Social Media Tactics to Shine This Holiday Season with Steph Bechard

Crystal Vilkaitis: Holy guacamole, get a pen, get paper. You’re going to want to take notes in today’s episode. We are giving you so many ideas as it relates to holiday marketing, specifically if you’re doing an open house, and we’re going to talk about Pinterest in today’s episode. Now I am joined by Steph Bechard.

And Steph is no longer on the Crystal Media team, but she is forever a friend of Crystal Media. And I’m so glad that we were able to film this episode 99 together, a special one, to answer three retailers questions. It’s a call in episode. They called in, asked a specific question, and we’re giving a lot of strategies and ideas and tactics.

Answering those questions today. So that’s why I say you’re going to want some paper and pen. You might want to listen to this a couple of times, send it to anybody who helps you on your team with your marketing or your events, because we cover a lot. So let’s dive in.

Welcome to Rooted in Retail. I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. Here we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. All right, here’s today’s episode.

Steph Bechard, welcome back to the show. Today is episode 99. It’s crazy that it’s 99. And so we wanted to do a little something special leading up to 100. And so a few months ago, I put out a call to retailers to leave us a voicemail and ask a question about something.

If they wanted content ideas for social media, if they had an event coming up, especially cause this is going to air end of August, so stay tuned. Especially if Q4 is happening, you know, what kinds of strategies can we help you with? And Steph and I are going to do our best to provide you with some help and resources and advice.

And so we had three awesome retailers call in, we’re going to play these voicemails and then we’re going to jump into brainstorming sessions to really support these questions. The first one, with Sherry, I’m going to play it here soon. We’re going to just kick things off right away. But before I do. Steph, anything on your end you want to say before we dive into these questions?

Steph Bechard: Oh, I’m so excited to have like a radio call in style show and to hear from three of our retailers. And this is just so fun to strategize for them. This is what we do every day. So it’s just fun to do it on this platform here.

Question 1: How can I start using and leveraging Pinterest for my crafters who often go there for crafty ideas?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Totally agree. All right let’s hear our first question from Sherry. 

Sherry: Hi Crystal and my Canadian friend Steph. This is Sherry from the Paper Crafters Workshop. I have a scrapbooking and card making store just north of Toronto, and I’d like to learn more about how to start using and leveraging Pinterest for my crafters who often go there for crafty ideas. What is the balance that I should create between sales content and value add content? And how do I leverage the content that I already create for Facebook and Instagram? To put it on Pinterest and just make life easy.

Crystal Vilkaitis:  Okay, so that was a great question. And we haven’t talked about Pinterest too much here on Rooted in Retail. So I am super excited. Steph, these are really good points that Sherry brings up. Like she wants to leverage the content she’s already creating. How can she streamline some of this, make it sort of easy on her?

And I love that she said thinking about Pinterest, being in the industry she’s in, working with these crafters. I mean, there’s so much inspiration and DIY is so big on Pinterest. So I want you to kick things off here. What recommendations for you, what recommendations do you have to help support Sherry?

Steph Bechard: I’m so glad that you’re focusing on Pinterest, Sherry, because it’s such a good platform. It’s one of my favorites to browse on as a social media user because the algorithm is so crafted, paper crafted, towards the individual user. So crafters is a great audience for Pinterest in itself, and I think it’s a great place for you to be, especially if you sell online.

Why retailers need to be verified merchants on Pinterest

Steph Bechard: So we wanna keep in mind Pinterest is optimized for link clicks. It’s one of those platforms that actually that will help you get your products found. First, I would suggest being a verified merchant on Pinterest. So you can look that up on Pinterest.com and search up verified merchant and follow the steps you can take to be able to sell through there.

Once you’re a verified merchant, you can be creating these things called rich pins, which are essentially like smart pins that stay updated with your product pages on your website. So you have to have a couple things to be able to create a rich pin. Such as a link back to a product site. You have to have a price, availability.

There’s all this stuff that you have to include, which most sales pages have anyways, and that would be the very first step I would be taking to be able to leverage pinterest for selling products, if that’s one of your focuses for your e commerce site for sure.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Awesome, great steps. And I bet people listening to this too. If you’re not on Pinterest, there you go. A good little beginner on how to get started, especially if you sell online. All right. What else you got? 

What’s the best percentage split between inspirational and sales-driven posts?

Steph Bechard: So I know Sherry mentioned what should be the percentage of like inspirational versus salesy posts. And I would say it’s okay to be a little bit more salesy on Pinterest, than it would be necessarily on like Facebook or Instagram or like one of the Met platforms where you really want to nurture your brand and your audience there.

Definitely post about those how tos and inspirational stuff, but I would say just start off with like 50-50 sales posts versus inspirational. And how tos to help pinners that are looking for a product find your product. A lot of people go on Pinterest to find a product, how to do something, and I would suggest going ahead and posting those product posts there.

 It’s also a spot that you can definitely nurture the how to, and the guides, and things like that, as you said. And I know you’re in the GTA, the region around Toronto, which Crystal, I’m also from Ontario. So that’s why Sherry gave me a little shout out for Canada there.

In that region, Crystal, there’s a spot called the Muskokas, like the cottage area.

So Sherry, I would focus so hard on the cottagers because they’re everywhere in Ontario. Any city has people that leave the city to go cottage and there’s bachelorettes there. There’s weddings there. There’s just the people leaving the craziness of the city to get away for a minute, renters and owners there.

And I would definitely focus on creating boards for people who are your perfect customer group? So your PCGs, your perfect customer groups, are likely cottagers are likely going to the Muskokas and I would consider making boards for them related to your product and category. So you might want to do crafts for cottages or wedding invites that are like Muskoka themed or cottage themed, lake themed, sort of paper borders or invites or envelopes and all those sorts of things that go along with those.

Events that are happening for the cottagers. And I bet a lot of wedding photographers, come across your page and people who might be your audience are also searching for things related to wedding vendors. So maybe you can even create a board called “Wedding Venues in the GTA.”

Wedding venues in that in your region to help people who are your audience land on your page. So you’re being a helpful resource for them not necessarily talk about your product, but you’re bringing them in from something that’s adjacent to your product. And Pinterest is really good for that.

I talked about a shoe company called McGuire shoes. McGuire in Montreal and they do a great job on Pinterest creating boards for their customers. Boards for their PCGs that has nothing to do with their shoes. Might be cute cats. It might be pose it like Instagram picture poses. It might just be like fun ways that their audiences are using Pinterest.

They want to show up there. They have about a thousand followers on Pinterest, but they have 1.6 million monthly views because of their boards. Yes, so I’d focus on creating boards that are related to your customers. And that means you’re pinning other people’s posts into a collection that you’re curating.

And it can take you less than three minutes to build a board related to your customers. So I highly suggest looking into that, Sherry.

Crystal Vilkaitis: That’s You had a lot of good tips in there, Steph. I agree with the 50-50. You know, I feel like on Pinterest, people are shopping. They do want to see products. They do want to see that inspiration for their home and for their hobbies and their life. And so you can get away with a little bit more of those product-based, sale-based. 

The thing that’s great in Sherry’s industry too, is if she did like a tutorial or a guide or how to, you’re easily like selling those products. You could sell a bundle of everything that was mentioned in that pin directly over link to your site where they could buy that full bundle, making it so easy. So it kind of serves as that value add and sales piece. 

And then with the, the GTA area, you know, any of our listeners who are not in that area. What parts of your town or state or region do people travel to?

Is there a hub that you can tap into? I’ll try to find some inspiration, I’m in a small town in Northern Colorado, so I’ll search Northern Colorado, NoCo, things like that to get inspiration for design or things to do. And so make sure you’re leveraging that you’re getting in front of them. And those are also keywords. People are searching for those things. So there’s a lot of great tips in there, Steph. I love it. What else do you got for Sherry? 

How to use keywords on Pinterest

Steph Bechard: So I have two more things. You just mentioned keywords and that’s something I want to talk about Sherry for Pinterest is a big focus. So keywords is essentially that the words that you’re using to help your pins be found by the right eyes. So you’re putting keywords in your posts, which helps the algorithm push it out to people looking for those things.

What are your customers looking for? What are your customers saying in store? What are they googling to find your products, your workshops, your services? What are those words? Make a little list. I remember having a pen and paper when I worked in a retail store and writing down every single word that I heard on a weekly basis.

They were the most popular words said in store. And I filled my social media captions, my links, the actual words inside of my links with that. Saved my photo posts as that to help with like SEO, right? We’re adding these keywords in, in to help Pinterest deliver our posts to the right audiences. So you’re going to want to be using basically words that your audiences use around your product, your brand, your area, your workshop, your services, all those sorts of things related to paper crafters.

And you can even search that in Google and in Pinterest and see the next top searches that come up. It might be DIY, it might be how to, it might be a specific word or brand related to that. And add those in your captions and add those in your links to help your posts get searched to put out to more people in that way.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Totally, and I’m going to play off of this a little bit. First of all, I love that you would write down what people say in the store in a way that feels a little like I want to use the word caveman. Cause I’m going to next talk about AI, but I think that it’s so smart because when somebody comes in, and the way that they ask for something, and the way that they describe what they’re looking for, you want to document that so you can put that in your website, in social, in a blog on page everywhere.

Like you were saying, Steph, it’s so smart because sometimes it’s hard to know and be in the head of our customers of what are they putting in to find the things that I sell. So documenting that in store, so brilliant. And then use AI. Go to ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Poe, whatever platform you use. And say, here are the things that I’m pinning.

Here are the things that I’m selling. Please write me a keyword rich description. What keywords would you recommend? And sometimes you might have to go back and forth a little bit to find some of those. So sometimes you’re working with some keywords you’re testing to see. Did something get a lot of repins and something else didn’t? What can we learn from that?

But those are just really great suggestions to help leverage those pinterest efforts.

Steph Bechard: Oh, yeah, I agree that you can leverage it using keywords in that way and help help Pinterest help you essentially.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Right. 

Steph Bechard: And then I had one more thing to say for leveraging Pinterest for paper crafters workshop, and I know you said you want to learn how to better figure out how to use your existing content.

And you already have lots of posts, or you likely have a ton of pictures in your camera roll related to your products already. You can take past Instagram posts, past Facebook posts, and recreate them on Pinterest as pins. They have carousel posts, they have individual photo posts, videos, just like Reels. You can take your Reels and put them over to Pinterest. They’re all called pins now.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Another app to check out, Sherry, is Tailwind. And I think that it’s just I have this open, tailwindapp.com, and then you can also go /Pinterest if you wanted to learn exactly what it does for Pinterest, but it also does some of the scheduling. And I know Tailwind also has some additional Pinterest education and some inspiration and case studies and things like that on there too. So you can learn from them and get some additional ideas. 

I’ll just add in group boards could be something fun to do with your customers or with an influencer in the industry or something where you collaborate on a board. So multiple people are adding pins to the board and that can go out into their networks and it’s giving more of like a curated look and feel and vibe. And I think that would be really fun to do with your customers to have them all add to that board. 

If they’re all working on a pattern together, or I’m not a crafter, so I don’t always know the right words, but like if they’re working on a thing together. And then they all take their picture of what they’re working on and they all add it to that board. That could be a really cool way to connect with your customers, but also get some additional content on Pinterest. 

Steph Bechard: Yeah, I totally agree. 

Crystal Vilkaitis: Awesome. Okay so Sherry, we hope that was helpful. Good luck on your pinning efforts. We’re wishing you lots of luck and you have to keep us posted on how it’s going. You know, if you start your initiatives here and you get going, let us know in the Facebook group is the best place, the Rooted in Retail Facebook group.

We want to know how it’s going. Okay. Steph, you ready for the next one? And one thing I want to say before I play it, the next two questions are similar. However, they are different. And so they’re both around a holiday open house. So we’re going to start getting into Q4. We’re going to start talking about Christmas.

It’s happening, everybody. It’s end of August and we’re talking about Christmas and here’s the deal. These two different questions. Like I said, they’re similar, but they do have different focuses. And both of these retailers could leverage each other’s answers. So, and everybody listening, you’re about to get a bunch of great ideas for Q4 for holiday.

Question 2: How can I come up with a new creative format for our annual holiday event in November?

Crystal Vilkaitis: So let’s dive in our first question here from Ginny. 

Ginny: Hey Steph and Crystal Media team. This is Ginny from Port Gamble General Store and Cafe. I always struggle when we have our November holiday open house event coming up with something different because I don’t want to use the same format as each year. So this is always the second Saturday of November and it’s an open house for all of our customers to see our whole store transformed into Christmas Wonderland and we give them a little discount to thank them for coming in and it gives us a lot of indication on everything that’s selling so we can go back and reorder. Hoping that you can come up with some ideas. Thank you.

Crystal brainstorms a Christmas Wonderland carnival event for Q4

Crystal Vilkaitis: Thanks, Ginny. I’m going to kick things off for this question. I’m going to go super like brainstorming the actual event. And then I know Steph’s going to come in with some really good tactical things to help you focus. Now, Ginny, you say that you turn it into this Christmas Wonderland. And I was looking at your Instagram last year and it just to see kind of how you were promoting it and what you were saying around it.

And I did see holiday open decor and gift open house, holiday home decor and gift open house. And then I also saw a holiday treasure hunt. Now I was sort of curious, is that the brand? Is that the name of this open house? And I was feeling like there’s such a great opportunity and look, and also I’m basing this just on what I saw on your feed on Instagram.

So if it is called something and I missed that, then there is an opportunity to get your Instagram tied in more to really help promote this on the feed. But I was feeling like I could just see this having a really cool brand, having a really cool theme. So it is a winter wonderland, but what about a Christmas carnival?

And this is for Ginny, use it or somebody listening can totally use this But as we think about what a carnival is like and how how that feels. You’re wanting something different. I heard you say that you want to mix things up. You don’t want to do the same thing all the time.

And so I feel like having a carnival could be fun. So as you’re entering, like it’s a grand entrance, it could be an arc has a sign like welcome to the Christmas carnival. If we want to get real crazy, I see fake snow, but that’s probably really hard to clean up. So we probably don’t want to do that , but maybe there’s a red carpet.

You could have some different Carnival themed booths. Ginny, we know Ginny, she’s got a really big store. So she’s got the space to really have some different areas, whether they’re tasting stations for treats and snacks and beverages. Or they’re carnival themed, elf games, gingerbread houses.

Some carnival games you could play is having a, you know, the ring toss that people could do at a carnival. So you could do that, but it’s with wreaths and candy canes, which is holiday, or you do the balloon pop, with a dart or something. I don’t know if there’s liabilities to that, but it could be red and green balloons.

Like are there some carnival games that you could bring in that makes it really fun? Like this whole weekend of carnival, Christmas carnival. Vintage carnival signs. I just see, like I can really see this. Can you see it, Steph?

Steph Bechard: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Crystal Vilkaitis: It’s so visual. So then as you’re promoting it, I think I can see people getting really excited for the Christmas carnival. I feel like it could be newsworthy. I think you should send out a press release, let the news stations know, maybe they want to come. I was also like, Do you also do a Christmas lighting reveal, where you have a big tree in your store? Maybe you’re already doing this and you light it at a certain time and everybody’s there for the lighting. And maybe there’s carolers singing during the lighting. Or do you just do this insane building Christmas lights.

And you know, at seven o’clock on day one, you plug in and boom, we’re all here. And it’s so fun. And then music plays and it’s the big reveal at the carnival. Of course, Ginny, I know you’re going to be doing this. You’ve got to run ads. We’re doing your ads for you. Anybody who’s listening to this, I highly recommend Facebook, Instagram ads to promote your events.

But then have that event that’s got the brand, that’s got the theme, that’s got interesting content that people are really paying attention to. Live entertainment, maybe. I don’t know if this is weird or not, but I thought of carolers going around to invite people the weekend before, or that week leading up at night.

Because it’s the second week in November, are people like whoa, this is way too early? We don’t like this. Or is there a fun spin on it that you could have it sort of be like fall related, but they’re singing and they’re passing out invites. I don’t know, but that’s a little bit more of like boots on the ground invitations and really trying to kind of like guerrilla marketing, get more people excited about that event.

Having my own events, EVOLVE, which I know you’ve been at the past two years. People love photo booths. So you could have like a carnival backdrop or carnival type of little things that people hold. Props in their pictures and then people can print that and it could be Christmas carnival, 2024 Port Gamble, general store.

There’s also opportunities to do giveaways. I know you’re doing discounts. Could your vendors donate some items that you could give away? You could do raffles. Also by having my own event this past EVOLVE, we did a silent auction and that’s really fun, it gets like people want to donate, people want to see what’s available, they go around, they could go to different stations. And you can have different opportunities for people to donate, raise some money for a local nonprofit. I see like stripped lights in the different sections of the carnival and I think that that’s it. I wanted to just be really creative and play. And also ChatGPT helped me think of this.

This is not me being a creative genius here. Me and ChatGPT had a lot of fun planning the carnival. So anybody listening to this, if you’re wanting to do something unique, you’ve always done the same kind of thing. Use AI to generate fun ideas for you. But Ginny, I’d love to know if you love that idea, take it or leave it. I would not be offended at all. And Steph, I’m passing it over to you.

Steph Bechard: Oh, I love that idea, Crystal. That’d be so fun. And I could so see that matching the Port Gamble General Store brand. And did you know there’s also a ferry that you have to take to get to the area? So maybe they can somehow tie in the ferry and make, maybe they can, you know, contact that, that team and be able to set up, make it seem like Santa’s sleigh coming to the open house or the Christmas carnival. And yeah, I really liked that idea. So fun. 

Crystal Vilkaitis: Love it.

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What retailers should consider when creating social media content to promote events

Steph Bechard: So fun. And Ginny, I want to suggest some of the more tactical items to consider creating for social media content leading up to that November open house. So, we’re always going to say, anyone who’s having an event, please make a Facebook event for it. I know, Ginny, you’re big on Facebook, so I have no doubt that that’s already on the list of things to do.

But also sending out email invites, specifically writing about that in the caption, writing about that in the email subject line, about how you want them to come to that event. So it’s like, are you free on this day? You and I have plans on this day. Grab your sister. You’re heading to this on this day, you know, so make it and make it an actual invite.

That almost looks like a birthday card invitation, you know. And to break down on social media, I would consider about one month before making a November open house itinerary. So making it like an itinerary of what to do, since people will be taking the ferry, since people will be coming from different areas and towns, make it like an adventure.

So you can always say, we’re open from this time to this time, and this is when you should come to the open house, we have these events, so you have a little bit of an itinerary throughout the day of what’s going on. But also list a couple places people can grab breakfast and lunch. List a couple places people can have dinner.

Some spots to visit for a good sunset. Like, list all those things to make an itinerary. And send that in an email to be like we’ve planned it for you. We’ve planned the perfect day. We’ll see you at this time. Grab your friend, grab your bestie, grab your parents, you’re coming to this event and you’re having the best day ever. November can tend to be boring, but not this November.

We’re going to have so much fun. And that would be good to plan out about a month in advance because it gives people time to make those plans with their pals and to get that on the calendar. About three weeks before I would really talk about how exciting it is. Like, make sure that excitement that you have and the team has and how big of a deal it is for you that you’re planning it in July, 2024, like you’re planning out this event months in advance, make sure that’s shown on social media.

So talk to you about that and your stories and in reels and breaking down, like you can even make a little videos now. I know you’re at market right now, shopping at market for your products. And in market in July, generally holiday. So you can take little videos now saying, I just got this item. I saw this trend and I only got a little bit of it.

You can talk about all the trends you’re seeing and say, you have to come in to the holiday open house to see what we got, to see what we brought in, to see what trends Port Gamble is going to be seeing this year. Because this is going to reflect what your living rooms look like, your mantles look like, your porches look like, so come in to see what’s trending this year. And post them closer to that event. That’d be so fun as well. 

Crystal Vilkaitis: Steph, I just want to add in of this. Obviously, I’m loving my carnival idea but there’s a theme. But it does make it easier to design when you have a theme. So I see like, if you could go into Canva. I was so tempted to do it while you’re talking, but there you could go in and have this carnival-looking agenda. I love the agenda because it is a two day.

It’s a weekend thing that she’s doing. And maybe there’s certain times that she’s picking winners or announcing silent auction winners or when things open or when the games are on or the Christmas lighting, the lights go off. So the agenda is so smart. And also, I love that you said, talk about it now.

We’re filming this in July. It’s going to air in August. Talk about it now have like, because especially if you’re doing a theme, like a big event like that holiday open house. I just feel like consumers hear that a lot. So they’re kind of like, eh but that’s where I’m loving the carnival or whatever you decide to do here.

But then we’re leading up, we’re leading up. You show a little sneak peek of something that’s like so random. And it’s like, what are we doing with this? Or should I get this for the Christmas carnival? Or whatever it may be like taking people along the way as you’re getting ready for this. It creates anticipation.

It makes me think of movies. The movie trailer comes out and you’re like, oh, I want to see the movie now. I don’t want to wait several months. Ginny, you could create a movie trailer. I’m not kidding. You could do this in Canva. 

You could be like the Christmas card, “The Port Gamble General Store Christmas carnival is coming,” and do flashes of like some of the items or what you’re doing there and some texts and use some music suspense. Create it as it’s a launch.

It’s something that we’re really focusing on launching. And that’s what I love, Steph, as you’re adding these tactical steps to really make sure we’re properly giving ourself that time to promote and properly promote and enough time. Cause I feel like sometimes it sneaks up on us and we don’t give it enough time. And so it’s not as impactful as it could be.

Steph Bechard: Yeah, I agree. I agree that you could talk about it now just like a movie commercial. It’s a great analogy. I see them months in advance and it’s on my calendar like I know Beetlejuice Is coming out on September 6th, which is also my birthday. So that’s why I remember it. That’s how I saw that months ago.

And it’s in my calendar and I’m telling my family about it because of movie watches. It’s just 1 of those things that you can talk about and get in people’s minds in advance. 

Three quick tactics for event promotion on social media

Steph Bechard: So I had three more quick ideas for social. About two weeks before your launch, make sure you’re talking about it at leave every other day or daily.

Don’t feel like you’re talking about it too much. Like it should be in front of people’s faces, this event. And it’d be so fun to involve your team in the social posts. So in Instagram and TikTok and Facebook, they all have these things called effects. A lot of people call them filters, but an effect is when you use AR, Augmented Reality, to add something to your film screen.

So it might be like the puppy filter, you might see that a lot, or like a beautify filter where it adds big long eyelashes. You can use holiday theme effects. Like maybe one of your team members uses a Santa effect, or one of your team members is using an elf effect.

Or maybe if you want to stick with a carnival theme, it could be like the clown effect, and they kind of make it a Christmas clown and something along those lines. And talk about the event, the details of what they’re excited for, the product they want to highlight, and all the little details they’ll need to know, parking, times, ferry times, all that, to make sure no one has any questions, they’re fully aware of all that’s surrounding that open house. 

Crystal Vilkaitis: I love it, Steph. And I, I totally am Googling. I can’t help myself. I’m like, you know, carnival IG effects. There’s some fun things you can do if this, but even if you don’t use carnival, I hope people are getting the point of, okay, what kind of effects that can be a part of this theme? What kind of brand, like the paper I’m using, the font I’m using that whole, how am I pulling all of this through to really connect and tie in together?

Also side note, Ginny, I feel like you need women on stilts. I’m going to throw it out if you’re doing a carnival, like can you guys dress up? And I saw this in the OneCoast showroom for my gift and home people. Cause they had a Wonderland and they had women on stilts. And people take pictures, they post to social media, they tag you.

Then all the people from Saturday, day one. Or if it’s Friday, they tag you. They’re posting all this content and getting their friends. You got to go tomorrow to the carnival. It’s the last day, look at how cool it is. Like I think we need stilts, okay. 

Steph Bechard: That would be so fun. Love that, I love stilts and I love a unicycle. I mean, if that’s a possibility. Anything silly. The next one, if you’re having an event, I think anyone who’s having an event should be implementing a countdown before the event. It just makes it more exciting, it makes everyone aware. People’s schedules get messed up, like my mom will never know what day of the week it is. But if you’re saying three days away, that’s easy to take in, you know?

So, five days, four days, three days, two days, one day away, and make sure that caption includes all the details they would need, and I would also consider, and I really consider just using the reminder sticker. You can do this in stories on Instagram and on posts. And you can also link in your Facebook posts to your event page, which has that countdown naturally built into it.

Cause when it’s coming up, we’ll count down. So use those reminder tools that are like actual built in features from the meta platforms to get that reminder in front of people’s faces. So they know it’s coming down and it’s building the excitement for them as well.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Awesome.

Steph Bechard: And lastly, I want to talk about it’s the day of. Woohoo we made it to our holiday open house or Christmas carnival and I think it’d be so fun to have an option to kind of help your customers shop there.

I know there’s definitely going to be a lot going on in that store, a lot of products and be fun to have like a nice list of products. Of people and products. So you might break out what’s your most popular products for mom, dad, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, pet, teacher, categories of people. And you can make that in Canva, an 8.5 x 11″ or even half of that.

So you can print two per one 8.5 x 11″ page. And just write out your favorite products for each of those categories. So it’s helping people shop, helping people actually complete that purchase, going to the event, of course, but just also making a purchase. And that can be out at the front of the store.

It could be all of your helpful elves can have them to be handing out throughout the event. And that way people know your top picks. And it could even be things that. You’re hoping to push, or tend to, you tend to put on sale at the end of the season. You can be giving them a little bit of a highlight right at the beginning of the season. And that way, and it’d be easy to do. It’d be very easy to create, and it could be really, really cute.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Okay, love it. The idea with the people, moms and kids and sons and all that at EVOLVE Don Miller, our keynote said Mother’s Day was coming up and he’s like, if you put on certain products, “moms love this” or for father’s day, “dads love this” or for back to school. You know, “fifth graders love this,” whatever it helps sell it. So during the holiday time, it’s such a great time to add those call ins or call outs of who would love it. It makes shopping easy. It may cause I just need that reassurance, right? Is my grandma going to love this? And if the sign says grandma’s love this, I’m like, she’ll probably love it.

It’s going to help me get it. So such a good tip. I love that too. With the naughty and nice, that’s fun.

Steph Bechard: I love the naughty and nice list. I better make the nice list this year.

Crystal Vilkaitis: You will. Awesome. Steph, are we good with Ginny?

Steph Bechard: I think we’re good with Ginny.

Andrea’s Question: How retailers can use social media to bring shoppers into their holiday events

Crystal Vilkaitis: All right. Let’s listen to our final question here from Andrea. 

Andrea: Hey, Steph. Hey, Crystal. It’s Andrea from All About You. I would love some extra advice on social media around my open house, which is always in the early November because it’s a downtown project, everybody gets involved, and I always love better ways to stand out so that people definitely know not only to come to the open house but to come to my shop during the open house. So excited about this opportunity and other things to think about. Thanks!

Crystal Vilkaitis: You’re so welcome, Andrea. Thanks for submitting your question, and I have to give Andrea a quick plug here. She came to EVOLVE, she brought me the most epic candy basket with chocolates and hot tamales. I love hot tamales. They’re like, Oh my God. One of my favorite candies. The chocolates that I had, and I’m not like, I like chocolate, but I’m not necessarily like a big dessert person.

Oh my gosh, I ate everything in that basket. It was so good and so thoughtful. Andrea, thank you for that. You’re incredible. And I hope that we can give you some good tips here with your question. Now, like I said, we have two holiday open houses, but they’re a little different. Andrea wants to really make sure she stands out.

So people come to her store because the downtown area, they’ve got a lot going on. So how can she stand out? What can she do that’s unique? Steph, you kick us off here.

Steph Bechard: Yay, I’m so excited for this event. It sounds so cool because oftentimes it’s an individual company that’s hosting this, but it sounds like this is like a big group event from everyone on Main Street or whatever the street is. So, so fun that there’s so many more participants in that, and that just is like increasing our service area, really, for inviting more people.

It’s like increasing our chances of reaching more people. The fact that there’s more business owners participating in this. But we don’t have to wait to the day of to participate, to get those participants, to get to know us and to want to put our stores event on that list of things to do that day. So again, have to start off, make sure you have your Facebook event.

Make sure you have email invites planned to your email list. And if you have tech subscribers, make sure you’re sending texts about the event as well. Um, Facebook events help you reach people who aren’t yet. Following you and your followers as well. Um, there’s this thing called the events calendar on Facebook.

So it’s a great spot to be able to see what’s up and coming in your area, in your region. I find things to do all the time from Facebook events. Whether it’s like a local musician playing somewhere, or a store is having like a pop up, or there’s a bigger event going on. I learn about those on Facebook events.

And make sure that’s on there, Andrea. Also, I want to make sure you’re posting teasers leading up to it on social media. So, make sure you’re posting teasers about the event that are little like hints and tips and things. Special things you’re doing around the store so people know how excited you and your team are for it.

How to leverage live rooms on Facebook and Instagram with other shops

Steph Bechard: And that you’re going live. So you’re going live on Facebook and Instagram to talk about your event that’s coming up. I also want to talk about live rooms on Facebook and Instagram. So a live room is where you can invite up to four people to speak in one live, you and three others. And it’s a great way to kind of, first of all, have more of a conversation.

There’s dialogue there versus just speaking to your phone., And also this is a chance for you to get a hold of other people’s audiences. So in a live room, when you have those three other people with you, their audiences are going to see that they’re going live with these others.

So if you’re on that live, their audience is getting introduced to you. And that’s a whole group of people that’s now getting introduced to you. So you should do maybe a weekly live leading up to this event with other businesses in this open house. So you’re going live with the coffee shop, going live with the boutique, you’re going live and with all these other businesses that are included to talk about it. And to talk about the excitement and talk about what they’re doing, what you’re doing, what you’re excited for, and just like chit chat, thinking about it.

Like you’re going to have those conversations on the streets anyways, when you run into them. You might as well do it on live and get ahold of their audience. So that way their audience is now hearing what you’re doing for this big open house. Especially if they’re planning on coming anyways. Now you’re a spot on their list for the day.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I love that so much because you’re getting that additional exposure. It’s the community working together. And also when we follow somebody and they go live, if you have Instagram notifications turned on, I do. I’ll see like so and so’s going live with so and so. And if it’s one of my favorite stores or coffee shop or restaurant. I’m like, Oh, if I can watch right now, I’m clicking in and I want to see.

And so it could be a great way for me to get introduced to you. If I don’t follow your story yet, Andrea, but I do follow the coffee shop and you’re going live together. You don’t get those push notifications when people just post. And so the live helps that additional visibility.

Steph Bechard: Yeah, I agree. And speaking of additional visibility, I feel like it’s a really good idea to also be visiting these stores and these other businesses beforehand and taking photos and taking a quick selfie in their storefront or in their store itself. And tagging them if they’re reposting that content. Again, you’re getting introduced to their audiences by tagging them, saying that you’re excited to be on the same street as them say hi neighbor.

So their audiences are aware that you’re right next door and saying that you’re looking forward to grabbing a coffee from their shop before you head to your sale. Or you’re looking forward to getting dressed from the boutique down the street before. What you’re going to put on the day of the event, like related back to the event.

And make sure that you tie in your own things that are going on in the store that day. Just making sure you’re getting tags from your fellow businesses in that area are going to help you get introduced to their audience as well.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Perfect. All right, great tips. Keep them coming. What else you got? 

Why you should talk about your past events in your content

Steph Bechard: I have one more social media idea and then two in store ideas. So for the social media idea, I want to make sure you’re making stories, Facebook, Instagram reels. You’re talking about it on social media and talking about last year’s events. So you can say, Oh, I remember this person came up to me and they were looking for this and we found them the perfect blank, like insert your product name here.

And you can talk about like the line, the amount of people you met, how you didn’t know so many people lived in your hometown. There’s so many kids that were talking about how excited they were for Santa to visit them. Like just talk about how great it was last year to almost like create that FOMO, but they don’t have to have to have FOMO because it’s happening again.

And two weeks, it’s happening again tomorrow. Like talk about it in a way that they’re like, Oh, last year was so fun. I need to come this year. I need to be there this year.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I love pressing on that FOMO. You got to do it.

The power of creating buzz outside the store to bring customers in

Steph Bechard: I agree. So for your two in store ideas for the day of the event, the first one I have to say, just like Crystal’s idea of having someone on stilts, making something exciting outside of the store helps to draw people in. Just like when you’re walking by a restaurant and you see a bunch of people in there, it wants you.

You want to kind of go in, see what it’s about. If you see a long line, people tend to just randomly get into the line to see what it’s about. Same thing in your store. Like you want to be making sure, for whatever reason, people are gathering on your store on the outside. So of course people in the summer consider like little drink stands or lemonade stands, but you can even do cotton candy machines in the winter.

I used to work at a vent rental place and I used to clean cotton candy machines and clean rental equipment oftentimes. And for my birth, even though I was like in my twenties and I would be able to bring this equipment home for my birthdays. And I know it’s too old to have a cotton candy machine, but it still is just so fun.

A nacho machine. You can rent these for very affordable prices and you can choose. It’s white cotton candy. It looks like a snow globe or something and hand it out in front of your store. It’s a cheap way to get people to come in and be drawn to your store. Or maybe like get a local coffee vendor from down the street that’s a little bit too far.

Their second stop for hot chocolate or whatever could be a small stand outside of your store. There’s a way to draw people in to get that crowd there to help people know this is an exciting spot you want to get in.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Smart. The cotton candy would be great for the carnival also.

Steph Bechard: I saw you write something down. I had a feeling it had to do with carnival.

Crystal Vilkaitis: It’s actually something different, but it’s a good idea.

How staggered sales can help maintain steady foot traffic throughout an event

Steph Bechard:  Andrea, I wanted to ask you if you’re having a sale that day, I feel like a really good idea to get people to come in and, especially come in early, is to do a tiered sale. So in the store I used to work for, we would do tiered sales. I know they still do it where at each hour of the day, there’s a different discount associated with that hour.

So, let’s say you’re open from 9 till 5. And we do the first hour is one discount, second hour is this discount, third hour is this discount, and sometimes that goes to the end of the day, or you might do one more discount. So the first hour is normally a big one, trying to get people to come in the store early, right?

9 to 10 AM. It’s 30 percent off the holiday, the new merchandise or whatever it is. And then from 10 to 11 AM, it’s 20 percent off. And then from 11 to 12, it’s 15 percent off. And then it might be 15 percent off for the rest of the day. Normally the open houses have a sale associated with them. It’s like, get it, you know, it’s brand new.

It’s better to sell it at that cost than not sale-sale price, like clearance sale price later. So that’s something to consider to get people to come in to that store and get that line up early. You know, get that line up earlier in the day because you have that bigger discount associated with it. So I love tiered sales in that way because it just draws people in and keeps them coming in.

And no matter if you come in at close, you’re still going to get a deal. But the early you, the earlier you get in line, the earlier you get there, the more you get rewarded.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Oh, I love the tiered sale idea. I think that is so smart. Just try to have your store the first place they pick. So we guarantee like they come in, they’re seeing us. And I want to say I had this vision of, I went to a SIM. I’m also in Colorado. I would love to go, I need to Google and see how far I am from Andrea Storks.

Maybe I could go to her this summer. Holiday open house downtown would be so fun, but I went to one here in Loveland and your point of the outside. Having something outside that I could see because I would be walking, they closed off the street, and they had a band. And you’re walking, but some of the retailers don’t look open or doesn’t look like much is happening there.

And we are like cows. When we see a bunch of people together. We go over there, we got to know what’s going on. So having some sort of something outside is such a good way to pull. They know you’re open. They can see that you’ve got fun stuff going on there. And what I was writing down was I used to work for this company and we would go around to different green, it was called Greenfest.

They were trade shows. We sold sustainable products, but we had a software. And one idea we came up with was the prize patrol. And we had these stickers with our logo on. It was a really pretty logo, green and white stickers. And people would come over, give their email address. Get a sticker, they have to wear the sticker.

And then at random times throughout the trade show, me and my friend would walk around. And the first person we saw wearing the sticker, we’d ring our bell. Prize patrol. And they got a free item that was donated from our vendors, and sometimes we would have people like waiting by the booth, just looking at us.

Like are you going out soon? Oh, I’m right here. You’re going to see me. It was hilarious. The next day on the news, I think we were either in Seattle or D.C. There’s a woman who’s live at the Greenfest and we saw people walking by with the sticker. It was good branding.

And then when we did the New York City one, I saw it on Sixth Ave on the cement, the sticker. It was like all over the place, but people loved it. And so Andrea, I wonder if that’s an opportunity for you to get people around town and then they’re wearing something that’s branded to you, that they can correlate back to like, oh, I got to go to that store to get my sticker.

Or they’re asking people, where’d you get that sticker? But we want to give, we want to get something right. Like that email address, because then we’re building our lead list. We can connect to them afterwards, send them special deals, whatever that may be. But that could be another way to kind of pull them in.

 And then Steph, I have a few things to add. Were you done on your list?

Steph Bechard: go ahead. Love to hear your ideas.

Crystal’s ideas for a holiday giveaway

Crystal Vilkaitis: Okay, so mine are more about like what’s going on in the store. And then of course you’re going to promote those on socials ahead of time, like Steph was saying. I see this opportunity of doing like your gift baskets that I’ve had the opportunity of enjoying.

Giving one away every 30 minutes or every hour. And so let’s say this is happening from 4 to 9 PM and you’re doing every hour. So there’s five chances to win and you have to be present to win. So people have to come in at this time and there is software. Wheel of Names.

There’s all sorts of different tools. You could research the different ones, but wheel of names. And basically people can register. I would want to get that email address and their first name. And then you can just add, you can have a laptop. And if this is projecting, or if you have kind of a big monitor screen monitor, and you’re putting in people’s names, and then at the time where you do your 30 minute drawing or hour drawing. You spin the wheel and it will stop on somebody. It’s really engaging.

People are like, “Oh, I hope it’s me. I hope it’s me. I hope it’s me.” Like wanting their name to be stopped on. So that gives that opportunity of they’re in the store, right? They’ve got to come and see you in order to win. I know that you, it seems like you cater mostly to women because you do have bath and body and some clothing.

So could you offer spa treatments, hand massages, facials, skin consultations, maybe things like that, that gets people even maybe booking appointments to ensure that they’re going to be there. Could you do a fashion show at a certain time? Tasting stations, like we talked about for Ginny. I don’t know how big your store is, Andrea, but could there be, because you have so many goodies, gourmet food, chocolates. Can you have really special tasting stations throughout the store?

Could they get stamped at the different stations and turn that in to get something special? Is there an opportunity for a local influencer to hang out in your store for a couple hours and they’re doing pictures or they’re doing a reading, if they wrote a book or if they’re singing, you could have a singer in there or a band during a certain time to ensure that people are showing up.

I even wrote down a magician, which magician could also be cool at the carnival, like there’s so many things, but kind of having that entertainment aspect, there’s probably gonna be a lot of different entertainments happening. What can you do in your store that really fits your PCGs, your perfect customer groups?

Is it that relaxation? Is it the tasting? Is it dancing? You know, what is a karaoke? I mean, that would be fun. I would, if you had some wine and karaoke, sign me up. So those are just a few ideas to really pull people in and you got to keep us posted. If you use any of these, be sure you take lots of pictures during and post , and share some great recaps.

But there we go. We did it, Steph.

Steph Bechard: Whoo. High

Crystal Vilkaitis: Woo. High five, high five. This was so fun brainstorming. So retailers, listeners, we want to know, this is so important. Did you like this format? We did this earlier where we had people call in and I answered their questions and we got great feedback from it. So we want to know, do you like this format?

You’ve got to tell us. Please tell us, here’s how you tell us, I’m going to say, tell us a lot. So how you tell us is you can leave a review on Apple. If you’re listening on an iPhone, go to the show, you do a star rating, right? You have to do the rating first. Hopefully it’s a five star experience. And then you write your review and in that review could say, I loved the call-in episodes.

That’s all you guys say. I know exactly what you’re saying. When you say call-in episodes, you could go to the Facebook group and tell us, I love the call-in episodes. If you are an Android listener, you listen on Google. I don’t know, actually, if Google podcasts does reviews. If they do, you could leave it there or Spotify.

They have a Q&A, I get all those Q&A’s. So if you just do a question and in that question, just say, I love the call in show. Please let us know, because I think these are pretty awesome. And I’ve heard one to one in person from retailers at EVOLVE, how much they love this, but I want to hear from other listeners too.

So Steph, thank you for sharing your brilliance, your ideas. This is so fun to do with you.

Steph Bechard: Of course, thank you so much for having me on and thank you to the retailers that called in. I can’t wait to see your events roll out and your ideas roll out on your social channels.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah, we can’t wait. And then next week is episode 100. So you will join me. I’m going to talk about a hundred years of retail evolution. I’m going to, the table is being turned and I’m going to answer the resilience round questions, which I’m super excited for that. And some other goodies on that show.

So be sure to tune in and show us some love for 100. I can’t believe we’re approaching that milestone. It just feels like we just got started so that’ll be a lot of fun. 

Thank you. Remember that I’m rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead. Bye.

Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don’t forget to join the Rise and Shine newsletter, which is social media news you need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystalmediaco.com/rise to join and don’t miss the newest episode of Rooted in Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.