This article is part of my "Marketing for Mompreneurs" training, which teaches moms how to grow their crafting business. Check out the link for more mompreneur articles!
Marketing Marketing Marketing!
Welcome to marketing for mompreneurs! Marketing is the most important part of your mompreneur crafting business, and my blog covers a bunch of topics to help moms like you succeed at it. To see more, go here.
Marketing your crafting business is an overwhelming topic. If you’re like me, you’re probably a little paralyzed with all the different things that need to be done. Where should you start and how could you possibly get it all done?
Let’s start with the baby steps to set you up for success. There are advanced techniques available, but this article will cover the much easier things to help get you started.
Before You Start
Set up your business!
If you haven’t already set up your business, you’re not ready to start marketing it! In that case, you should check out my Mompreneur Bootcamp. After you get your business set up, come back here to learn how to market it.
Prepare to become vocal!
To effectively market your business, you’re going to need to be a little vocal. If you’re an introvert like me, this stuff probably won’t come naturally. However, it’s going to be difficult to succeed without speaking up. Can you get comfortable chiming in with an opinion on Facebook group threads or reposting Instagram posts from others? That’s the kind of vocal I’m talking about.
Step 1: Find your customer’s micro niche
If the only thing you do is list a product on Etsy, it’s not likely to be found (read my example marketing scenario here for more info <Link to article about bookstore example>. You must bring customers to the product listing before Etsy will start showing your product to more customers!
To find customers to bring to your listing, start with the social media platform they are most likely to hang out on and then hunt for the place where they hang out.
Niche down
It’s tempting to start with the really large groups where tons of people talk about a wide range of topics. However, that won’t work for you. You need to find really small groups that are focused on a very specific topic. We call it a “micro niche”, and the process of finding this audience is called “niche down”.
Let’s say you’re selling shirts with custom designs based on heat transfer vinyl. Here’s what the niche down process would look like:
- People who wear shirts
- People interested in custom t-shirt designs
- People who can afford custom t-shirts
- People who take vacations and like custom t-shirts
- People who go to a particular theme park and want custom t-shirts for it
- People with kids going to that theme park and want custom t-shirts for it
The smaller the niche, the better you will be able to cater to them, and the more likely they are to buy from you. Start small and grow later.
Step 2: Learn about the micro niche
Take some time to learn about the micro niche. Dive into their groups and find a few groups that you’re comfortable with. Learn what the group likes or dislikes. These are your potential customers, and you need to understand their wants and needs.
Word of caution: Focus on one social media platform. Avoid the shiny object syndrome. Choose the one platform that is most important to your micro niche.
You don’t have to be the world’s leading expert in your micro niche. However, you should learn a fair amount about it. Here are some things to look for:
- Understand the rules / etiquette of each group.
- Which topics get the most attention?
- Which questions are being asked most often?
- Who are the most vocal people?
- What could these people use that you can provide?
- Do web searches related to what the groups are talking about to learn about blogs or videos out there that are related.
Step 3: Cater your products to the micro niche
After you understand the needs of the group, customize your products and your product listings to cater to that group. For example, let’s say you’ve got a listing for customized T-Shirts with HTV vinyl:
- Customized T-Shirts! Tell me what you want on it and I’ll create it for you!
To change it to cater to the niche of theme park kids, you might do something like:
- Customized theme park t-shirt for the kids!
Make sure to include search terms that you believe people are likely to use when searching to find your listing. You can guess which words to use for now, but a more advanced topic is to use data to find the right words to use. I’ll cover this in a future blog post.
Step 4: Include a call to action with your product
To help you grow, ask your customers to help you out! When you send a product to a customer, you have a unique opportunity to communicate with your best customers. Use it to ask them for help!
Include something in your product that gives the customer a specific call to action. What can this customer do to help you get new customers? Ask them to do it! For example, you should have a Facebook page – you could ask them to “like” the page.
Want to know how to get customers to go to a web page (such as your FB page)? Here is the technique that I use:
The more effort you put into making that product insert look better, the more likely customers will help you out. You’re a crafter! Use your skill to make a cute product insert!
Note: if you are pursuing the advanced techniques, you will want to do more than just ask for a “Like”. But that is a topic for another day!
Step 5: Update your profiles
Before you start talking to people, you need to set up your social media profiles to advertise yourself. When you start engaging with people, they will inevitably look at your profile. Use the opportunity to sell your products!
Here are some tips for what to do:
- Use a really good picture
- This part of your profile is so important that I decided to write about it separately here:
- The most important part of your business’s social media profile
- Describe yourself as a crafter who caters to the specific micro niche that you have chosen.
- Include a link to your store or any other relevant links
Step 6: Engage with your potential customers
This is the part where you need to become vocal: Provide value to the micro niche communities that you have joined.
This means you need to start talking with people. Engage in conversations and start conversations yourself. For example, if you’re on Facebook and have joined groups, try to get the “conversation starter” badge or “rising star” badge.
It will take a little time, but people need to recognize you as a valuable member of the community. Only then can you start putting in plugs for your products.
After you are a valuable member of the community, you can start plugging your products in non-spammy ways. Work your products into conversations naturally. Make people curious and get them to ask questions or peek at your profile.
Summary
We’ve talked about how to set yourself up for mompreneur marketing with no money spent. Instead of spending money, you’ll be spending your time to build up your reputation and then used that to lead people to your products.
The steps we discussed were:
- Step 1: Find your customer’s micro niche
- Step 2: Learn about the micro niche
- Step 3: Cater your products to the micro niche
- Step 4: Include a call to action with your product
- Step 5: Update your profiles
- Step 6: Engage with your potential customers
Homework Assignment
Based on what you have learned in this article, create one action item to do something new for your business and write it down in your MOMPRENEUR JOURNAL! Then do it! Focus on one little action item at a time and soon, your business will be booming!
What's the next thing to learn? I cover it all here - browse through and find an article to read!
You got this, mama!
