1) Have the Origami Owl Jewelry Bar end on a week day. Preferably not Friday. People are out (hopefully) doing fun things on Friday and the weekend and probably not tied to their Facebook or other online avenue.
2) I'm still on the fence about whether to do the party on a personal Facebook page or on the Facebook Business page. I feel the business page gives it more legitimacy, but the business page doesn't allow you to give a beginning and ending date. Though people can still post up until the ending date. So I'd probably do it again on the business page when I do it.
3) Even though you're having an online party, if someone wants to place an order with you, take the order. Do NOT refer them back to your website to place their order in person just because it's fun to see the shopping cart add people and you'll have them in your "customers" section. Take the sale then and there. People get busy and forget and procrastinate. That's a good way to lose orders (so far I'm still waiting on 3 people who were genuinely interested, one went so far as to write down all she wanted, and they still haven't ordered).
4) Give incentive to order now. My deal was that you can win a free charm. I've considered doing it where everyone who orders gets a free charm but then I was concerned about the cost involved in shipping those charms out. First you have shipping going from O2 to you (close to $8.00, ouch), then shipping out to those who are not local. That can start to eat into your profits pretty heavily. But at the same time, it depends on how much you're willing to give up to increase sales and interest. The jury is still out as to whether the potential of winning a free charm versus a guarantee of a free winds up being the catalyst to a sale. Consider having your online party a week before you intend on ordering more stock, this way you were going to have shipping costs anyway, and you're not hurting your bottom line so badly.
5) DO NOT over saturate with invites and posts. Post only one time a day. Otherwise you are going to annoy people away from buying. One invite is sufficient. Trust me, they received it. If they didn't respond they are simply not interested and bugging them is not going to increase their interest. Instead post to your personal Facebook Page about the party with a link, and post pictures on your personal page. One a day per personal and business page. Otherwise, overkill.
6) Flyer - Put flyers everywhere you go. I've been bad about this. I didn't leave a single one.
All in all I feel the Jewelry Bar was a success for me. I almost made up my initial investment (the party closes at midnight tonight so I may just make it yet, if those promises to buy pan out). Wish me luck!
I have seen a lot of questions about "How to do an Online Jewelry Bar" so I thought I'd comment. While it seems daunting, it's quite simple.
ReplyDelete1- Decide when you want it to run
2- Decide where you want it to run (where do you have the most friends?)
3- Create an "invite" textual or otherwise, and forward that to all of your online friends. If you're doing it in Facebook, you'll create an event. Once you've created the event it will allow you to invite people to it.
4- Promote your event. Send an email invite to all your email contacts linking to your event page. Post a new locket picture daily and encourage those who have purchased to post what they have purchased. (Only one picture/post from you a day otherwise you'll annoy everyone away).
5- When your event ends, encourage everyone to send pictures of their lockets once they've received them and post on the event (You may need to edit the event to allow posting beyond the closing date). You may get late sales this way.
If you have any questions about how to do any of this, feel free to email me. At the time of this post (4/6/2013) I'm a novice, but learning a lot very quickly! ;)