Boost your sales this Mother’s Day with these tips and design ideas

Next to Christmas, Mother’s Day in the U.S. is one of the biggest gift-giving holidays throughout the year. And it’s right around the corner (May 10th).

Mother’s Day offers ample opportunity to rev up your sales numbers.

You can optimize your product listings. You can run special promotions (find previous Mother’s Day hashtags, coupon codes, and social media templates here). And you can add new inventory to your store.

Below, I share tips and strategies you can try to improve your products’ rankings and, in turn, their sales, along with a bunch of inspiring new design ideas for Mother’s Day 2020.

(And for those of you who are wondering if mugs are still selling, feel free to check out this video.)

With that out of the way, let’s take a look…

Tags and keywords 

After going through a variety of Etsy-related blog posts and courses, I’ve seen a number of sources recommend making frequent, tiny tweaks to your Etsy listings to improve your rankings — for example, slightly adjusting your listing’s thumbnail.

These tiny tweaks make Etsy think you’re doing major editing, which is supposed to improve your listings’ SEO.

So one thing you can do around Mother’s Day is to take any listings that relate to moms, stepmoms, or grandmas and tweak their keywords and tags.

According to this Etsy article, “Most Mother’s Day-related searches are general (ex: “Mother’s Day gift”), which suggests that shoppers are looking for guidance on gift ideas.”

Shoppers may not necessarily think of specific searches to run for these gifts, such as “funny knitting travel mug.” So update any listings that would make good Mother’s Day gifts to include generic Mother’s Day-related tags and keywords.

Doing so can help your listings appear in those more general “Mother’s Day gift” searches of customers who don’t yet know what they want to buy.

Here are some examples of good, non-specific Mother’s Day keywords and tags from Erank:

• Mothers Day gift from daughter long distance
• Mothers Day gift from son
• Mothers Day gift from husband
• Step mom Mothers Day gift
• 1st Mothers Day gift

Obviously some of these are too long to use as a single tag, but you can break them into separate parts, such as “Mothers Day gift”, “from daughter”, etc. as appropriate for the listing.

After Mother’s Day passes, I’d suggest changing these keywords and tags back to whatever they were before.

NOTE: I’ve seen this strategy applied to Etsy listings. But I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same thing with your Amazon listings.

Mother’s Day 2020 design ideas

Mother’s Day 2020 is going to be unique. Many people are unable to be with their moms, stepmoms, or grandmothers this year due to COVID-19 and needing to practice social distancing.

These unfortunate circumstances present some distinctive design opportunities, however. Check out the design ideas I came up with below:

Long-distance love

Dear [Mom, Stepmom, Grandma],
While we may be far apart, I will always carry you with me inside my heart.
Love,
Your [son, daughter, stepson, stepdaughter, grandson, granddaughter]

More distance = More love

A [son’s, daughter’s, stepson’s, stepdaughter’s, grandson’s, granddaughter’s] love for [his, her] [mom, stepmom, grandma] never fades even when they’re far apart.

Consider this [mug, travel mug, tumbler, etc.] a great big hug from your [son, daughter,  stepson, stepdaughter,  grandson, granddaughter]

Coronavirus-inspired

[MOM, STEPMOM, GRANDMA]
You are always essential to me.

HOMESCHOOL MOM
not all heroes wear capes

This [mom, stepmom, grandma] needs a quarantini like yesterday

A [mom, stepmom, grandma] as awesome as you is harder to find than toilet paper.

…I usually say it’s better to make designs that work year-round — and I stand by that, especially if you want your business to operate as passively as possible.

But, at the same time, paying attention to what’s trending is a lucrative strategy that can generate additional sales for your business.

Not that COVID-19 is a “trend” per se, but it is something that’s on most people’s minds right now and probably for the foreseeable future. And many sellers are creating and selling products related to what’s going on.

These types of items can bring a little lightheadedness to an otherwise stressful and worrisome situation, and that can help people to cope.

COVID-19-inspired designs probably (hopefully!) won’t be relevant next Mother’s Day. But, depending on the angle you take, you could make COVID-19 inspired designs that could still be sellable when all of this is over.

Take the first two design ideas I listed, for example:

[MOM, STEPMOM, GRANDMA]
You are always essential to me.

HOMESCHOOL MOM
not all heroes wear capes

…The first design idea relates to COVID-19 but not in such a heavy-handed way that it couldn’t continue to sell well year-round.

The same goes for the second design idea. Many moms need to homeschool kids right now because of COVID-19. But there are some moms who always homeschool their kids so this design would continue to appeal to those moms.

One thing to note…

Be careful with your titles, keywords, and tags for any designs specifically relating to COVID-19. Both Etsy and Amazon have rather strict rules about what can be used in any such listings. And they generally won’t allow words like “Covid,” “coronavirus,” and similar references.

Personalization 

With your Mother’s Day designs, try to give people lots of opportunities to personalize your items. People love personalization, it makes gifts feel more special and unique.

So if there’s an opportunity to let customers add their name or their mom’s name to an item, run with it.

Other ways you can let customers personalize your items include allowing them to upload a photo or add the date or a specific location to the design. People shopping for gifts for new moms or first-time moms may want to add the date or location of the baby’s birth, for example.

Little luxuries

According to Etsy, products promoting “little luxuries,” such as flowers, relaxation, yoga, and meditation, are popular this right now.

For example…

You could create designs featuring each birth-month flower:

• January – carnation and snowdrop
• February – violet and primrose
• March – daffodil and jonquil
• April – daisy and sweet pea
• May – lily of the valley and hawthorn
• June – rose and honeysuckle
• July – larkspur and waterlily
• August – gladiolus and poppy
• September – aster and morning glory
• October – marigold and cosmos
• November – chrysanthemum
• December – narcissus and holly

These are great design ideas, as they’re sellable year-round. A product featuring a specific birth-month flower makes a good, personalized gift idea not only for Mother’s Day but also for birthdays and anniversaries or “just because.”

There are also lots of things you can do with yoga and meditation-related designs.

I ran a Google image search for “yoga mom mug” and got the following results:

There are lots of creative ways to beef up your inventory this Mother’s Day. And I really hope these tips and design suggestions help boost your sales!

Please leave a comment below if you have any other advice or design ideas you’d like to share. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with your friends and followers.