Before all you hater come and deliver a fresh loaf of freshly baked hate, I will chalk this post with 12 years distilled business advice of a veteran of Q4 gifting season. I’m like that old wily catcher who drinks too much and chews too much tobacco and their life is off the rails but they’re kept on the team to teach the new hot shot pitcher. Kidding I’m happily married but that would be cooler.
My website is Mantry.com What? Spam! You assh*ole you’re trying to promote your… blah blah blah. I post this as a point of reference. Believe me, the worst place to sell frivolous gifts on the internet is a reddit thread full of small business owners who value their dollar.
Alright lists read better so lets do this.
- YOUR PRODUCT CAN 100% BE MEDIOCRE - Selling gifts IS NOT about an MVP, it’s about the gift sender crossing someone off their list. People care most about the gift showing up on time and your company doing everything it said it would. Don’t sweat it if your product is a lame candle or an average T-Shirt. Mine is a box of mustard and jerky, it’s ok, it’s not gonna blow people away but we have sold millions of dollars worth. VERY FEW COMPANIES have unique products, it’s usually some blowhard selling books who tells you product matters. Maybe like the original iphone and the Model T Ford WERE SPECIAL but believe me your hot cocoa mix or crystal box set is just one of 17,000 on Amazon.
- You Should Sell Anything As a Gift - Too many companies make the mistake of NOT OFFERING a gift bundle. It’s free money. If someone has bought your product they will consider gifting it. Create a bundle out of your protein powder or toilet scrubbers or lawn care service. THE KEY is to OFFER IT AS A GIFT, put the idea in someone’s head. People love saying stuff like, “I use this, I thought you’d like it”
- Invest in NICE PACKAGING - We put all our boxes in wood crates, when we first started the company there was a joint called Rodney’s Oyster Bar that gave us a bunch of oyster crates for free so we washed them and put our products in them for the holidays. People raved and we never changed. I would attribute about 99.3% of sales to the damn wood crate (we now make them by the thousands). Shout out Rodney, you didn’t blink when two kids showed up and asked if we could take all those crates behind the restaurant.
- Pick a gender, pick a person, pick an avatar, pick a niche gift - The prefect gift for mom, the perfect gift for him, the perfect gift for your grumpy husband, the perfect gift for the try hard, the perfect gift for your little gym rat - LABEL people shamelessly. People want their thankless search for a gifts to be over, help them.
- Listen, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I WILL WRITE - People have a LONG gift list. Gifting has reached such ridiculous hysteria that most “gifts” are just hopeless people spending money they don’t have on people they don’t really care about but they have to do it to avoid guilt. You see with most products you have to solve a problem, with a gift you ARE solving the “problem” by default (the problem of having to give a gift ends the second someone checks out). Give people a simple out.
- Sell Gifts To EVERYONE - I have an auto responder on my email for Q4 for any incoming spam that says:
“Same deal as to all sales people (I receive 10+ pitches a day). Expense a 3 Box Mantry Gift and forward your receipt to me and I’ll hear your 10 minute pitch. If not, please remove me from your email list.”
It works.
Ok, this might seem bleak or ruthlessly capitalistic or maybe I sound like that monorail salesman from the Simpsons but think about your own gifting experience, we all buy dumb gifts we don’t care about. We are all in this hot mess known as consumerism and you work hard as a small business owner so go get that gift money…
So you can spend it on gifts for your family.
-—
Does anyone have tips for selling gifts? I want to hear them!
Thank you.
R
You must log in or register to comment.
This is honestly a great post.
After several successful businesses in other areas, I dabbled in ecom during the pandemic. When I tell people I’m in ecom, most of them ask “What do you sell?” I always laugh and say “unfortunately the same thing everyone else in ecom does—the stuff you buy every day.” I had high hopes for doing a crafting business or something “fun”, but the majority of ecom sales are stuff like this—essentials or everyday items sold with one twist or unique feature at most.
I met a guy on the loading dock at the post office who had a BBQ sauce subscription company. Same sort of deal you have going. That’s why I love this post. It’s a fully honest assessment of where the money is—and many of the responses are exactly why I’ll never say what I sell publicly!
These are all great as retention ideas, however I don’t think I saw a single Lead idea here.
This is a pretty nice post. I’m actually not in ecom but have a brick & mortar and wanted to bounce an idea off you. We are in the after school education space. So people come to us because their kids aren’t doing well and need more practice, or their kids are too smart and need a challenge and are working several years ahead of their grade level. It’s individualized after school education.
Any gift ideas? There’s the easy “gift a subscription”…those come in for new students, where it’s like grand parents who wanna get their grand kids in. I’ve never been about to think of a way for current customers to introduce new customers - because I feel there’s a stigma where it’s like…“hey your kids are dumb, so I got you a few months of xyz”.
The other thing is that several months of tuition isn’t cheap.
There are things like, book bundle, school supplies, workbooks, etc. The other thing is since it’s an actual sales, I think we’d need to collect sales tax (though I think technically if we aren’t tax exempt and pay for sales tax when we purchase at Office Depot, we don’t need to collect & remit idk not a CPA).
Also, suggestions on how to do packaging? Is there a store you buy supplies from, custom design?
You’re a fast talker, but this is still spam.
Meh, it’s only spam if he’s promoting a “how to succeed in e-commerce” course. If he’s trying to promote his shop, he’s fucking terrible at identifying his target market.