Merch Sale Tips!
The holiday season is here and in this series of blogs, I am taking the opportunity to share experiences about increasing your online merch sales. Don’t miss out the people who’ve never bought your stuff or even heard of you. It is important to encourage your supporters to share your music “with family and friends” who they think will enjoy your genre. As discussed in my blog Holiday Season Merch Tips, 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.
Personalized Shipments
Imagining receiving something from your favourite star on Christmas? Yes, that is how it will feel to your fans when you say that you will personally be mailing out each shipment. To keep your promise, you may add an autographed flag to the package. It gives the fans a feeling of importance and connectedness. When they receive wishes from you on a special occasion, they are sure to come back to you later as well. You can also sell signed copies of your posters or albums. For such personalized gifts, wrap the shipment with gift wrap and send it to its destination if the recipient is a 3rd party, or include a Christmas card. Most artists say that the favorite part of running a Christmas sales is the fact that it allows them to be more personal with their fans.
Load your Store
Don’t expect miracles happening at your Christmas store if you have only 2 products to sell. Realistically, it’s not always financially feasible to have additional merch; but if you can, try to add something new. That could mean hoodies just for the holidays, or a 5-song Christmas EP. New items always bring more traffic to your store and merch table at shows. However, at this point, it’s probably not possible to create something new, but you can pull out your very first album that nobody knows exists, or give away something exclusive that no one can get anywhere else. Another good idea is to partner with a friend who makes hand-made crafts. If you get on the web to search for more ideas, you would be surprised at the number of quick, economical ideas that you can use to decorate your store!
Create Bundles
Christmas stores can be a dream come true for a fan who can’t afford to drop an extra $5-10 bucks. Remember, a lot of people are waiting for the holiday season to get things cheaper. Bundles are your key to a great merchandise store during the holidays or any day of the year. Any time you can sweeten the deal for your fans by pairing items together, you should do it. Like, a T-shirt is $15 and an Album is $10. Together they are $20. Save $5 and get both. This kind of deal encourages the average visitor to go for the bundle instead of one singular item. What if you run a T-shirt/Album bundle that is $15 total? Can’t beat that offer!
Extend the Sale
Don’t think that everyone’s inbox is flooded with awesome Cyber Monday and Black Friday deals. Forget that. Give people time to decide what they want to get by visiting your web store during the entire season and taking advantage of your coupon code after the dust settles from all those other sales. Keep your sale going through the whole month of December.
Tip: Generally, holiday season is a busy time for all the venues, in terms of getting a performance for an indie artist. Also, people are in a jolly mood and happy to spend during holidays. So, it will be beneficial for you to get dates (for performance) during the holiday season from important venues. You will find happy crowd and selling merch will be very easy at a performance during the festive season. Some also believe that summer is a good time for performances because a large group of people take vacation almost all of summer and because summer has increased music events such as indie music festivals and summer concert series etc.
Have you done other things to increase traffic and sales on your web store? Let me know in the comments section below.
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