One of the biggest mistakes jewelers make on Facebook is expecting immediate results. Marketing, and thus results, takes time and you have to budget, strategize and develop your page. If you’ve been under the 1,000 fan club for a couple years or more, it’s likely you haven’t put any marketing dollars towards the effort or don’t really believe in the platform. That’s a subject for another time. Now, if you have built your fan base to say… 2,000+ fans organically, that is to say contests & promotions were not your primary way to acquire these fans, you’re ready to pounce and the holidays are the perfect time to do so.

For the retail jeweler it’s best to view Facebook in terms of sales cycles. These are direct sales opportunities that present themselves around mass gift-giving times of the year such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and the biggest; the holidays. The rest of the year is made up of indirect sales opportunities such as engagements, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., but are dependent on when people are in the market to buy, which is spread throughout the year. It’s also important to note that the direct sales opportunities happen to be gift-giving times of the year. So, the average transaction is lower versus the indirect sales that happen throughout the year. Do you feel what I’m throwing down? Sure, there will be large purchases made during gift-giving times of the year, but most “gift giving” will generally be sub $500. So, two things change when we consider holiday gift giving; our expectations and our objectives.

My expectations during the holiday season are to sell multiple items under $500 versus one item at $5,000. Although I’ll take and want that $5,000 sale, my expectations are to sell more items under $500. With that in mind, my objectives turn to fan acquisition and sales, which mean new customers. There’s a tremendous amount of value in that and it shouldn’t be overlooked. So what do you do? Well, let’s start by selecting a handful of items that you want to feature in page posts. Think hot sellers or items that are great for the gift-giving crowd. These should include pricing and descriptions. You want to push traffic to these posts using Facebook advertising. This will get the eyeballs on your content. It’s media and it’s important. It is also helpful to drive consumers to additional areas where they can view other great gift-giving ideas. Those could be a gallery or custom page on Facebook or even direct to your website. You may also want to incorporate a way to collect data for new people coming to your page. For example a sweepstakes, not to be confused with the contests and promotions I mentioned earlier and only as part of a multi-tiered approach, where it is supportive and not the primary driver. This will allow you to collect mail and email addresses that you can add to your holiday mailings and email blasts. Finally, let’s head down the home stretch and capture those last-minute shoppers! Maybe a 12 days of Christmas push, where you post a different gift giving idea each day, with pricing and descriptions.

These combined components are what provide us with the multi-tiered approach and traffic drivers for you to own the holidays. Now that you have the strategy, the execution is up to you.

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