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You have been building momentum throughout the fall with your essential oil business, and rocking it! Now as we roll into the holiday season, it’s time to keep that momentum for what could be the busiest time of the year for you (both for your business and personal life – we get it!). Because everything this time of year seems to move at an even faster pace, it’s important to plan out your strategy so you can finish this year AND roll into the new year with a strong, steady business.
Here are a few ideas you can choose from to implement NOW to grow your essential oil business in November & December.
1. Host a Virtual PARTY!
Think about the products you think will be PERFECT this holiday season for either individual use, or for gifting. Then host a virtual party on your social media channel of choice! This time of year, us ladies tend to get very stressed out and BUSY, so think of this as a service you can offer (you are saving friends from battles in the mall parking lot and Black Friday crowds). The key is to make this FUN and let people know that you have great products to offer that will help them take care of their shopping list easily and quickly.
A great idea for your virtual party is to create some graphics showing items you have packaged or grouped together for shopper’s convenience (Canva.com is a MUST if you aren’t already using it!). To create your “packages”, think about what items would go together well? Are there specific sets of items that are great for certain groups of people? Or create graphics showing products by price points (Gifts under $20, Gifts under $30, Team Gifts, Teacher Gifts, Stocking Stuffers, etc.).
Offer incentives for customers even if they are not a wholesale member yet – be creative! You want as many people as possible involved and engaged in your online PARTY, because the goal is to get your name out there and more people using essential oils!
BONUS idea for your virtual party: Give away a prize!
No wonder this can be an effective idea if you are trying to boost sales. Let people know that you will do a raffle at the end of the virtual event, and that for every $20 they spend, they will be entered into a drawing for a free gift (or however much you set the limit at). This is a great way to upsell, because if someone orders $34 worth of product, for example, they only need $6 more for another entry.
You might choose to keep the gift a suprise, or share it with them. Could be an oil, a gift set, or maybe a nice piece of diffuser jewelry.
2. Host a Make ‘n Take Party or Holiday Open House
Since you most likely will be cleaning house for some holiday events anyway, why not invite friends, neighbors, and customers over for an essential oil make ‘n take or Holiday Open House? You can schedule a traditional make ‘n take class with a holiday theme, and have guests learn about oils to use this season while making gifts to take with them (people with love the ease of this, especially if you have a gift wrapping station there!). Or, you can hold an open house, spanning across a couple of hours where guests come and go at their leisure. At an open house, your goal is to connect with past customers and team members, meet new people, and book classes into the new year along with selling your products or gifts you have made ahead of time.
We love the ideas listed here at DIY Show Off for hosting a type of class like this. Check it out!
Want to be extra enticing? Click on the images below for a printable card you can use as an invite. Just print it on cardstock and place a stamp on the back! Includes a fun game to encourage guests to come to the party (you can also modify this for social media):
3. Host a holiday party for your business builders
You business buildesr are the backbone of your business! It’s important to come together as a community to keep up the team spirit, and to encourage and support each other in building strong businesses. What better way to do this than a party? If you have a local downline, get together in person! Offer special gifts or awards for successes the past year, share stories and training material, and just overall make it fun to amp them up for bringing in the new year. Most of your team not local? Host the party virtually! Skype and Google Hangouts is great for this, and it will give everyone a chance to connect, especially if many of them have not met yet face-to-face. Hold an ugly sweater contest, have everyone show off their workplaces, or send everyone a small box of supplies in the mail and do a holiday craft together that they can then share with their own customers.
4. Book classes for the new year NOW! Set a goal and get January and February booked!
It is NOT too early to be thinking about this…in fact, NOW is the time! Set a goal for yourself to get some classes on the calendar for January and February. How many classes would you like to be hosting each week or month? If you are more introverted, this might sound scary (especially if you haven’t hosted a class yet!), but getting in front of people and teaching about essential oils is key to branching out and growing a strong business.
Don’t think that January and February have to be slow months just because the holidays are over and people have reached spending limits. MANY people are spending holiday money and you have an advantage promoting a healthy, natural product to New-Year’s-Resolutioners!
How can you use this to your advantage? How can YOU help people reach their goals in the new year? If you are intentional and have a plan, you can start the year with a booming business!
Look at the products you offer and decide what will entice people to live their healthiest life this year, and design some classes around them. Online is great, but try to book in-person classes when you can!
One of my favorite strategies for the new year when I was in direct sales was to start the year off with a Big 10 bonus for my hosts. I’ve created an easy template you can print out here (or click the image below!) with a calendar to help you write down your incentives, easy action steps and a sample script to use for booking classes.
5. Customer Appreciation Event
Another great idea for an event to offer is a customer appreciation event. You have great customers who, even if they aren’t “working the business” love essential oils and love supporting you in your business – this is your chance to show them some love right back!
If you haven’t done a customer appreciation event before, they can be a lot of fun! Consider setting this up for early December, and plan on having some great deals ready, raffle and door prizes people can win, great food, maybe some make ‘n take items they can do (for free), and have your Big 10 calendar from above ready to get classes booked into the new year!
Reach out to past customers who are not actively building their business, but are ordering from you. You should definitely invite any local team members, and ask them to invite THEIR downlines and past class hosts.
Create a great holiday theme & atmosphere – you want to pull out all the stops so that customers will remember this event and begin to look forward to it every year! Some ideas:
- Give recognition to special customers: “Calmest Customer” (ordered the most lavender), “Best Host” (hosted a well-attended class), etc.
- Use the opportunity to thank them for being customers and share your “Why” for doing this business!
- Create ideas for gift giving and share those specials with them.
- Encourage customers to bring a guest – bonus points/stocking stuffer prize if they bring someone who has NEVER used essential oils before!
Don’t be discouraged if you call and invite, and people can’t come. It’s a busy time of year! However, make sure to use the opportunity to ask if you can share holiday specials with them, follow-up on past purchases, and just let the customer know you appreciate them.
Bonus idea: Ticket Game Raffle!
This is a great way to encourage people to attend your event, whether it’s is an appreciation event, or a normal make-‘n-take class (we’ve included a game like this on the printable invite above!). Allow guests to earn tickets at the party for things like the following:
- Show up!
- Bring a friend (give a ticket for each person they bring who was not on the original guest list)
- Place an order
- Bring an outside order from a friend
- Ask questions about the oils or the business (give a ticket during the event for each question they ask!)
- Schedule a meeting with you to discuss how they can earn money with an essential oil business (offer to pay for coffee!)
- Book a class with you
Hopefully some of these ideas are helpful to you and encourage you this holiday season to keep the momentum up with your essential oil business! It can be a great, productive time of year with sales, and with a little motivation and planning, you can start the new year off strong as well.
If you’re looking for high-quality diffuser jewelry to use as incentives or gifts, check out Drops of Joy Jewelry and make sure to email us at mail@dropsofjoyjewelry.com to inquire about our bulk order discount.