Stacy Bloomfield (0:00)

Hey friend.

Angie (0:00)

Are you ready to pitch your artwork for art licensing? Then I have the thing for you. Presenting my brand new art licensing pitch Playbook. This free email course gives you everything you need to start pitching your artwork for licensing while leveraging your already awesome work into the next level of profitability and possibility. I'm going to teach you the five biggest mistakes that keep artists from crafting irresistible pitch emails, reaching out to their dream partners, pitching their work with confidence, gaining experience with collaborations, and building an art business that they love to run. So if you're ready to kickstart your art licensing business, visit artlicensingplaybook.com and I will send you my free 5 day email mini course. I can't wait for you to try it out. Bye.

Stacy Bloomfield (0:49)

It was Black Friday. I woke up, I opened my laptop, I checked my Etsy and there was nothing. And I began to panic because I'd been in business for about five years at this point. And for the previous several years, money just came to me on Black Friday. But I remember that Black Friday, nothing was happening. And all of a sudden I was like, oh no, what have I done? Of course I began to panic. And instead of having a really nice like after Thanksgiving Day with my family, I was a hot mess. I just kept refreshing and refreshing and refreshing my screen on Etsy, hoping that a sale would come in.

Angie (1:29)

Wouldn't it be nice if your art business loved you back? Hi, I'm Stacy Bloomfield. After years of trial and error and late night doodling, I went from being a coffee shop manager to running a vibrant seven figure art business that I love. And now I'm on a mission to help more artists create an art business.

Stacy Bloomfield (1:47)

That they love too.

Angie (1:49)

So I invite you to find a cozy spot, pull out your favorite sketchbook and listen.

Stacy Bloomfield (1:53)

Listen in.

Angie (1:54)

It's never too late to chase your creative dreams. Welcome to the Art plus Audience podcast.

Stacy Bloomfield (2:00)

Hey, hey, it's Stacy Bloomfield. I'm so excited to be here with you today. It's a solo episode and we're talking about Black Friday, y'all. Black Friday is in the retail world online sales, the day that everything really kicks off for holiday sales. We make so much of our revenue at GingerBR and Key Q4. So October, November, December. In fact, some businesses do more than half their revenue in those last three months. And so I thought it was only appropriate, given that it is the end of October, to go ahead and do a short episode with you about my best tips for having a killer Black Friday. So I'll start out by telling you a story about my not so killer Black Friday. I started out on Etsy. Many of you know that. And when I was on Etsy, I was kind of living in a cloud of delight and rainbows. At the time, Etsy was smaller. I was getting all of my sales from there. I didn't have to market, I didn't have to have a newsletter. It was just lovely. I made my products, I put them on Etsy and people bought from me. And I was like, man, I've got this small business thing all figured out. And then I remember I was sitting in my house with my family. It was Black Friday. I woke up, I opened my laptop, I checked my Etsy, I had done my obligatory like 20% off coupon code in the announcement of my shop and there was nothing. And I began to panic because I'd been in business for about five years at this point and for the previous several years, money just came to me on Black Friday. But I remember that Black Friday, nothing was happening. And all of a sudden I was like, oh no, what have I done? Of course I began to panic. And instead of having a really nice, like after Thanksgiving Day, slow eating leftover turkey and dressing sandwiches with my family, I was a hot mess. I just kept refreshing and refreshing and refreshing my screen on Etsy, hoping that a sale would come in. I called my sister who worked part time with me at the time, and I was like, Angie, what are we gonna do now all these years later? I'll tell you what we ended up doing. And just so you all know, my brand, GingerBR is a seven figure brand. I say that not to brag, but to tell you how far we've come. When I talk to you about our tips, we start advertising Black Friday really early. So I'm hopping in here into Shopify, which is what we use to host our online store, mps. Shopify is pretty much the standard nowadays for selling direct customer online. And I actually have an offer that if you sign up through my affiliate code, I think your first month is just a dollar. So I'm going to put the link for that in the show notes in case you're interested in opening up a Shopify store. So November 2023, we did gross sales just on gingerbread.com $173,000. Isn't that bananas? I'm shocked too. Frankly. I'm not shocked because we worked really hard. We strategize, and the things I'm going to tell you to do are exactly what we do on a larger scale. But anyone who has their own business can actually start out using these tactics, these strategies that we've picked up over the years to help make your November the best month ever. And you may be hearing this episode and you're like, stacy, this is actually kind of annoying because I'm so far away from hitting those numbers that hearing your success makes me feel gross. And I don't like it. I have heard that feedback before. That hearing about other people's successes, even if you mean it to be something to encourage and inspire and show what's possible, can sometimes make you feel down in the dumps. To be like, man, I'm not there yet. And I get that. But I like to share from a place of authenticity and honesty and tell you what's worked for us and what hasn't worked. So that maybe you can take these strategies and kind of pick and choose what's best for you right now in your business and go from there. So let's just start out with a couple of things that helped us get there. I do advertise now. I love using Facebook ads and Instagram in order to tell people about my products. You may not be ready to spend money on ads. I totally get it. We didn't start spending money on ads until 2022. But what's important to know is you have to advertise yourself. Whether it's through paid ads, newsletters, affiliate marketing. If people don't know that you exist, that you have products to sell, original pieces of art, man, you're not going to make any money this holiday season. And I gotta tell you, it seems like pretty basic advice, but this is advice that I have to give every day to my students. And I give it in love. But a lot of people don't want to talk about their businesses. They don't want to sell, they don't want to feel skeezy, they don't know how to talk about themselves in a way that doesn't feel self serving. And sometimes they just don't even want friends and family to know that they are trying to build an art business. But if you cannot imagine a world where you are successfully selling your art, you have to be able to envision yourself talking about your art with confidence. You're going to be your own best marketer and you have to commit today to show up, show up for your business so that people will know it exists. So that whenever you do have something for sale, when Black Friday rolls around, people will want to hopefully buy from you because they built a connection with you as a maker. And I really think that what helped me so much during the transition from like that year where I had no money coming on Black Friday to where we are now is I've shown up online consistently for years. Scroll through my Instagram. I have been there. I show up in my business. And people who show up in their businesses succeed. It's true. I've always just brought people along on my journey. I have built customers that are customers for life. They know all the things that have ever happened in my business because they pay attention. They like me, know me, and trust me. But to be successful in any business, you have to show up. So the things I'm going to tell you to do are going to involve you showing up in your business. I tell you, though, it's not going to magically happen for you to have success in Black Friday or in sales if you don't do the things that I'm going to encourage you to do and love. So, first of all, newsletters. You have to have a newsletter. You've heard me talk about it with previous guests, but you have to have a way to communicate with people. We send a heck of a lot of newsletters@gingerbr. And you may be like, yes, Stacy, I know I'm on your email list, but you need to send more emails. And you can even imagine you would send whenever it is Black Friday season. So I'd love for you, if you're anything like me and you have like 1,842 unopened emails in your inbox and you can scroll back to whenever it was actually Black Friday last year. And I'd love for you to look up a company that you're on their newsletter list. For me, I'm on a lot of retail stores and you may be thinking, I'm not a big business, I'm a solopreneur. These strategies still matter. Look at how many emails you're getting from these brands every single day, probably daily. During the holiday season, we are always trying to find a new way to talk about a product. Something I see a lot is people will send one newsletter whenever it's holiday season time. And they'll kind of bury the lead and have a little coupon code hidden in their newsletter. They'll send it once and they'll be like, okay, I did it. And then they'll be looking for this bias, this negative bias confirmation that's like, see, I sent it and I didn't get a lot of sales. Nothing happened. Why do you think all these bigger stores are sending so Many newsletters, it's because it works. And I know that you don't want to be that person in someone's inbox that they delete and unsubscribe. But there are people who will not unsubscribe. People who love your art, love your products, care about your story, and that's who you're trying to reach during Black Friday. So do you have a newsletter? If you don't go create one right now, please. Klaviyo is the best for products, but it can be kind of expensive. We used mailchimp before that. Highly recommend Just being brave and creating the newsletter. Now, this episode is not devoted to how you're going to build the audience on that newsletter. We've talked about it in other episodes. I think with Jenna Blackburn, we talked a bit about it. But I would highly encourage you to go ahead and just make the newsletter. Even if you just share it in Facebook and your friends and family join use this year as a maybe low risk opportunity to exercise your marketing muscle and send those newsletters. Second thing I want to encourage you is a lot of times people don't want to discount their products because, you know, we put a lot of time and effort into them. But the truth is, people are looking for a deal on Black Friday. Of course, you need to not discount to the point to where you don't make any money. Believe me, I've done that before. I've been like, all right, I see another brand discounting 50%. So I'm going to discount 50%. And then I realize I made no money from it. But even if you only have a few products, I want you to do the math. Obviously, I want you to see how much it costs you to create that product. The raw costs, labor costs. If you're hand making it, add that into it and then you're going to kind of multiply that by two and then multiply it by two again to get your retail price. Half of your retail price is your wholesale price. You may not want wholesale right now, but I want you to be prepared to make your best possible offer during Black Friday. So We've tested at GingerBR the difference between a 20% coupon code and a 30% coupon code. People like 30% off. If you can afford to do 30%, I highly recommend it. We do a 50% off customer appreciation sale once a year. Something that we build up anticipation for for our audience on social media and our newsletter. And it works. Our volume of sales are so significant during that time that, man, it Makes up for the discount. Honestly, we're moving through inventory and you may say, stacy, I only have a few products. Well, what is the best offer you can make? Is it free shipping right now? Is it 20% off? Is it that everyone who buys a product from you also gets a downloadable like PDF book or a pattern that you can email to them so you're not actually spending extra money? Is it like a buy one, get one free for your art prints? What is the best offer you could possibly make? And talk about it over and over and over and over again in your newsletter because you're now going to be sending like three newsletters a week for Black Friday. The next piece of advice I want to give you is a lot of times people don't want to put their best selling products on the front of their website. They want to show off what's new, right? Because we want eyeballs on what's new so that maybe it can become a bestseller. But if you're the type of brand that already has been selling for a little while and you have one product or two products that you know are just the best designs, best greeting card, best tea towel, put that front and center. Because the desire for that one most popular item is going to drive people to your site and then hopefully they're going to see other items on your website and then purchase those as well. But we always want to start off with our best foot forward, which is our best selling products, the best discount we can offer, and to communicate over and over and over again. Now if you are a beginning business and this feels a little bit out of reach for you, there are other things that you can do in order to make this a success. So I want to talk first about the kind of things that you could offer if you are a brand new business and you have limited inventory and resources. Well, on Black Friday you could have a special for custom artwork. The main thing though is you want to have some psychological triggers that will encourage people to buy. So anytime you're selling anything, you have to build up this anticipation of what's to come. So we're talking about what we're going to have for sale early. We're not going to just wait to share our Black Friday discount. On Black Friday, I want you to early start emailing people about that discount code. In fact, we now start our sale early and run it for two weeks. We don't just do a Black Friday single day only, we're running it for many days because we know that not everyone is shopping on Black Friday now. And so we don't want anyone to miss out. So we're building anticipation by talking about it early on social media and in our newsletters. Number two, we have time sensitive deals. You can do this too. If you're at the beginning of your business or you're further along a coupon code that expires. You know, most websites have a countdown timer whenever something is going to be gone. I want you to take advantage of this trigger that helps people to know that there's urgency because we do need urgency to let people know that this offer is going away. If you've ever had people buy your products and leave you a good review, I'd love for you to share that social proof on social media and even put it on your website. Go to gingerbread.com my website, and I want you to scroll down and you're going to be able to see a little slider that I have with all, all of the testimonials from our customers. I think we're almost to 2,000 testimonials of people who have bought our products and love them. Another thing that you want to consider are scarcity tactics. Like it has to do with time sensitive deals, right? But we want to make sure that people know like only five days left, sale ends in three hours. It can push a hesitant buyer to make the purchase. So we have the offer. That's only for a limited time. We're going to have countdown timers. You're going to remind people your newsletter topics are like only 3 hours left. Send that email when there's only 3 hours left. Truly will you see the biggest responses whenever it's almost over. Because a lot of people wait till the last minute. So we really want to hammer it, so to speak. Another thing that you can do, especially if you're in the earlier parts of your business, is bundle bundle and offer a discount for the bundle. So we have tea towel bundles. So you know, you save maybe $2 per tea towel when you buy a bundle of three. But people love that savings. And then we're moving more inventory so you can bundle things, your prints and greeting cards, a small print and a digital download, a sticker bundle, something with a little tiny discount built in, but you can market with so that people buy more of your products at once. The last thing I'm going to encourage you is don't wait till the last minute to do all of this. It's October right now, the end of October, November's here before you know it. So I would love for you to sit down. We actually did this in our Mastermind at our most recent Creative Hive Mastermind retreat. Like 20ish women who are building these amazing brands. We sat down and we went over more advanced Black Friday techniques and we gave everyone a worksheet and we said, we want you to right now figure out what is the offer you're going to offer specifically do the math. What are the products? What's the price point? What's the discount? How long are you going to run this sale? Is it going to be a full week? Is it going to be two weeks like us? Is it going to be just a day? Because that's the only time you have. Then you're going to actually think about the newsletters and that's the most important. The newsletters can correlate with your social media. So you're going to get out of just a blank monthly calendar and you're going to decide all the different ways that you can actually talk about what's coming. You're going to have the anticipation stage the pre launch. You're going to have the open cart which is, it's happening baby, it's time. Buy the products, tell your story, show off those products from every different angle. Share the customer testimonials about how much they love your designs. Show that product in use. Use your iPhone to take the best product photos you possibly can. Face to camera, talking about the product, how much you love it, what inspired it. I want you to think of every which way possible that you can highlight your sale and you're going to put on your calendar the newsletter topic and then that's going to be your social media topic too for the day. And then finally we have close cart. It's the day before cart. All right, our sale ends tomorrow. Today's the last day, three hours left for the sale. You're going to send more emails on your last day of open cart than you would any other time. I want to just encourage you that this works. When you show up in your business, amazing things can happen, but it takes you making that first step forward and committing. Now you may find this first year you feel a little wobbly, not so steady on your feet because you've never done this before. This is a practice year. This is your year to try Black Friday to see what you can do with what you have. And then you're going to afterwards, after the sale's over, there's something we do. It's like a post event audit, so to speak. It's like whenever something's done we decide to talk about what went well, what didn't go well, and what can we improve upon. And you're going to do this too. Let a few days go by after Black Friday sale is over and then you're just going to pull out a piece of paper, you're going to have three columns. What went well, what didn't go well, and what can I improve upon? And then here's the most important thing. I want you to literally go to next year's calendar, if it's a Google Calendar, and I want you to put an alert on your calendar for like the end of September and it says black Friday Prep starts now. Pull out last year's notes and then you're going to be set to start working on those things next year a month earlier than you are right now, because we're talking and it's just about October. But Black Friday truly can move the needle for product based businesses. And you know, if you're on Etsy, do this on Etsy. You may not be able to have a countdown timer, but you can still build a newsletter. If you're on Etsy, you can message previous buyers, you can have an announcement that you can change every day in your Etsy store. Utilize social media. If you're on Squarespace for selling, use it to the best of your ability. I'm using Shopify and I can tell you, use what you have where you're at right now. Don't go out necessarily today after listening to this podcast and be like, okay, I've got to build the perfect newsletter in the perfect website today. Take the advice I've given you. What can you apply now and what's going to be for next year? Start where you're at right now, use what you have at your disposal and go from there. But I just want to give you this last bit of advice that this can get better. Because I was someone who was a star seller on Etsy, things changed. I did not have a newsletter. I had no marketing plan. I was just flying by the seat of my pants. That was the year that I honestly thought I was going to close my business. After that Black Friday, that next year was so hard for me. And that's whenever I began to leverage my art, build multiple income streams and start treating my business like the business I dreamt of having. And here I am years later with a business that literally blows my mind. The art on products, that's selling day after day and it really works. And I want that for you. So Black Friday, I'd love to hear from you if you enjoyed this episode and what you plan on doing for your Black Friday Friday. All right, thanks so much for joining me and I will talk to you in our next episode of the Art plus Audience Podcast. Bye. Hey there, artists and creatives. Do you have burning questions about growing your art business, building your audience, selling your products, or navigating this creative life? Well, now you can call in and ask me directly. We've set up a dedicated Art plus audience podcast hotline just for you. Simply call 479-966-9561, leave your question and I'll be answering select questions on future episodes. So whether you're curious about marketing, your art, building, your brand, licensing, your portfolio, or anything in between, I'd love to hear from you. That number again is 479-966-9561. I can't wait to hear what you're wondering about and dive into these topics on the show. Let's make this a conversation. Bye.