If you’ve been selling on Etsy for a while, you know how crazy the holiday shopping season can be. If this will be your first Holiday on Etsy, then buckle up because you are in for a ride.
Preparing in advance of the holiday rush is so important to staying ahead of all the business that comes with selling online during the holidays. To help you get ready, we’ve put together these 5 tips for being ready before the rush begins.
1. Start Marketing Now
Get an early jump on your marketing by starting to tease your products and holiday plans now. Not only will this get your audience excited about what’s coming from you, but it will also help you beat your competitors to the punch.
Starting early with your marketing will help you avoid being lost in the inevitable holiday marking noise that comes as the holiday shopping season begins.
2. Plan Your Sales In Advance
If you intend to run holiday sales on your Etsy shop, planning your strategy before the holiday rush is going to help you focus on fulfilling those orders later. You will want to take into consideration what items you are offering a discount on, how much of a discount you want to offer, and when you plan to run these sales.
The week surrounding Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday is the busiest time of the year for the Etsy platform, and shoppers will be looking for sales. You are going to want to at the very least target this time frame if you have a holiday sale.
Another idea would be a pre-holiday sale in October to catch those shoppers trying to get done early, and perhaps a December sale to catch those last-minute shoppers.
Regardless of when or how many sales you run this holiday season, making your sale plan early goes hand in hand with your marketing plan. Like we mentioned above, marketing early is important to getting out ahead of the crowd and having a solid plan ready early allow you to begin marketing your sales before they even begin.
3. Get New Products Listed Early
Maybe you’ve been following the trends all summer and have a few ideas for new products you want to try out. Don’t wait until November to get those products created and listed. Get started now.
Not only will this give you time to dial in your SEO and get your product indexed in Etsy search, but also allow you to take advantage of early holiday searches. Using eRank’s Monthly Trends we can see that searches for Christmas last year already began to increase in October.
4. Inventory Your Supplies
This one is huge! You don’t want to realize that you ran out of your most common shipping box the day after Black Friday. Shipping times can get unpredictable during the holiday season and with ever-changing supply chain challenges, you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you can’t get what you need, when you need it.
Take an early inventory of all your shipping and product supplies early and make sure you order what you need in plenty of time. If you anticipate selling 10 of a certain item during the holidays, make sure you have materials to make 10 of that item plus a little extra for some breathing room.
As the holiday approaches keep an eye on your inventory and as you use things up, supplement that initial stock you built up. You will be thanking yourself when the time comes, and you can focus on serving your customers rather than finding a vendor that can get you your supplies in time.
5. Batch Out Products Where You Can
Depending on the type of products you sell, creating batches of products to keep in inventory for the holidays is a fantastic way to get ahead of the coming workload. Even with personalized items, you can conceivably create batches of the product leaving the final step of personalization until the order is received.
Happy Holiday Planning
Now that you have some tips for taking advantage of the time leading up to the holidays, don’t let it go to waste. Even though it’s a cliché’ the saying “It’ll be here before you know it” is absolutely true in this case. Take advantage of every moment you have now, and hopefully you’ll be able to rest a little more during the holidays.