Zoom Chat Overview: 1
Launching your biz/ release
· Dealing with the overwhelm to just start
o There will never be “the best time” so at some stage you just need to jump in and start!
o Feeling prepared can definitely help though, so setting up a plan for what you need, and having some SM posts up your sleeve can help kick things off
· Setting a date and working backwards to get everything done works for a lot of people- me included!
· Making a list of what you need to do and ticking the list off is a way of helping yourself know that you’re ready
What you need:
· Boxes
· Tissue paper/bubblewrap
· Business cards
· Packing tape
You don’t need all the bells and whistles: confetti, lollies, stickers, extra thank you cards. You can totally add those in if you want, its all a part of the customer experience, but don’t let worrying about this aspect put you off beginning!
Decisions to make:
· Pricing- you don’t want it to charge too much, or undercut your competition, or to undersell yourself. Price to begin with at roughly what you want to end up charging. Check your competitors and try to price accordingly.
o I charge less than the people who hand cut every piece, and those that sand the backs of their pieces (both of which are time consuming and both of which I don’t do), and I charge more than people who are just starting out. There’s a balance, you need to find it.
· You don’t need to be perfect to begin, but be honest. If there is a fault, make sure its photographed, consider labelling it as seconds or samples. As I go along now I sometimes find things that aren’t up to my standards, they’re in a box that’ll become a seconds sale. However, I do sell “imperfect” things too because I don’t consider a fingerprint to be a detriment, I think of it as a maker’s mark and fully acceptable within the handmade community. Again, it’s a balance!
· Your processes- printing off order forms, putting them in boxes, doing things in batch or doing one by one. A lot of this comes down to trial and error and practice. I think it was 8 months in that I truly got my groove on this one!
Hyping:
· Take the customer on a journey so they feel a connection to both you and the finished piece.
· How/when/why the idea sparked in the first place- the inspiration for it
· Any problem solving, trouble shooting, prototyping you did first.
· Any mistakes or issues that you found and fixed along the way
· The process- as outlined below!
· The finished piece
· Packing it up when it sells
· Hopefully a shot/story when the customer receives it!
· Ideally each finished product would have:
· Behind the scenes photo in progress
· A reel either from the process, the whole way along, how it began/how it ended or simply showing it off
· Catalogue shot- simple, showing it off accurately and easily viewed (close up, well lit, colour corrected)
· Scale shot (hands, on ear)
· Editorial shot- as part of its whole collection, stylised, the attention grabber image that you’d put as a pic on your website’s landing page or the one you want blowing up on insta
· Space these out- post one MAYBE 2 grid post a day, a reel every 1-3 days, 1-6 stories a day, an IGTV when something to say. I’m sorry to say that its getting harder to get away with not creating reels, so I do recommend putting your energy into them.
· Hashtag bunches for each type of post, saved on your phone or in an app for scheduling. This saves time and helps you not use the same ones for every single image.
· Don’t let yourself get spammy.
o Very few people can get away with posting 5 carousels in a day the day of/before a release, because those people have regular customers that are going to purchase regardless and they know it.
o Spacing out your posts over a week or so is ideal. On normal weeks I do one post a day, on release weeks its more like 2-3 a day (two grid posts, one in the morning and one at night, and a reel at night too).
o Walk the line between giving release information with each post without being sales-y. A sentence at the end with the release date and time is advisable- I can do that for every post for a week and still have people messaging to ask when they’ll be available! So yes, you can repeat yourself a lot and still miss people!
· Grid:
o Leading up to the release everything you’re releasing should be previewed. Carousels are your best friends when putting up these shots- the editorial shot first then the catalogue so every piece can be seen. People are making little shopping carts in their heads as you do. They’re also at some point going to go “Oh I wasn’t going to buy anything but there really is so much I like, I’ll have to!” so the more you whet their appetite the better
o I do stories (then pop them in a highlight) so the price range of each collection is visible beforehand too. That minimises the price shock where someone sees its more than they thought and reflexively click out without checking out.
o Day of release do a “here’s what you need to know” kind of post. Its info, but also a reminder.
o As the release goes live do a post along the lines of “READY NOW!” .These posts always have a huge amount of click-throughs to my website, more than any other.
· Stories:
o Leading up try to always have a countdown in, for about a week
o Do a couple of stories right as release time hits
o As I mentioned, having each collection previewed in highlights helps people see everything on offer and prepare themselves
· IGTV/Live
o Day before or day of. This helped me immensely in the beginning, and is getting less important now that I have a bigger fan base that are familiar with the sizes of my earrings.
· Emails
o I only email right on release time unless giving early access to your email subscribers
o Too many emails and people stop opening them, but if you only ever send when they can immediately act, you train them to open and click through
o If doing an early access, I’ve found the best is 30-60 minutes early, any earlier and the urgency isn’t there and they may leave it then forget. One day or 12 hours early just hasn’t amounted to much traffic for me in the past, whereas now I have orders flooding in from 30mins early access.
After all that, you’ve got your release! I hope this helped!