Emily Benson (00:00)

Do you want your boutique to stand out this spring? Let me show you how to create the most beautiful visuals that'll really get your customers to stop and shop. I'm Emily Benson, a boutique consultant and retail expert. I'm excited that you're here. I have helped thousands of boutique owners start, and scale their businesses. And in today's video, I'm gonna walk you through, whether you're brick and mortar online, doesn't matter. I'm gonna walk you through what spring should look like from a visual and aesthetic perspective.

so that you can make more money advertising to your customers. We're diving into the must know strategies for things like window displays, graphics, photo shoots, and so much more to just make your spring pop. Okay, so let's talk about why spring matters so much. Well, first and foremost, the biggest thing here is that the weather might still be cold, but visually,

emotionally, like we are ready for spring. We are ready for newness. We're ready for light, bright. And part of your job as a retailer is making that transition for people. So remember, your aesthetic sets the tone for what the customer thinks of you, if they're gonna stop, if they're gonna shop. We are in the mode of getting new customers in the door, right? Always. We love our old customers. We love our VIPs, but...

How do we grow our audience when we're not doing anything new? This is where spring is a great time to refresh everything, to give your audience and your new audience a reason to stop, a reason to get excited, a reason to say, my gosh, you know what? It is spring really soon, even though there's snow on the ground. I am going to buy something new and bright and light to feel really good. I think the other thing that we often forget in boutique land is that yes, is it about the product? Yes.

but it's also about the entire brand. It's about the visuals, it's about the concepts, it's about the words and the feelings and the music that you're using. I want you to remember also that visuals can drive traffic. We need more traffic to get more conversions, right? Okay, so if we have great visuals, my hope is that it will send more people clicking to your website. It will have more people pulling over off the side of the road because your window displays are incredible. It will have more people.

scrolling on social media and stopping because they see your incredible graphics. That is all we're trying to do. We're trying to stop people in their tracks so that they pay attention, okay? And change of seasons is like such an easy way to do this. If you've been struggling to figure out how to get more attention, how to drive more traffic, these are the ways to do it. You don't have to overcomplicate it. You don't have to do giveaways and shareables and like stop.

We have to recognize the seasons. We have to use our visual aesthetic, our creativeness, to drive the traffic to where we want it to go, which is our website or in our store. If you're in a brick and mortar, let's first talk about your windows. If you have windows or an exterior of any kind, please do something fun with it. The windows are why people notice you. And if you have tinted windows,

then figure out how you can do something on the outside of the windows or do some sort of display. But window displays are the key to having people stop, see what's going on, and even notice you. I think new boutique owners underestimate the power of the window display, of what you have outside, making it look neat, having signage, letting people know what's going on inside.

I've been talking to a lot of people lately and it feels like the idea of boutique, there's just a word boutique, right? Feels really fancy and it feels maybe a little bit intimidating to the newer generations. It feels like younger women and maybe even older women are nervous to go into a boutique because they feel like it's going to be expensive or fancy or all this really intimidating stuff or the owner's gonna be snobby.

We have to get over that. That is one of my biggest pet peeves about boutiques. Whatever they used to be before I was around, it seems like since then, there is a big push for boutiques to be community hubs, to be centers, for events, for meetups, for fundraisers. Boutiques get to be a community space when you make them that. So how do you make it a community space? Well, you have to make it feel welcoming. And the minute someone drives by, they're gonna know if they're welcome or not. I guarantee you, you'll wanna make your windows

feel bright, hopeful, energetic, and exciting. And that means a mix of visual displays and your merchandise displays. So let's talk about spring themes. What are we even putting in these windows? Okay, right after the holiday season, we want to hit people with that big burst of red and pink and spring colors. So the first opportunity you have to change out your windows displays is going to be Valentine's Day. So if you want to do something like candy hearts,

or some side of love or welcome, everyone's welcome here or something that feels warm and cozy and loving. Maybe it's celebrate Galentine's Day, like all women welcome here. Like whatever that looks like for you, we wanna make sure that that switch is obvious. So with your window displays moving from hearts, then maybe to flowers, maybe to rain showers. Do something fun, please do something fun. Think flowers.

Think spring, think Easter eggs, think bunnies, think anything that says fresh and renewal. We wanna keep it clean, but we wanna keep it light and bright and fun. So think about fabrics, think about using lights, think about what can you go to a craft store and grab and make a display. We're putting some images up here, but I wanna remind you that this does not have to be expensive. This is some paint on your windows. This is some chalk on a chalkboard. This is...

things made out of construction paper, like it's okay to be a little bit creative and a little bit whimsical with this. What you don't want to be is sloppy or messy or have it look too over cluttered in the window because then it's too much for people's eyes to decipher. Remember, it has to be a quick hit, something that feels good and that's instantly recognizable. Think about focusing on just one message at a time.

Maybe each month you want to do some little transitions in the windows. Like maybe you just change out the clothes or you just change out a little bit of the coloring. That's great. Remember to use props sparingly though. This is about the clothes. So no matter what, again, your clothes come first. What are you going to display? Where are the mannequins going to be? And then how will you dress it around it? How will you set the scene? What is the stage coming into your store? What is that big idea?

As always, swap out things often for frequent visitors or if you're in a high traffic area that people are going in and out of a lot because they're getting coffee or they're going to work out, remember to change the clothes out even more often than you change the window display. So you could decide to do one set window display for all three months and have it just be a burst of fun, but you change the clothes out every single week because you're getting those new deliveries or you're just styling it based on the weather outside. Remember.

People that are driving by, walking by, they are gonna think, can I wear this now? Can I see myself wearing this now? Or do I have something in the next month or two I need this for? Most people are not shopping six months out anymore. They're shopping for today, this weekend, or for an event coming up. If you're online, you don't have window displays, right? You don't have a front door. What is your front door? Well, your front door is the spot on social media or your website, wherever traffic is coming through.

to your website, that is your front door. So if you mainly post on Instagram, if you're mainly getting traffic from Facebook or you're generally like doing TikTok lives, what does that look like? What is the background? What are the graphics looking like? Maybe you wanna change how you take photography and maybe you wanna do some things outside. You wanna do some things on a different color backdrop. The time to do that is right now.

Switch it up, easy simple things, just in terms of color changes. mean, you could honestly go so far as to change your whole logo if you wanted to. Like, it doesn't matter. I feel like spring, especially if you're feeling stagnant and you're like, I really need a brand refresh. Like, things just feel like dark and heavy or they feel too wild. wanna, spring. Spring is the time to make changes because truly,

It's just like gardening, when we plant seeds in the spring, they come and they blossom in the summer, later on in the year. Work that you're putting in now in spring to make your brand great, to make those visuals really pop, that is what's going to fuel your fire as you continue on throughout this year. I probably should have mentioned that this is video two in my Spring Ahead series for boutique owners.

This one is all about visuals and if you missed the first one, I talked a lot about just the overview of spring, like what holidays are coming up, when to mark down, when to bring in new items. If you want to go back and watch this video after this one, you should. It's a really nice overview. This one is focused on visuals and we have two more videos coming up in this series over the next two weeks. What I'm really trying to do is pass on everything I know about spring and retail and how to transition really well because I think what happens so often

is that we get really tired after the holidays. We know that the fall and holiday season is exhausting. And then we see January as kind of like this chill month, but I want you to think of January as this prep for spring month, as this, how are we gonna make spring our best spring ever? And a lot of that, know, listen, if it's not January and you're watching this, you can still do it now. I don't care if you're watching this in April, in May, whatever, you still have the opportunity to.

Think about what I'm talking about here and implement it now. Okay, so it's never too late, but if you're watching this in a time period where it's not spring anymore, think about, okay, when's my next January? I'm gonna come back to this series, I'm gonna watch it, I'm gonna plan out my spring, and I'm really gonna nail it because a lot of boutique owners tend to get lost in January. They get down in the dumps of like, they look at last year, they start to judge last year, and then January's kinda like, mm, like.

It's just a naturally slower month. And instead of using January to fuel the next couple months, they look at it as this like hard time. And I want you to change that mindset. So that's why I'm doing this series. I hope you're enjoying it. And if you've made it this far, I would really appreciate it if you liked this video and subscribe to my channel. If you have a boutique business, you're starting a boutique business, this is the place you want to be. I always say that we are, Boutique Training Academy is the Porsche owner's club.

We are a boutique education company where we focus on high level work. People that want to be profitable hang out with us. Okay? So if you want to be profitable in your boutique business, you're in the right place. This one isn't necessarily so much focused on profit, but all of this contributes to profit. And the most important piece of all of this is we're talking about branding. We're talking about your boutique business standing out from others. This is how it's going to do it.

So when you're on social media, you're thinking about graphics, you're thinking about anything. Color wise, we're always thinking about what we would call a spring color palette. So light pastels, light yellow, light pink, cornflower blue, lavender, like all of these beautiful shades that you're thinking of about like think about France, think about Provence, where the lavender fields, like that is what we're thinking about. We're thinking about Easter eggs, we're thinking about.

Spring flowers like daffodils and tulips, right? That is our world that we're starting to pick from. Fashion is always inspired by nature. In terms of content, like this is where you get to be vibrant, excited, you know, don't overdo it, but be excited for your people to experience new items, to kind of come out of the velvets and the dark colors of fall and winter and pop here into spring.

Also feel free to talk about the holidays. If your neighborhood loves St. Patrick's Day and you sell St. Patrick's Day stuff, talk about it, post about it, create lists about it. If your community or your people that you serve love Easter, like give them the best Easter dresses, give them the best Passover dresses. Whatever's coming up for them, you want to be the solution. They have a problem. They're going on vacation and they have nothing to wear.

They're going on vacation and none of their stuff fits or they want to get a few new pieces because this feels like a new location that they're going to for vacation. You are the place. They're going to come in before their vacation and shop to get a few new things, right? Let them know what you have. People that are looking at you from a social media perspective that are driving by, they don't know what you have to offer. You have to present them with what you have for sale, with what you have on offer, and they're more likely to buy it.

Let's talk about pop-up ideas, event ideas, what can you do to sort of drive some traffic into your store? And honestly, these events can happen online too. It doesn't really matter. I think that an in-store event, you just translate it online by going live or making a series of videos or maybe you do a YouTube video about how to dress for spring. These are important things to educate your audience on.

If you're able to say, here's how you wore something in the winter, let's transition it into spring. That is super valuable. If you can teach people how to style what they're wearing and again, use what they have, combine it with what you're selling. All of that gives them the creative ideas to want to buy something from you. They're also gonna buy from you because you're more of an expert. You know what you're talking about. They can relate to you. They wanna dress like you. So plan around these seasons. Plan around Easter. Our first idea for spring is a spring.

fling party where you invite people in, you have them make bouquets or you have them decorate cupcakes, partnering with some other business locally, a coffee shop, maybe they have a lavender latte that they're promoting, right? All of this can be coordinated. I think in times like this, we want to partner with other local businesses to see what can happen, to see

how much bigger we can get our audience to be. Remember, there's always someone in your town that doesn't know about you. There's always someone online that's never shopped with you. This is also the time, and I've been getting texts from a bunch of my friends, I signed up for this market, I signed up for this market. This is the time to start applying for pop-ups for later in spring and for summer. So I want you to start to think about doing that. If there's nothing locally, this is the time for you to maybe organize something. I used to organize a food truck festival in my town and we had 2,500 people come to one.

Why did I do it? Because I wanted somewhere to park my truck. That sounds so crazy. But sometimes you have to be the catalyst to give yourself pop-up events, give yourself a market that maybe didn't exist before. So I wanna challenge you this spring to set up at least one or two events that are new to you, that you haven't done before. Figure out what you wanna do, invite people, and then you can offer exclusive discounts, giveaways, raffles. This is where you can do it, right?

If you're brand new, is also just a great time to get out there and do pop-ups. Let's say you're just online and you just launched. Go do pop-ups. Set up. Talk to people. Have them try things on. This is a great way to just get out there. Maybe this also leads you by the fall to open a brick and mortar. That'd be great, but get your sea legs underneath you. Now, especially for those of you online, we have to talk about photographs. Who has trouble taking pictures? Let me know below. I want to give you some tips and tricks here because

Number one, you have to be taking your own photos. This is the year, this is the month, this is the week where you start taking your own photos. Stop using stock imagery. I have too many people emailing me saying they need help growing their boutique. I go to their site and they're using stock images. Like Jaws, please stop it. It's crazy to me. We all have beautiful phones that take beautiful pictures or we know someone that does. You don't need a professional photographer. You don't need a fancy camera, but you do need to set it up so it looks professional.

This is my office, I painted a wall, I have an iPhone, I have a nice microphone because I think sound for me really matters, but it doesn't matter for you. So just take the pictures, get a tripod, take pictures, make sure that this is the year you are creating unique images for your business, especially in spring, and especially if you're online so that no one can just image search what you have and find it on the internet again, right? This is why images matter so much.

I also want to encourage you every time you are taking images to even just take video. Take video in 4K and 60 MPS, like up on the corner of your, if you have an iPhone, up in the corner, you can change the quality of your camera. And even if you just take videos, right, you just try and close, run the video the whole time you're doing it, change between, then you can cut those videos up into short form video for Instagram, for YouTube, whatever, TikTok.

And you don't have to talk over it either. You could do a voiceover after, but taking those short videos so you have that content to post is so important. So every photo shoot you do, you want to take pictures, you want to take videos, and you want to take every angle of the clothes. Okay? That's the most important thing. I want to see the neckline. I want to see the detail here. I want to see the hemline, right? I want to see what does the zipper look like.

Please show us details because that's going to give us more of a reason to buy it or a reason to say, I can't have something that tight on my neck. That's not gonna work for me. It eliminates returns when you take good photos. Now, if you live somewhere where it's actively spring, I'm gonna tell you, go outside. Take pictures outside. If it's snowing, don't. You don't have to. But the light is really good when it snows inside. So I want you to remember if it does snow and you do have a sunny day,

great day to take pictures. Right now I'm almost exclusively using natural light just because we have so much snow and the sun is out, right? So think about how you can leverage what you're doing to take better pictures. So if you're in a snowy spot, do it on a sunny day. But if you are somewhere where it doesn't snow, go to the beach, go to a farm, go to a garden center, right? Like go to these places where you can take some cool lifestyle shots. Honestly, like I think a lot of people think that their videos and their photos have to be so fancy and they really.

Don't go to a cool location. Literally, it could be the grocery store. It could be a gas station. It could be your local pharmacy. Take cool pictures in the aisles. Bring someone with you. Wear your cute outfit. It doesn't have to be a big deal. But those unique images are what helps people understand your brand. And spring is such a good time to do it. A few other things about photo shoots I want to share, especially for spring, is like one.

Think about using some props, whether it's a bicycle, whether it's flowers, know, a big bouquet of flowers, tulips, even like a spring picnic basket or bunnies, eggs, all of these things represent spring. So please feel free to use props. I also would encourage you.

To film some behind the scenes content, film all your props, like show people what you're doing. Let people in on the process. The more that your audience knows you, the more they will like you, the more they will trust you, and then they'll end up buying from you. And hopefully when they buy, you have the most beautiful clothes and then they're obsessed and they just keep buying. That's really the key to having those long-term customers is that during every step of the way, you...

are living up to what you promised before. So your photos are beautiful, your shipping is beautiful, your checkout process is beautiful, and then the actual garment is beautiful. And people have such a great feeling about it because every step of the way they were confirmed that you are a great business and they should continue to support you. Okay, also if you've saved this long, thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe. I'm gonna leave you with a couple more tips here.

Just thinking about spring cleaning, okay? Again, I think January's a great time to clean out your inventory. February's a great time to do some bag sales and get rid of just what clutter you have. You wanna clean out the store, less is best, okay? I think during Christmas, everyone sort of decorates a lot, which is great, but we also need that clean slate for spring. So declutter, put things on sale, donate things. This is the time to just kinda get rid of stuff.

And for sure, if you're online, like you should absolutely be updating your banner with new imagery and highlighting these new spring things. I also think it's important to anywhere on your website, anywhere in some of your social media graphics, if you've been doing a lot of sales or you've been doing markdowns, go back and delete that stuff. You don't have to keep all your sale posts up. You can just delete it if the time period is over. I would say that especially because unless you have dates on your posts or you have dates within your graphics,

It's going to be confusing for customers. Let's say they scroll back, they see, 30 % off everything. Like, what if they think that happens now? Just delete it, there's no problem. Spring season is where you get to not be a hot mess. You get to clean out, you get to refresh, and you get to really have a new start to this year for your boutique. If you're ready to hang out with more profit-driven boutiques, feel free to click on any of my links below.

We've got a great webinar if you haven't watched it. It's called 2025 State of the Boutique Industry. And it's like one of my best webinars. Feel free to say 2025 below and we'll drop you the link so you can sign up and get it for free. It talks about what I think the most important things are for boutiques in 2025 to be at the most profitable they can possibly be. And we've gotten rave reviews I've been hearing. We've had this webinar app for about a month now and people are loving it.

I know that you will too, so feel free to just say 2025 below and we'll send that over to you. Thanks so much for watching and here's to making lots of friends and making lots of money. Thanks for joining the Spring Ahead series. I'll see you on the next one. Bye.