Shop Talk Friday: Breaking the Wallflower Mold

What to Do When Nothing Works


So you’ve done it all. All the “must do” things that are recommended for developing a booming Etsy (or online) store. Twitter account. Facebook page. Project Wonderful ads. Your photos shine, your descriptions are really fabulous, and your customer service would make President Obama feel right at home.

But… you still have no sales.

If you feel like the girl who went all out for the prom, only to have her date come down with the flu, you aren’t alone. In a recession, there are often more wallflowers than dancers at the retail ball. The good news is that there are some things you can do to set yourself apart and attract good customers.

1. Aim for the Limelight: Offer a discount to your first customer. Or a free gift. Retail stores do this when they open new stores because they know that people can be leery of shopping in a brand new store, and they want the store opening to be a big splash. You can join forces with another new store or one that hasn’t had any sales, and throw a “WallFlowers” party, offering giveaways, discounts, or anything else you think would be a creative draw to customers- the sky is the limit.
   
   
2. Go Offline as well as Online: Sometimes the greatest defense is an offense. Make contacts with consignment stores, flea markets, art fairs, etc to show your work offline as well. Some types of work do best when they can be seen/felt/tried on by the customer, at least at first. So don’t be afraid to make your online presence only one part of your overall business plan. There is a jewelry designer I know who got her start marketing her work in office complexes at lunchtime. Don’t be afraid to look outside the box.
   
   
3. Take a Long Hard Look at the Seasonality of Your Work: Some types of handmade items tend to be seasonal by their very nature, such as Christmas ornaments. Others may be seasonal more by customer association, such as knitted shawls or scarves. It isn’t that they can’t buy now for later use, it is more that they don’t. There is more than one way to tackle this concern. One way is to create products that are more likely to sell right now, such as knitted cozies, tote bags, lacy summer-weight shawls or all-natural face scrubbies. Another way is to expand your product line to include items which correspond with your main work, but are more likely to be bought at any time of year. A basic example of this is pairing knitted creations with yarn/supplies for knitters and crocheters, or offering organic soaps and bath supplies along with your face scrubbies.
   
   
4. What’s Your Zing Factor? Are your products interesting? Do they say “unique and different” or do they look like many other products out there? Zing factor is a hard one to assess on your own, and it can hurt to get an answer to this question. But it bears asking. In the art world, work is called “derivative” if it resembles the work of other, more well-known artists, rather than reflecting the unique mark of the artist who painted the canvas. Does your work reflect you? Are you trying to follow a certain style or type of work without putting YOUR stamp on it? Customers are quick to sense “standard issue” and move on, so this is an important question. Zero in on what makes your work special.
   
   
5. Don’t Go It Alone: Team up with a friend or colleague’s store and collaborate on a project that both of you can sell. (Got a friend who makes bath products? You supply her with face scrubbies, she makes you organic soaps, both of you win by having products in two stores.) This can work very well on both a large scale, and a very small scale. A person who sells beaded jewelry can team up with someone who works mainly in metal, for a way to expand the product lines of both stores into other areas, offering customers a wider range of choices and prices, and increasing the exposure of both stores. If you decide to go this route, have all the details written out, as well as a firm beginning and end date for the cross promotions. Making sure things meet everyone’s expectations on a business level is crucial to having a good joint collaboration.
   
   
6. Give It Time: There are no quick fixes or substitutes for the exposure that time and familiarity brings you. Promotional efforts, sales, and all the other ways that you generate traffic for your store build upon each other over time. Some categories are crowded with competitors, such as jewelry or vintage items, and it can take longer to pull away from the pack. Don’t get discouraged during the downtime, use it instead to refine your products, get creative with your promotions, and spread your name.
   
   
7. Look for Publicity: The direct approach is best here. If you have a friend or read a blog that you love, see if they would be interested in profiling you. Offer to swap interviews, put their blog badge on your blog, or tweet about them. Don’t be pushy, but there is nothing wrong with asking. All they can say is NO, but very often they say YES, and you won’t know unless you ask.

These are just a few ideas that you can try, and the world is full of even more ideas, some of which may well be just the right combination. Beware of buying into quick fixes and instant results, as selling is much like dieting- different combinations work for different groups of potential customers, and the miracle with one group is merely a waste of time with the others. In the end, experimentation, knowing what worked (or didn’t) with your particular customers, and creativity are your best assets in crafting a successful online business.

Kristen
Etsy Twitter Team Co-Leader
Firebirdhouse.etsy.com

Backlinks - New Blog Feature

Backlinks have now been enabled on the Etsy Twitter Team (ETT) Blog, making it easier and faster to share articles, news about the Shop of the Week, ETT Treasuries and more, on your own blog.

What are backlinks? They are posts on a person’s blog which contain a link to an original post or article on another blog. They work much the same way that Re-Tweeting does, sharing the original article with your readers. The more backlinks to a blog, the higher it will rise in the search rankings, the more viewers and followers it will get, and ultimately, the more exposure it will generate for the team and all of its member shops.

So creating a backlink to a post on the ETT blog is a great way to help everyone on the team, get your participation credits for the month, and solve the “what am I going to post on my blog today?” dilemma all at the same time!

First, scroll down to the end of the blog post, and next to word “Comments”, you will see “Links to This Post”.


Click on"Links to This Post" and then on "Create a Link", and it will pop up a screen with the link code and generate a new Blogger blog post with the original link in it.


This window is the same as if you had clicked "New Post" from your Blogger dashboard. You can add more writing to it before posting. Then click publish and you are done!

If you have more than one blog, you will see a drop-down list in the upper right hand corner that allows you to select which blog to use.

For non-Blogger blogs, the link code provided will allow you to backlink to the original post.

The backlink will only be logged if you use this process and not if you just make a link to the team blog from your blog. Having the links logged this way helps our search results. In addition, when you create a backlink, your link shows up on the team blog at the end of the post you linked to. So it's more advertising for your blog!

Please use this new feature, as it will help get more views to our team blog! Try it! You might like it! Thanks!

Shop Talk Friday: Ready, Set, Market!

A recent Shop Talk Friday reviewed Project Wonderful, but there are other ways to promote your shop and work to the public online.

Online Advertising Options

Google’s AdWords is an advertising program where you create ads that appear when people search Google, and you can set spending limits, such as a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad. Google provides keyword traffic/cost estimates, keyword guidelines for choosing effective keywords, and you only pay per click, and not per display.

The companion to this program, Google AdSense, is for websites which would like to display advertisements, and it can also be a good option for entrepreneurs who would like to also generate revenue.

Yahoo Search Marketing is a program that is very similar to Google’s, allowing you to set your limits, pay per click only, etc. To give you an idea, 2.3 BILLION searches occur on Yahoo every month. Yahoo also provides support, ad testing, keyword guidelines, and more.

Magpie - Here you pay per view, but this is also set up on a similar keyword model. You can target fairly specifically here, and click-through rates tend to be much higher than with traditional banner ads.

Non-Traditional Sources for Promotion

Flickr - Don’t sell off of this photo site, use it to show. Show off new work, work-in-progress, or sold items to give people a feel for your product line. This is a great, easy way to build a network of interested people. Tweet about your postings.

My Etsy Book – This is super easy and can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Like a virtual portfolio or mini, only far more detailed, this is a great widget and you can customize it. You don’t have to use their templates, and can upload pictures, or use plain background colors, as well as move and remove elements.

Forums - Most forums have a promotional thread where you can promote your work, website, shop, or latest coupon or sale. A good one to try is the Crafting and Business Help Community, which is a new forum, but already full of great information and resources. ETT has our own private board there as well.

Handmade Pledge - This is one way to access a huge number of handmade and Etsy lovers, many of whom have provided a link/URL or email address. Use this list for networking and for connecting with others who love what you love.

RSS Feeds - This is a GREAT way to provide customers who are interested with your new products/blog posts/website and shop updates, and more. First, find your feed - usually you will find a small button at the top of your webpage on your tool bar that looks like a small, square orange box. If you click on that, it will take you to a link that looks like this one from my shop:

http://www.etsy.com/rss_shop.php?user_id=6174558

Copy the link, then go to www.widgetbox.com (use the basic, free package) and create a widget that will allow people to sign up to receive your RSS feeds when you update your shop. It’s easy, you don’t have to worry about being labeled as spam, and people can choose to be updated.

Additional Stores - places like Artfire, 1000 Markets, Ebay, and personal websites all provide additional promotional opportunities to promote yourself and your work, for a minimal cost.

The one important thing to remember when using any of these opportunities, or any that you find through your own research is to have specific goals in mind that are achievable and targeted to what you want to accomplish. Sometimes that will be generating traffic for a sale or special promotion, sometimes it will be increasing awareness of your shop, and other times it will be to introduce a new product.

Resources:

Handmade Marketing is an excellent and extensive source of great, usable resources, ideas, and links.

Programmable Web is an excellent resource for widgets, etc, with links and details.

Homework for this week: Spend some time on handmademarketing.org investigating opportunities, or if you don’t think you are ready for that, sit down with paper and a pen and come up with three objectives (goals) for your shop. Make sure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and have a Timeframe) so that you can determine when and how to meet them, and then begin looking into ways to make those happen.

Next Week’s Shop Talk Friday will be covering wholesaling, so stay tuned!

~ Kristen

Shop Talk Friday: The Recession

Recession. It’s an ugly word, and as the media points out to us, on a daily basis, it means that no one is buying and the economy is frozen as solid as the food in your freezer. But the actual truth is a bit more complicated because people are not as predictable as statistics.

In the height of the depression, two things continued to sell well - jewelry and makeup. The reason for this was actually very practical - they were easy ways to “fix yourself up” for a very small amount of money when the cost of new clothes was out of reach of your budget. It helped people feel better.

Faced with some difficult economic times of our own, we can learn a lot from the marketing techniques used during the 1930s and 1940s. Here are some crucial things we can take away and apply to our own businesses in 2009.

1. Range of Prices – Catalogs of the day show a range of prices from nice things for not a lot of money to nice things for a moderate amount of money. The emphasis is on the range of options for most budgets and on the quality of the merchandise. The upper level price is also considerably less from 1929 to 1932. For example, a dress that sold in 1929 for $45.00 was only about $30 or less in 1932. Retailers realized that even their highest priced items had to be made more affordable in order to be bought.

2. Reducing Costs – One reason that the catalog manufacturers were able to cut their prices so much was that they reduced their own costs. They kept the quality but produced pieces in two colors and styles, instead of five, or used a season-less fabric so that the styles would span summer and fall, for example. I will have some things for you to think about to apply this to your own stores at the end of the article.

3. Emphasis on “Using What You Have” instead of “Replacing” – This is not something many of us have consistently thought of in the last few years. When money is tight, people don’t spend to replace big items like couches and tables as much as they look for ways to use what they have - that means, using a chair cover or tablecloth, getting new drapes, framing a print to fix up a tired room, or buying new earrings for an old dress. With that in mind, it’s good to think about what kinds of smaller or accessory items you can introduce into your shop.

4. Using Creative Marketing Ideas Instead of Traditional Ones – Much of the Depression Glass you see around was a free or low cost giveaway associated with specific products - you bought the product, and would get the glassware for free as part of the purchase. It was a way of adding additional value and it proved to be a real hit. Jelly in glass jars that were actually glasses, and could be used once the jelly was gone, is another example of this kind of creative marketing. My mom still has her jelly glasses! People saw this as the kind of practical buy that helped their money to go farther.

5. Emphasis on Quality - This was consistent from 1930 on, and it was based on a sound idea - that when money is tight, people want to know that what they buy will last. What is “trendy”, “up to the minute”, or the “very latest” in 1929 becomes “classy, timeless, and season-less” in the 30s and 40s, as retailers emphasized that their clothing/housewares/jewelry or etc would look good even if they couldn’t be replaced in the next year. Quality markers such as hand-finished seams, fine durable fabric, and other details become the main points that retailers emphasized.

Some things to think about regarding your own stores: Are there ways to apply these marketing techniques and ideas to your store and/or products? What about bartering or trading for things? Can you make smaller pieces, such as earrings instead of large necklaces, a small doll instead of a life-sized one, or less detailed items such as a plain pillow with one embroidered flower as well as the more time consuming pieces? What about doll clothes as well as dolls? Can you emphasize quality? Is your soap organic, or does it avoid certain oils or chemicals that can make allergies worse? Does a bar last a lot longer than store bought varieties? Can you offer a value added product? Not everybody can, but it is worth thinking about.

Artists can look into creating prints, offering ACEOs, or even painting on found objects such as thrift store pillows (I have friend that does these and they are amazing and very eco-friendly).

I encourage you to brainstorm about some of the things in this article, and see what appeals to you. Talk to your teammates, friends, and family, or leave a comment/suggestion here. I am always happy to help, too, so feel free to email me.

Next week’s article (and the one following) will concentrate mainly on creative marketing ideas, and how to get the best out of your online and offline presence.

Have a great weekend!

Kristen