Craft Business Part 2 - Craft Marketing Success Secrets
I say tricky because when you mention marketing or promotion to a lot of crafts people their eyes glaze over and they suddenly find something else they need to do urgently! If you want to be successful, that simply can"t be your attitude. Don"t worry though, this stuff really isn"t complicated, certainly well within your abilities.To make things as straight-forward as possible let"s just say that craft marketing and promotion are the things you do when you aren"t actually making or selling. Something as simple as having a business card and giving it to someone is marketing. Telling a group of friends that you"re going to be at a local craft fair is promotion. Not rocket science, is it!
Of course the proper marketing and promotion of your craft business is going to be a bit more involved. Whether you already have a web presence or not I always suggest a craft blog. If you"ve already got a site it"s a relatively easy addition or you could run it as a stand-alone. It doesn"t really matter which, as long as you do one.
Why? Because it"s the most powerful promotional and marketing tool that your craft business can have, and a professional set up, even if you"re working from scratch, will cost you peanuts. Once it"s up and running you can use it to attract new customers. You can use it to keep existing customers informed. It will rank well at the search engines. You can sell directly from it or redirect people to your store. You can use it to gather prospective customers" details so you can keep them up to date with what you"re doing. You can use it to introduce new products...
Any modern craft business is competing in a market where almost everyone knows a little about the internet. The secret to success in that kind of marketplace isn"t complicated, it"s a question of doing a little more than your competitors do and ensuring your customers have what they"re looking for. A properly run craft blog will allow you to monitor, test, modify and build your business, and your customer relationships, with speed and ease.