A quick business related post to give you food for thought today, this time on effective marketing according to the Fournaise Marketing Group. The study looked at low and high GDP growth countries, but for the purpose of this blog entry I will give you the low GDP growth country information only, which applies to North America, the UK and Australia.
So here’s the top 10, draw from this what you will, hopefully it will give you a few pointers on how to develop your craft business marketing strategies next!
1) Direct Marketing – Newsletters and targeted mail outs. I would probably include samples for craft fair goody bags here as I would argue that you are specifically targetting the craft buying market. These are postal only results, not e-mail- we’ll get to that later.
2) Public Relations – Keep your customers happy for repeat purchases!
3) Newspapers – Perhaps not the most relevant, but if youcan get a product in the newspaper for review in a Saturday/Sunday supplement that would set you off to the big time. On a smaller scale think getting a feature in your local paper about your business.
4) Online E-mails – E-mail newsletters.
5) Online Paid Search Ads – Stuff like Facebook ads and Google Adwords.
6) Online referrals – Think link swaps, blog posts etc.
7) Online Display Ads – Adverts on other sites such as Project Wonderful.
8) TV – Not a hope in hell with this one for crafters really!
9) Online Rich Media – YouTube videos, podcasts…
10) Outdoor – Not that I expect you to be able to pay for billboard adverts, but maybe the odd car sticker may work!
As we’re now in 2009, things have probably moved on a little, I would imagine that online methods are becoming more trusted and clickable as people become less fearful of the Internet and E-commerce is growing and growing. For online shop owners and those with Etsy shops for instance, this is probably very welcome news!
Oh and here’s a picture of me at said successful craft fair as per my last post- my stall came together quite effectively in the end!
PennyDog Patchwork (and illustration, recipes, other crafts...) 
6 Comments
Some good advice thanks Kerry. The stall looks great. I have that bookcase. I used to do bookstalls and bought it for that. It is folded up in my cupboard at the moment.
Great info Kerry – Thanks!! Your stall looks good too!!
Good looking stall, and some good marketing tips passed on. 🙂
Direct Mail is allegedly still very effective – apparently postcards are particularly high impact if well designed, perhaps because they only contain a small amount of writing and are likely to be (at least) read on the way to the bin??
Email Newsletters are also great but ‘cold’ email is a really hard sell – we use it occasionally (we are at the moment for instance), and the return rate is terrible!
Good points!
I’m wondering if Twitter is good marketing.
I would put that under social networking which isn’t mentioned here as it’s unpredictable and hard to guage results. That said I’ve had a couple of directly related sales from it 😉
WOW that store looks fab, its great to put a face to a name. xx