This is Halloween! Part 2 How to get your shop noticed for Halloween
October 03, 2009 | By
Halloween is hot on our heels! It is the biggest trend going right now and for us crafters and handmade artisans this is a busy time of year. We have toiled for weeks or even months to get our ghouls just right and to make our zombies behave. We have taken our pictures, posted our listings in various shops. Agreed to participate in our guild's scavenger hunts. Offered up goodies for all the give aways of the season. Then we are promoting the stitches right off all of these wonderful sales opportunities. To top it off we are posting daily to a holiday blog. With all that done we are now chomping at the bit for our first sales of the season.
You have done all that right? Ok, if you are shaking your head, biting your nails and wondering what the heck I am talking about, have no fear! It is not too late!
If you are a member of a guild / team chances are they are having a sale or promotion you can still get in on. Just contact your guild/team leader or go to the links listed on their pages. If the deadlines are passed for entry, you can still tag along. Promote the sales and shops that are participants. This attracts attention to you as the provider of this information and it boosts your attachment to the guild/team. Just think of Twitter for example if someone retweets your link, they include your name with it. Promotion for you and promotion for your guild/team.
Scavenger hunts can work the same way. First offer to be a participant. Sometimes late entries are allowed. If you are too late, promote it! This works just like promoting the guild/team activities. You still appear to be in the know and it gets your name out there with that of the hosts of the scavenger hunts.
Almost all the promotions going on involve give aways. Now these can also involve promotion, but in most cases a last minute offer of a prize will be snapped up quicker than a steak at a werewolf convention. Prizes are always needed and wanted.
Now, if you are a lone little vampire and do not want to go trying to figure it all out last minute. You are in luck there too. The coupon making options on Artfire allow you to have a spooky sale in an instant. Go to your shop and click the link for coupons on the left hand side. From there it is simple to make your coupons and easy to give out the code in links on all your social networks.
Other lone gunmen options are creating your own specialty games/promotions. Offer daily or weekly quizzes where the winner gets a prize. Using something on your own site or blog as the answer is a good way to get people to check you out! Hide a Poe quote in your shop announcement. Ask for people to find the quote. You could also wax poetic about your favorite poem on your blog. Then ask who was the author . Take all the correct answers, draw the winner and send them their prize! Often times people will blog about what they win, which is another way to get your name and products out there.
Do what the big monsters do and offer your own scavenger hunt. Use your favorite websites or details hidden about items in your shop as your things to be collected. Scavenger hunts are easy if you keep in mind that there needs to be a central way to give answers. Email is the easiest. Second would be blog reply posts and this also offers promotion of your site and tracking of those reading it. Overall, making things easy is the key! Asking people to jump from site to site to find things is enough of an activity, make posting the answers simple.
These are just a few options for getting your shop's monster blood boiling and out there for the world of Halloween shoppers to see.
That's all from Xane for this time kids! Stop by next time to see what I dig up next... It is that time of the year after all!
Other articles of interest :
Charlotta Sisco of Reveries of Solace Fantasy Couture
Forget Princess, I want to be a vampire!
Zombies like me
Kids Dig Monsters
IMAGES in order of appearance
Wacko Jacko necklace by Beat Black
Skull Wall Hanging by Grimvisions
Xane Dravor Likes the darker side of crafting. If it is dark, full of teeth and covered in stuff best left to nightmares, she might have it on her shelf somewhere. Sculpture and paintings being her primary mediums. Come by and see what we mean at - House Morbid Ltd
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