The back-to-school rush has come and gone! Now it’s time to figure out how to promote our resources for the rest of the year. Today we’re talking about leveraging promotions. And, we’re continuing the conversation in our Mastermind group. Head over there to share what works for you and hear what others are saying: www.growwithusmastermind.com.
Happy back to school! It’s that busy time of year where everyone’s adjusting to new schedules. But, the back-to-school sales rush is over which leaves us TpTers asking “What now?”
The back-to-school time is great for sales as teachers prepare for their classes, but it’s also a time when it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. There are tons of sales, giveaways, and promotions going on. This is one of the reasons why it’s great to continue doing promotions throughout the year.
Angie and I are working on creating our promotion schedule for the year. Teachers are really appreciative of fun giveaways and promotions throughout the year, so don’t think you have to wait until the next big holiday or TpT sale to promote your products.
We’re going to give you insights on both group promotions and individual promotions and share what’s worked well for us.
Group promotions
To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with group promotions. I love how great they are at getting me in front of new people. And, it’s a really affordable way to do that because you can pitch in some money instead of having to do all the advertising on your own.
But, they can be a lot of work, especially if the organizer isn’t really organized.
Over the past five years, I’ve really learned a lot from the different group promotions that I’ve been a part of. I’ve also learned that I like to be the one organizing them because I’m a bit of a control freak. The simpler they are, the easier they are to be a part of. But, in all honesty, they can be fun to participate in and when run well, they can give you great results.
Tip: Find sellers with similar grade levels as you
Angie and I have both found that it’s really helpful to work with other sellers that focus on the same grade levels as you. This gives you similar audiences which is exactly what you want when doing a group promotion.
The more targeted you are, the more likely you are to get in front of an audience that will join your lists and buy your products and resources.
I know some TpT sellers also like to pay attention to what specialties the other sellers in a group has as well. If you all focus on a different area there is less competition among the group. You don’t really want competing resources within a promotion.
Tip: Look at past performance
Before joining a group, you want to make sure that the other sellers in the group participate and follow through on the things they’re supposed to do for the promotion. You don’t want to join with other sellers that aren’t going to share the posts with their group. And, you’d be surprised how many people this really is.
Check to see how they performed in other group promotions they were a part of. Did they post the images to their platforms? Did they comment on the others?
There are some people that participate 110% and then there are others that have great followings but don’t really participate.
Tip: Don’t do ALL promotions with the same group
If you only work with the same group over and over again you’re going to limit your reach. You’ll only be getting in front of the same people over and over again. The last promotion that Angie and I did, we worked with some new people from the group and it turned out great.
If you do a few a year with the same group and spread it out over the course of the year then you’ll most likely be fine. Both you and the other sellers will have grown your audience in between the promotions, so there will still be new eyes seeing your stuff.
Tip: Don’t do the same thing all the time
It’s important to space your promotions out and do things differently. You don’t want to repeat the same promotion over and over. And, if you do them too close together, it’s not fun for your audience.
Tip: Know what the goal of the promotion is
Before you join a group promotion make sure you understand what the goal is. Some promotions focus on getting people to follow you on social media while others are focused on increasing sales.
I’ve done a lot of quick and easy ones on Instagram this year. All I had to do was post the picture and the goal was to gain followers. I did five of them back-to-back and was able to hit my 10K followers and earn my swipe up feature.
Promotion example
When we run a group promotion we focus on leveraging email subscribers to get more followers and sales on TpT. The last one that we ran was a 5-day promotion that focused on the following:
Day 1: Flash freebie – This made people happy right off the bat because they received something free. We focused on keeping the free resource to a $3-5 limit so we weren’t giving away a high-dollar freebie. When you do this, it’s a great idea to choose a resource that’s part of a bundle so you can introduce your bundle to them and show them the quality of your products.
Day 2: 50% off bundle – This was my best sales day of the week. Angie has done some experimenting with this and found that the bundles that she’s done the best with are in the $10-20 range. The 50% off price is really affordable and they sell like crazy.
Day 3 & 4: 20% everything in the store – I thought that two days of this was too long. My second day didn’t perform as well. However, these two days were some of Angie’s top sales days.
Day 5: Flash giveaway – This is a way to reward those that stuck around for the entire week. We did our giveaway as an Instagram follow. You want to make it easy for people to participate in. You also want to mix up what platform to use so you don’t exclude anyone that doesn’t use a certain platform.
Individual promotions
On our last podcast episode, we had Nikki from the Sprinkle Topped Teacher on to talk about building an email list. She talked about a promotion that she did with 5-days of freebies to get people to subscribe to her list. There’s a lot of helpful information that she shared so check it out if you haven’t already heard it.
Tip: People love flash deals
I’ve had a lot of success with 24-hour discounted bundle flash sales. When you do sales that last for multiple days you’ll usually get a large response right away and then people will just trickle in for the rest of the deal. That’s why flash sales and giveaways are so powerful. People feel the need to act fast.
I had a graphic designer create a flash deal template for me. Now all I have to do is drag and drop the cover image of the resource into it. I have one sized for Instagram/Facebook, one for stories, and another for my newsletter. In less than five minutes I can have all my graphics ready to go. Then, all I have to do is write my email, send it out, and share on social media.
Tip: Try to get people to engage with your flash giveaway posts
The more people that see your giveaway posts, the more people that will enter it and the more product you will sell. Only one or two will win your giveaway, but others will buy because they’ll be interested in what you have to sell.
You want to get people to engage with your social media posts because it will increase the amount of your reach. What I like to do is share a picture of the resource and then say something like, “Follow the link in my profile and then comment on what you like the most about the resource. I’ll pick one winner from the comments at the end of the day.”
When you push people to your store to see the product you will get people that wishlist and buy the item if they don’t win it. You can even gain followers on TpT which is always helpful. You’ll also get a larger reach because people will be commenting on your post.
Tip: People like free stuff
That’s probably something you already knew, but flash freebies do well because everyone likes free stuff. If you’re giving something for free, people are going to take some kind of action.
Tip: Leverage your biggest audience
I’ve been using my email list a lot lately because it’s one of my biggest audiences. I use a template to fill in the details of my promotion and simply send it out to them. I had been struggling to know what to send my email list and being able to send out promotions has helped. Deals, freebies, and giveaway emails have high open rates.
Create a plan for your promotions
Angie and I are getting to work on mapping out our promotions for the year. I’m going to try to do two a month and Angie is going to do one while focusing on a variety of different options. We encourage you to take some time to create a promotional plan for your own year.
If you have a promotion that you’ve had success with, feel free to share it with us over in the MasterMind group.
