Number one, determine a sales goal and create some structure for yourself. And once you have that sales goal, start identifying basically what needs to happen in order to create that goal. So if let's say you want to do $10,000 a month on your website, which is fantastic. How are you going to get there? Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's
do this. Welcome to the thrive by design Podcast, episode 357. It's Tracy Matthews here chief visionary officer of flourish and thrive Academy and the host of the thrive by design podcast. I am extremely excited to be here today to be talking about how to make more online sales this summer by really being more impactful in your strategy. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm actually recording this a couple of weeks in advance like I usually do because I batch record these podcasts. I think I actually recorded about 10 or 15 podcasts this week. So I have things, some really great episodes coming in the pipeline, starting with a couple of weeks ago, and we did our holiday gift guide episode, along with many other things. Today I did an interview all about conscious leadership and the future of work with Sarah Holly, which I'm super excited about. And I interviewed Lauren Chateau to talk about how to ethically use Etsy to grow your online sales, which is coming out next week, I'm pumped about that. And then I interview my girl, Brenna McGowan, all about holiday sales, visibility, and so much more. We have some really great episodes coming in the pipeline. Plus, it is our 10 year anniversary over here at flourish and thrive. On July 5, Robin and I are going to have a big celebration and share with you where we think the future of the jewelry industry is going. We're talking about a lot of future focused things. So right now, as you're listening to this, it is June 14, and I am in Lake Como Italy, it's my last day, I think we're probably driving to Milan, to head out to our flight tomorrow. And hopefully, you've been following me on social media and you're saying what a blast I'm having. I'm just forecasting that for myself in the future, you know, vision casting my amazing trip to Lake Como. And I'm so excited that we had the opportunity to go back that now that things are opened up. For those of you have listened to the show for a while you probably know that I have a fascination and passion for Italy, I went almost eight years in a row I think before the pandemic. And I'm just so excited. I love the food. I love the culture. I love the people. It is a beautiful country. And it's just one of my favorite summer escape. So it's great to be back. So I hope I have a lot of things to report, I probably won't be reporting them till the end of the summer, but you'll hear me talking about them on social. So check it out on Instagram and Tiktok you can find me over at Tracy Matthews and Y and at flourish underscore thrive. So before I dive into today's episode, this is really you know, a lot of people in the summer months, either they kind of fall in one of two camps, they either have a really slow summer because they sell primarily wholesale, or their seasons are mostly during the holidays or in the front end of the year. I know for me, my busy season with a fine jewelry private jewelry company where I'm designing mostly engagement rings is usually at the front end of the year. Or you're someone who is really focused on holiday season sales, which is a lot of people. And then there's other people who actually have busy summers because they have more summer focus brands, and all those things. So wherever you are, what I really want to help you do is to start thinking strategically about how you're growing your audience and getting more high quality traffic to your website. And doing that starting now. Because if you can get quality traffic to your website during the summer months, and you can kind of dial in some strategies and get your planning kind of up and running in advance. Then guess what happens you have an amazing holiday sales season. So today I'm going to be talking about those five steps to get more sales this summer online. But then also next week, I'm going to be hosting a brand new newly revamped workshop and it's called Supercharge your online sales. It's designed to help you 3x Your high quality website traffic and build brand loyalty by creating an unforgettable brand experience. So I'm excited to bring that to you. And we're delivering it in a workshop format so that you're gonna actually be showing up and getting some work done. I've completely revamped it from previous years I have hosted a masterclass with the same name before but I'm bringing in what's working now which I think is always really valuable and important for a viewer really specific reason. And that reason being is that things are always changing. And we know with iOS updates, and everything else that's happening with on social media and algorithms and all the things that worked last year, may not be working. Now, some of it is, but not all of it. So we're gonna dive deep into that. So please, please, please join me next week, it's going to be a great class. So even if you're on vacation, join, it's going to be amazing head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash supercharge. And sign up, save your seat right there. I also want to mention who this is for to be crystal clear. This is for jewelry makers are already doing like anywhere from five to $10,000 a month in offline sales who are trying to grow their website traffic. This is great for people who are just trying to scale maybe you already have successful online sales, and you just want to scale and get more and make a bigger impact. And it's also for people who like me, who are private jewelers or Fine Jewelers who want to use their website as part of a omni channel presence. And to drive traffic to that website to get more customer acquisition. What I mean by that is to get people filling out forms for custom or private jewelry work and or their fine jewelry. So if that sounds like you, then I would love to invite you to join us for this masterclass. So head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash supercharge and save your seat right there. All right, so let's dive in to these five steps. Now I know that online sales strategy, one of the most important things that you can do, and this is step one, I think a lot of people forget about this is like, they're like, Oh, I'm not really doing a great job at selling online or whatever. In fact, I did an audit for a student of ours, a while back for her pricing. And she joined us for our momentum program after I did that audit. And she was really struggling because she was having a hard time actually, she had a successful business selling about, you know, $500,000 a year, she was on track to do that. And she's in the fine jewelry market, but she could barely pay her business licenses. And she was kind of freaking out. She's like, my business is growing. And it's never been this good. My products are selling, I don't know what's going on, though I don't have any money left over. And it doesn't make sense. So we dove into her pricing strategy and some of her sales goals. And it became really clear that number one she needed to she needed an audit because she needed to increase her prices, which was a thing that was super helpful. And then the second step is that she didn't really have a goal or strategy on what needed to happen in order to get the online sales that she wanted direct to consumer. So she was very clear on what she wanted to create from the wholesale side. But she had a very successful trunk show business. But she was not very clear on what she needed to create when it came to these online sales. So the first step is to determine a goal for online sales. So if you have a track record, the best thing to do is to look up that track record, and then create a small increase for yourself and get that going. And I know for a lot of people, things feel like a little bit weird right now. And I don't blame you, you know, commodities prices are going up, that means that gold, diamonds and silver, the cost of them are going up. And so the costs of making jewelry and selling jewelry are much higher than they used to be. And that might you know, at a certain point, depending on who you serve, kind of weed people out of that process like maybe not as many people can afford, what you're offering or you might not be, maybe your sales are slowing down because there's uncertainty, or maybe you are concerned about sales slowing down because there is uncertainty. And so I think the more structure you can create for yourself, and the more that you can start saying like, Hey, okay, here's what's going on. There's nothing I can personally do about this, except for to move into action, and to create some structure for myself, then that will help you kind of move forward towards that next step. So number one, determine a sales goal and create some structure for yourself. And once you have that sales goal, start identifying basically what needs to happen in order to create that goal. So if let's say you want to do $10,000 a month on your website, which is fantastic. How are you going to get there? How many pieces do you need to sell? Do you need to figure out like the average order value that you usually sell online, or if you don't know, do you need to kind of make it up for now. And once you do this, it actually gives you power because you have something to work towards. And once you break that sales goal down into the number of pieces you need to sell, it becomes a lot easier to actually achieve that because you're working towards a tangible number instead of some mystery, right? So if that landed with you, I want you to go right now and go on social media and clip this episode in your stories and say like, write something and tag me or just shoot me a direct message on Instagram or Tiktok. And I'm saying that because like you'd be surprised at how many of you listening and raise your hand who are so unclear about where they're going, that they just don't know how to get there because they they don't have a clear goal to target. So I want to make sure that you got something to shoot for. Because it's going to help with all these other things that we're going to do. Talk about now step number two is to improve the user experience. I want you to think through the lens when you're shopping online. Like let's say you click on an Instagram ad and you see something that's interesting. Like for me, I'm shopping for my dog Roxy all the time. I bought so much, I probably spent about two or $3,000 on doggy goods for her over the last six months since we got her. And, you know, I like Hilux luck. And so Jason bought her like a standard crate on Amazon, like one of those ugly looking crates, I love you, babe. But you know, whatever your dude. And I have an apartment that I work out of, and I knew I wanted to bring her to my apartment, you know, on certain days, just bring her back and forth and have her here sometimes. So I get served an ad for this beautiful dog crate by a brand called digs. I click on the dog crate, the user experience is streamlined. I had a question I was able to live chat, all those things, click Pay, takes me to the Shopify shop pay section, I entered my email, everything's there. point click Checkout, it was super easy, super easy. There was no churn. But I've been on other websites where they're not on Shopify, or they don't have that shop pay thing set up. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta find my credit card. And sometimes I'm in bed. And it's hard. So I ended up abandoning the cart and never buying from those other brands. So I want you to think about how you enjoy buying online if you're an online shopper.
And if you're not think through the lens of the people that you want to be buying from you online, is your user experience streamlined. Is it very clear who you serve? Do the images you have on your website actually fit and look good on the website to compel people to take that next action? Are there strong calls to action on the homepage? Can people clearly see how to shop? So if you're shopping somewhere, and you really enjoyed the user experience? Because it was easy? Start taking screenshots of those websites and start to noting, like, what are some of the things that they're doing to get me to take that next step? How is this easy for me? Is it because there's live chat and I don't have to pick up the phone and call or wait 24 hours for an email? Like, how is that service? Really? How was that really serving me in a way that's going to allow me to get to that next step. And I can't say this enough. Get on Shopify, if you're not unless you have some complex thing, because you will make so much more sales if you have that dynamic checkout set up because people don't have to think about entering their credit card information. And taking that next step. Shopify can be fully customizable if you want it. And I know a lot of you out there on WordPress or Wix, or some of these other platforms are saying like, Oh, but it's cheaper, or we're gonna have my website here. But I want you to think about what I just said, how many people are abandoning carts because they have to go dig for their credit card, and it's not already set up. That is the one of the most compelling reasons to move to Shopify today. So I have not, you know, I'm a huge advocate of Shopify, for that for a lot of reasons. But that's one of the most important. Step number three, I want you to think of your web site as part of your sales machine. And here's what I mean by that. A lot of people say that they want these passive online sales. And in fact, I'm going to be interviewing Lauren Chateau next week. She's our community manager over here at flourish and thrive. And Lauren was a former student of ours, and she did have 100% online business, she was not interested in doing wholesale, she was not interested in doing shows, she just wanted to sell online. Lauren is a self professed tech geek and nerd. And so she was always like, always in that place of tinkering and optimizing. And so if you're like Lauren, then focus just on your website. But I know that most of you who I talk to really enjoy those in person experiences. You like meeting people in person you like having trunk shows and parties, you like doing these, like craft shows or events. Or if you're a private jeweler, like me, you like meeting people in person and having a conversation. So your website should act as a tool, as part of the entire sales process is not the only avenue. It's just one of many. So if you're thinking of it in the terms of an omni channel business in a place where you're getting sales from a variety of ways. How is your what is your the purpose of your website? What is it there to serve? It's to help you make sales. Does it really matter how you make the sale? Like if someone finds you online, and they fill out a contact form, and they want to ask you some questions, or they're chatting on the live chat, and they want to order just on the phone. Is that the same thing as someone clicking and pointing and just checking out on your website if you still got the sale? Is it or not? And so I really want to reframe this mindset because a lot of people are so tied on the fact that they just want people to land on their website, point and click a sale. If you have expensive jewelry. That doesn't happen that easily. You probably are going to have to talk to people, you're probably going to have to direct message them. The more you can pick up the phone live chat with them. Have a conversation. Get your voice involved. The easier it will be to make a sale. If you are have other types of jewelry, it's the same thing to people want to know that they can trust you. And this is part of inexperience. So if you're saying to yourself, it's so hard to create an offline experience online, take what I just said and think, How can I replicate the offline experience and make it an online experience? Well, there's a lot of ways number one, if you're selling in person, follow up with the people after in, add, like, reach out to them and say, hey, you know, you bought this necklace at the show I was at, I just noticed, I have a matching pair of earrings on my website. And I wanted to know, like, are you interested in getting the next piece that like a matching set, and then you could literally text them or message them, like a link to that piece? I wouldn't start it out that way to actually lead with like, Hey, I wanted to check in to see how your order is going.
And, or how you're enjoying that necklace that you bought at the show. And then you could follow up with them once they respond and say, you know, and just thank them for being there to say, Hey, I found a pair of earrings in my inventory. I have them available online to buy my online store. And here's the link if you're interested. If not, no worries, let me know either way, I have a couple of other people who bought that same necklace who might be interested. Another thing that you can do is, like really think like when you're in those in person events? How can you drive traffic to your website that way? Are you building your email list? When you see people in person? Are you getting phone numbers, so you can add them to your SMS list, obviously, with permission or manually SMS them because it's a great strategy, are you giving them maybe some incentive to buy from you online or opt in to an offer. And so I love the idea of like, maybe I was at a sample sale one time a long time ago, and I got a $50 gift card to shop on someone's website regular price, they're like, hey, use this gift card and buy some of the new stock. And that was a great way for them to build sales in their audience, I ended up doing it not buying anything, because I'd spent too much at the sample sale. But I definitely went and looked. There wasn't anything that I wanted more than what I already had purchased. But it is definitely a great way for it was a great way for them to get me to opt into their email list. It was a great way for them to get the traffic on the site. So they can start even retargeting me with ads later on. Right. So this is important. And then I want you to think about how you're building your SMS and email list your digital SMS lists when you're marketing to people, because I want you to make sure that you're sending out at least one email or SMS message a week, if not more, I get SMS messages almost every single day from brands that I like, asking me to shop. In fact, I was on Wednesday, sign up for some suitcase brand A while back, and I got one today they're having a sale this weekend because it happens to be right before Memorial Day when I'm recording this. So think about all the reasons that you have to reach out to people and give them an offer. It's not necessarily discounting them, but reach out and think of your website as part of a 360 or 103 60 Holistic omni channel Sales Machine.
Step number four is all about getting high quality traffic to your website. So what's the difference between random traffic and high quality traffic? Well, random traffic is are people who are not serious about your brand, high quality traffic are people who already know like and trust you and want to buy from you. That is why when I was talking about building your email list, and transferring those people from the in person events or previous customers, onto your website, as quality traffic, this is important. So I want you to always be thinking about how you can build high quality traffic. So the people you already know the people who've already purchased from you are the best traffic, the people have already paid for something. Referral campaigns are also another great way for high quality traffic, I was just working with a VIP client, because I do these VIP days for people who want to just work directly with me, feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in learning more about that. And on these VIP days, there are different types of them. I have a virtual option, which is what this person chose. And we were on the second session of this virtual option. And, you know, one of the things that she said was, you know, I'm just really trying to grow my current audience and I'm like, What are you doing to get referrals? And like, well, sometimes people talk about it, but there's no formal plan, like should I give them a like a discount or something like that? I'm like, No, all you have to do is just ask for the referral. Tell them that you build your business on referrals, especially for a high touch brand. This is a fine jewelry designer. She's doing several million dollars a year, and she's in the private jewelry space. And in my private jewelry business. I know that one of the things that people like are happy to do when they have a great experience is to send people my way. In fact, my clients Kelly and Tyler I think they sent like five referrals to me. I even got one this last year that one didn't end up in a sale. It wasn't the right he wasn't the right fit for me because of what he was looking for and all the things I told The story many times, but I'm not gonna go into it right now. But it's funny like how the right people find you, and then the wrong people, you're just like, you try to help them and it's just not gonna work. Anyway, so the right people, when you develop a strong like referral, ask will just send people your way. And so part of this process because she has a high touch product, and sells very expensive engagement rings was that once the couple gets engaged, she sends them out a gift, like a package saying congratulations, you know, maybe with a bottle of champagne, or whatever it is. And then inside that package is a thank you note, and something along the lines of like a pre created card that says, Thank you so much. I build my business on referrals. And I'm so grateful if you know, anyone who might be interested, I'd be grateful for the referral or something along those lines. And you wouldn't believe like how far that can go. And for someone who's doing a high touch brand, that might take a while for it to pan out. But it might not you just never know, because people who are getting engaged often have other friends getting engaged in that same demographic, like the people are getting married for a second time or the late 20, early 30 year olds are getting married for the first time, like all the things so referral campaigns. Now, the next part of that is also direct mail. I think direct mail is like an underutilized segment. And think about like, what can you do to create brand loyalty with direct mail? Are there people on your mailing list that you could send out a note card and give them some sort of incentive to buy on your website that you've met other places, maybe these are your top customers, maybe these are people who have never purchased from you, but are on your physical mailing list. Maybe it's like a friends and family promotion where you send out a promotion to the people that you know, to get them to support you. And there's a lot of ways that you can do this, but direct mail can be really powerful. And I'm gonna share a case study on the supercharge your online sales website about one of our students who got a 38% conversion. Now if you know anything about online conversions, normal like website cold traffic conversion is like 1% of warm Traffic Conversion is about 3%. And so a 38% conversion is really high, really, really high. So I want to share this strategy with you. It's awesome. And I'll share the case study as well. Then we look at traffic, right, we have organic traffic, which comes in the form of social media, SEO and Pinterest. So the whole purpose of doing social media and creating reels and content for Tiktok or, you know, posting images or whatever it is you're doing is to move those people off the platform and onto your website. Or if you make a sale on on the in app purchases, moving those people back on to your website. And I want to just reference this again, it's like what's the purpose of your website isn't part of a bigger digital strategy. So I want you to think of your social selling, and things that are happening on your Instagram and stuff like that. If you're making sales on social media, as part of your online sales strategy, it's not a separate thing, it still counts as kind of a website sale if you're doing it right. So if you aren't getting those sales that way, then this is a great opportunity for you to move those people to your website mailing list and to be able to market to them later. So what if you were to give them some incentive for opting into your email list from that platform, if you sell on Etsy, same thing, give them an incentive, ethically, move them off the platform. In fact, we're doing an entire podcast episode about this next week. And we have a complete training in are laying the foundation and momentum programs both of those programs about this. Because it is so important. I mean, we have a brand on Etsy that's doing almost a million dollars a year it's like insane. And they're slowly but surely taking those customers moving them off Etsy to build their online sales. So we want to help you do the same because we know that with all the changes with everything that's happening in algorithms and the changes that Etsy has made over the past several months, that now more than ever, it is extremely important to get those people to be buying from you. And then organic SEO like when you're using blog content and other things to get traffic to your website or the keywords that you're using. And then also Pinterest as a strategy. Now let's talk about paid traffic strategy getting high quality paid strategy. Now one of the best ways to do that. So paid advertising, the best strategy for paid advertising is to retarget people who have landed on your website with ads. That means the people landed on your website before you send those people ads instead of trying to find cold traffic. And you can hit them up on Facebook and Instagram. Tik Tok, you could do this on Google AdWords and keywords like ranking. You could do this on us Pinterest ads, which is a great platform right now that's totally working. You can use Google Display Network for YouTube ads and all these other things. So the more that you can have this holistic strategy and start hitting people up all over the place. The more you become top of mind, the more that they remember you and if it takes seven touches for someone to make a sale, or to buy something the first time. This is another way to do this now. Advertising is never my first step. strategy. You know, I don't think that that's the best way to kind of grow your audience. But unless you're using it out from a retargeting standpoint,
because that's the best way to really grow your audience. So I want you to think about that. As you're thinking about advertising, is it something you can afford to do? And is it something you want to do? And does it make sense with your strategy all around? Now? Step number five, I want you to think through the lens of your customer. What are they focused on right now? And how can you get in front of them? What are they focused on? It's the middle of the summer, are they on vacation? Are they working the summer? Are they you know who that's why defining a clear avatar for your customer is so so important. If they're in vacation mode, is this your opportunity to sell them vacation mode pieces, like start promoting your products in a way that get people to think like how can I see these as part of my vacation? Like if I'm only gonna bring three pieces of jewelry? Are these my vacation earrings, right? Are they getting engaged? Is this like the summer of engagement is that something where you can like really position like summer engagements or weddings, or it may be they're attending weddings in the summer, summer is a great time to attend a wedding like maybe this is their opportunity to get the perfect set for that dress that they're going to you know where to wear summer wedding or their travel experience. So think through the lens of what your customers are doing? Are they on vacation with their family, and they just want to bring something simple on that vacation that they're gonna wear every day and never take off? Right? You know, you think of those busy moms who are wearing like the tankini. And the, and the bottoms, they might have a silver necklace on and a simple set of earrings or something and they're not changing it throughout the vacation. They don't have time. They're just busy. And they're probably at Disneyworld with their family, or at the pool, you know, the whole thing. So I want you to think about people are busy. I did an episode a couple of weeks ago all about consumer trends. And I want it for my birthday. And I want you to think about like through that lens of that in the influence the overwhelming consumer and the activist consumer, like what's going in their mind? How can you make the buying experience super easy for them? And how can you keep things going and really streamline this summer so that you can get in front of them. So the more that you can make that buying experience easy and think through the lens of what the customer wants, the more success you're going to have. So I want to know what resonated with you the most I also want to know what you're going to try. So if anything landed, please hit me up on Instagram. Or you can comment below this video or wherever you're listening to this episode. And I would be honored if you wanted to just like share this video and your stories and share it with a friend because at the end of the day, it will be my pleasure for more people to listen to this. Because sales during the summer is one of the best ways to start building your audience for your holiday sales events in your holiday sales season. And if you are a little bit slower this summer, I don't want you to freak out this is your opportunity to plan and prepare and really get ready to dive deep into what's going to happen over the next couple of months. It's kind of nice to take a little bit of a breather, I have to be honest with you. So thanks again for listening to the episode today. This is Tracy Matthews, signing off until next time, and if you haven't done so please rate and review this podcast. It helps me get in front of more people just like you and Ciao for now. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help 1000s of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to thrive by design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive
