Pardon our dust!

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed a few changes… little things like missing pages (no FAQs or Services to be specific) and a changing tagline.  Don’t worry, you’re not crazy.  Things are changing around here.

It’s the precursor to what will be an even better service for creative professionals.  One that will build your brand and get you noticed… and, most importantly, grow your sales.

I’m still refining things and working out system kinks.  So please bear with me and pardon the dust.  And check back in around St. Patrick’s day to be a part of the re-opening festivities!

Must read article!

I just read the best financial advice for creative professionals I have EVER read. The post by John Scalzi is written for writers but it applies to every creative professional out there… yes, that means I’m talking to all you indie designers, graphic artists, web designers, crafters, photographers, musicians… every one of you who are out there doing something you love and trying to earn a living at it! Go and read this post RIGHT now. Then follow his advice. That’s an order! (You’ll thank us for it later… )

Mailbag: How do I get people to read my blog?

Dear Shauntelle,

I’m a novelist and just started a blog because… well, everybody has one! I’ve written about 10 posts so far, but I’ve only had a handful of readers. How do I get people to read myblog? — L.S. in Texas

Hello L.S.,

First of all, welcome to the blogosphere! You have just joined the largest social network that exists on the interwebs. Getting started is easy. Sign up for a free service like WordPress, Blogger, or Typepad, follow the get started wizard, type your first post, and hit publish. Easy.

The hard part happens after you start writing. It’s a funny thing, even if you start a blog purely for your own enjoyment, after a while you want an audience. As a novelist, L.S., your blog can be a great promotional tool, allowing you to connect and build loyalty with your readers. First, however, you have to let them know your blog exists.

The key to building your blog readership is to remember that the blogosphere is a social network. Sure, you can buy ad space on Google, or pay for banner buttons on other, more popular blogs. Those are definitely viable ways to attract an audience. What works best however, is jumping in and getting to know (and be known by) other bloggers. You do this by reading and commenting on other bloggers’ posts.

There’s a right and a wrong way to do this. The right way involves actually researching until you find blogs which you 1) honestly enjoy, and 2) reach the audience that you are trying to reach with your blog. Read these blogs and add your thoughts to the conversations they start by participating in the comments. When you add your comments, it’s generally acceptable to add your name and your blog’s address. This is how other interested readers will find you and your blog.

The wrong way is to spam other bloggers with announcements about your blog. Or to spam their comments section by making inappropriate or irrelevant comments just to advertise your website. Bloggers are generally a friendly bunch, but if you overstep this way, you WILL suffer a backlash for it.

The most important thing I can tell you is to make sure you provide readers with a reason to visit and return to your blog. Update it regularly with useful and interesting content. While your blog can be a great promotional tool, no one wants to visit a blog that’s basically an ongoing advertisement.

Finally, once you’ve established a rhythm for updating, and gotten a feel for your style of blogging, take the time to add your blog to blog directories. Additionally, consider joining a blogging group (or webring), a community of bloggers who share and blog about a common interest.

A lot of work can go into having a popular and successful blog. This advice should get you start. Check out the following links for additional information:

• Shining examples: Dooce, GapingVoid, SFgirlbyBay, Shake Your Beauty, The Sartorialist, whatiwore2day
• Interesting blog groups: Designers who blog, Blogging Mommies, The Craft Mafia Web Ring
• Sample blog directories: Technorati, Blog Catalog, Delightful blogs
• Advice on blogging: How to get traffic to your blog (Seth Godin), How to Get 53% More Readers for Every Blog Post You Write (Copyblogger), 20 Tips for Good Blogging (Writer’s Digest)

Good luck L.S.! See you around the blogosphere.

Marketing 101: Lessons from the Personals

Quick, tell me five things about your perfect customer!

If you couldn’t get past “anyone who wants to spend their money on my product,” we need to talk. See, as much as I hate to break it to you, the truth is, not everyone in the world wants what you have to sell. You might have the most wonderful doo-dad in the world… a product guaranteed to change life as we know it… and still, you can bet not everyone is going to be in the market for it.

Which is why I suggest you sit down and write yourself a personal ad. You know, the ones you find in the back of the newspaper classifieds, man seeking woman, etc.? Those people have one up on you when it comes to marketing; they know that even with a million fish in the sea, not all of ‘em are ones they want to take home. And it’s the same with you. There’s a specific type of person out there who really wants/needs/appreciates/craves what you have to offer and when you’ve figured out who that person is, you’ll also be able to figure out exactly WHY they want you. And those two pieces of information are your start to a sensible marketing plan that gets results.

So, let’s get started. Find yourself a pen and paper and honestly answer the following questions:

1) Is my perfect customer male or female, or does gender matter?
2) How old is my perfect customer? Married or Single? Children?
3) What does my perfect customer do in their day to day life? Are they type A? Do they love their work or hate it? What are their hobbies? How do they relax?
4) Why do you want this person? And, most importantly, why do they want you?

When you’ve answered those questions, take a break. Give yourself some space to mull over your answers and in a few hours, come back and read what you wrote, making any corrections or additions that might occur to you. Then, when you feel very comfortable that these are your honest, true answers, sit down and craft a personal ad to this customer. It might seem silly, but do it anyway.

The point of this exercise is to develop a target for your marketing efforts. Marketing initiatives fail when the target is too broad. Trying to reach everyone under the sun just spreads your marketing resources out so thinly that even good programs become ineffective.

So take a tip from the personal ads– go after exactly the right customer and make your dreams of more sales and larger profits come true!

Planning to Succeed: Marketing 101

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand. –Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I don’t often go around quoting _The Art of War_, but this quote seemed very appropriate to the topic at hand: Marketing! Many business owners, start-up and experienced alike, view marketing as a necessary evil. “I have to advertise, it’s a part of doing business” you’ll hear them say, “but I hate figuring out the budget because it’s so expensive.” Or even more often you’ll hear, “I know I should advertise, but I just can’t afford it.”

Which really underscores the true problem. Most people think “marketing” means advertising… solely and unequivocally. The term “marketing” brings to mind the Yellow Pages, commercials on T.V., and glossy magazine ads. All of which can be expensive, expensive, expensive!

Marketing, however, is so much more than that. According to American Heritage Dictionary, marketing is a verb defined as the commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer. That means marketing is really about processes; the processes that get your product or service from you to your customer.

When you consider marketing for your company, you in reality should be thinking about:

• the customer: who are they, how do they think, what’s going to get them to part with their hard earned money, and, if they’re unhappy, how are you going to handle it?
• the product: is it priced right, is the packaging attractive, can the customer access it easily (or in the best way), and is the delivery system efficient and effective?
• promoting: how will you let people know your product/service exists and what steps will you take to encourage them to buy it?

Once you understand all the areas of your business that marketing encompasses, it’s easier to see why developing an appropriate marketing strategy can seriously affect the success of your company.

Want to learn more about marketing and how to develop your best marketing strategy? Then keep your eyes peeled for the next Marketing 101 post. These posts are meant to help you develop a basic understanding of marketing and marketing issues so that you can make the best decisions for your company.

If you’re interested in more in-depth assistance, feel free to e-mail me to with your questions. You might see the answer show up in a mailbag post. And don’t forget you can always schedule a complimentary consultation to discover custom solutions to your marketing challenges.

Question from a reader…

Dear Shauntelle,

Help! I’m a jewelry designer and I want to start selling my work online. Someone told me the easiest way to get started was to sell on Etsy.com. Setting up a shop looks easy enough, but there are so many shops that I’m afraid no one will find me there. Can you give me some advice, please? I don’t have a clue about marketing on the internet. —T.L. in D.C.

It’s a familiar story. You’re great at something- in your case, T.L., jewelry design- and everyone tells you that you need to start selling online. Get yourself a website; the internet will make you rich. There’s a pervasive attitude that if you can just get online, you’ll hit the gold mine and be on your way to a field of riches.

As you’ve discovered T.L., the reality of getting started online can be really confusing. First, the myriad of options out there– paid websites, free websites supported with advertising, blogs, Ebay, Etsy, Facebook, Myspace– are enough to drive a person crazy. Then, when you’ve waded through it all and are finally online, there’s the problem of attracting attention. With a brick and mortar (real world) storefront, you can at least count on signage and normal every day traffic to bring a few customers your way. Online, there’s so many websites going up at any given minute, you can’t count on someone just stumbling on to yours.

Getting customers to your Etsy store isn’t going to happen automatically– that’s the bad news. The good news is that you’ve picked a great way to get started. For an indie designer, Etsy.com is a wonderful way to test the waters without investing a lot in startup. No worrying about which shopping cart to use, transaction security, merchant accounts… just fill in the blanks, upload a few pictures, and your pretty much ready to start selling.

The other nice thing about Etsy.com is the strong community. If you take a moment to visit the Forums, you’ll find all sorts of suggestions for building traffic to your store. It’s like having a built in market research department, with all kinds of information at your fingertips about what types of marketing techniques have worked for others and which ones have failed dismally. Therere also “co-op” groups that work together (co-operatively) to develop and conduct marketing initiatives. This gives you a chance to spread the word about your shop in creative and ingenious ways without shouldering all the expense; always a plus when you’re starting up.

Finally, one of the best things about Etsy is the concern you voiced… The myriad of shops by crafters and indie designers. Etsy is like the mall of indie design. And this is a great benefit for you, just like the design of the mall benefits all the retail shops within.

Not following me? Well, let’s say, for instance, that Macy’s runs a weekly Wednesday sale. They advertise that sale on the radio, in the newspaper, on bus billboards, and all over network television.

Now my friend Jill might see one of those ads and it draws her in. She heads out to the mall on Wednesday because she needs a new date night dress. Her plan is to check out Macy’s because she knows about their sale. But what happens when she gets in there? Maybe they don’t have a dress that she likes… or maybe she remembers that she also wants a new pair of shoes and a lovely necklace to compliment her new dress. One way or another, she ends up wandering around the mall, checking out the products in the other stores. Even if she doesn’t buy something from one of those other stores at that particular time, she’ll tuck knowledge of the stores that interest her in the back of her mind for the right time. This is exactly why stores are willing to pay higher rent for space in malls with several big name department stores; they benefit from the customers that the bigger stores pay to draw in.

And this is exactly how Etsy can benefit you. If Jill (who loves to shop, obviously!) visits Etsy because she’s looking for a necklace, she may start in a particular designer’s shop, but once she’s there, she’s bound to browse in other shops. The key is making sure to add stock to your store often enough that you remain in the top 10 to 15 pages in your category.

Hope that helps T.L.!

Got a marketing dilemma of your own? Send me an e-mail with subject “mailbag” and you might see your answer as a post in the blog.

If you advertise it, they will come… But will they buy?

You’ve advertised your website in all the right places and you’re getting a decent amount of visitors. The problem? Very few of them are buying. What do you do?

If you’re attracting a steady stream of visitors, it’s not an issue of getting the word out. So you need to pinpoint the actual problem. That takes asking a few questions:

• How deep into your website are your visitors going?
• Do you provide the right information for them to make an informed decision to purchase?
• Are your product/service descriptions interesting and inviting?
• Do your descriptions help customers understand how this product will improve their life or does it just list benefits?
• Have you included enough information to support the value of your product?
• Are your product photographs high quality, attractive, and inviting?
• Is it easy for them to actually make the purchase? Are you confident that your shopping cart is working correctly? Do you make it easy for them to pay in a manner that’s convenient to them?
• How much is shipping? Do you inform them of shipping costs early enough?

Finally, and most importantly:

• Are you reaching the right audience with your current advertising?

Getting the word out is only the first step to building your customer base. Just like a brick and mortar shop, websites have to focus on creating a satisfying customer experience. These questions are just a few to help you get started. I guarantee you, when you’ve met this goal, your sales will soar.