I
have always been a little skeptical of sales. Even when I worked in retail I always wondered if you are able to mark this item down 50, 60, sometimes even 70 percent off was it ever worth the original retail price. And I get how retail works I know that the prices are marked up so high that they are not losing anything when they have these types of sales but it still has always rubbed me the wrong way.
Then when I think about handmade, particularly crochet, I already see so many people under pricing themselves that there is no way they could possibly offer any type of discount. As we all know the day after the Thanksgiving holiday “Black Friday” kicks off the busiest shopping season for the whole entire year. I went back and forth on if I would offer any type of discount, I was already sold out of custom doll slots for the holidays so pretty much all I had to offer were patterns and a limited quantity of the cutest keychain ever. I finally decided that yes I was going to offer a sale and my main reasoning was…
Some money was better than no money at all!
And here is what I learned…
1. Some money is better than no money and a lot of some money will make a girl do a happy dance. I set a goal of $500 for my sale that was initially going to run with an early release to my email subscribers on Tuesday November 22nd through 11:59pm on Friday November 24th. By midday Friday I had exceeded that goal and decided to extend my sale to run through Cyber Monday and by the end of Monday I had almost doubled my goal. So if you need a quick influx of cash in your business… have a sale.
2.Bundle Bundle Bundle. If you have products that can be bundled and offered at a discount. Do the bundle! In addition to finished products I also offer crochet patterns. I currently have 7 crochet patterns available for purchase and I decided to offer all of them in a pattern bundle for $17. Even people who had one or two of my patterns found value in the bundle and it was a big hit for my sale. A little birdie told me the link for the bundle was still active but don’t tell them I told you.
3. There is power in your email list. Now I have heard this before that you have to collect emails in your business and I will be the first to admit that email marketing is not my strong point but I do have a few hundred people on my email list and as I mentioned above they did get early access to the sale and that did make a huge difference. I sent two follow up emails one to new subscribers who missed the early release and one “Last Call” email. After all was said and done about 75% of my sales came from email! Imagine if I actually knew what I was doing!
Now I’m not saying that you should go have a sale every week but if you are pricing your products for what they are worth a sale once or twice a year won’t hurt anything. In fact it should help your business grow. As always if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below.
Happy Crocheting!
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