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!
Trade Time for Money
If you’ve read many of my other articles, you probably know by now how much I value marketing for the mompreneur. In fact, I think it is the most important thing for her to focus on.
But how do you do marketing if you don’t have the money to spend on ads?
In this early stage of your business, the most effective forms of marketing do not actually cost money. Instead, they will cost you time and perhaps a little subject matter expertise.
To illustrate, I’ve assembled this article with several examples. But don’t limit yourself to just these tactics – use this to spark your own ideas!
Tactic #1: Use your profiles wisely
For every social media platform that you plan to be an active member of (it should be ONE community at first), your profile should advertise your products / services.
I recommend you choose one super important objective that you want to achieve when people visit your profile, then craft the profile to specifically achieve that objective. Here are some examples:
- Send them to your Etsy shop
- Show off your hottest selling product
- Ask them to join your FB group
- Get them to “Like” your FB page
Which one do you want to happen the most? Only ask for ONE thing in your profile, and give your users a specific call to action to achieve it.
After your profile is set up, it’s time to get people to look at the profile!
Tactic #2: Make yourself valuable to a community
Have you ever been a part of a Facebook group? If yes, do you tend to be a “lurker” who only reads, or do you actively participate in discussions? A community entirely made of lurkers would never get a single post!
Becoming an active participant is other communities is a VERY effective way to market your business:
- Make people curious about you
- Some might click on your profile and see your advertisement
- When you consistently provide value to the community, you’ll find subtle ways to plug your business
- Not often, but at key moments where conversations naturally lead that way
Provide Engaging Responses
Find two or three communities related to your micro niche and start engaging in conversations there. For starters, you can provide engaging responses to others posts.
Warning: Don’t simply post one or two word responses like “super cute!” or “love!”. Make your response meaningful and engaging. Ask questions to get people to respond and show genuine interest in their story. The key to marketing here is to create engagement.
Become a Conversation Starter
After you’re comfortable in the communities you’ve chosen, start conversations! If you’re an introvert like me, this can be intimidating at first. But it gets waaaaay easier the more you do.
When you’re ready to start conversations, here are some ideas for what to post:
- Post the news – repost others content
- Tutorials for how to do some crafting technique
- Learn something new and document your journey over a series of posts
- You’ll be surprised at how supportive people are when exposing your learning – this is HUGE for you!
- Do product reviews of products from other companies that are of interest to your micro niche
- Provide general mom inspiration
Market Yourself
While you are providing content to the community (in the form of engaging responses or starting conversations), feel free to infrequently throw in a plug for your own stuff. Since other communities generally frown on advertisements, I found the best way to do this is to make people curious. That leads people to your stuff!
Warning: Don’t pitch your stuff like a sleezy used car salesman. Make it a natural part of a conversation, and do it infrequently.
Here is an example:
- Person: “Here is a really cool tumbler design that I saw. Love it!”
- You: “Yes, what a beautiful design! I sell something very similar to it, and it has skyrocketed in popularity in the past few weeks.”
- Person’s thoughts: “Wait, what was it that skyrocketed in popularity? Let’s see if I can find it…”
Another example:
- Person A: “I don’t understand how someone was able to do this to a T-shirt”
- You: “This technique is called XYZ. I don’t recall who came up with it first – maybe someone else here knows.”
- Person B: “I think it was Jane Doe who first came up with it.”
- You: “Oh yeah, thanks! I loved her design so much that I modeled one of mine after it. Here, take a look at this picture and you’ll notice the similarities:”
- Post a picture that has a watermark to your stuff
Yet another example because 2 wasn’t enough:
- Person: “I can hardly wait, we’re going on a cruise to the Bahamas!”
- You: “Yay, I am so happy for you! Which island are you going to?”
- Person: “It’s a private island owned by the XYZ cruise ship company.”
- You: “Love love love that island! Make sure to check out the snorkeling side excursion! I loved it so much that I created a custom t-shirt just for it”
- Post a picture that has a watermark to your stuff
The general formula that works is:
- Give content / engagement
- Give content / engagement
- Give content / engagement
- Give content / engagement
- Give content / engagement
- Plug your stuff in a subtle way
- Repeat
By providing a lot of free content and engagement to the community, you become a valuable part of the community . Generally speaking, it’s OK for these people to plug their content every now and then. Some communities may still frown on it, but I think the vast majority would appreciate what you provide and allow an ad every now and then.
Tactic #3: Get creative with your product inserts
You should always include a product insert with the products you sell. The insert should have 3 goals:
- Be noticed by the person opening the package
- Enhance the product’s perceived value
- Market yourself
Since you’re a crafty mompreneur, you should use your crafting skills to make a cute product insert.
Get crafty!
Make your insert so interesting and cute that it makes people curious. If they don’t even bother to look at the insert, then anything you have to say on it will be wasted.
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Your insert can also enhance the perceived value of the product. Think of Apple’s iPhone boxes: They are LEGENDARY for their incredible box design and inserts. Some people keep their boxes around because they value them so much!
Higher perceived value create happy customers that tell others about you. The customer who just bought from you may even become a repeat customer some day. |
Call to Action
Finally, you should use the opportunity to get your customer to do something: a call to action!
Do you want them to join your FB community? Like your page? Consider buying a related product?
It’s up to you, but you should always have one specific call to action on it that gets them to come back to you. If you give them a specific call to action, the few that take you up on your call to action will help your business grow.
Tactic #4: Create your own content channel
Create your own channel and pump out your own content!
This one requires a LOT of work, but it is free and can give you a really big marketing hammer to swing with. That is, “free” in terms of money and definitely not in terms of time.
Most mompreneurs don’t have the time to this one. That’s unfortunate because this is a HUGE boon for business. I don’t expect you will go this route, but I tell you this to plant the seed for further down the road. After you get some sales under your belt, you may revisit this.
It requires so much time because you have to regularly make content. I spend a LOT of time after the kiddos go to bed working on content for you. In the beginning, it will seem like you’re wasting your time and only talking to yourself. But by using some advanced tactics, the audience will come and you can start to build a platform for pitching your products or services.
I won’t dive into the details here because it’s too complex, but here are some channels to consider:
- YouTube channel
- FB group
- Blog
- Pinterest boards
Tactic #5: Befriend an influencer
The last tactic I will discuss is to befriend an influencer. Add value to their community, and make a specific point to engage the influencer directly. Develop that relationship over a long period of time and don’t ask for anything in return – at least, not up front.
Further down the road, when it seems natural, consider asking the influencer to plug your products for you. There are creative ways to do it where you don’t have to feel awkward:
- Ask them to review your product on their platform
- Ask them to include your product in one of their giveaways
- Consider a joint cross promotion if their audience is roughly the same size as yours
Engage with the influencer in a natural way and try not to do anything forced. Pay attention to how they interact with their community for clues as to how receptive they will be to a request like this.
Conclusion
So there you have it – some techniques for how to market your stuff for little or no money! Again, there are many other ways to do this – feel free to share your ideas with us on Facebook! We may even add it to the blog here!
If you’d like to know about some more marketing techniques, make sure to check out my guide here:
It’s a lot to learn, but if you make a habit of educating yourself a little every day, your business will be booming! I am a HUGE believer in education – first grade teacher for 8 years!
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!
(Did you notice my call to action here?)
