friendly shopping cart
• SEOQast - semi-automated massive ranking-oriented syndication tool
• ArticleQast – Send your articles directly to a network of over
  17,000 subscribing sites with YOUR links and link text defined
• StomperQast - Add text messaging to your integrated marketing efforts with this platform that includes text messaging, email, and
  social media
• CommuniQast - Telephone platform for EACH member (not VOIP) – Personal 800 number for inbound, plus conferencing, and
  21 other features
• ReviewQast – Ethical reviews of your products or service from 3rd
  party that get posted to Google Local or other review sites.
• StomperSocial – Like Tweetdeck on Steroids + Twitter Twenius training program

These tools would cost you well over $500 per month if you got
them separately, and that doesn’t count over $1,000 in setup
charges and fees.

So, there it is.

As you can see, StomperNet wants to give you all you need to
succeed with your online business.

No matter what level you’re at, between our tools, training,
faculty, events, and community – this is the greatest Internet
Marketing Success System there is.

Don’t ask us – ask the countless members whose lives have been
changed for the better over the last 3 years.

We invest a lot in our customers’ success.

Very soon, you’ll have your chance to join us and change your future.

And we’ll be offering ALL of this for a price that ANYONE can
afford – you can’t get HALF of what we have anywhere else for
TEN TIMES the price.

$197 per month.

That’s StomperNet – as simple as I can make it.

Are you serious about online success?

If so, we think your next decision is pretty easy.

So we’ll see you on the inside, where we’re ALL serious
about it.

Best regards,

Brad Fallon
CEO
StomperNet

That’s it. There is a ton more information at:

Stomper999

StomperNet opens up again tomorrow.

StomperNet is the best for good reason, and has my highest endorsement.

StomperNet 9/09/09 Launch Tomorrow!

Yes, it is almost here and I am super excited! No matter what type of online thing you do, StomperNet can and will help you do it better. The faculty has been expanded, the structure has been changed, and the resources that have been put together are incredible.

I’m not prone to exaggeration or hype marketing, I am truly excited about what has been put together. Business owners of all types and levels are going to benefit from these changes and that brings a smile to my face.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching – it’s a selfish thing – I like helping people succeed, it makes me feel good. I never recommend anything I don’t personally believe in. Those that already know me know that to be true. It’s all about Good Energy!

Check out the launch here: StomperNet 999.

The Social Marketing Time Suck

Social Marketing your eCommerce store can be fun, it can be tedious, or somewhere in the middle. There is also so much of it to be done and so many different avenues to take that you can become so engrossed in it that you ignore other areas of your business.

I’ve had days where something fun or cool was happening on Twitter and I had to use all my will to stop hitting the refresh button and go get some actual work done. It’s bound to happen sometimes but if it becomes a habit you’ll end up wasting time that could and should be spent doing things that make you money.

I’m not suggesting that you avoid social networks, they can do great things for your business, you just have to watch that you stay focused while using them.

You should regularly post and respond to your followers and friends but it should be a get-in-and-get-out sort of thing. If you hang around too long you can easily spend hours clicking through pages, comments, and pictures; or worse get caught up with silly distractions like quizzes and games.

I try to spend no more than a half hour or so a day working on my social networking. I go in, spend a few minutes on one, and then move onto the next. I do the rotation a few times a day and am able to stay caught up with what’s going on and communicate with my networks without it taking away from my work time.

If you do it right, it’s a great way to take a break from whatever main project you’re working on while still doing something positive for your business.

Twitter: Audrey Kerwood

Facebook: Audrey Kerwood

Here’s a Little eCommerce Secret

“HTML, Java Script, CSS, CGI, Perl, PHP…

Ahhh… technology. The hustle-bustle, the abbreviations, the wealth potential.

I can remember being in the shoes of the budding Internet Entrepreneur – the one who doesn’t program enterprise wide servers for a living. I thought to myself “ Am I going to need another degree to do this?”

Even today, the word “eCommerce” is the Buzz Phrase or Power Word used to loosely define what we all want to achieve on the Internet: “Sell Something for a Profit”.

Here’s a little secret of eCommerce: Opening an online store front was, for a long, long time, very difficult and expensive because…

…it kept people employed.

All of the web masters, programmers, graphic designers, flash animators, IT Engineers… each was needed to build and operate a traditional eCommerce store front. The expense was astronomical. I’m fortunate to know someone who works for a Fortune 100 company that was a pioneer in eCommerce. His company is huge… with an operational budget of many billions of dollars. The level of resources that his company brought to bear on their eCommerce project read like a list of Atomic Engineers. Spectacular titles, many with PhD scribbled after their names would spend hours hand coding cryptic characters into syntax editors to create a shopping environment.

He once told me the cost of one of their misadventures – Many Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars.

“Here’s the Thing”, he told me once, “The Store Front is tremendous! It looks great, it’s fast, it captures customer information, it can hold thousands of products… but it’s not working.”

So, I asked him what the problem was. He said, “It’s not making a profit”. I asked him how much revenue it would need to make to be profitable. He said, “How much money did you make this year”? It had been a very good year for me. He said “Triple That…”

Gag!!

Ultimately, that’s the problem. What my friend was soon able to take to his supervisors turns out to be the same reason that so many motivated, passionate, work-at-home hopefuls can’t quite seem to make their online efforts work…

“eCommerce is all about technology and when you want to open up an online store, you will need the technology, but that’s not your goal.”

Your goal is marketing and sales. The faces on my friend’s superiors twisted into degrees of anguish and amazement. “What the hell do we know about sales and marketing? We’re spending our money on technology!”

He replied, “My point exactly.”

People don’t seem to realize that selling successfully online is still the same process as selling successfully ANYWHERE.

- You must know where to sell it, and you find that out by observing what people are buying.

- You must know where to find your products so that you can sell them to people that are buying.

- You must know how your products benefit your customers so that they will understand why they are buying.

- You must be able to buy your products cheaply enough to make a profit.

You must serve and protect your customers after the sale so they will buy from you again!

Notice how there was not a single mention of SQL Databases, or DHTML, or Server Side Extensions?

This is how people get confused. When they start shopping for a service to host their online store, they get so carried away in the technology of it they forget that their first and most important responsibility is to get their product in front of the customer.

The truth is, the customer only wants a few things:

A Great Product at
A Great Price,
Shipped Quickly and Efficiently from,
People that they trust to spend their money with.

They couldn’t care less about how fancy your eCommerce shopping cart is; if you don’t have 3 out of the 4 things above, you have not got a chance to sell them anything. Here’s my point.You want to sell online? Then SELL online! Don’t you dare get caught up in all of that technological nonsense that web geeks tell you will make you money.

There is only one thing that will make you any money for your online store – Sales.

You want to make sales online? Figure out what people are buying and sell it to them. You want to make money online? Get your product in front of the right customers and CLOSE THE SALE!

eCommerce is just a tool. Get it setup right and leave it alone. If you want to make money online, go out and find some customers and get them to come to your “Tool.”

Ask yourself, what’s your goal online? Is it to make money, to build wealth? If it is, them why would you focus your efforts on technology? Focus your efforts on Making Money! No matter how good your technology is, unless you have customers, you will not make any money.

The quickest path to income online is to actually make a sale. All other things are secondary. Technology does not matter, so don’t chase it. You can get it already set-up with a built in customer base for less than dinner for 2 at the Outback Steak House. So, you no longer have any excuses to not sell online.