Starting something new . . .

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Always requires a bit of trial and error.
I recently decided to try a 6 week time period of which we ran advertised sales to our clients every single Friday. Every Friday something else will be deeply discounted and clients will have 5 days to shop. Our discount will never be lower than 25% off and can range from seed beads to kits to metal.
I finally got our Ratepoint e-mail service attached to our Twitter and Facebook pages. So the discounts will also be posted on these pages. And now I've added FB, Twitter and blog sharing links on our blog page. I'm slowly starting to figure out all the "electronic" social media venues and avenues to try and take advantage of the best possible way to advertise for our business.
I (by accident) also figured out how to write my blog posts in advance and post them on a certain date. Now that I've figured out all these things, I really need to figure out if the extra time I'm spending utilizing all these services is paying off?
Owning your own business is essentially wearing about 20 hats in one day. Just mentally picture me . . . taking off a COWBOY hat and putting on a BOWLER. And then I remove the BOWLER hat and put on a BASEBALL CAP. And removing the BASEBALL CAP to place upon my head a FEDORA. In the five+ years that I've owned my own business I have absolutely no idea how much my time is worth. I do so many things in one day - how do you evaluate the financial worth of a designer, accountant, illustrator, customer service specialist, ad manager, social media specialist, lawn service, etc???
So . . . back to my point. It's very hard to judge whether or not an idea works until it's too late. Even with a 6 week plan, we could have implemented the sale on the wrong day of the month. The sale could end on the wrong day of a month. Everyone could be taking their SUMMER vacations right when I decide to attempt to run a large scale sale. And if the sale does well, what were the reasons OR reason?
It's going to take six weeks to find out but we're going to try. Maybe it will be the most successful event we have ever planned. Maybe it will FLOP. But one thing I can say:
We would have never known what we could accomplish had we not even tried.

What are your thoughts? Post, comment, discuss on YOUR blog. I'd love to know what you think. . . please don't try to post anonymously.
Thanks for reading.
xOxOx

2 comments:

Carol Dean Sharpe said...

Kelli, I wish you the best of luck with this promotion. What works, when and why is a complete mystery to me. My sales are half of what they were a few months ago although I don't think I'm doing anything differently. sigh. ;o

The Hole Bead Shoppe said...

No kidding Carol! Everyone's sales are down! I keep saying "it will get better"... I hope it does for you too!

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