Holiday Season Merch Tips.
Gratitude and humbleness will take you a long way in the indie music industry and open doors to success, so will sounding professional and politically correct. In my blog 5 Ways to Impress Bookers, I have written about the importance of planning well in advance while booking performances for tours and music festivals. As the name suggests, a booker is a person who is hired by companies to book performers for an event. With the growing indie music industry, the bookers have become really important people and hence very busy. Every artist will come in contact with bookers before they are able to physically perform locally, nationally and internationally.
With the advent of Internet, however, the online virtual world has become much easier to reap benefits from. One of the important ways to benefit from the virtual world is through online merch sales. So today, I am going to share some quick tips to increase your online merch this holiday season.
Decorate Your Store
Hard copy music sales have gone down considerably since live streaming and file sharing have been made available. As discussed in my blog The Indie Guide to Radio, with fierce competition, huge supply of music and the money flowing in the industry at an all-time low, with the younger generations only wanting to stream and buy pirated copies, physical sales are declining. Only the most incredible artists are able to make ends meet through just record sales. Admit it. People rarely visit your online store. Hard copies are just not selling like they used to. And if they are, people are getting them at the live show to commemorate their time at an awesome concert. So how do you get people to visit your store? Give them some holiday discounts. Yes, don’t tell me you don’t look up the “Grand Amazon Holiday Sale” at least once, even if it is just to check how low the prices are! Make it shiny. The holiday season is coming up and you want to make the best use of it. Give a holiday feel to your store. Encourage people to stop over and check out the “Holiday Store” for some great deals. Remind people that this is a temporary sale through Dec 25 (or whatever date you choose). Curiosity will encourage them to at least stop by and check out what you’ve got to offer.
If you do not have an online store yet, too bad! You are missing out on a lot of money and fan following. Get in touch with HyperEffects for a quick website makeover!
Deals, Deals, Deals!
Your target audience is your fans. Now, you’d think if they are real fans, they’ve already bought your album; and if they haven’t bought it yet, they might never buy it. Maybe they only like your live performances? Regardless, holiday sales are just the perfect time to reel them in. Come up with clever ways to sell your merch. Post a 50% off coupon code. Offer free shipping, with complimentary gift wrapping. Create Bundles. If your $12 album is suddenly $6 for the month of December, that’s a deal that’s hard to pass up for the die-hard fan! Or maybe an additional 20% off sale price? Here are uncountable ways to create attractive deals to lure your fans. Most store platforms have tools you can use to create discount codes and run special deals.
Most of the famous music distributors rarely give anything for free, no matter how much music you buy from them. They almost have a monopoly in the market because they offer music from major labels. As an independent artist you are free to be generous in your sales methods. This can become your unique selling point. As I have suggested in my blog E-mail Marketing for Indie Artists, offer the customers to receive a link to a song in an e-mail, or send a little gift, like a glimpse of your upcoming release, or short peeks to back-stage fun etc. Before your next release, your fans will already have you on their bucket-list! Getting appreciation for their repeat purchases in the form of bulk discounts and coupon offers will also keep the customer coming back to you and even awaiting your new release.
Use Attractive Key-Words
You don’t want to miss out people who’ve never bought your stuff or even heard of you. Here, it is important to encourage your supporters to share your music “with family and friends” who they think will enjoy your genre. Albums and T-shirts are great “stocking stuffers” and simple gift ideas for co-workers or people you “don’t want to spend a bomb on”. Understand the power of suggestions and use it to your advantage. What you say and how you say it will affect how people decided to support you through your store.
The holiday season is on and I am going to come back with more tips to increase your merch sales this season. Stay connected!
