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Want Big Sales This Holiday Season? Target the Corporate Gift Market

August 27, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

If you really want to guarantee big sales this holiday season, one market you’ll want to consider targeting is the corporate market, and you will want to start preparing for it now.

how to get corporate gift sales

According to a report from the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), last year companies were planning to spend $43 per customer (or prospective customer) on Christmas gifts and $50 per employee.

Typical gifts for customers were food baskets, bottles of wine, and desk accessories. Typical gifts for employees were gift cards, food/beverages, apparel and cash. 68% of corporate gifts will bear a company logo (for obvious reasons).

Therefore, do you offer a product and/or service that would be suitable as a corporate and/or employee gift?

How to Make Sure Your Products Work for Corporate Gifts

  1. Personalization – It would really help your chances if you allow for personalization of your product as companies do use corporate gifts as an advertising medium.
  2. Gift Packaging – If your products already come pre-packaged, ready for gift giving, you will be saving the company time and money.
  3. Quantities – Don’t approach a company with 500 employees if you can’t turnaround high quantities of product in a short time.
  4. Delivery – Companies will want to start sending out their corporate gifts in early December (but they will order in September and October), and hand out employee gifts in the first two weeks of December, so you will have to be able to meet these deadlines.
  5. Distribution – The company may want you to actually send the gifts directly to their clients, so make sure this is a service that you can offer.

How to Get Corporate Gift Sales

  1. You are best to approach local companies as they will typically want to support another local company.
  2. Employee gifts are usually sourced by the human resources department, so start there by hand delivering a sample (with gift packaging) and price list (with discounts for quantities ordered) to the Human Resources Manager (find names on LinkedIn).
  3. Mention to the HR Manager that your product/service would also work well as gifts for clients, customers and prospects, and they will likely pass this information along to the Sales Manager.
  4. Printout references and reviews from previous customers to give them some assurance as to the quality of your product/service.
  5. Make sure you understand the company’s business, their customers and their employees. For example, if the majority of their staff is young women, they will not be interested in men’s wallets.
  6. Approach companies in early October. September is too early and November is too late.

By the way, my 2017 Etsy Shop Marketing Plan does indicate that this is the month for sending out corporate gift inquiries, so if you haven’t downloaded my plan yet, you are missing out on other great sales opportunities.

© 2012-2017 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

6 Creative Ways to Draw Customers to Your Booth at Fairs, Shows and Festivals

August 25, 2015 /

creative vendor booth ideasLooking for some creative vendor booth ideas for the next time you are at a fair, trade show, festival or even farmer’s market? Here are six unique ones I came up with.

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #1

People tend to bring their kids to these things (don’t want to pay for a babysitter) so you need to keep the kids busy in your booth so the parents can stick around longer. I would make one wall of your booth a chalkboard and let the kids go crazy.

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #2

Nothing pulls people into a booth more than free food and beverages. Offer something less ordinary, like espresso, cappuccino or one of those large glass drink dispensers and they can help themselves. Plus, if you give them a drink they feel slightly obligated to look around your booth while they finish it.

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #3

You want to collect leads, and the best way is always through some sort of ballot box (you can capture names electronically through an iPad as well). The draw has to be attractive, such as a daily draw for a $200 Home Depot gift card (since these are home renovators attending the show).

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #4

Instead of useless swag give a useful handout, like a checklist of all the things you need to do to your home to prepare it for winter. This is something people are more likely to keep, even post on the fridge. Make sure it is well branded with your company’s info.

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #5

Have a fun mascot that kids can pose with (with your company’s name somewhere on the mascot that won’t get hidden behind a posing child). Then encourage their parents to post the photo to Instagram (maybe doing this gives them a second ballot in the draw). Posting the photo to Instagram gets your company seen by their followers.

Creative Vendor Booth Idea #5

Get the word out in advance on social media by tweeting out to people attending the show to bring a digital photo of their home for a free, on the spot transformation (you bring the photo into an editing program and quickly swap out windows, doors, siding, etc. so they can see the possibilities). Show the before and after transformations up on a big screen for all to see.

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About Me

A 20+ year marketing professional, small business consultant, ebook author & blogger, my advice has been featured in the NY Times, Success Magazine, American Express, Big Commerce, Business2Community to name a few – so this is professional advice you can trust!

I have consulted for thousands of small businesses since 2012. It really does help to talk to someone who is objective to get a new, but professional, perspective. I have also written publicity pitches for clients that resulted in them being featured in Real Simple Magazine, Apartment Therapy, House Beautiful, Vanity Fair, Houzz, Martha Stewart, Glamour Magazine, LONNY, DesignMilk, Emmaline Bride,– just to name a few.

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© 2015 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved. Creative Vendor Booth Ideas.

The Holiday Gift Guides You Really Want to Get Your Products Into

August 20, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

If you sell products online and want to take advantage of those huge holiday sales, then I highly recommend you re-read my post of two years ago, Why You Should Be Pitching Your Products for Holiday Gift Guides Now. However, today I want to give you a more current suggestion for getting holiday gift guide publicity.

how to get your products into holiday gift guides

Popular Pinners

You want to pitch to the lifestyle bloggers who are excelling at creating beautiful, comprehensive, and highly pinnable gift guides for Pinterest. One of my favorites is The Everygirl blog. Their gift guides are really well done, great at attracting attention on Pinterest and getting thousands of repins, not to mention turning up first in Pinterest search results. Other bloggers whose 2014 holiday gift guides also got huge circulation on Pinterest last year include:

All of these blogs create gift guides for every family member, every type of interest, so don’t be afraid to pitch your own category. Some of these blogs were also part of a mass marketing effort last year by a group of lifestyle bloggers, all promoting each other’s holiday gift guides, creating even wider exposure by tapping into each other’s social media following.

YouTube Vloggers

I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more holiday gift guides on YouTube this year. Many popular “vloggers” (people with popular YouTube channels) last year did holiday gift guides that were viewed by millions of people. Granted, most of these vloggers and their audience tend to be young, but they are recommending gifts for mom, dad, boyfriend, boss, your pet, etc., so it is a wider market than you think. Vloggers are known to get paid for endorsements, however, you should still pitch to them asking for consideration as an artisan/indie seller, and hopefully they haven’t completely sold out and would still recommend your product because they like it, not just because they got paid to say so. You would likely have to send them product to show. Here are a few vloggers who had popular gift guides last year:

Now, Before You Go….

  • Follow my blog on Bloglovin
  • Pin this post to Pinterest and follow me
  • Check out my E-book shop on Gumroad for more creative ideas!

Thanks so much for your support!

Gail

© 2015 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

11 Ways To Maximize Any Publicity Your Business Gets

August 18, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

I always tell my clients that publicity may not transpire into the results they want right away, but it does offer a lot of opportunities for your business over time.

How to Turn Your Publicity Into MORE Publicity

  1. Include the links to the article in your email signature with a call to action line such as, “Recently featured on the blog XYZ, read it here”.  An email signature program such as WiseStamp will allow you to do this.
  2. Add a link to the article in your website and/or shop’s About page, along with the line “Recently featured on the blog XYZ” to create credibility.
  3. Add the mention to your website or shop banner.
  4. Post to all of your social media sites, “We are honored to have our product featured this week on the XYZ blog” and be sure to tag the blog on all posts. They will likely share/retweet with their followers.
  5. Go to the blog’s social media pages and post a message and/or comment on the post and thank them for including you.
  6. Do the same on their Instagram and Pinterest pages, adding a comment, sharing and liking the post. 
  7. When you post/tweet the link to social media, also include the @Etsy or @Amazon tag (if you are an Etsy or Amazon store) in hopes that their social media people take note of your press and feel it is worth sharing on their social media sites.
  8. Add any publicity you get to the back of your business card. This helps when handing it out to local shops for wholesale orders.
  9. Approach a business writer at your local newspaper to see if you can turn this publicity into more publicity i.e. “Local business owner’s  featured on XYZ blog”. Local press coverage will help to create interest among your local buyers as well as with local shops for wholesale offers.
  10. Ask the blog if they have a “badge” or logo you can use on your site and in your marketing materials that says, “As seen on the XYZ blog”. 
  11. Include the mention and link in your monthly newsletter to customers. 

Want me to write a pitch for you? Just see my very affordable Publicity Pitch Writing Service, for any type of product or business.

© 2015-2021 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

Try This Old Marketing Trick to Sell More Products and Services

August 6, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

I was in the drugstore yesterday and I saw an annual back to school favorite called the Teen Value Pack, which consists of 10 different skin and body care products from various brands packaged together in a box for a value price of $9.99 (retail value $42). Even though my kids may only need half the products in the packs (my son isn’t old enough to shave just yet), I still bought them because I felt like I was really just paying for one product and getting the rest for free.

Screen shot 2015-08-06 at 2.00.45 PM

The lesson here is that consumers love getting value for their money, and love getting many items at one expenditure almost feeling as if some were free. So, have you thought about bundling together your products and/or services?

There are a few advantages to this old marketing trick:

  • The customer might be more likely to go for the bundle because of the overall cost savings, allowing you to sell more product to one customer at one time, and hence make more money overall.
  • It is a good way to introduce new products and create future demand
  • You can take advantage of various selling occasions or events to create bundles or value sets around, such as Back to School, Having a Baby, Going on a Trip, New House, etc.

It can also be a way to quickly expand your customer base. Back when I was working for a computer software company, we wanted our customers to start buying the CD version of our software because it was much cheaper to produce. But a lot of people didn’t have CD-ROM drives in their computers (we’re going way back here). So the company bundled the CD version of the software with a top-notch CD-ROM drive (they worked out a deal with the manufacturer to buy them at a really good price). They packed the software and CD-ROM drive together in a box and called it the Blockbuster Bundle for the same price as buying the software on its own and they sold like hot cakes. Why not, it was a chance to essentially get a free CD-ROM drive. The end result was not only did we successfully get our customers to upgrade to CD-ROM, but we got a ton of new customers in the process.

So come up with a bundle that makes sense, offer it at a value price where you still make a decent profit, make it a limited time offer, and see what it does for your business.

No Sales? Get a Marketing Critique of Your Business for Just $99 and I’ll Tell You Why

© 2015 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

My Latest Surefire Tip for Getting Publicity for Your Business

July 30, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Marketing Consultant

Do you ever get frustrated trying to get publicity for your business with the media outlets specific to your industry? For example, fashion magazines are besieged with requests from vendors to use their products in editorial, so how good are your odds? But you do have other choices. Have you ever thought about stepping away from your industry’s mainstay magazines and blogs, and try a different approach?

How to get publicity

Let’s say I owned a restaurant, I would typically be trying to get a review or included in articles from local magazines, lifestyle and travel blogs, and as such would be competing with many others for the same editorial. However, consider a story pitch that would work with a different type of publication and have the same effect.

For example, I was recently planning a trip to Boston and I searched on Google for “Top restaurants in Boston”. One of the articles that came up was from the business blog, Business Insider, entitled “The 10 Best Restaurants For A Business Lunch In Boston“. Do you see where I am going here? Would you normally expect to see restaurant suggestions in a business publication? But this article makes sense for this particular type of publication.

Maybe you have a pet products business. You are likely always targeting the pet-related media. However, earlier this year the men’s fashion magazine GQ ran an article called, “The Ultimate Dog Accessories for a Gentleman’s Best Friend“. Would you have thought to pitch to them?

If you own a resort or tourist-related business, I imagine you are always trying to get featured with the travel media. However, Time Magazine ran an article last summer entitled, “7 Great American Vacation Spots That Won’t Bust Your Budget” as part of their money feature, and it listed and linked to several hotels, restaurants, bars and attractions.

What if you sell beauty products and you have had no luck with the beauty editors at the popular beauty blogs. But did you know that Shape Magazine, which typically focuses on fitness-related editorial for women, also has regular beauty editorial, even an annual beauty awards?

I hope this gets you thinking about how you can increase your chances of getting publicity for your business by targeting non-industry media with a story relevant to their editorial.

Before You Leave….

I hope you will:

Thanks so much for your support!

Gail

© 2015 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

4 Easy Tips to Help Your Business Succeed on Social Media

July 17, 2015 /

To succeed on social media, it is really all about interaction. So, if you are a business on social media here are four easy ways to make sure you are maximizing your presence there and reaching more customers:

Respond to Comments

On Facebook, Instagram and Twitter you can reply to comments on your posts, photos, tweets, etc., and you should, especially if someone has asked you a question. I know I can forget to do this too, so make a point of setting aside a half hour at the end of the day and go through your notifications and make sure that you respond to every comment as well as if people have even mentioned you on their social media site. If people have retweeted your tweets, say thank you and/or return the favor. You never want to look inactive or that you don’t care, so take the time to respond.

Comment, Like & Share

How good are you are taking the time to comment, like and share on the social media posts that appear in your feed? When you comment, like or share someone’s Facebook post, your name is now seen by their followers. I have actually had people tell me they found me on Facebook based on a comment I made on another site’s Facebook page. Plus, a lot of the time when people see that you liked, shared and/or commented on their content, they will return the favor.

Follow Back

Again, take that half an hour everyday and go through your list of new followers and make sure to follow back. Now, I am not saying you have to follow everyone who follows you because sometimes you will have people follow you that are spammers or maybe not appropriate content, so use your discretion, but if they look like a potential customer, a potential business alliance or someone in the media, follow back.

Analyze What You Are Posting & When

Take some time at the end of the week to go through your social media posts and see which content was the most popular. What was liked the most, commented on the most, shared the most? Now try to analyze if it is the actual content and/or was it a particular day that was popular, or a particular time of day? Both Pinterest and Twitter have pretty good analytics at the ready for you. For Twitter, click on your avatar in the upper right hand corner (for Pinterest, it is the gear icon) and then go to “Analytics” on the menu. You want to stick with the content that is working for you, and then schedule it for the days and times that seem to offer the best chance of sharing.

More Social Media Posts
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About Me

A 20+ year marketing professional, small business consultant, ebook author & blogger, my advice has been featured in the NY Times, Success Magazine, American Express, Big Commerce, Business2Community to name a few – so this is professional advice you can trust!

I have consulted for thousands of small businesses since 2012. It really does help to talk to someone who is objective to get a new, but professional, perspective. I have also written publicity pitches for clients that resulted in them being featured in Real Simple Magazine, Apartment Therapy, House Beautiful, Vanity Fair, Houzz, Martha Stewart, Glamour Magazine, LONNY, DesignMilk, Emmaline Bride,– just to name a few.

©2020 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved. Succeed on Social Media

5 Creative Marketing Ideas If You Sell Kids and Baby Products

July 9, 2015 /

Do you need creative marketing ideas if selling kids and/or baby products? Getting your products in front of parents is obviously a key component to finding success in this market. Below are just a few of the creative tactics from my 12-Month Marketing Plan for Online Kids & Baby Shops to inspire you.

5 Creative Marketing Ideas If You Sell Kids & Baby Products
1. Magazines’ Baby Registry Features

All the major pregnancy magazines have a regular feature in every issue where they recommend baby products for a new mom to choose for her baby registry. Approach the writer or editor of this section with one or more of your products for their consideration. If they mention, be sure to add a “As Featured In” badge to your product photos.

2. Local Marketing

Selling online doesn’t mean you have to ignore local customers, you might really want to support a local business. Therefore, inquire at local gyms and fitness centers if there are any opportunities to sponsor Mommy and me classes.

3. Free Local Advertising

You know those window shades that people put in their car’s backseat window to keep the sun off of a baby? They present a great advertising opportunity if you put your shop name and url on the side visible to other drivers. Give one to every member of your family to really extend your reach locally. 

4. Social Media Ideas

Do not just post your products. Post content moms might like and try to get them to engage, such as:

  • Post a photo of a favorite celebrity mom for #WomanCrushWednesday and ask followers theirs. 
  • Post a list of your favorite kid’s movies and ask followers theirs. 
  • Post your favorite destinations for spring break family beach vacations for #TravelTuesday and ask followers theirs. 
5. Offer a Free Download

Change up your email opt-in incentive to include a free coloring printable, for special holidays or seasons, that of course clearly has your shop name and url on it. Even give a stack of these printables to local family restaurants to hand out to kids.

Get More Ideas for Your Kids & Baby Business!Creative Marketing Ideas Kids Baby Products

Each month you get a series of tactics and ideas for advertising, social media, publicity, promotions, email marketing, content marketing and more in my 12-Month Marketing Plan for Online Kids & Baby Shops. Download today! 

© 2022 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved. Creative Marketing Ideas Kids Baby Products

 

5 Must-Do Marketing Ideas for July

June 23, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

Need some cool ideas to promote your small business in July? Try some of these:

5 Must-Do Marketing Ideas for July

  1. Who doesn’t watch Netflix these days? Every month when Netflix updates its listings, it trends huge on social media. So, tweet out something about your favorite @Netflix show because they are very good are retweeting compliments, which puts your business name in front of their 1.42 million followers.
  2. Now is the time to be pitching to print magazines to get into fall editorial. Magazines will be writing about fall fashion, fall food, fall entertaining, fall decor, fall weddings, fall shows, fall movies, you name it. So come up with a fall-theme story pitch that involves your business.
  3. Creative Market is amazing! They give free goods away on their website including fonts, icons and graphics that you can use in your marketing.
  4. Two big events this month that will trend well on social media are Shark Week and Comic-Con, so take advantage by posting updates from both.
  5. Remember my post a couple of weeks back, 5 Ways to Promote Your Business at Summer Events? Take advantage of free advertising on your car (and your family and friends’ cars) by having a cardboard windshield sun visor made that displays your logo and url and leave it out when parking at popular local events.
  6. Check out my ebook shop for more creative ideas in my Marketing Ideas Ebooks.

© 2015 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

Where to Sell Your Products Online

June 16, 2015 /

by Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

I have added a permanent page to my blog for your reference. It is called 50 Online Marketplaces where you can sell your products online, and, as the title says, it includes links to 50 online selling sites.

50 Online Marketplaces to Sell Your Products at from Attention Getting Marketing

50 Online Marketplaces to Sell Your Products at from Attention Getting Marketing

Some of these sites sell all types of products (Etsy, Amazon), whereas others specialize in art (Society6), clothing (Not Just a Label), vintage clothing (As0s), food (Artizone), kids (Buy Baby Buy) and home decor (Houzz).

Some are regular marketplaces (11 Main), some are auction sites (eBay) and some are flash sale sites (One Kings Lane). Hopefully you can find the one(s) that are right for what you sell.

Now, things are always changing in the online e-commerce world, so you may see some of these sites merge in the future. There have been rumours that Wayfair might take an interest in CustomMade and Alibaba (that owns 11 Main) has invested in Zulily, so who knows.

Please note that I did not include businesses like Shopify and BigCommerce as these are considered e-commerce solutions.

Be sure to share this list with your fellow sellers on social media!

Till next time, Gail

© 2015 Gail Oliver, Attention Getting Marketing. All rights reserved.

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