You're Gonna Have to Stand Out from the Crowd

Dec. 27, 2010 - NYC’s Polish-born Agata Olek
hit up the Wall Street Bull and encapsulated it inside crocheted neon.
http://cnnmon.ie/fBS1Iv

  

Holiday Marketing 2012: The holidays are upon is – can you believe it? And, it is still September! Every year, the frenzy starts earlier as savvy businesses want to be the very first in front of you for marketing their products.

With the exploding number of Internet businesses of all sizes, a buyer can find any product they want online. For those of us with very small businesses run by us, solopreneurs, or by limited staff, the din of  our competitor’s “buy me, buy me” can be overwhelming. Now, in September, is the time to work out the plan to market our products online and off.

I cannot give you a plan specific to your business to follow. You will need to study your competition, your targeted buyer demographic, your distribution channels, and your goals for your business.

However, I can give you some strategic ideas on how to approach your holiday buyers. You might want to ask yourself these thoughtful questions:

• Why is my product special or better that my competition’s? Or is it?
• Would I want to buy my product over my competition’s product? If so, why? If not, why?
• What extras can I offer my targeted buyer this holiday season? Could that be an extra free service, free gift wrap, or other? What would be valuable to them?  
• What would be a trigger for my targeted buyer to seal the deal? Price? Design? Extras? Usefulness? Quality? Local?
  
• What are the challenges that my targeted buyer faces during the holiday rush? How can I solve that problem for them?

Answer these questions and you will have an outline of your core marketing strategy. From there, craft your marketing message to include these points and get the message out there!

By the way, to add to my own holiday strategies, in addition to GalleriaLinda's iCraft.ca shop, I have reopened GalleriaLinda's jewelry shop on Etsy. Please take a look! I am loading in over the next two weeks so please check back. 

Tips for Branding Your Online Business

A lot of us started our handmade businesses from humble beginnings of creating items for ourselves, family, and friends. After much encouragement from this group, we took the plunge into the world of online selling.

With so many handmade/supplies/vintage selling venues available today, it is no wonder that we might be watering down our own brand and not even know it. We should not brand our business with the name of the venue where our products are at this time. This can change over the years.

Why have a brand? Why protect that brand? Branding a business is one of the most important strategic marketing tasks that you can do.

A brand is your reputation, your recognition, and the soul of your company. It is that split-second understanding of who you are and what you do. It matters not if your business is "just" a hobby business - if you are selling online, you will benefit from a brand.

A brand can consist of the name of your business, a logo, and/or a byline motto, slogan, tag line. As your business grows, your brand becomes your reputation.Your brand can be known for excelling customer service or stellar quality. A brand is more than a logo. It can be the essence of your business practices.

The most important thing with growing your brand, is consistent use of your brand at all times and in all ways.

Here are some tips for you about branding your handmade business:

• Create a visual that resonates with your business name and/or product. This can be your business name in fancy fonts, iconic logos, or a tag line that you consistently use.
• Once you create your visual - use it everywhere, such as on your online banners for your shops, banners for your networking pages, business cards, avatar, blog headers, packaging, invoices, signs at craft shows, etc...
• If you choose to use a tag line, use it always when you use your business name. An example, would be "Susie's Pet Apparel - for Stylish Pets Everywhere!"
• If you send out press releases on new products or other business news, be sure to be consistent with your brand decisions.
• Purchase a domain name with your brand name and point it to your venue shop. This is very important to use YOUR domain name in all your branding efforts and not the links to the venue shop. 
• Use YOUR custom domain link in all your materials, online, and business cards. 
• Another tip is to create your domain name with words that tells us what you are all about. An example of what not to do is my domain (LOL) - gatllerialinda.com - I need to change this because it tells us nothing. It would be better as GalleriaLindaHandmadeJewelry.com instead. 
•  If you have your own website, utilized consistency with your strategic brand decisions.

I read a lot of forums on several of the most popular handmade selling venues. I always see that some sellers are branding the venue and not their shop. Your venue shop is just a rental space and is not "yours." You want people to search for YOU and not just find you accidentally through the venue. Your business is who you are and what you do, so brand your business - not the venue.

These tips just scratch the surface of branding your business but is the most basic start to a good relationship with your business!

We Seem to Have it Backwards - We Must Find Our Own Online Traffic

Infographic from SEOmoz

We seem to have it backwards! Most of us that sell online on Etsy, Zibbet, Artfire, Shopify, Bonanza, and a zillion other selling venues - we have it wrong.

So many times I see in forums that there are no views, asking what they are doing wrong, and wondering when the traffic will kick in. "Build it and they will come" is not what happens online. You have to work at it hard and consistently if you want to reap the benefits of traffic.

It is OUR responsibility to drive traffic to our own shops or our own websites. The venues will bring a certain amount of traffic, but it is like thousands of people milling around a mall and your shop is way back in a dark corner.

I found an excellent article titled 11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website by John Doherty that you should read. John is a professional SEO consultant and a photographer. He was pleased for me to share this with you! The article covers all aspects of how to get traffic to your site:

• Search
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Social networks
• Webinars
• Q&A sites
• Direct, referring links
• Forums
• Video
• Comment marketing
• Blogging
• News, PR 

Not all on this list will be appropriate for everyone, however, if you take four of them and work it, you can see rewards. This is such a great overview of all the opportunities that you have to bring people to your sites! 

Be sure to visit my other blog GalleriaLinda Showcase for a variety of posts about jewelry and life!

A Point of View

Have you ever watched Project Runway? (My favorite TV Show)!

It is a challenge for fashion designers, who are given specific criteria each week to produce the best fashion creations. Recognized industry leaders and designers judge the efforts to come up with a winner.

Throughout each week, the term "point-of-view" is used. It is important to each designer to clearly state their fashion point-of-view through their creations.

I have pondered that for a while, as I never heard that term relative to design work. However, I have come to the conclusion that the term helps us to understand and to define who we are as artists and designers. Our work needs to shout out that point-of-view.

We each have a unique style. I remember one of the greatest compliments I ever had about my jewelry was someone saying "I knew that necklace was GalleriaLinda!" At the time, I did not consider that the person had recognized GalleriaLinda's Handmade Jewelry design point-of-view.

This all plays into your marketing message. Think in terms of your own point-of-view in art and design. In your marketing, tell people about what makes you unique and what makes your creations recognizable as your unique work. Not features and benefits, but true design uniqueness.

How would you explain your own design point-of-view? Step back and look at your work. Likely, there is a unique style that emerges. Start writing down keywords to describe that style. Not all keywords will fit all of your products, but you know what you want to attain in each design.

 For example, the keywords I would use for my GalleriaLinda handmade jewelry designs are:

• Chunky
• Contemporary
• Modernist
• Minimalist
• Colorful
• Geometric
• Vintage beads & components

 This point-of-view will evolve and change over the years and so should your marketing message!

Charity Giving for Business

One of the things I love about online networking is meeting others who are street-smart marketers. One such friend is FairyCardmaker on iCraft.ca. I discovered a great two-part blog series that she wrote on charity giving for business. It is right on point.

Charity giving can be planned strategically as a part of your business plan. When working it into your objectives for the business year, you will not only be in control of how much inventory and investment you hand out, but also will have the ability to select charities that may benefit to your business.

As FairyCardmaker shows us, we can be specific in our planning for charity giving that may give us the opportunity for exposure to our products, advertising to a target group, or even develop other opportunities for our products. Charity giving is easy, welcomed, and helpful. It also can give your business a boost! I recommend this reading.

From the FairyCardmaker Blog:  Business or Pleasure?
Why not BOTH?  Just because you are running a business to earn a living doesn't mean that giving to charity has to be a one-way trip out of your pocket.  There are many ways that you can work charitable donations or time in to your business model.  It's a win-win scenario!

The key to selecting a charity to support is knowing your target market.  You can create a symbiotic relationship with a charity where the host is a shared target market.  This topic will be covered in two parts:

• Part I: Selecting a Charity
• Part II: Selecting a Manner of Support

Are You Rolling The Dice with Your Advertising?

No one wants to waste money, the least of which is business money for a very small business owner. Are you rolling the dice with your advertising dollars? Hit or miss? Whether you advertise online, offline, or both, it is important to plan your markets.

To small online sellers, that means we need to know who our customer is and where they can be found. When that is determined, we must go through the exercise of researching advertising opportunities within that demographic.

Artists and crafters especially can be unaware of this important step. I read in forums all the time about sellers sharing their advertising success and missteps, regardless of product, customer demographic, or price category. If you sell little girls' hair bows and have great success with advertising on several blogs, it is likely that my jewelry is not targeted to that audience. Although sellers have a kind heart and want to share what they know, it is important for you to step back and ask "is this where the customers for my products are?"

Basic marketing is truly not rocket science but requires that we think through our decisions. Here are a couple of out-of-the-box conceptual ideas of where to find customers online or offline for a variety of handmade products to jump-start your thinking for your own products:

• Handmade hats, crochet, knitted, felted-cold climates, cold weather sports gatherings, colleges/universities,
  

• Little girl hair bows-dance schools, pageants, first communion outfits, children's photographers
  

• Home decor pillows-independent interior designers and decorators, model home stagers, home staging consultants
  

• Photography-tourist shops, independent interior designers, home stagers, model home designers
  

• Journals and Diaries-college students, poetry reading groups, English teachers/assistants
  

I hope you get the picture. Brainstorm about who would love and use your product. Then, think out-of-the-box about where they are!

Weathering the Economic Storm

We have gotten through the first quarter of 2009 and now, almost the second quarter. How is your shop weathering the economic storm?

Last fall when the economy slowed down, GalleriaLinda made a commitment to expand products to offer more items that were lower price but still high quality. Because I make jewelry, I decided to start a line of interesting earrings using high-quality Czech glass, vintage beads, and sterling wire that were priced $12.99 across the board.

In the last few months, I have connected with several new customers that wanted earrings to brighten their wardrobe!

This strategy was one that you could say met the needs of the economy and was considerate of the customer. A lady can update her wardrobe with $12.99 earrings and not spend a fortune.

I hope that you have weathered the economic storm. I see that the economy is loosening up a bit, as sales seem to be more frequent!

Utilize Help and Information From Your Selling Venues

One of the ways online sellers can benefit from marketing and selling success strategies is through the selling venues that they use. You can find a lot of selling, promotional, and marketing tips in the venue's documentation that is very valuable!

The forums on each of the venues becomes a treasure trove of shared experiences about everything for selling online. Use it! Even if you just read, you will gain such valuable information that you can use. Read, read, read.

Today, I want to introduce the Sellers' Boot camp going on right now at iCraft.ca!

Sellers' Boot camp is a new admin-supported program started by Christine of PillowThrowDecor for sellers on iCraft.ca! Check out the iCraft.ca forum for lots of details on the Sellers' Boot camp program.

Christine not only produces the most elegant pillows for your home, but she is also a sales expert that creates energy that motivates!

She is the one that started the awesome "Odd Sock" category to move merchandise. Check out PillowThrowDecor's "Odd Sock" deals - unbelievable!

The Sellers' Boot camp program goes for 28 days with assignments for each day that will help you fill your promotional "bag of tricks" by the end of the month. The idea is to get into the habit of spending up to 30-45 minutes a day doing things that will help sales.

Retired from another career, Christine states that a part of her professional background is in sales training. She states, "As independent business people it is all about accountability. I do much better when I know there is a team of people marching along with me every day and are as committed as I am to doing assigned activities!

If you are considering trying iCraft.ca as your handmade selling venue, now is the time! Remember, if you use a referral number when you pay your one-time registration fee, you receive six months of shop fees free for an unlimited number of items! Shop fees are very reasonable. In case you need one, GalleriaLinda's referral number is: 1c28439c38!

Must go...off to boot camp!!

How You Distribute Your Marketing Message is Important!

How do you communicate with your customers? Email? IM? Twitter? Social Networks? Snail mail? Phone? Print, Handwritten, Virtual?

Knowing your target customer's demographic is essential in planning your communications campaigns!

To grab your customer's attention, your messages need to be seen, so ensure that your customers are receiving communications in a way that they embrace. With so many distractions in the media today that competes with your business messages, you may as well purposefully plan to distribute your messages in a way that will be delivered successfully to your customers.

Here are the top three generations and known communication preferences:

The Y Generation (Net Generation Millennials, Echo Boomers, and iGeneration): born 1976-2001

This is the first generation to grow up immersed in a digital and Internet-driven world and all uses of digital technology is the way to reach this group. Cell phone texting, social media, Internet, blogging, and microblogging will win over standard single email campaigns.

Gen X: born between 1961 and 1981

Gen X grew up with computers in classrooms and later on, computers in their homes. As users of early cell phones and the World Wide Web, Gen X continues to embrace technology and gadgets. As adults, they still strive to increase their level of automation in their lives. Email campaigns, as well as Internet-based communications and promotions are received well by Gen X.

Baby Boomers: Born between 1946-1964

This group was introduced to technology in the 90s as they approach their 50s. Technology was not embraced for its value, but seen as a fun gimmick with no real value.

Older boomers may utilize email, but checking email is infrequent and social media is not a desire or skill. Personal communication, such as handwritten letters and notes and even phone calls will win over many boomers before email campaigns or tweets.

Generational demographics are interesting, especially in how you should structure your marketing efforts to reach them. There are many books on the subject. Here is a list of interesting books from Indie CEO on how to market to generational demographics that you might like to peruse!

Be sure to check out GalleriaLinda and IndieCEO's resource page for links to things you can use!

Newsletters are Meant to Be Shared

I found an interesting blog from Pam Hawk, who makes "Pass it on Plates." What a great concept these plates are for sharing goodies. You must visit her Etsy store to find out all about it.

Pam has a blog about street-smart business, promotion, marketing, and a lot of excellent topics! I was so enthralled with the blog's rich content, that I wanted to share it with you.

Her latest post is about using newsletters as marketing strategies. Just like "Pass it on Plates," newsletters are meant to be shared and she shows you how.

Keep Pam in your sights for good, usable strategies for your Indie Arts business!

The Pam Hawk blog will go on the Indie Business Blog Roll on the left. I am building resources for you!
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Nimble Businesses Will Win in 2009

It is the first week in January 2009 and already I hear of friends being laid off of their jobs or salaries cut. When times are tough, the tough get going. Are you tough?

You are in control of your own universe. Make choices everyday focusing on those things that you can control and not those things that you cannot control. That makes a lot of sense, especially in these economic times.

As we gently dip our toe in the water of the year 2009, we realize that we are all in this together and are affected by the downturn in the economy. Many of our customers are spending much less, eliminating luxury items from their purchases, are anxious about their job security, and are facing losses in retirement programs.

I do marketing communications consulting work for a large real estate land office and you can only guess the challenges there. I appreciate so much the real estate broker I work with, as he is a staunch supporter of the marketing effort. His mantra is not to cut spending but to rev up marketing efforts in this sluggish market in order to be seen above the clutter. He will have the company well positioned at the time the economy improves and will win business in the meantime by being responsive to clients and their situations.

Realize that it is time for different business strategies.

Rigid business practices will not work anymore. Nimble business practices will win the business of 2009. What can your Indie Business do to review, rethink, and retool?

• Position your company to be above the clutter
• Position your products to be needed - take them from an impulse buy to a need buy
• Position you, as the Indie CEO, to be helpful, flexible, understanding, and supportive of your customers and their situations

Three pages of strategies are available to you by Indie CEO and GalleriaLinda's resource page, or directly Download this 3-page report on how nimble businesses can win in 2009. You can do it!

Painless New Year's Planning for Your Indie Business

It is time! The celebrations have given way to new days for our indie businesses. Away with the old and in with the new!

Has anyone ever asked, encouraged, cajoled, or otherwise arm-twisted you into writing a business plan for you business? Ah....I though not. My famous line is,"If you don't know where you are going, you will never get there." And, I could add, "If you don't know where you have been, you will repeat the same old results."

*Puts on marketing hat.*

Business plans are like math, even to me. They are boring, stodgy, stiff, suck-your-brains-out exercises that are supposed to help you direct your business strategy. Heck! A lot of us did not start this to be a business, anyway...right? GalleriaLinda was born out of encouragement from friends to sell. If you are selling anything, you are in business and you need to listen to this.

I have a fun, painless informal business plan for you. Just answer the questions and you will be surprised at what you see on paper as your business. It is created to identify where you are now, where you want to go, and if you need to change anything. It is not a formal plan but valuable marketing tool for you. Pretend it is a fun quiz! I am calling it a "Think-it-Through list because that is what it is.

If you want to get fancy, you can go to SCORE.org to download great business templates for business plans and other business documents. After this exercise, maybe you will want to do a formal business plan.

Get your GalleriaLinda Painless Business Plan "Think-it-Through" handout today!

Blogging is an Art - Will it Help sales?

In the next few posts, I continue to work through some of the basics of blogging for you in this "Blogging is an Art" series, utilizing my background in marketing communications, as well as my experiences with blogging for GalleriaLinda.

• Should I start a blog?


• Will a blog help sales?


• What should I write about on my blog?


• Who will read it and do I need to promote it?


• Where do I go to create a blog?

Q. I am an Indie CEO. If I start a blog, will it help sales?

The answer is....maybe....it could...if you play your cards right.

My experience considers blogs to be a "soft marketing" strategy and there are many online sellers that have gleaned some sales from featuring their work on their blogs. These sellers are also successful in bringing in reader traffic that is their target customer.

What is "soft marketing?" Soft marketing is really relationship marketing, where you build a relationship over time between you and the reader. This builds trust, familiarity, friendship, and warm fuzzies. Who wouldn't want to buy from a trusted, familiar friend?

Here is a great 30-min audio on soft marketing from Blog Talk Radio.

Soft marketing includes those things that you do for your business that are not blatant promotional selling efforts. Blogs and Flickr photos are examples of soft marketing opportunities. Sales can be had through these methods and are the result of successful "schmoozing!" It takes time and patience but can be very rewarding, not only as a customer builder but as a friendship builder.

Some ways you can utilize your blog content to enhance soft marketing for your products are:

• Be friendly and professional


• Some personal content could be good but be careful to come across as a true professional that runs a viable online business


• Open the doors to your life as a business owner, artist, designer, creative - give a glimpse into these worlds


• Build your brand by optimizing your content for SEO (using appropriate links)


• Showcase your products and creations, giving history, information, and perspective beyond what is found in your shops


• Know where and how to promote your blog to your target audience


• Encourage comments to start a "conversation" with potential customers

You can also create your blog to be your own selling site!

This is good, especially if you do not have your own web site and do not care to list on selling venues or it can be an extension of your selling strategies. There are several ways to do this that include:

• PayPal "buy now" buttons - individual buttons from PayPal that you place by your item photo


• flogd.com - selling format that can be placed on blogs, Facebook, MySpace and other areas

Don't expect the money to come rolling in, however, you can make good strides in increasing views of your work, becoming better known, branding your business, and making friendship sales from your blog.

One last reminder is that you must bring in the right people to see your blog in order for the relationship marketing to work well for you. That is another blog series to come about finding your target customer, so check back very soon!

The "Blogging is an Art" series continues in the days to come.

Blogging is an Art - Should I Start a Blog?

As GalleriaLinda, I participate in a variety of indie arts forums online find many comments and questions continually brought up about blogging. The questions I see are about why to blog and the comments are about how to blog from a content perspective.

Over the years, I have created two blogs. IndieCEO is a business blog that is targeted to a specific audience - the Indie Arts business owners online.

My second blog, gallerialindashowcase, is my jewelry blog that is targeted to both my customer and other online sellers. While I consider it somewhat businessy, it contains lighter topics relative to creating jewelry, photography for online stores, some tutorials, and more.

In the next few posts, I will work through some of the basics of blogging for you in this "Blogging is an Art series".

• Should I start a blog?
• Will a blog help sales?
• What should I write about on my blog?
• Who will read it and do I need to promote it?
• Where do I go to create a blog?

Q. I am an Indie CEO and should I start a blog?

In short, the answer is YES!

Early blogs were setup to be fun, personal diaries with daily life antics that allowed friends and family to keep up with what you are doing. Today, blogs are big business.

Think about using a blog to enhance your online Indie arts business. Some advantages to having a good, targeted business blog include:

• Name recognition for you and your business
• Can set you apart as an expert in your field
• Great SEO & search support if you plan your blog with this in mind
• Features your work to your audience and works for you 24/7
• A place for potential customers to be sent by you to learn about you and your products/services
• An extension and enhancement to your web site and online plan
• An important part of your marketing plan if used correctly
• Once seasoned, a potential for utilizing advertising opportunities

WHY do you want to start a blog? Because everyone else has a blog? Because you want to use it to promote your business? Because you want to ramble on about your inner musings in life? Because you want to make it an extension of your creative expression?

All of these are good, but my experience suggests that it is best if you pick one reason why you want to blog. If you don't know where you are going, you will never get there. If you don't know who you are writing for, no one will read it.

Some things to think about before you actually start your blog are below:

• Why do I want to blog? What is my core reason - pick one. Everything else will fall out of this one objective.
  
• Do I want to blog about business topics, personal topics, a targeted craft topic, a specialty topic, or all the above?


• Who will be my target audience? Fellow indie artists? Friends and family? A targeted group within the arts community? An outside group supporting a cause? Or all the above?
  
• Where will I find this audience?


• How do I plan to promote my blog?


• Who benefits from the blog? Me? Them? Others? All? (goes back to why you want to blog)
  
• Do I have time to nurture this blog with rich content that is interesting to my target audience?

Once you have worked through this, you will have a better idea of how to plan your blog. Blog planning can be as simple as understanding what you want to do with your blog from the questions above, or as complex as a written plan to include promoting and marketing methods; advertising; statistics review, measurement and improvement; content editorial schedule, and more.

Check back for the rest of the "Blogging is an Art" series!