On Oct. 17, BryonySeries participated in the Channahon Farmer's Markets first Halloween Night Market.
We'd never participated in any event by the Channahon Farmer's Markets (although we were invited to attend each event this past summer), and it was their first Halloween Night Market.
So we had no idea what to expect or how to plan.
But it turned out to be a delightful event! Here's the why behind our recap.
Now, vendors were encouraged to hand out candy or other small treats to children at the event, Rebekah devised an idea for adults, too.
It was a good idea, and I wished we'd taken a photo! But we were so busy with the assembly in the evenings after work and before the event, we simply forgot.
Basically, we started with very small black gift boxes.
Then we filled them with shredded tissue paper we shredded.
To each box, we added a tiny glow-in-the-dark resin potion bottle featuring one mildly spooky word.
Then we found quotes from the young adult and adult BryonySeries books that matched the words.
And we added an offer: $3 off that particular book through Halloween.
We printed the quotes on parchment paper, cut them into strips, rolled them into scrolls, and then loosely taped the scrolls close with decorative tape that picked up the color of the potion and a theme in the book.
We had seventy little boxes, so that's how many we made.
We handed these magic little boxes to adults who approached our booth, along with coupons for Jody's Hot Dogs, one of WriteOn Joliet's Kids Fest sponsors (Kids Fest was canceled twice due to weather), since those coupons expired on Halloween.
Well, the adults were thrilled to receive them, and we ran out of boxes in the first hour of the five-hour event.
I had twenty-two of the BryonySeries mystery gift quotes left. So we started handing out those with the coupons, too, and let people know about the $3 discount. We ran out of those really fast!
That gives you an idea of well-attended this event was.
What did we sell?
Five books.
Four that night and one online two days after the event.
The giveaways converted two of those sales or more than two percent of our efforts, which is considered by sales professionals as an average conversion rate.
Now, we don't measure the full value or impact of an event only by sales.
Because BryonySeries strives to be "a better reading experience," that experience begins, not with the book but with our first interaction with a potential customer and any interaction with our brand.
And if that sounds me just trying to be postive, just wait until you read the back story behind Book Sale No. 2, a conversion from a previous interaction.
But that's a story for next week (wink).
Please scroll through the photos before you bounce. Didn't Rebekah and Cindy (who left early because her son got sick) do a great job with the decorating?
And, of course, Uncle Barty and Bertrand (in matching Halloween bat gloves costumes) did a great job of welcoming attendees!
