Truth talk time: Your promotional campaign doesn’t end with the sale or with the holiday. For those who made a purchase during your initial emails, make sure you follow up with an upsell offer. Those who’ve invested in your products are often interested in finding out what else you have to offer, so an effective upsell can encourage them to make additional purchases. These upsell offers require careful planning, so make sure you come up with a natural progression that customers are likely to take advantage of. Similarly, those who chose not to make a purchase during your initial email campaign might still be interested but chose not to make a purchase for a variety of reasons. People are sometimes reluctant to spend more than a certain amount during the holiday seasons, so a down-sell can be a great way to give them a soft landing spot. Some people might worry that their time is limited during the holidays, and a purchase that will occupy a significant amount of their time might not feel right. By offering a down-sell, you provide a more bite-sized option that can capture a significant portion of your mailing list and encourage them to make a larger purchase in the future. Do you offer upsell or downsell offers after your promotional campaigns are “over”? Share your thoughts with us in the comments! 
A successful promotion should feature something customers find useful which stands out from a typical offer. Consider offering a bonus in addition to your paid product, such as a free, limited-time trial of your membership, a free eBook, or free audio training. 👉 But remember, whatever you add, keep it simple and make sure it helps your audience solve their damn problem. 👉 Don’t include something extra just to add something extra - that’s a BIG no, no! It takes time to develop all of the elements that will make a promotion a success, which is why we can’t stress enough that a promotional calendar is a must-have. Just as you consider how to allocate your budget, treating time like money is useful when planning how much time each aspect of the promotion will take when scheduling your promotional campaign. 👉 When planning your offer, do you want to offer an existing product or service, or do you need to create something new? Promoting a current product is certainly easiest and least time-consuming but if it’s seriously outdated, then consider doing updates before offering it up as a holiday promotion. How much time will it take for you to develop a new product? Do you need to outsource any aspects of this new product? Think realistically here. Even if you love to write, do you have the time between coaching clients to write a brand-new product? If not, outsource to a trusted ghostwriter. Also, consider the time it takes to test the offer with a sample audience before actually releasing it. This step can be as simple as asking for feedback from trusted peers or you can splurge on a focus group to give honest feedback, much like the larger corporations do. 👉 Have you added something useful to your offers? 
We can't stress this enough: if you create content on a regular basis you literally have a treasure chest you can pull from any time to whip out a brand new product or lead magnet or webinar or video. We know that sounds nuts to a lot of people, because there's not a solid understanding of how that works. But the great news is that we covered a few examples in episode 7 of the Marketing & Cocktails podcast! Hop on over to iTunes or marketingandcocktails.com and take a listen, then leave a review to let us know what you thought of this episode! Do you create content regularly anywhere? Share with us in the comments! 
Does getting your customers attention feel like the Apple rainbow spinning wheel of death? Hoping that once the wheel stops you’ll not find chaos on the other end. To get the attention of customers, you need to reach them in several ways--through social media, email, and online ads. Relying on a single method to reach your audience isn’t wise because not everyone in your target market will see each of these avenues. 📱 Think of how many social media posts you publish normally. Does everyone in your target market see every single one? 🙅♀️ No way! 🙅♀️ Likewise, not everyone in your market uses social media, so you could miss out on reaching huge numbers of your target market simply because you’re focused on one avenue of promotion. Ideally, you want to use every avenue possible (and affordable) to reach your market. ⚙️ You may even hit the trifecta where your social media followers are also your email subscribers and also see your online ads. These people will likely buy more quickly because they are seeing your promotion across various platforms. But this is the exception, not the norm, so plan your touchpoints carefully and far enough in advance of when you want to promote your offer, like the holiday season, so they already know, like, and trust you and are ready to purchase. 👉 How many avenues are you using to reach your ideal customers? 
Here are key questions to ask when setting up your metrics so that you can pull all that data gold and craft a marketing strategy that converts: What are you looking to achieve? What is the ideal outcome of this campaign? Visibility, brand awareness, loyal customers, increased sales? Will this increase revenue in the long run? If so, how? Will we sell more by discounting? How will this benefit (or incentivize) our customers? Asking the right questions can help you to take a look at the big picture, which will help you strategize and build on your previous experience. So tell us, do you pay attention to your metrics each month?