In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Marketing Through Q4 and Beyond ft. Hope Bellair
Digital marketing expert Hope Bellair shares insights from HubSpot's Inbound 25 conference and tailored Q4 marketing strategies for different types of jewelry businesses.
Reach Hope Bellair at hope@punchmark.com or 704-910-4774, extension 318 for more information about holiday marketing strategies.
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Welcome to In the Loop. So we discussed that and what she learned and how she plans to take what she learned at this conference and educate our clients. But we also talk about Q4. Q4 is a big time for jewelers and retailers in general and we're talking about how the different types of jewelry approaches can be served by marketing and what she would recommend if you have e-commerce or if you're trying to do custom jewelry design or anything in between. It's a fun talk. I hope you enjoy it and you have a great Q4. Good luck.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. What is up everybody? I'm joined by digital marketing manager Hope Belair. How you doing today, hope?
Speaker 3:I'm doing swell. How are you, Mike?
Speaker 1:So well. I'm very excited to get a chance to speak with you. Q4 starts like in the middle or beginning of Q3, but we kind of just pretend like we're in Q4 already. We're in the beginning of September. Lots of exciting things, but most excitingly, you just went to a big conference in San Francisco. How was that?
Speaker 3:It was lovely. I went to Inbound 25, which is HubSpot's marketing conference. It was huge. There was at least 15,000 people there Got to watch the Hot Ones episode live.
Speaker 1:Seriously, that's cool.
Speaker 3:With the ex-CEO of, or the co-founder rather of, hubspot and Colin Jolt, the SNL comedy guy. He was there and present and it was funny, his marketing jokes were quite cute.
Speaker 1:So to give everybody an idea why we're talking about this even remotely is so. Hubspot is sort of the backbone of how Punchmark runs our business, so it's a CRM. Correct me if I'm wrong. So CRM it's kind of how we run our infrastructure. We use a combination of HubSpot and a custom built one that Ross actually built from way back in the day that we lovingly refer to as admin, and HubSpot, though, is how we also do our marketing and a lot of our kind of broader outreach tools, but what's really interesting is some other people use different ones. It's sort of a B2B marketing tool. What is it that they mainly discussed? That made it so that you felt like you should attend and that you learn new skills to you know. Help our clients.
Speaker 3:So the way Inbound was marketed was it's kind of, you know, the biggest marketing conference in the nation, at least, if not the rural, where every marketer and business owner from different walks of life are coming and going from this marketing conference. So, for example, I actually sat next to a guy on the first keynote seminar there and he was an agricultural marketing person that used HubSpot for the backbone of his business in Bend, oregon, and I thought that was crazy because, again, over here I'm on the East Coast, jewelry marketing is our big thing, so getting different perspectives and really being able to network with high level marketing professionals really sets us apart, I think, you know, in the long run, when we're able to kind of continuously learn and stay curious about new marketing techniques and how that relates to the jewelry industry. So, specifically with Inbound, we were able to go through HubSpot's new marketing offerings that were just launched while I was at the conference, as well as what AI is doing to reshape the space that we're so used to in the web space.
Speaker 3:Right, web and marketing are synonymous with Google, search and SEO and all this stuff and they really came out with hey, ai is here, we either embrace it and we exceed or we ignore it and we kind of get a little left behind. So their answer was AEO, which is answer engine optimization, and I'm going to be going into this a little bit more, just in general, maybe with a couple of blog posts and LinkedIn posts on my personal LinkedIn profile about how this will shape the jewelry industry. But really getting a little bit more forecasting, especially in the jewelry industry, where you know, obviously we're centuries old, right, maybe not the web development side, obviously, but the jewelry industry has always been around from, you know, 1800s and beyond, you know.
Speaker 1:So really getting jewelry up to date and the industry as a whole just marketing it correctly so that we're not getting left behind as well, I think is a very important aeo, transparently hope, dropped this on me before we started recording and I was like I'm I'm just dumb enough that and and and forward enough that I don't know what that that acronym means. You gotta explain that to me. So just to like kind of put this into like very tangible terms, uh, correct me if I'm wrong AEO would be making sure that when someone asks chat, gpt or Gemini hey, recommend me some places to get an engagement ring yours is at the top of the list or is included in the list. Is that kind of what it is?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah. So basically, I guess kind of the synopsis of it all is you know, ai has an idea of your brand, right Through SEO and your obviously traditional digital footprint. It has an idea of what you do. Aeo, the answer engine optimization, basically fine tunes that idea into your actual brand voice. So, like, let's say, right, you are a jeweler that specializes in bat custom jewelry specifically. Let's just say that because it's a little out there, right? You know what I mean it's niche yeah it's niche.
Speaker 3:So aeo like would help, you know, with some of those tactics, help chat, gpt or another ai source get to. Hey, yes, we specialize in bat custom jewelry, that's it Not. Oh, it's a jewelry store located in XYZ town that does bridal, because you know what jeweler doesn't really do bridal right. So really hyper-focusing and focusing on answer engine optimization, I think is definitely the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of interesting when I you know immediately, I usually try to tailor a lot of this stuff to how could Punchmark use this? And what I have always really loved about working at Punchmark is that you know that terrible expression oh, we eat our own dog food. You know that kind of phrase. It's like we genuinely use all of our own tools. Our website is built on version six of our platform. So, if you were to, if you log into Punchmark, if you want to write a blog, I literally log into punchmarkcom and I use the blog editor the exact same way our clients do.
Speaker 1:And what's funny about that is there are certain things I hate and I get in my devs ears and I'm like hey, just so you know, I hate this aspect of it. And, uh, when they hear it coming from me, sometimes I can fast track it. But hearing that, I'm like man, for example, your bat jewelry, what is it? A baseball bat or is it a bat Like, as in a flappy flappy, you know? And same thing with web design.
Speaker 1:We are Punchmark is, we do websites, but we do websites specifically for jewelers. So, but you can't bury that lead in that it's if someone was to ask like hey, who can you recommend me for a website? It's obviously they might recommend Punchmark, but that would be a little bit of a miss. It's almost like when someone gives the contextual information that we're starting to learn is so important when it comes to prompt engineering that if they were to mention something around the jewelry industry, hopefully we would start to be recommended. It's really interesting. Part of me wants to pull up ChatGPT right now and see if we show up as someone, but then again I also have probably tailored mine so much that I wonder if it would recommend Punchmark or not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe go in an alias email and just say hey.
Speaker 1:Hey, like, who do you recommend for bad jewelry for bad jewelry? So, when it comes to that Hope, do you think that that's something that Punchmark will start to? You know? Consider offering in the near future. You know how people can start appearing in these general AI searches?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so, moving into quarter four and obviously early 2026, that's definitely going to be a focus of ours, just because, again, with everything that I have seen in the analytics, with the data, traditional search is going down. Ai summaries on Google even is bringing traffic to your website down significantly, because people don't need to necessarily read blogs anymore. You get the information. They can say, hey, who makes that jewelry near me? In Google even, and that AI summary will come out. So what we're going to be doing is focusing again more towards that AEO with blog posts and copywriting et cetera on our websites, posts and copywriting, et cetera on our websites so that when people are just searching in ChatGPT or in Google, they can pull directly from quotes, let's say, from a blog post, from your website, and get sourced in ChatGPT or AI overviews. So that's definitely something that we're working on. And this is not to say that traditional SEO and everything like that is irrelevant, because it is still very relevant.
Speaker 3:I think it's just a hybrid model that we're going to be starting to go forward with, so that we're pleasing two platforms or two technologies at the same time.
Speaker 1:And you know, it's really quite interesting because I'm starting to it feels very reminiscent of when Punchmark started building our marketing program. It was right around 2018. And what was so fascinating was we were, I remember, starting to understand SEO, and when you start to understand what it's looking for, it's looking for experts and then it is going to try to show relevancy, and that's always what we're going after. Is this relevancy? And that's where blog posts were kind of coming into the play. Is that's how you could show your relevancy.
Speaker 1:Back in the old days, we used to hack it by stuffing a lot of keywords into it and that way they would think that we were super relevant. But nowadays I've started hearing this term source of truth, like the one source of truth, and what I've found is that it starts to become about like the actual content and the thrust of the matter, if you will Like this is not just having a lot of the keywords or it's not just writing a lot of blog articles that pertain to the matter, but the actual hmm, like the message is the most relevant, pertinent, gripping, and it sounds like quality is almost coming back into the fold more than just quantity, which I think is. I mean it sounds refreshing, but I'm sure we'll people are going to find ways to game that too, but we'll enjoy it for the time being.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean definitely quality over quantity is going to start taking prevalence and especially, kind of in that same vein, third-party apps like Reddit, social media. Third-party apps like Reddit, social media, other platforms that your business is on is going to be super relevant when showing up for AI, because AI is pulling from those different platforms as well to give a more holistic picture and view of your brand so that they can recommend you better, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's really interesting is, just like on a personal connotation or discussion, I've heard that Reddit is becoming more and more kind of in the forefront One, because it seems like one of the last bastions of of real human content which, if you're listening, I am starting to be worried about the whole dead Internet theory.
Speaker 1:You know, where no one is actually making content, everything is made by bots and everything is just bots talking to other bots and we are the onlookers. And you know, chat engines are actually looking to them as, like, a place where there is a lot of human activity, whereas when you look at, for example, facebook, facebook is not a lot of human activity and a lot of these other places and Instagram increasingly overrun by it. But when you look at Reddit, it's primarily text based and that's very easy for a engine to digest. So I have started to lean actually on Reddit a lot more recently, which is just very I don't know. I kind of am happy about that, but I also am like I know we got like one more year of this before suddenly they're like all right, we got to ruin this too. So who knows? I think we'll see how this comes to play, but it's fascinating to know that relevancy is going to be a new topic as well.
Speaker 3:Again, Absolutely, and anything published under a year, 10 months, is a sweet spot. Ai doesn't go back much historically. They want or it wants, I guess relevant and current types of data.
Speaker 1:Good to know. So everybody stay with us. We're going to take a quick break and then when we come in, we're going to talk about new strategies on your quarter four strategy. So everybody stay with us. This episode is brought to you in part by Stone Algo's Jeweler OS. If you're an independent jeweler offering bridal in your brick and mortar store, I need to tell you guys about what I recently discovered that will explode your bridal sales. At JCK Las Vegas this year, I came across the most impressive customer-facing engagement ring builder that I've seen so far. It's built by this company called JewelerOS, like Jeweler Operating System, and they've basically created a ring builder that's better than what the big box stores have at their disposal and it's available to independent jewelers. I had the founder on In the Loop a few weeks back and they've already installed on hundreds of jewelers' websites and, whether they are punchmark sites or not, it fits perfectly onto your site. They also have this mind-blowing feature that instantly converts a picture of a ring your customer wants into a free manufacturable CAD file Super cool. The best part is there's no contract, no onboarding fee, and they'll install the ring builder on your website super fast. All you pay is $25 per verified engagement ring lead and that's it. It no hidden fees. So if you're tired of not converting your website traffic into bridal sales and you want to grow your store, go to trytheringbuildercom once again that is trytheringbuildercom all spelled normally and play around with it and get it installed on your website if you like it, and maybe mention in the loop, if you do.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. All right, everybody still speaking with Hope Belair, digital marketing manager at Punchmark Hope. So I want to talk about Q4 and what you are spinning up for jewelers, and what we always say at the very beginning of this we've done this episode a couple times is we're not making this a sales pitch. This is more like talking about the end goal and then looking at how to get there. So what can we do? And you could do for yourself if that's your goal.
Speaker 1:We've learned that not everybody's goal is the same when it comes to their business and also with their online presence. So with very selfishly, I used to always want jewelers to just have e-commerce out the wazoo, Like I thought that everybody should be shifting everything in the e-commerce. Increasingly, I'm learning that only some jewelers should be doing that. It's not for everybody, and as you start to slice them down, there are these kind of main sort of bastions. Let's talk about what can e-commerce focused people would you recommend they start doing, and what sort of Q4 strategies would you maybe implement if that's what they were going to do with, like a digital marketing program with Punchmark?
Speaker 3:So if you're e-commerce focused, I would hope at least anyway that you've been running your ads all year, really pushing out products and different aspects to different people and demographics that align with your store, your store. Now, for quarter four, obviously generally off the top, we're looking at at least a 10 to 20% bump in budget per month for the duration of quarter four, just because, again now you're competing with people that maybe haven't been doing any ads throughout the year and they're entering the chat, if you will. So, thinking about your, your budgets and prorating them to where, let's say, you know, even a week by week basis, maybe you know, you know it's going to be a little slower, end of September, early October, and then you ramp it up really through Thanksgiving, through 24th, let's say so, off the top budgets, you're looking to increase budgets. You're looking to increase as far as your general campaigns and pushing more products out there, let's say, on meta and google. You're looking at a lot of retargeting.
Speaker 3:So, a lot of the you know clients or new people that have found your brand throughout the year, we want to hit them hard during the holidays yeah, time to cash in, exactly because it does take at least 12 touch points, let's say on average, for someone to say, oh, I remember that brand, I've seen their ads on stories and in my feed. Maybe I should actually check them out for the holidays and make that e-commerce purchase. So really focusing on lookalike audiences, retargeting, getting that demographic and really hammering it down is going to be the strategy for e-commerce going forward. And then, of course, you know, based on your store and your location, I would recommend different imagery and videos. You know from someone from Florida than in New York, let's say. It shouldn't necessarily be the same, because the demographics are completely different. So understanding your store and what people want around you is the best you know thing to do and making sure that your radius around your store, the zip codes that you're targeting, are going to convert for you.
Speaker 1:It's interesting it's kind of like the prelude for the year is you got to write these blogs, you got to update everything, try to write this good content, get out there making these posts and start gathering your following. And then it's like Q4 is when you cash in. And it's funny because the episode before this one was about five jewelry topics, uh, that you should be paying attention to, and number five was I was kind of complaining about how much retargeting there is these days. I feel like it's not fun anymore and it's so funny. And I almost included like a little teaser in there because, like 10 minutes before, I said that I ran a sponsored ad for our sponsor and I was like, oh, am I part of the problem?
Speaker 1:But I think that retargeting it just goes to show how effective it is and now is the time to cash in on it. And what I've said in years past you got to be loud, you got to be aggressive, and then, when January comes, I do think it's OK to be a little bit quiet, like let the crescendo come down and like reset to a piano, if you will, if you're into music. But now, hope, what if you're maybe more of like a custom jeweler and you, primarily, are doing these custom projects or you want people to come into store. What would you recommend then as far as like a strategy and how, like a marketer might help you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the most important thing, let's say, for a custom jeweler is knowing your end date, and what I mean by that is knowing the amount of orders you can take to get every custom job done, let's say by the holidays and let's say Christmas for, for this example, knowing your end date and knowing when the turnaround time is for your clients period. Obviously that's more of a business decision and not necessarily translating into marketing, let's say in the ad space. But that will also determine then how you curate your ads. Let's say if you're doing ads throughout the quarter four. So e-commerce and custom design are two different heads, if you will. Yeah. So with custom jewelry I'd say you're looking at getting the, the word out, let's say in the next two or three weeks. You're starting earlier than e-commerce and retargeting. You're getting out those designs and saying, hey, actually you know what. Look at all this stuff I did over the summer and why it's so beautiful. Here's some testimonials. It's a lot more visual, it's a lot more storytelling than let's push the product. So you're looking at a strategy from, let's say, now to December 1st, whereas e-commerce you're looking at, let's say, october 15th to December 20th to really get people in. So understanding again your audience and what you do best is going to help you in the messaging and branding for your ads.
Speaker 3:Let's say in this sense, if you're not doing ads, you know email marketing. Let's say, re-hitting that client list saying, hey, I know you guys got married. Let's say, I don't know 10 years ago anniversary kind of a year-ish you want a custom-made new, upgraded engagement ring for Christmas. Let's make something together. Let's make it beautiful. Let's start now. You know what I mean. So really getting messaging across and being a little bit more holistic with your approach. Personal touches to clients, you know obviously, um, jewelers are so good at that anyway, with phone calls and personal messages and stuff like that. But really understanding, like, okay, this is, this is going to be a little bit earlier and, depending on how quick the turnaround time is for a custom job, knowing when to hit that sweet spot.
Speaker 1:I'd love to know that there's like, yeah, there's different uh target times and like blocks, if you will in in in the timeline for different parts. So let me throw a curveball at you. What about someone who wants to do lots of events this holiday season, increasingly? I think events are awesome. I used to kind of poo-poo. They were sort of pretty standard. I kind of thought they were unimaginative for a little while. But it seems like they're coming back and I'm starting to hear about these more creative ways of getting people into your store. And what I've also learned from having my own art exhibits is that getting people to the event is the best way to, but they won't really buy if they don't show up, unless you are retargeting and being aggressive in other ways. But that's almost like a whole nother ball of wax. So what would you recommend? If someone is an events person and they're doing a combination or suite of marketing programs such as guys nights, gals night, wishlist nights, anything along those lines how would you approach that?
Speaker 3:So the biggest thing with events is, in my opinion, organization. So, because you're doing events, you want to attract new customers. Of course that might be through ads, through meta, I'd say specifically, just because Google, more search based, it kind of, you know, populates as as needed and of course there is some retargeting there. But if we're focusing on new customers, for ads, meta is definitely the spot to do it. And then emails you've got, you know, postcards, if you're sending them out that way. Commercials in your radius, if you want to, you know, go that route. So, having you know, okay, here's my two week block for the Black Friday event, where I'm going to be, you know, doing XYZ, maybe gift cards at the door, whatever. And then the next two weeks, let's say, you have a VIP night for your high earners, followed by a ladies night, making sure that the messaging is tailored for both so that you're not, you know, conflating the VIPs that have maybe been with you for forever with maybe someone that just came in a month ago to, you know, resize a ring, let's say, just for fun and would be more apt to the ladies night. So, having it all spread out and I'm I'm saying even if you need to have a calendar in front of you, paper pen. Really focus on when the event dates are, when the emails should be sent out, when the ad campaign should start, and as general best practices I say that you know, just basic level. Two weeks out is the sweet spot to hit it. Now, of course, if you're going for leads and awareness and all the fun stuff on meta, that's a whole different ballgame and I'd be happy to talk any strategy regarding that at a later date. But really kind of having your ducks in a row because proper preparation it sounds cheesy. Proper preparation prevents poor performance, and that is what my coach tells me all the time.
Speaker 1:So so I think it translates the same in you know jujitsu.
Speaker 3:I think it translates the same in you know jujitsu, the gym business. It's all the same Proper preparation and having you know the know. How is how to you know, really implement that strategy through Q4 so you can have successful events over and over and over again?
Speaker 1:And you know what. I also think there is something to be said about documenting how you do this year and not just for you know a postmortem to look back. So punchmark big on these, or I am big on these, so I make everyone. I punchmark to them is whenever we finish a campaign or a big project or anything, I throw a calendar on the meeting, usually a week afterwards, so that it's still fresh enough that we can talk about it, but not close enough that we're like maybe still pulling a couple levers. Close enough that we go and we talk about how it went. We document as much as we can and then we also try to capture as much information as we can for the next time that we want to do it, whether we're going to do the exact same thing or potentially we might want to do a spinoff. But trust me, now is the easiest time for you to document what went well and what did not, and now, meaning right after the event. I highly recommend it because you can just take your, for example, your copy for your social posts or your ads, put it into just like a little I use Google Sheets for everything but just pop it in there, paste without formatting, put it all in there and then I mean, in this day and age you could just feed it back into a GPT and have it write it for you the next year if you wanted to. That's a really easy way to get yourself set up for future years. But increasingly I just think, don't let that work be one time work, let it be like half of the way to next year's efforts. And I think especially I mean to be candid we just did a jewelers helping jewelers uh takeover, and with that one I wrote so many posts I mean just an awful amount of posts and with all that copy what I did is I just put it into a spreadsheet and I'm going to use that information and, just like you can do a million things with it. You can train a gpt on it, you can recycle it for future posts, you can just have it to see what went well and what did not. We earmarked which posts got the most comments and then we looked. You can go in and see like, oh yeah, this one is written in the first person versus the third person. That's the kind of stuff I highly recommend. You at least do the legwork on Hope when it comes to.
Speaker 1:Just really quickly talking about VIP events, I am definitely. I've heard so much about these events, even going back all the way to, for example, I did this interview with Constance Palamalu, my first interview with her. She made this incredible showstopper piece 100 hundred thousand plus and she said it went to one of my VIPs and I remember thinking, oh man, you can't go to the well too often, but when there's a moment to go to the well you really can cash in. Is that something you've had conversations with jewelers about? About like cultivating this VIP experience or list so that when the moment is ready, they can actually take action?
Speaker 3:So, honestly, the majority of the jewelers that I work with kind of already have that squared away. There are a couple generations in, they've got their list and they know kind of how they're going to do it. Where I come in is asking you know, hey, how can we make this a little bit better, how can we elevate it, how can we change it so that your VIPs don't get a little fatigued, let's say, year over year, knowing that, okay, every year they're going to have a VIP night they're going to, you know, obviously, invite me to an early showing of every jewelry they may have.
Speaker 3:How can I make it even that much better? Whether it's taking them out to a little bit of a group dinner type of thing, obviously, champagne, the works, you know, in the store. But what's going to stick with them so that next year, when it rolls around again, they're excited to go back and excited to spend more money with you and, you know, really elevate the whole entire experience.
Speaker 1:Man. There's so many different things to be focused on, but the good news is I do think you're right. I think that jewelers kind of already have a nose for where they stand. In the grand scheme of things, this is not their first Christmas most likely, or not their first holiday season, I guess and what I've started to see is that they do sort of always know how to go through it. They're going to be super tired at the end. They all have. They know their area best.
Speaker 1:But what's fascinating is there are just certain things that you can do behind the scenes that can really have a nice little 5% to 7% boost and 5% to 7% boost who doesn't love that? And I think that those like little SEM kind of things are going to be really quite. That's like the hidden, hidden man behind the curtain that's pulling some of the levers, having Google, you know, be your salesperson. For you. It just seems like it's within reach and if you just make one sale off of that, or like it contributes to one sale, it feels like it pays for itself, right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, yep absolutely yep, and I mean even some, some of our smaller plans that we've got going on for the quarter. Four plans as a whole. Um, you know, some of our smaller packages is 1500 for the entire quarter and one engagement ring sale out of that. I mean pays for itself.
Speaker 1:You know what about when it comes to these, these curated landing pages I don't actually really have a great term for these. We've talked about gift guides. It's one of the things that we do every year. I told you beforehand I'm a little down on gift guides sometimes because it feels like they're kind of one-dimensional. How do you think that a jeweler can kind of breathe some life into their gift guide approach, for example, like these landing pages?
Speaker 1:I really like it when there's like this personal touch where it's like this is Michael's collection or this is Michael's holiday picks, and then you can go in and add a couple of tags and it's just it's all of my favorite pieces. There's 10 of them and they're on a landing page, maybe a picture of me looking at some jewelry, a little bit of copy that adds like a little personal touch about me, and then it's like hey, I love simple jewelry, it's great. And it it's like hey, I love simple jewelry, it's great, and it's those kinds of things. Uh, what are you seeing jewelers do to kind of make the holiday gift guide not a snooze?
Speaker 3:fest. Well, I think you kind of answered my. You know, my rebuttal actually would have been kind of the same thing Personalize it. Obviously, the jewelry is going to change every year. Hopefully, keep those you know longer lasting pieces in the gift guide. Maybe just put them a little bit towards the bottom so it is a little bit refreshed. But you know it's funny. I was on Gabriel Co's website the other day.
Speaker 1:As one is.
Speaker 3:As one is, you know, and, mind you, ever since I did that, I've been getting a ton of retargeting.
Speaker 1:They must have such a budget.
Speaker 3:Oh, they've got a budget, budget like you wouldn't believe. But anyway, what made their you know kind of gift guide? If you will, it wasn't necessarily a gift guide, but they went through with their designers and every single designer or any collaboration that they did. It was so different, it was so unique, so kind of the same way that you had said okay, here's my picks, because I like fine dainty jewelry and this is what I would recommend. Same kind of deal.
Speaker 3:So if a jeweler has a couple different designers in their in their store, or if they've got a couple minds going into a certain collection, having a blurb or saying this is why this is special to me is really going to resonate with the audience that you're targeting. And especially the holiday gift guide is again something that is beautiful for retargeting. As soon as you hit that landing page, you're introduced into a whole different campaign ad set. As well as having that be a page like a landing portion for emails and ads alike, it's just going to put people in that gift giving or gift buying headspace because it is curated towards the holiday of your choice. Generally it is Christmas, but having those specific collections and blurbs about you and your store is going to help immensely, and especially again circling back to AI here as funny as it is, because it is artificial intelligence, it is prioritizing human first content. So have human first blurbs and you know little things to add. That's going to help you rank better online as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like you're saying that and I was thinking like a a staff picks page, sometimes with with gift guides. I think that this is what it is. I'm putting my finger on it, I think it's so. It feels so salesy and it's so like like the term gift. I think that's what I don't like, where it's like, hey, buy this thing, whereas like, what are we doing with joy, we're trying to pretend like it's, like it's a necessity, which it is kinda it's a luxury.
Speaker 1:And I think when we, when we jump the shark and we start talking gift it, it's somewhat it almost like ruins some of the sparkle. But when you start saying it's like staff picks, and then, yeah, maybe you have like five of your staff members, let them pick out a couple pieces, or honestly, or don't just find five of your best sellers and you know, put it in like a little carousel next to their headshot by them, get a pull quote from them, and then suddenly you have like a little something that stands up a little bit better. Yeah, it's, I don't know. It's something about the whole like necessity kind of feeling of it and it's like, actually, no, there should be some a little bit more storytelling. And, like you're saying, like it's personal, it should feel personal yeah, adding a little bit of the whimsy, if you will.
Speaker 3:It's all it's whimsy, it's it's stories, and it makes you forget about the actual necessities for a minute. And that's what I think jewelry is all about.
Speaker 1:Yes, I totally agree. Hope anything else. Before we wrap up Q4, always a busy time of the year and it's busy for us and it's even busier for jewelers. We always laugh about is when the jewelers get the busiest. We have to be quiet and for what I've seen in every single jewelry forum is, if you're a vendor, don't contact us between the months of of, you know, middle of October and December, because they don't want to talk to us, they want to talk to customers and that puts, in my opinion, kind of a lot of pressure on you because that means you have, like this window which is like right now until like, maybe, halloween, because Black Friday is stretching. It stretches earlier and earlier every single year. It seems like it used to be just the day after Thanksgiving and now it's like November 1st essentially, and that's great for jewelers. But at the same time, it makes your position with those different marketing windows which are unique for each store, like we were just discussing. Uh, you got to be pretty precise, I think, and uh, I don't envy that for you. We'll be trying our best to provide as much information as we can for jewelers, so be sure to come back every week for new in the loop episodes. We'll be having a black friday prep episode, like we always do. We'll be having a couple of just, you know, informational ones with some of our partners leading up to the holiday season as best as possible. We understand that you're going to be busier than ever. Hopefully we'll provide some interesting and engaging content for you all.
Speaker 1:What we do at Punchmark is we're kind of approaching our code. Freeze is what we typically call it. It's where we have a couple of high impact locations in our code base that we won't touch, usually starting in October, and that means October, november, december. We're not going to roll out major features that could potentially ever impact the grid and the checkout and the product details page. Those key features, because every single year between November and December combined make up like 30% or 33% of all of the e-commerce sales for the entire year on the platform. So we understand it's a high impact time and we'll be cognizant of that. If you have any questions, if you want to reach out to Hope, where should they contact you?
Speaker 3:You can email me at hope at punchmarkcom, or you can give me a ring on my punchmark number, which is 704-910-4774, extension 318.
Speaker 1:318, everybody. Well Hope. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Can't wait to see all the sales ringing in. It's going to be a good time. I'm very excited, everybody. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, cheers, bye. All right, everybody, that's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Hope Belair, the digital marketing manager at Punchmark, and you can reach out to her at hope at punchmarkcom. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom. Slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, we'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye. Loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, we'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye.
