For many handmade business owners, the Christmas season is the busiest time of the year and a time when you can sell more and maximise your income and profits. 2020 has been an extremely strange year for most of us, but people are still buying and with a little bit of preparation you can ensure that this festive season is a great one for you and your handmade business.

My first Festive Season nearly broke me

My first proper Christmas season in my handmade jewellery business was in 2015. And I went all in! And by the 25th December I was burned out and broken. I had to take most of January 2016 off to recover. Yes I made lots of sales on the run up to Christmas, but I was working round the clock to achieve this.

So in 2016 I approached the last quarter of the year differently and planned it more strategically to both maximise sales at my events and online, but to prevent burnout and overwhelm.

So what did I learn from my 2015 Christmas season? Below are my top 7 tips for getting ready for the silly season so you get through it without overwhelm and working 24/7.

1. Create a Plan for your Christmas Season

One of the first things I learned as a Programme Manager was that you need a plan in order to achieve your goals.

And the best time to plan for Christmas is RIGHT NOW! The further ahead you start to plan, the more you can put in place to automate as much as possible which leaves you to focus on creating your products and posting them to customers. Planning ahead is the single biggest thing you can do to avoid overwhelm. Even using a basic calendar to plan out your key dates, events and marketing messages, blocking out time to make as much in advance as you can, and stocking up on packaging and packing materials can reduce the amount of time you need to dedicate to admin and marketing on the run up to Christmas.

2. Plan out your Christmas Marketing

This one is important. When things get busy in your business, the last thing you want to have to do every day is scramble around trying to find something to post on your social media and speak to your customers about! So even some very basic marketing planning and creating a content calendar can make a HUGE difference.

But where do you start? I recommend that you start with:

• Choosing your marketing platforms

• Determining your Christmas Offers

• Finalising your Christmas Events

• Deciding on your Christmas Deadlines

• Brainstorming your content themes.

By establishing these linchpins in your marketing plan it makes establishing the rest of your content much easier.

a. Your Marketing Platforms

Before you start, it is important to strategically pick your marketing platforms. These are the platforms that you are going to commit to showing up on regularly to engage with your customers on the run up to Christmas. Now is not the time to focus on new platforms so look at your stats and pick the ones that drive the most traffic to your sales platform. And don’t over-stretch yourself. I would pick no more than three - for example, Instagram, Newsletter, Blog.

Then for each of your platforms decide how often you will post. For example:

Instagram - Grid posts 5 x per week, IGTV once a week, Stories - 7 days a week.

Newsletter - One email per week

Blog - 2 blogs per week.

It is important to carefully consider how often you can post - make it realistic and achievable. Consistency is key!

b. Your Christmas Offers

The first step tis to decide what your Christmas offers are going to be. These offers could involve free shipping, a discount, a free gift or an extra service. You may want to offer Christmas gift wrapping and gift vouchers. This means you have a set of core messages that you can use to communicate to your customers about why they should buy from you this Christmas and not someone else.

c. Your Christmas Events

Hopefully you should know the dates of any Christmas events by now such as face to face or online fairs, festivals, or collaborations. This will help you to determine key dates that you want to promote these events to your customers. Often these events will provide you with images that you can use and will do some promotion for you, but it is good to tell your customers in advance about these events so that they can come and see you in person and plan their gift buying.

Online events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are times when a lot of people are buying online too so decide whether you want to participate (it’s not obligatory!) and plan out some offers around these dates.

You may also want to work with other small or local businesses whose ideal customer aligns with yours in terms of pop ups, stall sharing, shopping evenings and parties, or online giveaways. This is a really nice way of reaching a wider audience and building business relationships.

And don’t forget about after Christmas. This is a great time to hold flash sales and clear stock so you have room for new designs.

d. Your Christmas Deadlines

It is VITAL that you decide on key deadline dates for customers to order a. personalised items and b. regular stock items and your last postal dates for items to arrive both internationally and domestically in time for Christmas.

So have a look at this year’s domestic and international postal dates as soon as they are available, and establish when you can feasibly make and post your products to arrive one time. Then communicate these dates REGULARLY on your website, newsletters and social media. You cannot tell people enough about these key dates.

Add these dates and reminders into your marketing calendar - you will be amazed at how many days content this gives you!

d. Your Christmas Content Themes

Then you can create some content themes for the rest of your content to make your content easy to create and to tell a story. Pick between 3-5 themes and then brainstorm content ideas and angles that fits into these themes. Some ideas for themes are:

Christmas Gift Ideas - gift guides, ideas for difficult people to buy for etc

Christmas Wrapping and Packaging - show off your Christmas packaging

Giving back this Christmas - are your going to donate a % of sales to charity of donate items to charity raffles etc

Giftcards and vouchers - a great offering to allow recipients to choose their own gift

Stocking Fillers - lower cost items that make great gifts

Christmas Limited Editions - it is a nice idea to have a few special edition items with a festive theme

Customer Experience - don’t forget about the bread and butter content around what buying from you is like!

Your values - again, continue to share these albeit with a festive slant so if you are an eco-friendly firm make sure your festive packaging is eco-friendly, share ideas on how to have an eco-friendly Christmas etc

Advent Calendar - you could create a 12 days of Christmas advent calendar of special offers. These are time limited and fun.

Choose themes that work for your business and that will appeal to your ideal customer.

Then plan out all this content for October, November and December. This will tell you what images you need etc. Even mapping out a catchy title, deciding on your image and the angle of your caption really helps make your marketing, timely, targeted and impactful. I aim to have 80% of my posts planned out in the last quarter as it is always nice to share behind the scenes and off the cuff content too.

Then pick a day each week, when you are going to block out time to finalise your marketing for the next week (I like to do my planning on a Friday afternoon) using the weekly planner. In just an hour or two you can have written all your social media content for the coming week, plus a newsletter or blog post. I plot this planning time on my monthly calendar as a non-negotiable appointment to work on my business.

You can grab your FREE Monthly Content Calendar template here and your FREE Weekly Content Planner to help you plan your high level nd more detailed content here .

3. Plan a Festive Photoshoot

It’s no secret that good photos help you stand out and sell more online. So once you have planned your marketing content out, you should know in advance what kind of images you are going to need. So it’s time to plan either a DIY photoshoot or book a photographer (or both!). I recommend having some awesome evergreen shots (shots you can use any time of the year) of your handmade products including closeups, lifestyle, on a model, showing the product in use etc, but also taking some styled festive shots featuring your pieces that you can use to create promotional graphics, website banners and festive social media post that give customers that fuzzy festive feeling. Think group shots and hero shots!

For limited edition Christmas items you can go all out on the festive styling, but for regular stock items you may want to pair it back and go for a more winter wonderland vibe that can be used throughout the winter months. Festive props such as holly, pinecones, snowflakes and and fairy lights can work really well. And don’t forget - well lit and sharp shots are what we are looking for! It is also a great opportunity to capture your festive gift wrapping and gift vouchers to show customers how your products will arrive ready to pop under the Christmas tree.

I recommend booking a date or a couple of dates in your calendar for a photoshoot. September and early October are perfect for this as Christmas decorations will start appearing in shops to help you style your shots! And then you can pretty much forget about photography until after Christmas apart from the odd behind the scenes shots.

The last thing you need is to be scrambling around trying to take photos of your products at this time of year.

4. Optimise your sales platform(s)

Once you have planned your marketing, taken lots of gorgeous shots of your handmade products, it’s time to make sure that people can easily buy from you!

So give your sales platform, be it Etsy, your own website, or a Facebook or Instagram shop some love. Look at the following:

• Make sure it is easy for customers to find your online shop and how to buy from you from your homepage

• Get ALL your products listed and review ALL the product photos and listings. Make sure you answer all your customers potential questions so you remove any obstacles to them buying

• Use your announcement bar to advertise last order dates

• Make your final order dates and last postal dates clear on your website homepage and in your product listings

• Update your product listings with lead times for you to get your handmade products dispatched

• Make sure important pages like your about page and contact page is up to date

• Test your checkout process to make sure that it is easy for your customers to buy your products - even rope in some friends to test for you

• Optimise your website for mobile - people are searching and buying online on their mobiles now more than ever. So it is worth making sure your site looks good and operates well on mobile.

• Make sure that things like slow loading speed on your website (keep your images under 150kb each MAX or Google may penalise you for having a slow site!) and lack of SEO keywords on your images and web pages isn’t holding you back. Include festive themed keywords in your page descriptions - think about what words people will be using to search for Christmas gifts!

• Display customer testimonials that give customers the confidence to buy

• Create festive themed blog content if you enjoy blogging

• Offer free shipping - this increases checkout significantly but make sure this is built into your pricing

• Create an abandoned cart sequence in your website if your website platform allows it. With up to 88% of online orders abandoned at checkout, this simple add on can make a HUGE difference to online sales.

5. Make as much as you can in advance

Do as much preparation in advance as you can. Make up components so that you just need to assemble and/or customise for the customer when they place an order.

Build a small stock of your best sellers, and if selling silver or gold, get as much hallmarked in advance as you can and in bulk to reduce costs. I typically create and hallmark blank pendants, bangle and ring blanks that I simply personalise and/or set stones in when an order comes through. This means I am not creating anything from scratch during this busy time. It also speeds up dispatch times which really helps as your last postal date approaches and the stress levels rise!

And make sure you have plenty of the following in stock:

• Materials and consumables required to make your products

• Boxes and packaging

• Business cards, leaflets and other inserts

• Parceltape and packing boxes

• Free gifts

• Address labels

Think about signing up to Drop and Go with the post office so you can limit your time queuing to post parcels to customers - every minute counts!

And consider hiring some help even a day or so a week to help with packing customer orders, social media or dealing with customer enquiries. Anything that will let you focus on core, revenue generating activities and serving your customers.

6. Plan in some downtime from your handmade business

Yes you heard me! It is so easy to get swept up in your handmade business at this time of year, but it is important to book in some time off in your calendar too. You want to make sure that you have time to:

• Relax and recharge - try and take at least one day off a week

• Go to Christmas parties and events - enjoying time with friends and family is so important

• Do your own Christmas shopping - whilst you are busy fulfilling the Christmas dreams of others, don’t forget about you and yours!

• If you have kids make sure you book time off to go to their Christmas plays and end of year events - these are so precious and you want to enjoy every minute of these guilt free!

• Timeblock your working time - set key hours each week that you are working and stick to them. You don’t need to work 24/7 if you have planned well in advance!

• An early night or a long lie at least once a week

• Exercise and your health and wellbeing.

To truly avoid overwhelm during the silly season it is VITAL that you prioritise at least some of these things. Book them in as if they are appointments and make sure you maintain those boundaries so that you enjoy the festive period, not just survive it!

7. Execute your festive marketing and sales plan

One you have planned everything out - your marketing, your offers and your personal time you can focus on making, creating and packing and posting customer orders with grace, style and ease.

Don’t forget to grab your FREE Monthly and Weekly Planners to help you plan and prepare for an amazing 2020 Christmas Sales period.

And I wish you a fabulous season with heaps of sales to help you finish off 2020 with a bang!

Introducing my Christmas Styled Product Shoots

And if you want some help getting some amazing photos for your business on the run up to Christmas, I am delighted to announce my Christmas Styled Shoots!

These shoots are perfect if you want some festive shots of your products or your special Christmas packaging for your marketing on the run up to the festive season.

These limited edition shoots are running on the following dates:

24th September 2020

25th September 2020

8th October 2020

There are only 10 spots available and once they are gone, they are gone.

The Christmas Styled Shoot package includes:

• A 20-30 minute styling pre-shoot questionnaire & consultation call

• 10 curated images in your own bespoke gallery styled in a festive theme - these can be close ups of individual products or group shots/ flatlays as preferred

• 1 style set up using my festive props and in-stock backgrounds (no bespoke props will be sourced but you are welcome to send any you want me to use)

• High resolution files for print, & low resolution files for web

• Return postage of products post-shoot (via Special Delivery)

• Lifetime copyright release for use of images on your website, printed materials and social media channels

• Beautifully edited images.

The early bird pricing for these shoots is £97

This price will go up to the regular price of £120 from the 5th September.

To find out more and to book, please click the link below