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Today I am going to share craft business marketing tips with you. Whether you’ve had your craft business for a long time or you’re just getting started these tips are sure to help you reach a larger audience. You do not have to have a marketing degree to market your own business. As long as you know your product, you can market it.
This is the 9th episode of Crafting for Profit Live. If you own or want to start a craft business make sure you go back and listen to the previous episodes. We’ve discussed SEO, craft business myths, selling at craft fairs, developing a business mindset, and more. You’re sure to find something helpful in every episode.
You can watch us talk through all of these different topics and share examples by pressing play on the video below.
Table of Contents
Craft Business Marketing Tips
I loved visiting with Cori George from Hey, Let’s Make Stuff and Chelly Ontis from We Can Make That to hear how they market their craft businesses. Let’s hit some of the highlights of our marketing discussion!
1. Know Your Customer
After you’ve decided on the product you’re selling, the first thing I recommend is knowing who your ideal customer is. We talked about this a lot in our first episode so make sure you listen to that one if you haven’t already.
It may seem counter-productive to market to a certain group of people vs. trying to offer something for everyone but when you’re trying to reach everyone you’re likely reaching no one.
Create your ideal customer. Giving them a name and knowing their demographics makes it easier to talk to your customers to promote your products.
I have my ideal customer, she has a name, I know where she lives, I know her crafting budget, and I know what she’s interested in. Every time I send an email or make a video I talk directly to her.
Use your social media channels and other tools (like email) to poll your audience. Ask questions, this is great for your social media engagement and will teach you more about your customers.
2. Narrow Down Your Target Audience
Going back to that idea customer. When you have them in mind every time you talk to your customers it becomes easier to connect with your audience. If you’re trying to reach a 65-year-old retired grandmother and a 27-year-old working mom, one of them is going to feel like you’re not talking to them.
It is also easier to talk to one person than to talk to everyone. As you develop who you think your ideal customer is, those people will find you.
I do recommend paying attention to your customers. Who you think your ideal customer is may change. During the pandemic, my audience became younger and younger. As more people were stuck at home and turning to crafts as a creative outlet my audience changed.
Don’t be scared of having a smaller target audience. As you learn about your customers you can expand your products for that person.
Speak Their Language
As an example, if your ideal customer is someone who loves baking. Make sure you’re talking to them using terms and phrases a baker would use. Be knowledgeable about what you’re selling so you can answer questions.
If your ideal customer is female, you may use familiar terms when addressing them such as “Hey Girl”. I don’t know about you but when I’m talking to my friends the exclamation points definitely come out.
3. Be Consistent with Your Branding
Having consistent branding will reduce a lot of your overwhelm and make it easy for your customers to recognize you. I know it seems fun to work with the whole color wheel and all the different fonts but it can also be very overwhelming.
When it comes time to create a design or even social media content, having specific colors and certain fonts you use can cut that time in half. I have found I am more creative when I work within certain restraints. Sit down, choose your colors and your fonts, and stick with those. Your social channels and shop will look more cohesive if you do.
Be sure to pay attention to your font choice and how each letter looks both upper case and lower case. You also want to look at it from a distance and make sure it’s easy to read.
While you can’t check every single competitor, be sure to look around and make sure you’re not using someone else’s exact color combination. You want to be able to stand out and if you’re using the same color combination as someone else customers may get confused.
4. Use SEO to Find Your Ideal Customers
We have talked about SEO in a previous episode. Make sure you check out that episode because SEO is really helpful when you’re trying to help customers find you.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and that is how sites like Google, Etsy, and even social media help people find you. SEO is your friend, make sure you’re using it.
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5. Don’t be Afraid of Video
I know video can seem scary but your customers want to see you. When I started out I did a lot of videos that were just my hands and my voice over the top. You can start that way too, but start, you’ll be glad you did. Take advantage of time alone or use your family as an audience to practice what you want to say.
It’s also okay to have bullet points or a script to follow. In the beginning, you may find it helpful to write down exactly what you want to say or have bullet points of topics you want to make sure you touch on.
Don’t forget, you can always delete the video and start over if you need to.
6. Create an Email List
We have preached this from episode one of Crafting for Profit Live. Having an email list of your customers and potential customers allows you to contact them without an algorithm getting between you and them.
Learn more about creating an email list in How to Start a Craft Business the Right Way.
7. Capitalize on Return Business and Referrals
It is said that it’s easier to sell to someone already a customer than to find a new customer. To really capitalize on return customers and referrals, you must put out a quality product and have great customer service.
It’s hard to get someone to buy a second product from you if they’re unhappy with the first product they purchased.
How Do You Get People to Share About Your Product?
To get customers to share about their purchase, there are a few things you can do.
I like to offer a discount for a return purchase for people who leave a review. This gives them an incentive to share/rate/review.
Another option is to encourage customers to tag you in their posts when they share. If you share their post to your stories, others will see their thoughts which is a great way to get reviews in front of your customers.
How Do You Get Customers to Purchase Again?
Some products are easier to resell simply because they are consumed or need to regularly be replaced. Other things are more difficult.
Maybe you sell tumblers. Some people like to collect tumblers and others just want one that they use daily.
I like to make sure I have upsell items. If someone purchased a tumbler for a nurse, offer a keychain or tumbler topper that targets that same audience.
8. Start Small
We’ve talked about a variety of different things you can do to market your craft business and you may be feeling overwhelmed. Choose one social media platform to start with. Send out one email a month. You don’t have to do everything from day one.
As you get comfortable with one platform, you can choose to add another if you would like. Each platform you use will require learning about the platform. If you try to start with every one of them, you’re likely to get burnt out before you even begin.
I do recommend claiming your name on all of the different platforms. You do not have to use all of them right away but having a little bio on the platform will make it easier for potential customers to find you.
9. Don’t Be Afraid of Change
If you want to see an example of change, scroll all the way back to the beginning of this blog or head to my YouTube channel and look at the first videos I put up.
Notice the change between the first and the most recent. You’ll probably notice that my photography has improved. If you know anything about SEO you’ll see that I didn’t know much when I first began but have gotten better with that over time as well.
If you look at my videos, you’ll see that I’ve gained confidence and my setup is definitely better.
As we know better we do better but we won’t know better if we don’t get started. Get started and remember you can always make a change if something isn’t working.
10. Track the Effectiveness of Your Craft Business Marketing
These craft business marketing tips are here to help you but how do you know if what you’re doing is effective? The best thing you can do is to schedule time regularly to review what you’re doing.
Different platforms have analytics you can review that will show you things like reach, engagement, sales, and growth. You can look at a certain time period and compare it to previous periods if you’d like.
Because each platform is different we cannot get into every one but make sure you learn the business tools associated with the platform you’re using.
Another way to track marketing effectiveness is to add a UTM code to the end of a link. These codes will help show you where traffic is coming from. Use a different UTM for different platforms and then you can see how people are finding you.
If you don’t know what a UTM code is you can Google the process, it’s pretty simple.
I hope you’ve found these craft business marketing tips helpful. The biggest tip is always to get started, you don’t have to be perfect but you do need to start.
If you have any additional questions leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.
Don’t forget to sign up for our Crafting for Profit Live email list so you get notified every time we go live!