{I apologize for being a week late on the final part of this series. Our weekend away for the George Strait concert distracted me. 🙂 You can find the first four parts of the series here.}
In this final part of our series of Selling On Etsy, we will be going over marketing and promoting. What good is having an Etsy shop if no one knows about it? A lot of new shop owners don’t realize there is more to selling than just putting up your items. No matter how good your pictures and writing, you still need to bring people into your shop.
Target Market
One of the first things you need to decide is, “Who is your customer?” This is your target audience/market. Example, my target market is actually a couple of different ones. One of my biggest audiences is young moms on a budget. Another is aunts, grandmas, friends, etc. who need a gift, don’t have a lot to spend, but want something of quality.
It seems daunting at first but really, you just need to think: who do you think is most likely to purchase your products? Who are you trying to sell to? You really don’t want to waste your time promoting to people who are never going to buy your product anyway.
Sometimes you will be part of your own target market but sometimes you aren’t. It’s okay if you aren’t.
Marketing
Now comes bringing in your target market. If you are going to use social media, which you should, find out where they hang out. Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Tumblr? Once you set up your social media profiles, you will need to use them wisely. You don’t want to just promote your products. In fact, you really don’t want to do that more than 2-3 times a day. You also want to share things that may be of interest to your customers. That may be a yummy recipe or a funny picture or cute story about your kids. Whatever it is, it helps make you a person not just a business. People like that connection. It’s part of the reason people shop on Etsy. It’s that personal touch. You do want them to be quality posts. You don’t just want to re-tweet a bunch of things on Twitter or only share other people’s pictures on Facebook.
A lot of Etsy shop owners have blogs for their shops as well where they share pictures of their process, life stuff, feature other sellers, etc.
You can also make use of the teams on Etsy. Look for a team that is in your genre, location, beliefs, etc. I am a member of the Etsy Maine Team as well as some teams for moms and some for baby items as well as a few others. These teams help each other out by liking each others items, sometimes purchasing, offering advice, creating treasuries, and other things.
You also want to take your marketing offline. There are a few stores and places where I have my business cards tacked up on a bulletin board. I’ve handed out business cards in line at the store because someone asked me about Abby’s headband. My family all have business cards and will hand them out to people for me.
Buying ads isn’t usually a profitable way to promote your product. Facebook and Etsy ads are usually not worth the cost. Blog ads can be profitable if you choose the right blogs. You want to make sure you are advertising on the blogs that your target audience reads.
If you do craft fairs, you can also advertise at your booth that you have an Etsy shop, Facebook page, etc.
Marketing and promoting are all about bringing people, the right people, to your shop. If you don’t have any customers, there is no point in having your shop. Because, let’s face it, you may enjoy the crafting but your shop is open to make money.
Here is a great resource on using social media to promote your shop.
This week I asked my fellow Etsy sellers: “What is the most important thing to remember about marketing/promoting?”
Shawna from JSB Arts said: “You want to be marketing not only your wares, but you as an artist. Customers buy from the person; if you are a Negative Nellie, the customer will walk on by. It’s important to engage a potential customer without being pushy and overbearing. The same goes for marketing/promoting virtually. People/businesses who post 5 or 6 “buy from me” posts…in one day…, I have a tendency to tune out…they are trying to hard, which in turn turns me off. One a day is more than enough. Letting people into your creative process, entices them more than running sales just to get you to buy something.”
Dory from worthygoods and worthygoodstextile: “For promotion, I’d suggest paying it forward, instead of crowing. It’s always free or low cost and an easy way to get yourself a broader reach in the online community without paying for ads. This is NOT posting about your shop constantly, what you just made (unless it’s unique in some way), etcetera (crowing). I’m talking about bragging others up. Yes, let your ‘followers’ in on your process, how many whoosits you managed to bang out, etc. But then follow up with, why this fabric/metal/paint is your favorite to work with, and where you get it from, who makes it.
When you get inspired by someone’s blog, post, picture, share it. If you use their fabric, tag them in your finished item photo. Make a treasury that features some really wonderful work and tweet about it, tag a maker or two that really shines. Then, watch what happens. You’ll start to get shared a bit, tagged a bit yourself, retweeted, maybe. But bit by bit, your social media circle will widen and start to overlap others. You might find someone wanting to feature you or an item of yours in their blog! This sort of thing takes a while to build, but I find that it’s a great (FREE) way to get exposure. Those blog post that feature your goods might still be sending you traffic years (yes, years) later.”
Marley from Cobalt Sky Studio said: “I think its crucial to know your buyers and to appear interesting. Also, I realize my personal Facebook friends are as sick of hearing about my buoy pillows as I am about their new puppy or new niece. I try to spare them the daily and post about my business only when I have good news.”
I hope you enjoyed this series on the basics of selling on Etsy and have gained some knowledge in opening an Etsy shop. Please remember that this was very basic advice. No matter how long you have been on Etsy, there is always something to learn.
If you decide to open up your own Etsy shop, be sure to use my referral link to get your first 40 listings for free!
Go here to read the rest of the Selling On Etsy series
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